Chapter Text
"Hey sugar, lookin' for som’n’ sweet?" Was the first thing Alastor heard as he stepped outside of his building that morning.
The words dripped so easily off of the blond's tongue that Alastor could swear this was not the first time he had said such a thing. He eyed the young person of indeterminate gender up and down. Their outfit was minimal at best. The figure was a striking, if not a contradictory, one; shoulder-length blond hair, and a thin cropped top with a skirt that neither confirmed nor denied anything even as it clung to the lithe frame. The voice didn’t help much either. It was high and put on, a persona if ever there was one, he thought.
"Shouldn't you be in school?" Alastor remarked.
"If that's what gets ya goin' daddy," the other purred.
Alastor raised an eyebrow. "Ah, no," he replied.
"Yer loss," the voice lost all of its come-hither charm, falling instead to a nasally, Brooklyn accent. He smirked, it was far more entertaining when they dropped the act, he thought.
Alastor pulled out a hundred dollar bill without thinking and handed it to him, "Perhaps you should focus on your studies," he said and with that he made his way down the street. He heard, rather than saw that the other was following him. The click of heels on the sidewalk echoed in his ears.
"Hey, whoa, what tha fuck, ya just hand a guy a hundred and take off?" Well that answered that question, Alastor thought. He knew better than to speculate on someone's gender, but ultimately it made him no never mind either way.
"I had hoped you would consider it for what it was: a friendly gesture,” Alastor said simply, not stopping. He pulled out a cigarette from his trouser pocket and his favorite lighter–it was silver, an antique given to him by his mother, etched with an engraving of a stag and his doe. Alastor placed the cigarette to his lips, cupping his hand around it as he lit the cigarette, and deposited the lighter back into his pocket.
"Smiles, in my line of work a friendly gesture is–" at this the young man made a fist shaking it up and down in a jerk-off motion.
Alastor's lips pursed as he side-eyed him. The blond seemed to be keeping up with him well enough despite the busy early morning pedestrians. "How old are you exactly?" he asked as he removed the cigarette.
"How old do you want me to be?" Came the well-practiced reply. The bimbo persona was back.
Alastor sighed, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk so abruptly that the blond almost ran into him. "Please kindly cease with the come-ons,” he snapped. The blond eyed him then nodded. "Now then, how old are you, really?"
"Nineteen," he replied, too fast, too easy.
"Somehow I doubt that," Alastor remarked under his breath.
"No, honest. Just don't go spreadin' it around or nothin’. Some johns would prefer it if I weren't."
Alastor didn't doubt that. He supposed he couldn’t fault him for trying to play up an act for his job. Alastor certainly did at times. "I take it you have no family worried about your whereabouts at," he looked at his wristwatch. "Eight a.m. on a Tuesday?" He would be late at this rate.
"What's it to ya?" The blond asked as he pulled out his own cigarettes from somewhere in his top. Alastor eyed him somewhat amused. He flicked a cigarette out of the pack and lit it with a near-broken plastic lighter that he had apparently also kept in his top. It was almost impressive.
Alastor sighed shaking his head. "Go home," he said, pressing on down the street.
"I ain't got one a’those," the blond said. "Pops kicked me out when he caught me suckin' off one-a his associates," he remarked.
Alastor scrunched up his nose at that. "Must you be so crass?"
"Oh, sorry Motha’ Theresa, I didn't realize I was talkin' to a man o' tha cloth,” the young man retorted, voice dripping with sarcasm.
Alastor smirked despite himself, he was nothing if not entertaining, he thought. "Hardly. I simply do not find such filth in the least bit appealing."
The young man pouted. The pair were stood on the street together once more; Alastor had stopped again at some point though he hadn’t quite remembered when. He wondered what it was he was waiting for, or why it was he hadn't left already.
"Sorry," the blond said genuinely after a moment, all pretense gone.
Alastor smiled. "That's quite alright. Listen, how about this. You seem like a bright young man, entrepreneurial spirit and all,” that was a word for it. “Why don't you apply at my radio station? You could be–I don’t know, an assistant or something," he suggested.
Alastor had no idea why he was even suggesting such a thing or what on Earth continued to possess him to stand there. Perhaps it was some part of his better nature, whatever of that still existed. The voice of his dear departed mother whispered to him to take care of souls like this one. The vulnerable sort. If he was truly without a family, as he said, one that left him with no other choice but to resort to–Alastor tried not to think of it too hard. He was not so naive, however little he cared for sex personally, not to know a sex-worker when he saw one. The young man wasn’t exactly subtle about it. He was the sort of person that his mother would have stopped at nothing to help; would have given the coat off her back. Alastor liked to pretend he was not as kind as his sainted mother, but her ways rubbed off on him at times like these.
The young man eyed him suspiciously. "I ain't really an office girl," he remarked taking a drag off his cigarette. Alastor wanted to chuckle. He wasn't really an office person either. He much preferred his own nighttime activities to sitting in an office, expected to deal with calls and meetings and emails. He loved his radio show dearly but the things that came with it, long meetings with boring men with starched white collars and blotchy, pale skin made his fingers itch for a knife.
