Toreth nodded.
"Well, Tom looked
nothing
like his sister at all. Dark where she was blonde, rather skinny while she was — " He looked past Toreth, unfocusing his gaze to sharpen the image in his mind. "Athletic. She played tennis to a fairly high standard."
"Sounds nice."
"Extremely." He looked back at Toreth. "Poor Tom was really no competition. However, he lived in the same house as her, which was a good enough reason to visit him. She'd barely even speak to me, of course, but I'd get to spend some time with her. She'd tolerate our presence, if she didn't have anything better to do."
"And?"
"Well, I'm sure you can imagine how a few hours in the presence of someone who put all my glands into overdrive left me."
"And he was a handy fuck." Toreth sounded thoroughly approving, which made Warrick uncomfortably aware of a dynamic he'd often felt guilty about.
"He was always very accommodating, yes. Because — " He hesitated, then ploughed on. "Because, I suspect, he felt about me the same way I felt about Tamara. I treated him very badly without thinking anything of it, as one does at that age. Once she went to university, I stopped going round to see him. I've wondered since if he knew why — he must have done, I suppose."
"No one tied him up and forced him to fuck you." Toreth paused. "Or did you?"
"Good God, no. Nor he me." That was a conversation he didn't want to pursue right now, so he looked for a distration. "Who was your first — " He shied away from the word 'lover' just in time. "Fuck?"
Toreth shrugged. "I don't remember."
"You must do."
"Honestly, no." He went back to his original chair, lounging back into his original position. "And anyway, it depends what you mean by first. Handjob, blowjob, fuck, what?"
He hadn't considered that for Toreth the acts would be so separate from any kind of relationship. "Well, any of them."
"Okay." Toreth rubbed his nose. "Well, when I was thirteen, I was sent to a Retraining Centre. Juvenile prison, really. It'd be in my security file — you must have seen it?"
Warrick nodded, despite a sudden chill of premonition.
"Right. I was there until I was sixteen, so the first time I did pretty much everything, I did it there." He closed his eyes. "Blowjob, giving, that would be one of the guards. Same for a handjob. Getting both of them would be one of the other kids in there. Fucking . . . being fucked, guard again. Fucking a grown-up was with one of the teachers, although I maybe did some of the other kids before that. I don't remember for sure. And I don't remember any names, except for the teacher: Gee Evans, who was a complete fucking fruitcake, but other than that not a bad bloke."
He opened his eyes. "That was all men, of course. Women were later, after they kicked me out for being bright enough to dress myself. Well, to pass exams, actually."
Toreth paused, watching Warrick expectantly, waiting for a reaction. Warrick had the sudden feeling of a test in progress.
He had read the words Retraining Centre in Toreth's file, but he'd never stopped to think through the possible consequences. If he had, this conversation would never have happened. However, he'd asked Toreth to reciprocate, so it was up to him to live with the results.
"It must have been — " Warrick ran up against a locked-down security door. What the hell
would
it be like to be Toreth, at any age, whatever was happening? He did know that getting the wrong answer would, at best, lead to an awkward weekend, if not a full-scale vanishing act.
Toreth still hadn't said anything.
"It must have been very boring — frustrating — being locked in a secure facility."
"Yeah." Toreth sounded surprised and possibly relieved. "Very. Maybe that's why I like walking everywhere, huh?"
"Possibly."
After a brief silence, Toreth shook himself, shedding memories like water, and said. "I can do the first time I fucked a women, if you'd rather. I can even remember her name. Or at least I can remember the name on the card, which was 'Chastity'." He snorted. "Talk about false advertising. Good, mind. Value for money. She was about the only time I've ever paid for it, as well."
"Why did you then?"
"Practise. I like to do things properly and it's a hell of a lot easier to do intensive training with someone you're paying."
Warrick laughed, and Toreth frowned slightly. "What's so fucking funny?"
"It's —" It took a few more seconds to rein in the amusement. "'Intensive training'. A very practical approach."
