Big Chicago

Big Chicago Part 7...By Samayel


Last night, Harry Black…I mean Potter…I mean…damn it! Fucking aliases. At least Zabini was just Zabini. Of course, he was just a chump change pusher compared to Harry. Where was I? Oh…yeah…last night Harry let me sleep alone. He didn’t even ask about it. I was overwrought and so woozy from losing that much blood to ‘doctor vampire’ that I just nodded off.

I agreed to stay…for awhile. Maybe curiosity killed the cat. I’m not a cat, but I sure seem to have the nine lives and the ability to land on my feet. Harry seemed relieved, and while I nodded off and slept through any hope of dinner, he must have slipped off to one of the guest rooms. I woke up alone. It surprised me, because I really thought that, since I’ve had his dick in my mouth, he’d just expect to sleep in his own bed, whether I was in it or not. I also kind of wanted him here. It was anti-climactic, coming this far and then waking up alone on pillows that smell like him, but without him actually here beside me.

I haven’t slept next to anyone in so long that it’s kind of creepy to think about it. To be honest, I like playing the catty, cold-blooded bitch when I’m out on the town, but I’m kind of a cuddle bug after the lights go out. It’s the one kind of intimacy I haven’t had enough of. Who would I have shared that with anyway? In general, tricks don’t cuddle, and most of them aren’t anything you’d want to hold close to you anyway. It’s get your money and leave when you’re finished. It figures that the first decent man to pay attention to me, who goes through all the effort to get me here, would scare the living shit out of me and spend the night in another bed. Actually…it’s kind of sweet.

Everything about him was sweet. It’s impossible to pair up the image of the man that beat Flint half to death with the polished, bright and eager to please guy I met yesterday. Harry James Potter. How could anyone say no to that? He told me his real name…and he isn’t going to kill me. If anything, I think I’m in less danger than ever. That knowledge alone is enough to make me kind of giddy.

I woke up really early, thanks to passing out before it was even four o’ clock yesterday. By the time it was all over, I slept from six in the evening until five in the morning. I haven’t slept that long…ha…Doc Snape was right. Everything comes back to seven years. You have to get on with living eventually. I can wear what I’ve done or been forever if I want to…or I can be something else entirely. I’m alive…and today I’m going shopping. This…this is going to be good.

Harry was awake not long after I was. I heard the shower running in the guest room down the hall. I made my way to the kitchen to get some coffee. Therese always sets the machine to start brewing at five, so it’s ready for Harry whenever he’s home, even if they’re still asleep. When they know he’s home, they get up earlier. I realize I’m wearing his pajamas again. That’s been the routine, but now he’s back. What if he wants them? Are there things that annoy him? I’ll find out soon enough. I’m a scruffy mess in oversized silk pajamas, with a cup of Arabica Highgrown coffee in one hand and the other stifling a yawn while I make my way back to Harry’s suite for a shower. He pops out of the door in the hallway and smiles. He’s wearing nothing but a towel. Not a very large towel either. Part of him is peeking from below the edge of it, and I have no business blushing after the things I’ve done, but it’s early, and I’m not quite at my best yet.

“Hey…you headed for the shower? I just need the closet for a few minutes. I think something semi-formal for today, since we’re shopping later. I can call Ron in when you’re ready. After breakfast. Therese should be up and starting anytime now. Did you sleep well?”

He’s so cheerful. For a man who didn’t sleep in his own bed because an emotionally exhausted queen was in it, he’s awfully chipper.

“Yeah. Just wanted coffee before I did anything more complicated than opening my eyes. You…you don’t mind if I wear these until I get dressed…do you? I slept…okay. I didn’t mean for…for you to…it’s your bed and all…so…”

“Ah. Cool. We’ll figure all that out later. I just wanted to make sure you were alright.”

He heads for the master suite with the unperturbed calm he always shows, and I watch his back as he enters the room ahead of me. Yum! I saw a lot of hard bodies in prison…but it’s hard to enjoy the view under those circumstances. Here, on soft carpets and sipping premium coffee, I can look at the man walking away and nakedly lust over the muscles of his back. Nice to touch…nice to hold onto while he’s…damn it. My pajamas may be loose but I still have a little bump in the front now. Maria would collapse into giggles if she saw me reacting that way to Harry!

After all the cocks I’ve seen and had shoved into one end of me or the other, whether I wanted them or not, it just defies explanation that after a few days and some good living, I turn back into a raging slut for the first cock that presents itself. At least it’s a nice one. I want to peel that towel off of him and…damn it…his pajamas are bulging again. I can wait. Tonight. I could indulge a little…if today goes well. If he’s as nice to me as he’s been so far. Maybe it would complicate things…but it can’t get too much more complicated than this, can it? Why shouldn’t I have what I want? Especially after the shitty decade I’ve had.

