Dark romance. Adrian has a chat with Tevye.
Continuing on from A Clean Pig.
Phil Hutchinson, a detective inspector, has stumbled into being the kept pig of the beautiful young Adrian Gillespie – half his age, devastatingly attractive, and sick. Uses a wheelchair, takes a bunch of meds, is weak and ill and has a thousand allergies sick. So why the fuck does this kid have such a hold over him? Why does Phil feel like falling to the floor at his feet whenever he lays eyes on him?
Dom/sub dynamics, age gap with the younger one domming, lots of powerlessness and grappling with self esteem, building to some fucked-up sex. References to domestic violence, homophobia and bigotry, antisemitism, mild bigotry on Phil’s part as you’d expect from a cop (racism, antisemitism, the Islamophobia you’ve seen so far, etc).
Up ‘til this moment, Phil’s actually had an alright day.
In the morning, he and Bav had driven out to Enfield to look over the scene there after they’d found a lot of crossover between the brothels they’d been chasing up a few months back. Phil hadn’t had much faith in it, knowing what he did about Gillespie and how unwilling he was to share information about his mother, knowing how locked-down that whole operation seemed to be in terms of identity, the surveillance age be fucking damned, but it had actually been decently illuminating.
It hadn’t had anything to do with the Kołodziejskis and their import/export business, but more to do with local grow houses and connected brothels – Phil doesn’t give a fuck about weed, really, thinks that it’s only a matter of time before it’s legalised and he doesn’t have to bother with the paperwork, but in the meantime, the big grows fund a lot of more fucked-up, nefarious shit, and that’s the case here.
The actual grow is across a bunch of interconnected attics over some moderately shitty terraced houses, all rented out to students and immigrants, people with little to no interest in getting into the attics to have a look around, let alone be pissed off about nice warm bedrooms with no concern about the heating bill in winter. It’s a good amount of plants to be confiscating, and Phil knows that it will look good for their statistics, but what gets him and Bav called over is a passport desk in the corner of one of the offices, where one of the growers was apparently getting up to some ID fraud in between spraying down his farm – there are some helpfully familiar names and faces across the fake passports and ID cards, and it’s no hardship at all to sit in a nice warm room while they go through them and shoot the shit with the other Dis.
After Enfield, he sits at his desk and gets on with a bit more paperwork, even spares an idle thought for Tevye Gluck and the misery of his fucking situation, and he’s feeling tired and desperate for his bed through the drive home, and then the walk up his fucking path.
Dariusz is a big fucker, does as many steroids as he does lines of fucking coke, and it’s no wonder that all that shit makes him as fucking angry as it makes him meaty and muscular.
Phil doesn’t know that it’s him in the initial seconds between walking miserably up the path to the front door and finding himself flying through the air with the big lug wrapped around his waist – all he knows that some huge bald-headed meathead is tackling him, presumably with the intention of killing him, and that he’s fucking winded by the blow to the belly the tackle is accompanied with.
He twists as they go down, driving his knee up and into his attacker’s solar plexus as best he can, though fuck, it makes his muscles ache after being out of the house all day, and it barely feels as if he’s making any impact, his knee hitting hard muscle.
As Dariusz grips him by the throat, Phil twists and grips him by the cabbage ears, shoving his head down hard into the neat concrete slabs that makes up the front path. It had had dandelions and grass and shit growing up between the cracks a week and a half ago, but all of that is gone now – that’s nice. Leaves space for Dariusz’ blood to flow as Phil cracks his fucking head open.
He hisses something in Polish, snarls the fucking words, then goes on, “… pathetic fucking pig, trying to fucking fuck me—”
“No one wants to fucking fuck you, Dariusz – you’ll find that out in lock-up when you go away for whatever the fuck this is!”
“I do not plan to get arrested – I plan to fucking kill you!”
Dariusz punches him hard in the jaw, keeping him still by the throat, and Phil grunts at the force of the fucking blow, at the ringing pain that radiates through his fucking skull, his teeth feeling like they’ve just been held to a fucking tuning fork. He pushes up with his knees, trying to force the bigger man off him, but there’s just no fucking leverage possible with how huge this prick is, how goddamn heavy his muscle is.
