Chapter Text
It was cold in the brothel that day. Goosebumps rose on Levi’s skin like raw chicken skin, making him feel more exposed than he was, laying spread eagle on his back with his legs in the air, his ankles in shackles to ease the physical burden, only his bottom half visible while his upper body was behind a hardwood wall. A glory hole, one frequented by men too ashamed to admit what they were doing, either to themselves or to the prostitutes, and were too cowardly to look them in the eyes and acknowledge them as human.
Levi looked up at the ceiling and took a few deep breaths. He enjoyed this calm before the storm in his little pinewood coffin, the peace and quiet—except for the coughs and whispers among the other prostitutes. He closed his eyes and placed his hands on his stomach, felt it go up and down, and counted the breaths. It was what he would do while he was being ravaged, just focus on his breathing—one, two, three, one, two, three—and then it was over.
A knock against his box shook him awake. He hadn’t slept more than three hours last night between his glory hole shifts, personal entertainment of clients, and his night terrors. The tiny door—big enough for him to crawl through and rearrange himself into the hole—slid open, and Hange’s face filled the space, her grin putting Levi at ease—but he’d never admit that to her.
“Hey, buddy,” she chirped, patting him on the shoulder.
“Don’t call me that,” Levi muttered, his hands drifting down to cover his genitals. No matter how many years he’d had Hange as his pimp and his personal doctor, he was still bashful around her when he didn’t need to be naked. But she never looked. The only thing that held her focus was Levi’s eyes, the tiredness of them, the expectant doom that darkened them.
“Just came by to say that I’m thinking of shutting down early,” she said. She gave his face a once-over, something akin to pity befalling her expression. “I want you to go home.”
“And I need food money, Hange,” Levi retorted. “You can go home, just leave me here.”
Hange looked at him, that expression deepening into true pity, her head cocking as she smiled gently at him. “You know I won’t do that. Okay, but only if you try these smelling salts I’ve conjured up. Maybe they’ll help you sleep.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Levi said with a dismissive wave of the hand. “Let’s get this shitshow started.”
Hange didn’t laugh, instead slowly sliding the door closed. Levi’s ears pricked at the sound of her footfalls getting closer to the front door, the lock tumbling, and then the sound of male voices steadily growing louder and closer.
Levi was never prepared for the first touch. Perhaps that was why men raced to get to him first: to experience the subtle flinch his legs do, the arch in his back that showed them he was unprepared, defenseless, like a virgin despite being fucked so many times he’d lost count. It was a little slice of their rotten heaven, and so when Levi did his characteristic flinch as a hand fell on the inside of his thigh, he fought back the bile rising in his throat as the man chuckled something garbled in his throat, something pompous and egotistical.
Another thing they enjoyed about going first was being the first to break Levi’s seal. Even though he prepared himself before every shift, the thought that their self-important semen would christen his insides first was enough to make them come before they even entered him. As evidenced by the first man that day, whose hand drifted from Levi’s thigh to his own cock, which swiftly entered Levi, causing him to gasp and let out a soft groan, which in turn caused the man to come as if on command. He had paid extra to fuck Levi without a condom, graciously leaving him a disgusting mess to clean up after this shift was over. But Levi didn’t have time to be nauseous because after that man was the next one, who practically pushed the previous man away to get a taste of the relatively fresh pie.
Before long, the length and girth of the cocks were a blur as Levi fell into counting his breaths again. When he first began, he would hiss to himself when a particularly big cock stretched him open or try to hold back a laugh when a cock so small would enter him he’d think it was a finger until he looked down and saw a man’s hairy and plump midsection between his legs. But now, he fell into his safe space of tracing the grooves in the ceiling with his eyes and trying to keep his heartbeat steady. He found that the men he slept with, especially at a glory hole, didn’t particularly care about him moaning or actively participating. All they wanted was a warm hole and human legs to grip, something that didn’t fight back because that would be too much work. They most likely didn’t even consider Levi a human—if he had been a corpse, it’d be all the same.
After about four or five or six men—he didn’t count anymore—he was leaking come and sticky and limp. Another body darkened the hole, and Levi decided it was time to close his eyes and pretend he was in the little hovel he called home. That was, until fingertips, so light he could barely feel them, trailed down his ankle down to the inside of his thighs, stopping just short of his buttocks. The john repeated the same thing on the other leg and then did something so unexpected that it caused Levi’s eyelids to snap open. His hand splayed itself wide against Levi’s lower stomach, pressing down ever so slightly before trailing it up and tracing the line in the middle of his torso before reaching his ribs, outlining each one.
Levi had stopped breathing by that point—no man had ever gone that far up, or rather cared to interact with any part of his body that wasn’t his hole or feet. The man’s warm, large hand retreated, only now it traced the underside of Levi’s cock in all its limpness, except it was getting harder and harder with each feather-like touch. When the man grasped it, Levi saw stars, letting out a soft exhale as his hands gripped the thin blanket he was lying on.