The shower always warms quickly, and it never seems to run out of hot water. I just love it. The body scrubs and salon quality shampoo and conditioner make the whole room smell like a basket of fruit and spice. In here, I feel more than just human, and I like that feeling. I’m beautiful, and sleek, and I can see why someone would keep me around for awhile. Sometimes it’s just good to see that for a little while. A little product and my hair stays where it belongs, which is normal for me. It’s always been fine enough that it isn’t hard to manage.

I slip back into the pajamas after I’ve dried off, and I make my way back to the bedroom…almost hoping Harry isn’t gone, but he is. Probably out of politeness. The man is considerate…I’ll give him that. Just wish he’d be a little more forward. Not vicious or rough…so I guess I prefer this, but I don’t know how to be in charge of anything…I’m better at rolling with whatever comes my way. At the moment, I’m hoping it’s breakfast, shopping, a stylist, dinner somewhere nice and some sex for dessert!

My conscience tells me that I’m a maniac for thinking these things about a man who kills people for a living. Whatever Harry Black gets up to normally, he’s making one person very, very happy today. My conscience can fuck off. I want to live the way I used to, the way I can, the way I love to live, and Harry is going to make that possible.

He’s at the kitchen table, talking with Therese, who gives a small smile when I arrive and take a seat. For once, I’m not the only one in here besides her. There’s toast and jam, slices of smoked ham and eggs benedict, fresh slivers of melon and grapefruit, juice and more coffee. I forget that Harry is in the room for about ten seconds, and then I remember my manners and try to stop eating like someone who just got out of the pen.

“You looked like you were enjoying yourself. Don’t stop on my account…I rather like that look on you.”

When he says things like that, I wish Therese wasn’t here. I’m not used to compliments, at least not anymore…but I think I can manage to get back into practice at it. Fuck formality. I have eggs benedict and chilled slices of melon. Harry eats lazily, carving off snippets of ham or distractedly bringing forkfuls of fruit or eggs to his lips. Once I’ve gotten just enough food into me to take the edge off of my hunger, it’s easier to watch him…and enchanting.

Everything he does is so precise and no-nonsense, but he seems very relaxed right now. At peace. This is his home. The only thing in this environment that’s out of place is me. He looks pensive and restless, full of thoughts he’s keeping to himself. I refuse to interrupt, trying to keep from offending him. I know he doesn’t want me dead, and I know he seems very kind…but it doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten anything. It matters even more now.

I have a big choice. A decision…one of those things I’m generally lousy at. I have to think about it carefully…and calmly…like Doctor Snape said. Harry is a killer. No matter how I dress it up, I’m attracted to someone who commits acts far more illegal than Blaise ever attempted. It was all good when I was seventeen and went from sucking dicks in cars and cheap motels to dining in four-star restaurants…but I’m twenty five tomorrow. Is there any man worth being involved in this? Would I risk another prison sentence or even death…just to be with someone wealthy and handsome…and nicely hung. Arrrgh! If I keep thinking like that, the bump in the front of the pajamas won’t let me leave the table while others are present!

It’s hard to tell because his skin is so tanned, but when our eyes meet across the table, I think he blushed! He did! I’d swear to it! He fucking blushed! I can actually feel my half dead ego inflating to new heights. I can make a stone cold killer blush…at six-thirty in the morning…while my hair is a mess and I’m wearing huge pajamas! Maybe I don’t know if I’ll stay or go…but I think this going to be a great day.

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Let me say a few things about Chicago. This is a true world-city. A giant marketplace of cultures, ideals, dreams and bodies. Nestled on the shore of Lake Michigan, tucked comfortably between the main highways to four different states, Chicago is huge and vibrant because it has always been at the heart of America’s heartland. When trade was still conducted by use of river barges, long before the automotive came, Chicago was already big and bustling with activity.

Is it full of corruption? Yeah. Is it big and loud and dirty? Yeah. Is it home? Yeah…it is. Chicago is nick-named ’The Windy City’, and when the wind comes off the lake, the stink of urban life is peeled away and people pull on warm coats and get to work anyway. Cold or hot, stinking or sparkling, Chicago is always in motion. Sports, agriculture, shipping, manufacturing, politics and party-goers…Chicago never stops living and breathing. The museum district is just one of this city’s pride and joys. Maybe it isn’t the Louvre, but if you’re in between New York and Los Angeles, this is one of the biggest and best cultured cities in America. And the food! Cuisine in America used to be laughed at overseas. American cuisine was an oxymoron. Not anymore. There are delis here owned by the sons and grandsons of immigrants, and they know the food of their former homelands. If you can eat it, you can find it here.