His phone is in his pocket, but if he can just grab for it, he can set off the emergenc—
Phil heaves in a gasp as Dariusz is swept right off him, tackled to the side, and as he stares, dizzily, Laborious and Hanzalah are on him like this is a neatly choreographed dance: Dariusz’ head is shoved to the side, a bag is forced over his head, his hands are cuffed, his shout of rage is muffled, his ankles are cuffed too, and then he abruptly goes limp on the ground.
“The fuck?” Phil asks, a little hoarsely, rubbing at his neck.
“Sorry there, Mr Hutchinson,” says Laborious cheerfully, patting Dariusz down and removing things from his pockets, handing them over to Hanzalah. “He must have just gotten past us while we were chatting. You alright?”
“Just fucking dandy,” Phil mutters, pulling himself up, and he watches as Hanz rolls out a blanket, then helps Laborious pitch the big cunt to the side. They have to work together to lift him even just to tip him to the side, and Phil stares at the sacking wrapped around his neck. He’s still breathing, his big chest rising and falling, but and he can even hear him snoring through the sacking. Chloroform is a bit out of fashion, but he doesn’t know what else would knock him out so fucking fast. “What is this, boys, citizen’s arrest?”
“That’s very funny, Mr Hutchinson,” says Hanzalah, somehow mild and scathing all at once. “Perhaps you should consider a career on the stage.”
“You’re in a good mood,” Phil says.
“I just watched you get punched in the head,” Hanz replies, and despite himself, Phil laughs, as much as his throat hurts and his head fucking aches, and as he leans forward, rubbing the side of his neck, he watches a slim figure rush to the garden’s edge, standing there at the border with his mouth open, his hands stupidly hidden inside the sleeves of his too-big YSL cardigan with his stupid claw-tipped nails sticking out.
“Did you fucking kill him?” Tevye demands, and he’s breathing heavily, looking in a panic between Laborious and Hanzalah, who have lifted Dariusz up using their ready-made stretcher, to Phil as he leans forward and pushes himself up off the ground.
“He’s still breathing,” Phil says, casting about for which car Tevye must have been waiting in. “The fuck are you doing here? Do you know this is my fucking house, kid?”
“You’re the one that said for me to fucking meet you here,” Tevye spits. “What, you thought I was just going to come here, and, and just let you fuck me?”
“What?”
“Ah, Mr Gluck, isn’t it?” comes a smugly Scottish interruption, and Phil rolls his eyes, looking grimly in Adrian’s direction. He’s sitting in his chair, still in the same outfit he was wearing this morning, and Phil’s door open. From inside, Phil can hear the sound of music playing, and something smells fucking good. “I’m afraid I may have mislead you using our mutual acquaintance’s good name.”
“I didn’t know you had a son,” Tevye says to Phil.
“He’s not my son,” Phil snaps. “He’s—” Phil stops, and Adrian looks expectantly at him, his hands neatly folded over his Ouija board blanket, his perfectly groomed lilac eyebrows raised in amusement. Tevye is also looking between them, staring at Phil, before he casts a concerned glance behind him, to where Laborious and Hanz are closing the door to the van, their quarry inside. “He’s a prick.”
“No, gross, you’re like, fucking him?” Tev demands, and suddenly his head has whipped forward and he’s not looking back at the car at all, and he’s just studying Adrian, staring at him. “But you’re— Can you walk? Can you even fuck? I mean, even if you can’t fuck, you know, you’re pretty, you’re… Don’t you see him? He looks like there’s mould growing between the fat folds on his fucking gut.”
“Don’t worry, I keep him nice and clean,” Adrian says softly. “Why don’t you come inside, Mr Gluck? I made a sorrel soup.”
Tevye blinks, uncomprehending. “Schav?”
“Yes, I believe that’s right,” Adrian says in his mild and easy way, like this is normal, like this is every day. “I don’t speak Polish myself, but that’s what your mother called it.”
“My mother?” Tev repeats, taking a reflexive step forward as he looks toward the door behind him, and Adrian smiles at him.
“She isn’t here, dear,” Adrian says softly. “She was just good enough to give me the recipe. Come.” He neatly turns in place and wheels back through the living room, out of sight, and Phil wipes down his trousers, picking his rucksack off the floor.