Now Toreth grinned. "Yeah. I've been spending too much time on training courses at work. The jargon creeps up on you and the next thing you know you sound like some management tosser. God, did I tell you about the course last week? Nothing you don't want to hear about. It was 'Safety in the office environment'. Don't trip over chairs, don't fall down stairs — which bastards from outside always have to make some crack about, like we haven't heard it a hundred times before — and don't run with scissors. Talk about a bullshit waste of time."
"Unfortunately, they're a legal requirement. The staff at SimTech are no more enthusiastic, I can assure you."
The conversation moved on to other topics, leaving Warrick to wonder briefly if Toreth would ever mention the retraining centre again.
Warrick couldn't sleep. There were too many images competing for his attention, crowding each other. Half were memories of Tom and Tamara, all vivid pictures, scents and sounds and remembered feelings. The others were created scenes, purely imaginary.
He had no idea how Toreth had looked as a teenager; Warrick couldn't imagine him as anything other than his tall, well-muscled, physically confident self. And if it was hard to create a picture, it was flatly impossible to place him in the role of victim, to conceive of him being forced into things. Dominated and taken against his will.
Somewhere deep inside, a dark, dirty thread of excitement twisted, looping round his guts and tying almost painful knots. He felt sure that if he could really imagine Toreth being hurt like that, the thrill would vanish. But as it was, shadowy pictures, unreal and strangely compelling . . . he pushed the feeling away, sickened.
Toreth's voice in the dark startled him. "Are you awake?"
"Yes." Warrick rolled onto his side, facing Toreth although the room was pitch black. "Wide awake."
"Me too. You made me think about it — about the RC. I haven't thought about the place for years." Toreth sounded reminiscent more than anything, certainly not distressed. The kind of tone Warrick associated with old university stories. "The beds were fucking awful. Hard as bricks. The real psychos were in single cells, but the kids they could trust not to strangle anyone in the night were in dormitories. Mind you, there were still cameras and they never really switched the lights out, just turned them down, so they knew what we were up to."
The bed shifted. Judging by the new position of his voice when he spoke, Toreth had rolled over onto his stomach and propped himself up on his elbows.
"Funny how it all comes back. There's other stuff. Like, there were a dozen of the guards who did most of the fucking. With the others it was every now and then, if they had some tension to let off."
"Mm?" Warrick said, trying to make the sound noncommittal, but encouraging if that was how Toreth chose to take it
"Yeah. Someone would turn up in the dormitory, that was the routine. Go along the beds. They'd strip the covers back if they wanted you to go out with them. Kids used to hide under the sheets anyway. Under the beds, sometimes. Not me, though — I used to sit up and wait. There was a rec room they used a lot. Sometimes they'd pull some of the real basket cases out of their cells, just for a bit of extra fun. Oh, God, that was usually —" He snorted quietly, then stopped. "I expect you don't want to hear about it."
Selfishly, he kept quiet, because he didn't want to hear and he had no idea what to say if Toreth went on. However, it was rare enough for Toreth to mention anything about his childhood. Rejecting the offered confidences outright would be cruel.
Toreth shifted, and when he spoke again, his voice was different, almost muffled. Cradling his chin on his hands, perhaps. "Some kids hardly got touched by anyone. And then there were the other kids, the ones they all wanted: the better-looking ones, the ones they could tell what to do and who'd understand in less than fifteen minutes, the ones who weren't so fucked in the head they'd bite their dicks off just because."
Toreth must have fallen into all three categories.
"Some of the kids used to fight every single time. And then the guards would kick the crap out of them every single time until they cooperated. They had bruises every day they were there: black eyes and broken noses and whatever else. No one cared. I never saw the point, though — going along with it hurt a hell of a lot less. It was just fucking, anyway, and I've always liked it."
"Always?"
"Yeah, most of the time. Sometimes, okay, it wasn't fun. Pretty fucking grim, I suppose. But most of the time . . . I'll tell you what — the real difference was
who
you went along with." He sounded more insistent now, with an edge of defiance. "I did the guards and the couple of teachers, but after the first few months none of the kids touched me unless I let them.