There are restaurants here, rated highly by even the harshest critics, that can match the best meals in the world bite for bite. Every ethnic subculture you can imagine has a restaurant somewhere in this giant burg, and if you want real Cantonese made by real Cantonese, you can find it. The same goes for everything from Irish to Afghani food. Want your palate challenged? Come to Chicago…but bring money. Nothing in America is cheap these days, except our politicians…and they can be rented by the hour like the kind of seedy motels that I used to get fucked in, and Chicago is no exception. Space is at a premium, and if you want to live here and keep your life and health intact, you need to pay the high rents in the good parts of town.

This is the home of neo-capitalism. Milton Friedman and ’The Chicago Boys’ dreamed up the heap of neatly phrased and catchy bullshit that was adopted by almost all fiscal conservatives of the last thirty years. The gist of it is that, if you let rich people do whatever they want and generally leave them unsupervised and untaxed, business will flourish, jobs will appear, and a better economy will evolve by default. Essentially, Milty was a lying crapsack with a good line of patter that sold well to audiences and think tanks that frantically needed a logical sounding argument to support legislation that favored their interests. Decades later, around the world, these policies have proven that, if you take away accountability, enforcement and responsibility, CEO’s act about as maturely as teenage boys who are given whiskey and car keys. It’s a dubious honor for Chicago to claim that philosophical disaster as it’s own, but Chicago has survived worse, and always will.

Honest capitalism, on the other hand, has some great benefits, and you can see them all here. The shopping is divine. If they have it in Paris, London, L.A. or New York, we have it here too. I’m still internally debating whether shopping is better than sex, and I admit that shopping is probably a close second, but you hardly ever need to clean up afterwards. Shopping may not be messy, but sex should be. If you didn’t get sticky and sweaty and make too much noise…then it wasn’t worth doing in the first place. But hey, don’t take my advice…I’ve been nothing more than a glorified dartboard for dicks since I was fifteen. What I know about making the right choices could be poured into a thimble…with room leftover for your thumb.

Harry took me to a salon. A proper salon…not just a stylist. I got a manicure and pedicure, as well as a much more suitable hairstyle, while soothing music played and Harry read a newspaper. I picked a nice, shorter, unisex hairstyle. Longish bangs, almost in my eyes, and reasonably short in the back. It’s perfect, and with my hair finished and styled into place, I look almost eighteen again. I get a massage too, and let me tell you, I haven’t had one since I was just a kid who wasn’t old enough to be sore anywhere that counted, and if it brought tears to me eyes…well…they were from joy.

The makeover at the M.A.C. salon finishes the job. By way of explanation, M.A.C. is the salon of choice for drag queens worldwide, as well as anyone who is finicky and conscientious about their make up, and their make up lines are simply brilliant. I picked out all the make up I wanted, and Harry just hands them a card and pays the bills. I could pass as boy or girl now…not an obviously haggard and worn out prison bitch. One major goal left…clothes!

I need men’s and women’s clothing. I know I like to look like a girl when I’m out, but at home I’m just fine in any clothing that looks good and flatters my figure. I kind of want to see what Harry thinks of me as a boy. He’s seen me at my worst, and he’s seen me in the clothes I left prison in, but he’s never seen Drake Malfoy. I want him to. I want to be judged looking like the person that nature made me. If he wants me no matter what I look like…well…it’s almost too much to think of.

My solitary humiliation is that, when we finally get the car into the private parking and get to the shopping…I have to go to the teens section. I’m too short and too skinny for almost any of the adult sizes, and probably always will be. The salespeople are ingratiating, but I think it has more to do with the aura Harry gives off when he’s around strangers. He commands them, kind of the way my father did. Ugh…that’s a comparison I sooo don’t want to make! People respond to him because he knows he’s the boss. I get good service even though I’m a boy in women’s clothes, shopping in both sections, and trying on outfits one after another, because Harry has a line of credit that can’t be beat, and these people know where their bread is buttered.