He doesn’t wait for Tev, just stalks inside himself and sits down in his easy chair to take his boots off, but quickly enough Tevye follows inside, slowly closing the door behind him like he’s not sure exactly what sort of fucking trap he’s walked into. He keeps anxiously glancing around like he thinks his mother is going to hop out from a corner or from behind a door, but it’s just the two of them in Phil’s house, which has become Adrian Gillespie’s fucking spider’s web.
“He didn’t crack your head too badly, did he, Phil?” Adrian asks. “No loss of consciousness, no dizziness?”
“Felt like my teeth were jarred, but none of them are loose,” Phil says, and he startles as Adrian rolls right up to him with a first aid kit that’s in far better shape than the messy and well-used thing he’d used to have under the sink in a faded grey case. He closes his eyes as Adrian pulls him gently forward by the chin and checks his head for marks, then dabs a little antiseptic on his head. It stings, but it doesn’t sting much – there must not be much of a cut there, probably more like a graze; the dab against his split lip stings more.
It’s nice.
It’s not like having a once over from a paramedic on a job – Adrian’s hands linger in his hair and on the side of his neck, checking Phil’s pulse, probably so that he can enjoy the warmth of Phil’s neck under his fingers more than because he thinks Phil is about to have a heart attack.
He doesn’t draw away, because it feels nice, and Adrian smiles at him indulgently and takes his boots once he’s gotten them off, dropping them onto the shoe rack and out of their way.
“You don’t let him touch you,” Tev says disbelievingly. He’s standing there with his hands at his sides, gripping at his sleeves from inside the cuffs, and still glancing suspiciously around. “He must be sixty years old. How old are you? Like, nineteen?”
“Nineteen,” Adrian repeats, and laughs. “No such luck for DI Hutchinson there, Mr Gluck. There’s a significant age gap between us, but not so scandalous a one as you imagine. What of your beau, Mr Kołodziejski? How much older is he than you?”
Tevye glances over his shoulder, as if he’s going to see his boyfriend in Adrian’s guys’ car, as if he can see them through the blinds closed on the window. “Is he okay?” he asks quietly, and Phil can see his feet shifting on the floor, see his uncertainty about where he is, about the fact that he’s in here instead of following out to where Dariusz is.
“He’s well in-hand,” says Adrian warmly, and it even sounds soothing. Phil can’t stop staring at his face, how beautiful he is, when he’s being like this – menacing, but with a polite and easy face on it. Tevye has no fucking idea what he’s walked into, has no idea that of him and Adrian, Phil’s not the fucking dangerous one, and something about that makes Phil’s heart skip a little faster in his chest. “How was work?”
Phil doesn’t answer right away, doesn’t answer until Adrian squeezes his knee, and Phil looks up to his face, to his pretty eyes, his pretty face. There’s something magic about him, Phil thinks, something magic and fucking dangerous.
“It was alright,” Phil says. “You cooked?”
“I cooked,” Adrian says.
“Housewife now, are you?”
“Would you like that?” Adrian asks, all sinewy and sinister even as he stretches out his arms above his bed and arches his body, and Phil’s mouth goes dry looking at the long column of his neck, at the slight arch of his back in the chair before he turns away and rolls back into the kitchen.
Phil stares after him, unable to speak.
“As I said, Mr Gluck, the message you received was from me, not Philip here. Do you know who I am?”
“No,” Tevye says. “You know my mother?”
“I met her just today,” Adrian says. “Come, help me.”
Phil is too tired to be curious, and he wonders what the fuck that says about him, that he’s sitting here in his chair and taking paracetamol, finishing the water in his bottle, and not desperately trying to listen to what Adrian is saying to Tevye, how he’s convincing him, how he’s fucking with his head. It wouldn’t be the first time. He tunes it out, sometimes, when Adrian’s on the phone with his mother, or he’s having a conversation almost within Phil’s earshot that he’d rather not be hearing.
After five or ten minutes, he doesn’t know how long, he eases himself out of his chair and walks to the kitchen, standing in the doorway. He watches Tevye Gluck, a boy he’s seen bruised and bloody and broken, seen in tears, seen scared, and other than that, seen angry and defiant and bitchy, a dog snapping at interlopers from behind the legs of the master who beats him, do what Adrian tells him.
Maybe it’s because Adrian’s in a wheelchair, or because he’s been talking to his mum, or maybe it’s some other reason entirely, but he seems pretty pleased with what he’s doing, reaching up and getting plates from the high cabinets Adrian can’t get out of his chair to reach, moving the chairs and table so they can sit down together.