None
of them. And I had to do some real damage to make that stick, but it did. By the time I left, I was one of the ones who could take first pick of the new kids if I wanted them."
It was odd — he knew what Toreth's answer would be, but he had to ask. "Even though it had happened to you?"
"That's how the world works, isn't it? Food chain. If you're not on the top, you're on the bottom."
"Figuratively speaking."
"What? Oh, right, yeah. Anyway, that's more or less it. Just thought you might be interested. That's what I was doing when you were letting Tom suck you off while you thought about his sister's tits."
"Good God," Warrick said without thinking, because that was literally true. It had probably been on some of the same evenings when he'd —
"What?"
Toreth at fourteen, learning lessons about sex and control while Warrick had been exploring the power of imagination and discovering that all it took for people to believe was an illusion that felt good enough.
"What?" Toreth asked again.
"It's . . . the idea suddenly made it seem a lot more real."
Toreth chuckled. "Yeah? You want real, you should have been there. God, you'd have gone mad with boredom. I nearly did sometimes. But it was still better than being at home."
Sudden silence. Warrick felt so tempted to comment, but there was nothing guaranteed to make Toreth leave faster or in a worse temper than trying to discuss his family. Even — or especially — after he'd brought the topic up.
Another test, perhaps. Warrick breathed quietly, listening to Toreth's breathing in the dark, trying to judge what to say. Considering that they lay in the same bed, the distance between them felt unclosable. He put out his hand and stroked slowly down Toreth's back. A muscle twitched at the base of his spine, and Warrick imagined the panther at the zoo. There was no glass here to save him from making a mistake.
'It'd tear your fucking throat out . . . That'd teach you not to feel sorry for things that don't fucking need it.'
Although Toreth certainly didn't need his pity or understanding, and possibly didn't want them, Warrick couldn't help himself. Something had to be said, to break the silence.
"I don't . . . " I don't think of you any differently, knowing about it. True, and maybe even what Toreth wanted to hear, but perhaps not the best phrasing. "It doesn't matter. It was a long time ago and you did what you had to do to survive."
He half expected a furious explosion. That Toreth simply ignored the comment told him he'd guessed right about Toreth's motive for resuming the conversation.
"Let me fuck you," Toreth said suddenly.
The peculiar phrasing caused a near-disastrous hesitation. Warrick covered it by sliding over to Toreth — bringing them together now sex had made it permissible.
"Of course," Warrick said, his mouth against Toreth's shoulder. "Anything you want."
How truthfully and how broadly he meant that disturbed him, for as long as Toreth allowed him to think about it.
"Do you want another one?" Ali asked.
She was pressed against him under the duvet, legs entwined, and the naked heat was made all the better by the fact that he was missing an afternoon lecture to be here with her. It felt illicit, like a real affair, although as far as Greg knew she wasn't married.
Greg kissed her and then shook his head. "Don't forget what we're doing this evening."
She laughed. "I think we can stick up a few posters even if we're stoned."
"But we have to do it without being caught." Sometimes he worried that Ali didn't take their anti-Administration acts seriously enough. She'd only been involved with the group for a few weeks, and she was only college serving staff, not a student, but it didn't take a Cambridge undergraduate to work out that putting up idealist posters wasn't safe.
She opened the plastic bag and shook it invitingly. The earthy smell of dried mushrooms mixed with the warm smell of sex and some kind of incense she'd brought along. God, he hoped that incense was all it was. The college took a dim view of students fumigating their rooms with illicit substances.
He shook his head again, and she sighed, mock-pouting.
"Two's enough," he said. Actually, two hadn't done anything much for him, but he wanted a clear head for later.
"What shall we do instead, then?" she asked, and her hand slid down between his legs.
He laughed, breathless, letting his eyes close as she touched him, his cock hardening quickly. God, she was good. Not just good in bed, but funny and kind and sometimes he wondered if he'd fallen in love with her, short as the time had been. Pity his parents would never let him make anything more formal out of it. She was too much older than him, too far down the social scale, too —