It wasn’t as if no john had ever touched his cock—a few were generous enough to give it a few pumps to at least make it seem as if Levi was enjoying the act or perhaps it was to make it seem like their arrangement was reciprocal rather than transactional. Levi would get hard sometimes, which killed him to see his body betraying his heart. That was a hard lesson he had to learn at a young age: that his body’s reactions often contradicted what he wanted—or what he didn’t want.
But wow, this man was making it peculiarly difficult for Levi to deny his body what it wanted, especially since the man continued at it. He gripped it firmly but with enough gentility that the blood continued to drain from Levi’s head and down south. His hand left only for the man to spit into it before returning and continuing to pump it, his thumb tracing the underside again only to come to rest on the tip, teasing it and the hole that gradually began to leak pre-come. The shackles clanked as Levi’s legs bent together, his knees almost touching before the man’s other hand gently spread them back apart and held them there.
Levi’s breathing got heavier and heavier, and it was almost impossible to hold back his voice because he didn’t want to admit to himself that he was getting turned on by a john. He didn’t want to come at the hand of a man paying to fuck him, regardless of whether they know if he wanted that or not, but the faster the man’s hand went, the more ragged Levi’s breaths grew and the more humiliating moans spilled past his lips like a broken levee.
Eventually, he couldn’t deny it any longer: he was close. Close to coming for the first time in a long, long while. That familiar roiling in his stomach that finally wasn’t nausea, the twitching of his cock, the fact that he could no longer control his voice or his legs. His own seed coated his lower stomach as he let out a whiny exhale, his toes curled and his hands bracing against the hardwood, his thumb curved underneath the hole. All Levi saw was stars peppering his vision, his chest stuttering as his body tried to recoup.
But the man wasn’t done, to the chagrin of the other men in line. He plucked Levi’s exposed thumb and pressed his hand into the wooden bench, the man’s thumb tracing the little mountains Levi’s knuckles made as the man’s other hand slowly entered Levi. He started with a finger, even though it was clear to everyone that Levi was more than prepped with the countless number of men’s semen leaking out of him.
But the man slowly worked Levi open again by digging the semen out and flicking it onto the ground. Levi wasn’t sure if the man was doing it to be thoughtful or because he was a neat freak and didn’t want other men’s semen in his meal. The latter was more likely, so Levi let the man work, let him caress his hand, until he added another finger. Still sensitive from his intense orgasm, Levi gasped again, the clinking of the shackles showing off to every man in the room that Levi’s current john was giving him a good time. Levi hated it. He hated what this man was doing to him, even if it was the kindest a man had ever treated him. Now the rest of the men would take their sweet time with him, manipulating his body against him to make him feel things he didn’t want, that he never wanted to feel again. The one solace he had in doing this work was that it was quick. He didn’t have to dwell on his emotions in the moment, and he didn’t have to feel as if he was betraying himself or his morals. This man was undoing everything.
When the man deemed enough of the come was out, he slowly eased himself in. Condomless, Levi could feel. He decided to finally take a peek through the hole and saw a toned and muscular midsection with trimmed pubic hair. As he continued to plunge himself into Levi, the more Levi tightened around him and the higher his back arched into the air. He blamed it on the sensitivity from just climaxing because otherwise, he had no explanation for his body’s reaction to a regular cock. Sure, it was girthier and longer than most. But it was nothing godly, nothing worth Levi making a spectacle out of himself.
The man’s hands gripped Levi’s hips, and when he was nearly in, firmly tugged down on them to sit Levi perfectly down on his cock so that his balls were kissing Levi’s ass. Levi covered his mouth as stuttering moans spewed out, but the man only reached in and grabbed Levi’s other hand and held it hostage on the bench. Levi almost shouted no, but that was worse than if he moaned because it broke the whole illusion of the setup. So he turned red in the face in his failed attempts at holding his moans back as the man began to thrust, slowly rocking back and forth so Levi could feel his length and girth properly.
The pace picked up steadily, but it never reached a jack-rabbit pace. It felt as if every thrust was calculated. Whenever Levi let out a particularly heinous moan and the shackles clinked, the man continued drilling that one spot. When Levi went silent, the man readjusted his angle and pace until he could get back the sweet, guilty sound of Levi’s voice. However, when he was getting closer—Levi could feel his cock pulsing and growing bigger—the man’s pace got faster, sloppier, more desperate. Levi waited for the inevitable nauseating warm rush of liquid inside him, quieting down just for the man to pull out and rub once, twice, until he spilled onto Levi’s stomach, their semen mixing and dripping down his side to the bench. The man’s groans echoed in Levi’s ear, low and honest as if he was thanking Levi for the great meal. Most men kept their voices to themselves, but this man was commanding in his presence and wanted to not only let everybody know that he had a good time, but that Levi had one, too.