The soup smells okay – Phil doesn’t know what the fuck sorrel is, but apparently it’s yellow – but the bread looks good. He sees now that Adrian has an apron over his lap, and that there’s a little flour over it from baking. He must have done the majority of it at the lower kitchen table, and just reached for the counter to put stuff on the hob.
“Wine glasses in there,” Adrian says. “Thank you, dear. You drink, don’t you?”
“Not wine,” Tevye says. “Haven’t been to temple since I left home.”
“I won’t tell your mother that,” Adrian says.
Tevye bows his head slightly as he lays out glasses on the table, and then goes to start serving food as Adrian takes the place at the table without a chair ready. Adrian gestures for Phil to sit, and Phil does, watching as Tevye brings everything over for them, this food that Adrian’s made and actually looks pretty fucking food, this soup, this big crusty bread.
“Did he see the message I sent you?” Adrian asks in mild tones.
“He looks through my phone, normally, but not always,” Tevye says. “He saw the notification come up while we were sitting together, and I didn’t have time to delete it.”
“I thought perhaps he might. He didn’t hurt you too badly?”
“No. Kicked me about a bit, but that was all, until he saw it was the first message I’d gotten, and then he was mostly pissed at him.” Tev nods his head toward Phil, who gives him a dry smile, which makes Tev roll his eyes. He’s older than Gillespie is, Phil thinks, by a year or two, but you wouldn’t know it by how Tev looks to him, how Adrian talks, holds himself. “Are you gonna kill him?”
Phil looks at the young man’s face, asking that question. It’s not the way he looks when he’s asking about if his boyfriend is gonna be arrested, if there’s gonna be charges, when he’s coming home – he doesn’t look defiant and angry, doesn’t look scared.
Whenever Dariusz gets arrested, after all, it’s only a matter of time before he comes home angrier than ever.
Tevye Gluck is asking now, looking almost fucking hopeful, if Adrian’s gonna make sure he never comes home again.
“How could you ask me a question like that, Mr Gluck?” Adrian asks, raising his eyebrows. “Those aren’t the sort of jokes one ought to make in front of a policeman.”
“What?” Tevye asks, fucking moron that he is, and Phil almost laughs but doesn’t, because he can see Adrian’s polite mask of charm and easy charisma falter as he’s struck with how stupid this fucking guy is.
Phil eats his fucking soup.
* * *
“The fuck did you say to his mother?” Phil asks. He’s laid on his belly with his cheek on Adrian’s thigh, his nose pressed against the underside of his stomach, just above one of the surgery scars across his side. He has his hands around Adrian’s muscular thighs, pressed between his legs, his knees pressing in around Phil’s neck.
“I tested the waters somewhat first,” Adrian says. He’s reading a book about defunct computing systems in Russian or some shit. Phil can’t read the Cyrillic writing, but he knows what computers look like. “Laborious distracted the father and I spoke with her. The fact that she didn’t immediately balk at my existence was a positive sign, and then I broached the topic of her son, implied we were already familiar. She asked after him quite fervently, albeit whilst looking furtively about for her husband.”
“You gonna kill him too?” Phil asks.
“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” Adrian says mildly, distractedly stroking his thumb up and down the back of Phil’s neck, pressing on the muscle. It feels really fucking good, and Phil is having difficulty keeping his eyes open. “The boys had a word with him. He won’t be laying a hand on any of his children again, and not on his wife either. Not without a painful and permanent consequence, anyway.”
Gerri used to nick pain meds off the back of the ambulance, and he remembers he used to feel guilty and conflicted about that, that he knew about it, and that was a lot less fucking immense than doing fucking murders.
But he did fucking ask, didn’t he?
What do you do when someone’s too much of a cunt for the commune?
Kill his boyfriend, and threaten to kill his dad, too. Why the fuck didn’t he think of that?
“So he’s gonna work for you?”
“He’s going to do some work for my mother,” Adrian says.
“Huh,” Phil says, and then grunts, because Adrian has shifted his foot underneath Phil’s body, and is toeing against his cock.
“Take your clothes off, Philip,” Adrian orders him, and Phil knows that this is to stop him asking about his fucking mother, but that’s fine, really, because he doesn’t want to fucking think about it either.
He starts to take off his clothes.
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