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Sunset in Roanapur always looks like something out of a travel brochure. Like the words Five Days, Four Nights or All Expenses Included should be hovering just between the glittering golden ocean and the billowing pink clouds. It's all thanks to the smog, of course, a hazy prism of pollutants that creates the illusion of a sky on fire – but still, it's easier on the eyes than the steel-grey skyline of Tokyo. A casual tourist might even mistake the place for some sort of tropical paradise.
Rock exhales a long plume of smoke into the twilight and lets the butt of his cigarette dangle from his lips. It would be easy enough to spit it over the side of the boat, into the tangle of seaweed and trash – after all, Rock is no longer a good world citizen, and littering would be the least of his many sins – but in the end he flicks it into the nearest empty beer can. He hasn't exactly done an honest day's work, but his muscles ache like he has, and he wants to hang onto that guiltless languor for as long as he can.
The beer is losing its chill, sweating condensation through the cardboard case. Rock may not be a good world citizen, but he is a good employee, which means he should bring Dutch a can before it goes warm.
He pushes the cabin door open, announcing his intentions – I've got beer – in lieu of a knock. Dutch is facing away from him, seated before the console and its arcane array of dials and switches. Against the wash of orange light coming through the window, he looks like a paper cutting, one of those elaborate shadow portraits. “Thanks,” he says, still unmoving. No doubt he's busy planning things that Rock can't begin to guess at, and doesn't really want to.
Rock clears his throat. “Should I just leave it here?”
“No. Stay.” Dutch swivels his chair around, but doesn't lean in to take the beer from him, doesn't even unfold his arms from across his chest. Rock has to walk forward until they are almost knee-to-knee. He's swaying a little with the boat, but only a little; these days, it takes more than three and a half beers on an empty stomach to rob him of his sea-legs.
Dutch is as untouched by the motion of the water as the great stone Buddha in the harbor. He takes the beer and cracks it open, all one-handed. With the other hand, he catches hold of Rock's tie and loops it over his knuckles, rubbing the fabric, considering. His tongue, darting out to catch the foam as it spills over, is surprisingly pink.
“This real silk?”
“Yeah,” Rock says. “I think so.” If he remembers correctly, this particular tie was a present from some ex-girlfriend, or maybe his mother, but it's impossible to be sure: he has a dozen more just like it. Or had – most of them are back in Japan, where he could no more have gone to work without a tie than without pants. Some hungover mornings he would adjust the knot and think, with sour melodramatic satisfaction, I'm fitting myself for my own noose.
He waits for Dutch to ask him why he's still wearing the damn thing.
A tug on his tie – firm-but-gentle, the way you're supposed to train dogs and small children – and he's standing between Dutch's spread legs. “Finish that,” Dutch says, and the lenses of his glasses are as mirror-opaque as always, but there's no question he's looking at the open beer in Rock's hand.
“Right.” Rock tips back his head and swallows. When he's done, he tosses the empty can over his shoulder – in old movies, he remembers, lovers throw champagne flutes into the fire, but this is better, beer and casual sex and the tropical heat clinging closer than his own skin.
He kneels.
Rock has gotten good at dropping to his knees, for reasons that have less to do with blowjobs than bullets and not getting hit by them. Dutch, considerate man that he is, has unfastened his pants and is drawing out his cock. All Rock has to do is open his mouth and keep still, which is easy enough: the rush of arousal hits him like paralysis.
His mouth is watering even before Dutch pushes past his lips, like some X-rated version of that famous experiment with the dogs and the bells – he can't remember the guy's name, but he learned it in college, which is also where he also learned to suck cock, furtively and infrequently and never as good as this –
And his mind always starts slipping away at odd angles when he's giving head, goes all foggy with need, but he knows how to fix that – his fingers fumble open the button of his slacks, and he bows his head to take Dutch deeper.
He never hears the waves anymore, except in moments like this, when all the soft white noise comes flooding in: the sea slapping against the side of the ship, the catch in Dutch's unsteady breath, footsteps on the other side of the door, coming closer –
The cabin door bangs open. Rock catches a glimpse of long tanned legs in his peripheral vision before the insistent pressure on the back of his neck takes him back to what he was doing.
“Jesus Christ, Rock, what the fuck.”
Rock mumbles an apology around Dutch's cock.
“I've been calling you for like, half a fucking hour, you lazy bastard.”
“Levy. What is it?” Dutch sounds remarkably calm for a man in the middle of getting blown. Levy sounds remarkably calm for, well, Levy – real-calm, not that lizard-eyed blankness that frankly creeps Rock out, even as it makes him want – which means that she either likes what she's seeing, or she's hit that golden mean of intoxication, or maybe a little of both.
“I want pizza. I'm hungry, and there's fuck-all to eat around here.”
Dutch sighs, a little shakily. “Don't they do delivery?”
“Not to us, they don't. They gave me some shit about their car being broken, which is a load of bull, but whatever.” The cabin is small enough that Levy can nudge Rock's shoulder with her toes stepping out of the doorway. “So go get me some pizza, okay?”
“Just give him a few minutes,” Dutch says, and then, because Rock's mouth is otherwise occupied and he's a fucking saint, “What – what do you want on it?”
“I don't care.” Rock can imagine, with photographic clarity, Levy's breasts lifting slightly as she shrugs. He swallows hard. “Whatever Rock wants on it. Just no vegetables. Nothing that's fucking green.”
Rock nods. It is, under the circumstances, a doubly useful motion, and his scalp prickles as Dutch's fingers tighten.
“Just hurry it up, huh? And Dutch –” Levy's all but purring, the way she does when she's about to hurt someone, badly – “Leave him hard for me, will you?”
“No problem,” Dutch says, and casually kicks Rock's hand away from where it's working at his crotch. “You don't mind, do you, Rock?”
And weirdly enough, Rock doesn't mind. In five minutes or so, he knows, he'll be walking down the darkening streets of Roanapur with his hair mussed and his lips swollen, cock still tenting his slacks and tie sliding free of its knot. And it will be shameful and a little scary and altogether glorious, not least because no one will give him a second glance. In Roanapur, everybody has seen stranger things.