Barney’s New York, Jade, Tragically Hip, Neiman Marcus…one after another we hit the places that carry just what I need. They can tell he’s got class the same way I can. It’s the tasteful, relaxed understatement of his wealth. Quality without pointless flash. Only gutter trash wear excess bling as soon as they get a little extra cash. Real money makes a tiny, simple display. Harry has no jewelry. No rings or tattoos or piercings. No jeweled cufflinks, no diamond tiepins. Just a perfectly tailored suit and a Rolex watch that tells the time in all the major financial centers around the world. No more, no less. The quality of his hand tailored clothes is such that most people don’t earn in a month the cost of what he’s wearing right now, and that probably isn’t even the most expensive outfit he owns. When people get sudden money, and try to show that they’re well off, they all make the same mistake. They use their wardrobe and accessories to shout out how wealthy they are. It’s pitiful, and the people with real money just nod their heads and laugh up their sleeves at it. Harry doesn’t care how much money he has. He isn’t even counting, and that means he doesn’t have to worry about counting. That’s wealth.

These days, in America, being a millionaire is about what it takes to be middle class. This may not be good or healthy or fair…or even sane, but it is getting closer and closer to true. A lot of people pick apart the world and look for the signs of racism, or sexism, or homophobia, but they’re missing the big picture because they’re staring at the details so intensely. There is only one ‘ism’ that has ever mattered. It feeds all the others like a zookeeper hurling chunks of bloody meat to the big cats. It isn’t black or white, or male of female, or gay or straight…it’s all one color…green. Dollars. Gold. Classism. The rest are all byproducts of the first great difference between people. Wealth.

There are only two real classes. The truly rich, and everybody else. I’ve lived in both states, walked in both shoes, and it gives me a rather unique position in this world. I’m back in the world that supermodels and the companies who own them shop in, and I see the differences more clearly than ever. Harry has it, I have it for being with Harry, and the girl packing my purchases into bags and boxes doesn’t and probably never will.

I have shoes and stockings and socks, slacks and skirts and dresses, club clothes and evening gowns, pajamas and lingerie, hats and gloves and every beautiful little thing it takes to make a wardrobe. I have thongs that are both comfortable and just unbearably sexy. I’m almost afraid of the moment Harry sees me wearing one…because whatever self control he possesses might just evaporate on the spot. I’m dressed in the boy’s clothes now, because I need to make a special stop before I even consider wearing one of the outfits we got today. There’s a small store in Boystown that caters to queens, and they have the accessories I need to make certain outfits look right…up front. I don’t have much of a chest, and I have nothing in the way of cleavage anymore. I like the appreciative smirk on Harry’s face when I step out of the changing room as a boy. It makes my stomach flutter.

Tailored slacks can come later, but I have a belt that’s tasteful and slim, Brush Modal socks that feel like heaven, and good black shoes that have just enough heel on them to be nearly comfortable. They’re obviously shorter than the heels I was wearing when we came though, and I notice the difference on the way out. No wonder he seemed so enormous in prison, but normal when we met again. He isn’t really all that tall, but when I’m out of the heels and wearing something flat the difference is much more visible. Harry is much broader through the shoulders than I am, and his hips and legs are thick and corded with muscle…deliciously so. It all adds to the impression of bulk and size, but he probably doesn’t weigh much over a hundred and seventy pounds. Next to other people, he looks normal. It’s only when he’s next to me that he looks hulking and enormous. I like that.

He hasn’t been silent the entire time. We spoke en route to each destination, but there were snippets that were so much more meaningful than the rest of the chatter. I got my nerve together and actually asked what he was blushing about at breakfast. His staunch refusal to admit that he blushed was amusing…because he was blushing while he denied it! I pushed for answers and boy did I get one.

“Fine! Fine! You wanna know? You looked adorable in my pajamas! A lesser man couldn’t have handled that much temptation. I wanted to drag you back to bed on the spot. I’m only made of stone when I’m on the job…the rest of the time…it’s not so easy!”

I am a creature of mischief. I can’t help leaning to his ear and whispering so that Ron, the driver, can’t hear.

“A lesser man maybe, but a smarter man would have known that I really…really…wanted him to do exactly that.”

His nostrils flare. I can see his pulse pounding in his jugular when I slip back into my seat. He isn’t angry…he’s excited. He wants me…just the way I want him to, and when the time finally comes, the anticipation will make it perfect for him. I’m hoping it will do that for me, but I think it’s safe to guess that I’ll have fun either way.

We spoke of more than that. Much more. He likes me, boy or girl, dress or slacks. It sounds like an old line, but I think he wants my mind and soul, not just my flesh. Being gorgeous doesn’t hurt my chances, but he really is looking for something more, and I wonder if I can be that to him. He has a restless mind and a passion for living that makes me remember when I was glad just to be alive. It can’t be wrong to want that near me. It just can’t.

