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Lilo’s apartment was way too high up to take the stairs, but he ran down a couple of floors until he didn’t feel like he was about to throw up, getting into the elevator from there.
Lilo was going to call the agency and complain. With a shock to the system, Leo realised he didn’t even care. He didn’t want to do this anymore. Wanted to stop feeling like this, wanted to stop letting people touch him when he didn’t want to be touched, and degrade him when he didn’t want to be degraded, and ask things of him he didn’t want to give.
He burst out of the building’s front door and into the frozen Manhattan air, shocking his body into alertness. He looked around, watching the people bundled up in coats walk past. The idea of navigating the subway right then seemed impossible.
He called an Uber, selecting an address from his favourites, not even fully processing it was his sister’s until he was already there.
It was late, but Rose opened up the door quickly when he knocked on it. “Leo.”
Leo took a gulping breath. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“Do…come in. Do what?”
“The whole…I’m sorry. You were right, okay? You were right, and I didn’t want to see it, but I can’t do this anymore.”
“Okay, okay, let’s sit down. You’re okay.”
“I’m not okay. I’m not o—” he choked on the word, on the reality of it, the crushing salt and water of this sickness inside him that was rearing up now and slamming into him.
He couldn’t sleep, and he didn’t want to eat, and he didn’t want to be touched, and he didn’t want to be called a whore and a slut, and he didn’t want people to look at him like they owned him, like they could do anything to him and it wouldn’t matter.
Rose held him tight, rocking back and forth like when they were little and his dad had thrown something at him or slapped him around a little, and she would come to his room so he wouldn’t be alone, hugging him just like that.
He was drowning. This place, this rotting of the flesh and spirit—he wasn’t going to be able to escape that. This was what he was made of now. What he was.
Rose was murmuring something in his ear, a distant, bubbling sense of peace he wasn’t going to be able to reach. He turned his face into her neck and gulped her familiar scent—the scent of family. Of safety.
He had no idea how long he stayed like that, time contracting and then expanding into one thin, tangled line. By the time he stopped sobbing, he felt empty of everything, like he wasn’t a person but a pitcher someone had poured out.
Leo shrank into himself, leaving the comfort of his sister’s arms, but she held on, grabbing his arms gently.
“Leo. I know you’re not okay, but I’m here. I’m here for whatever you need,” she whispered fiercely.
The words echoed in the hollow of his body, bouncing off the cavern walls and leaving cracks behind. “I couldn’t…I just don’t want to be touched like that anymore.” His voice was nothing, a scrape against metal, but Rose seemed to hear him loud and clear.
“Then don’t. Look, I know you think that I don’t like what you do because it’s sex work, but it’s not that. It’s not about if the job is valid or whatever, if other people should or shouldn’t do it—this is about you.”
Leo shook his head, mouth pasty with tears. “I should be able to do it. Nothing bad even happens. I don’t have a reason to stop, I should be able to—”
“Stop. God, just stop—do you even hear yourself? Why the fuck should you have a reason beyond ‘I don’t want to do this’ to not have sex?”
“It’s not sex, it’s work. You think people don’t wake up in the morning dreading going into work? But they suck it up and they do it because they have to. Not wanting it isn’t a good enough reason.”
Rose pressed her fingers to her eyes, cheeks flushed with what was obviously anger. “Just because sex work is a valid job doesn’t mean it doesn’t have some stuff unique to it, Leo. You need to—you need to accept that you chose a job that has certain…qualities or whatever that have to be handled carefully. And you don’t handle them carefully.”
Leo scoffed, Rose’s anger contagious. “Oh, and how the hell would you know that? You’re not there when I—”
“I don’t need to be! I know you, and I love you, and I just have to see the aftermath to know. You have all these fucking issues Dad fucking slammed into you, and you don’t go to therapy, and you don’t talk to anybody, and you have no work-life balance, and you think a job like sex work is for you? The way you’re feeling now is fucking normal for this situation. You don’t need another reason to stop doing something that’s hurting you.”
Leo stared at Rose, knees cut from under him. It wasn’t like he didn’t know he was fucked up, but they never talked about that stuff. Barely brought up their dad or the things they dragged around because of him.
Leo didn’t want to have issues because of his childhood. It was years ago—it didn’t even matter. He should be able to put those things aside and grow up. But it was becoming more and more obvious that he just…couldn’t.
Leo looked down at his hands, the fight draining out of him. He could argue with his sister all he wanted, but it didn’t remove the fact that the thought of going back to work made him sick to his stomach.
“I don’t know what to do,” he admitted quietly.
Rose grabbed his hands, squeezing them tightly. “Stay here for a while—for tonight at least, or until the end of the week. Get some rest. You have savings, Leo. You don’t need to do anything straightaway. Give yourself some goddamn space for once, okay?”