Alastor hummed, "Just think about it," he said and with that he began to walk away once more.
A cold breeze ran up the street and Alastor thought about the skirt the young man was wearing that barely brushed his thighs. He had barely made it ten feet before he stopped, turned around and walked back over to the blond. He removed his coat and wordlessly handed it to him.
"What's this fa?" the blond asked.
"It's cold," Alastor replied easily. "You should stay warm." Before the other could protest, Alastor had handed it to him and turned around. It was only after the fact he thought to check his pants pocket. Keys and wallet were still in there, he thought gratefully. He finished off his cigarette, walked to the end of his block and hailed a cab, trying to put the young man out of his mind.
* * *
Angel was stunned. The man had just handed him a hundred dollar bill and his coat like it was nothing. Hadn’t tried to get a quickie, hadn’t tried to cop a feel, none of it. Just a kind gesture from one human to another in broad daylight. That was the thing about New York generally, most people were pretty kind when you least expected it. Then again, Angel had detected a hint of a Southern accent beneath the Trans-Atlantic facade. Who the fuck still even talked like that? Angel thought to himself.
He hummed as he watched the man disappear into the crowd. He slipped on the coat with a soft smile, slipping his hands into the pockets for warmth. It was February and there was still snow lining the streets. The coat reached his mid-calf, he had always been on the taller side which made shopping for a floor length coat next to impossible. Still it was warmer than nothing. It smelled of whiskey and tobacco, with just a touch of something heady and masculine that made Angel’s head swim. Was it cologne or something distinct to the man himself? He wasn’t sure but fuck he wanted to find out. His hand touched something rectangular in the coat pocket. Curious, he pulled out the small card and stared at it:
Alastor LaFaon
Radio Host - WDER
Radio host huh? That certainly explained the accent he supposed. The card had the address to his office printed below that along with a telephone number. Angel hummed, as he stared at the business card before he slipped it back into the pocket of his new jacket and made his way down the street. He still had a job to do, he told himself. Sure, he had enough money to get himself food for a bit, and food for Nuggets, and maybe even drugs; he was pretty good at making a dollar stretch when he had to. He couldn’t stop smiling to himself as he caressed the card in his pocket like it was something precious. Maybe later he could pay him a visit, Angel thought to himself with a grin.
* * *
Alastor’s office was pure chaos. Alastor was the host of a program for Manhattan’s local jazz station—WDER, FM 101.5. His particular program covered everything from local news for the city as well as jazz standards and history on the subject and its legendary greats from across the decades. He had a preference for jazz from the thirties in particular, his mother and grandmother had both loved Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. Nina Simone and Miles Davis.
That his news programs were legendary for how he discussed the news at large and his penchant for making even the most lurid of events sound entertaining was why he’d been brought in from New Orleans in the first place. Alastor was talented that much was obvious.
He did most of his own research, some more first-hand than others, though he still had people in his office who handled more national news affairs when it came to that—politics talk, which he managed to make sound as thrilling as his talk of murder and mayhem, and jazz.
Which perhaps was why the office seemed to be in an uproar today. Something big was happening. There had been talk of a takeover of the station by a larger conglomerate for a few years, but apparently the bidding was close at hand from what Alastor had heard. That meant that soon the FCC would be getting involved to make a decision on the matter. Things were always stressful when the technicalities came out.
Bureaucracy bored him. Paperwork was his personal idea of Hell, which was frankly ironic considering that running his own show meant that he did an awful lot of it. His show constantly toed the line between what you could say on a public radio station and what you couldn’t and as such he’d had more than a few run-ins with the FCC personally to last himself a lifetime. Thank fuck for his lawyer. The man was brilliant, a shark if ever there was one, who knew his business inside and out and had kept Alastor from getting fined on more than one occasion.
The morning passed in a blur the moment he stepped into his office, and before he knew it he’d missed lunch. He hated to go into a recording session not having eaten, he was always cranky and threatening to eat someone around the office. He meant it too, not that they knew that. He hummed, as he stared at the clock on his computer. Two-thirty. He had just enough time to run out and grab something quick, he thought, and all but ran out the door from his office and towards the elevator.
He sprinted out the door craving something meaty. He almost didn’t notice the blond young man from earlier that morning who had been leaning against the wall of his building smoking a cigarette. He was still wearing Alastor’s coat, he noted, his foot propped up against the stone wall, casual. His attire was less overtly sexual too, Alastor noticed. He was wearing a simple tee shirt now and jeans. “Oh hey,” the blond said, as though it were a complete coincidence that he was leaning against his building.
Alastor smiled despite himself. “Hello,” he was happy to see him again, he didn’t want to think too hard on why that was.
“I realized I neva gave ya mah name,” the blonde said. He flicked his cigarette into the street.
“You came all this way just for that?” Alastor asked.
“Figured I got yours,” the blond replied as he pulled out his business card. Alastor chuckled.
“Why don’t you tell me over lunch then,” he suggested. The blond smiled, and the two made their way down the street towards one of Alastor’s favorite burger joints.