I asked about personal things. I stick to things that have nothing to do with his work, and I get answers that are couched in vague terms that leave names and locations out of the picture. I understand this. He’s only known me for a few weeks. He can’t risk too much, and he’s already taking a gamble of epic proportions.

His parents died in a car crash when he was just a year old. He was the only survivor, pulled cut, bleeding and crying from the wreckage left behind. The only reason he lived was because his mother had curled her body over him, cushioning him from most of the impacts and from all but a little of the broken glass. Relatives looked after him, but I get the impression they weren’t especially kind or even decent to him. When he talks about them, his eyes go flinty, and if it were me he was talking about while having that look…I’d be shit scared of him ever seeing me again.

When he was thirteen, his godfather took custody of him, and his eyes light up when he speaks of the man. This person, whoever he was, defined what Harry thought of as a real parent. That man died two years later, and Harry was sent to a military boarding school with the money that was left to him from his godfather‘s estate. That was where he figured out what he wanted, specifically that he liked boys more than girls by a serious margin, but he didn’t do anything about it for a long time to come.

He was always focused tightly on doing what needed doing, and he passed with honors, joining the military after graduating as an emancipated minor at seventeen. He had two estates waiting in trust, his godfather’s and his parents‘, but he chose a life of danger just to push his skills as far as they could be pushed. He was Search and Rescue. The people that only show up when a situation has already gone to hell. Ever heard of ‘Blackhawk Down’? He was one of the guys that pull other people out of nightmare scenarios, and it certainly gibes with what he did for me. He pulled me out of hell and gave me a glimpse of how good life can be again. Right now, I’m just glad that he did, reasons be damned.

Most of his time was spent in the Middle East, which certainly explains his tan. As it turns out, he speaks Farsi in three dialects, and can read and quote the Koran like a native. He doesn’t have a religion of his own, but reads of them all, trying to piece some kind of sense out of the mish mash of ideas that humans have had over the last eight thousand years. He mustered out of the service after four years, taking a contract with his current employer for reasons he doesn’t share, but there are hints that he has a strong personal reason for his choice.

Some parts we just can’t speak of here, and that’s good enough for me. A window into who Harry really is…that’s good enough for me…even if it’s a little cloudy. Harry is twenty four years old. The same age as me. Our birthdays are about a month apart. It’s strange, because he seems so much older. Maybe I do too. I guess it’s the things we’ve done…not the time we’ve had, that make the difference.

There’s a tiny German delicatessen we stop at for lunch. I may be skinny, queeny, Drake Malfoy now, but I glow because Harry likes me…all of me…and I don’t feel like trash when he looks at me with a quiet smile, happy because he’s here with me, and I suspect that he’d be just as happy wearing rags and picking through garbage, as long as I was here. I can feel it rolling off of him in waves, pounding me like I’m the shore, and I love it. I shine most when I am the center of someone’s world, and I am shining again at last.

I am emboldened. I am unafraid. Here, in the heart of the city, feasting on ham and Swiss on rye with spicy mustard, I am not a frightened ex-con in a situation that feels perilous. Here, I am an attractive young man, and I am here with a very attractive man who wants me every bit as much as I want him.

“Harry?”

“Yeah?”

“Why me? You just spent a small fortune putting clothes on me. You bought a piano and had it shipped before I even got to your place, just in case I said yes. I don’t even want to know what it took to get me out a month early. My sentence had no parole or time off for good behavior. Don’t get me wrong. I’m grateful, but I have to know why. What…what the hell do you see that I don’t?”

He’s silent, chewing his sandwich and sipping bottled water to clear his palate. I wait until I almost want to speak again. I wish he wasn’t wearing sunglasses. If I could see his eyes, I could guess at what he must be thinking. Maybe I sound needy. It’s because I am. I want to know. I want to believe in something, and I just can’t let go so easy. When the answer comes, it’s deadpan, voiced as if he knew it all along and wanted the timing to be right. Everything I know about the world dies a beautiful death and is born again in the ashes of his words.

“Potential. Somewhere along the way, you stopped seeing it. It never went away though. I saw it when we were stuck in that cell together, simmering under the surface. I heard it in every answer to every question I asked you. I still see it every time I look at you now, and I want to be there when you can see it in yourself again. I don’t care what you’ve done…or what you’ve been. I only care about what you could be. It would be worth everything I’ve done or will do, if I get to see you look at yourself…and see what I see.”

I will never properly celebrate birthdays again. The day before my birthday will always overshadow any meaningless marker of age. I wanted to believe in something, and Harry makes me believe again. This will always be the day that something dead inside of me came back to life. The day I fell in love.


TBC!!!