The man released Levi’s hands, and he immediately brought them back into the safety of his hardwood cubicle, his hands covering his red face as he tried to catch his breath. He heard a couple of men curse and exclaim, “Finally!” With one final act, Levi felt the man’s lips on the inside of his knee, giving it a chaste kiss and no doubt delighting in the flinch Levi’s leg gave. Levi experienced a heavy feeling of deja vu before light streamed back through the glory hole gap as the man’s torso moved away.
The next man plunged in hastily, missing Levi’s hole twice before making it. Clearly, the other men hadn’t learned from the previous one, hadn’t registered Levi’s moans as originating from genuine pleasure but just because it was his job. Except Levi didn’t moan at the next one, or the next one, or the final one before Hange shut them down. It was like the moment the man and Levi shared had been in secret as if the man had truly done it all just to please Levi instead of himself. But Levi didn’t let that thought embed itself in his head. Any time he thought something good about a person, they’d disprove it in the most wicked way possible just to prove him wrong and gain a sick satisfaction out of seeing the light leave his eyes.
Hange made her way down the line of prostitutes, undoing any shackles that were holding up their legs or helping them out of their glory holes. Once she got to Levi, she laid a towel gently down over his body and undid his shackles, catching his ankles and setting them down slowly on the bench. Levi would’ve let out a groan, but then it would’ve reminded him of that man, so he kept his jaw clamped shut as he dragged himself up into his glory-hole cubicle. He hugged his knees to his chest and stayed put like that for a few moments, taking in the idle chatter of the prostitutes outside and trying to ignore the puddles of white on the board. A soft knocking at the door woke him from his trance, and the door opened to reveal Hange’s face.
“Hey,” she said, stepping back to allow room for Levi to get out. Once he slowly, painfully did so, she handed him a wad of cash and a small bag of coins. “This one guy left you a nice tip. Nice job.”
Levi scoffed. He knew exactly who left him the ‘generous’ tip. “He did all the work,” Levi replied truthfully, taking the cash and coin bag. He looked up at Hange and frowned. “Can you try and make those condoms less…thick? So more of these assholes will use them? My stomach hurts already.”
Hange gave him a sympathetic look that had the exact opposite effect on Levi that she might have hoped. “I can only source so much rubber from the surface. And making them is time-consuming. You’d know, since you’re always in my workshop even though you say you hate it there.” She chuckled and gave Levi a light shove on the shoulder as he walked away to the baths. She followed him and continued, “I’ll try. In the meantime, I can charge even more for condomless. But um, about the big tipper—”
“God, I hope he never comes back,” Levi muttered. He’s the only one in the baths as most of the other prostitutes went off to continue their shifts on their own time or back home in the privacy of their own bathrooms. Levi had no such luxury, living in a room above the brothel Hange built for him. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have money to afford a nicer place, but he had little regard for where he lived, as long as it had a bed that didn’t hold memories of sex. What would he do with a bigger place, anyhow? He had nobody. More space just meant more reminders of what he lacked.
Hange gasped and leaned over the bathtub as Levi climbed in, cocking her head in confusion. “But why? He was the best tipper we’ve had in years—maybe ever! And get this—”
“He made me feel terrible,” Levi spat, grabbing a bucket of lukewarm water as the winter had already cooled down the water since Hange heated it ten minutes ago and dumping it over himself. “Not physically. I’m sure you heard me—I’m sure everybody in a fifty-kilometer radius could hear me. But to think I liked it…I—”
“Levi, I think he was very important,” Hange interrupted with a glimmer in her eyes. “He walked in with a commander uniform. I don’t know which one, I couldn’t see the patch for which regiment. But he was dressed niiiice. He could be your ticket out of here.”
Levi scoffed again as he worked the soap into his skin. He had learned a long time ago that no amount of soap would ever make him feel clean after the first time he was used, and he scrubbed himself so raw that when a man touched him the next day, he felt a searing pain that hurt like nothing he’d ever felt before even after all the pain he had already been through. The only thing that stopped him from rubbing his skin raw again was that the men liked it when he screamed from the pain and touched and spanked his skin more.
“I was born here, and I’m going to die here.” Levi grabbed another bucket to dump over himself once he was properly lathered and scrubbed. “You really think a person like me could ever survive up there? Reminds me of that bird my mom took care of since it was a baby. She found it on the ground, probably lost after flying in when the gates were open like a dumbass. When she was getting real sick, she decided to release it. I found it dead a couple of days later. Somebody had smacked it with something.”
Levi looked up at Hange, his gaze dark. “That’s what’ll happen to me.”
Hange’s lips were pursed into a thin line, her knuckles turning yellow as she gripped the sides of the bathtub. She looked away and sighed before standing up straight and crossing her arms. “Have it your way, Levi. Judging by how much he tipped, he’ll be back.” She began to leave before she turned back to her friend. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”
“We’ve already had this conversation a million times,” Levi groaned. He hoped Hange went away so he could get the semen out of himself in private. “This is all I know how to do. This is all that people want from me. End of story.”
Hange nodded, stepped outside the baths, and closed the door. However, once she left, Levi just sat in the bathtub, hugging his knees, until the bathwater went completely cold.