dethorats | COME TOGETHER - Interlude A: Number 6

Title: Fitzgerald, France, and Freud
Rating: R-ish for het sex
Word Count: 2718

“Unhh…Plus dur, vous étalon sexy de blonde. Plus dur!”

A rapid slur of Parisian slang filled his ears as Skwisgaar met the strident demand. He didn’t speak French but he certainly knew the language of fucking well enough to get the gist. Slender, long-fingered hands tightened around the plump swell of the woman’s buttocks as he braced his feet against the too-soft mattress. He used his arms as well as his hips to pound deeper and harder into the moist flesh that gripped his eager cock. The scant, pared-down nubs of his fingernails dug into soft skin gone somewhat flabby with middle-age, left red crescent indentations as Skwisgaar jerked his wrists, lifting his partner and slamming her back onto his straining prick with as much force as he could muster. She impaled herself eagerly, twisting on knees gone slightly arthritic while her crimson-painted fingertips pinched and plucked at her nipples. Skwisgaar sank deeper into the plush bed and watched the show he was participating in somewhat impassively from behind the sweat-darkened blond strands that draped over his face.

Three days in La Ville-Lumiére, three nights in the international city of love, and he’d done little more than fuck. It was simply a matter of walking the streets, taking a casual stroll down the Champs-Élysées in his exclusive label jeans with the holes in the knees, a t-shirt that clung to his ribcage with the logo of his current band blazoned across his chest, a black leather duster to keep out the comparatively mild Parisian cold, and a cigarette between his lips, every inch a young rock star. It took little searching to find one or two or four of the ladies of the evening and invite them back to his hotel out of the chilly drizzle and damp. He hadn’t even paid for any of it after the first night. Skwisgaar was beautiful, had money to burn, and he knew how to play the instrument between his legs at least as well as he knew how to play the guitar. And he was the fastest guitarist in the entire world.

Truth be told, he was a better whore than most of the prostitutes he picked up. The stray thought flitted through his sex-fogged mind and made the Swede frown, the expression out of place given his current circumstances. Bitter anger and ancient frustrations spurred him on and he managed to buck his hips even faster and harder until the hooker straddling him could only try to hang on and enjoy the ride. She came with a loud shriek and Skwisgaar followed suit, his orgasm ripping from him as his face contorted from concentrated scowl into a twisted mask of pleasure. The high was over too soon – it never lasted long enough – and he pulled out of her well-abused pussy, tied off, and tossed the condom with unerring accuracy into the trashcan. The woman slid off his lap after he dodged her attempt to capture his lips one more time, sinking down into the bed he found not nearly firm enough with a long sigh of satisfaction. One arm reached languidly across the snoring form of her dark-haired friend, the one Skwisgaar had plowed face-first into the mattress about an hour ago, the dark blue spiderweb of veins inside milk-pale skin standing out in stark relief. Her groping fingers found cigarettes and a pack of hotel matches. Dark-rimmed eyes widened again at the name emblazoned on the cover in gold but the hooker kept quiet as she lit a smoke, offered another to the tall blond guitarist who had just given her the best lay she’d had in eight years.

Skwisgaar brought the cigarette to his lips, sucked in the addicting nicotine smoke and slowly exhaled so that it streamed out of his nostrils. The prostitute sank into the pillows and blew a cloud of smoke at the gilded ceiling, taking unusual care as she ashed over the side of the bed onto the floor. The guitarist watched her smoke for a long moment, listened to soft inhalations and noisier expulsions from the other woman. He should have been resting between them, their hands caressing the taut skin over his ribs or carding through his hair. But he’d been restless lately, out of sorts even before he’d arrived in Paris, and the events of the past few days had done little to ease him. Long, pale legs swung off the bed as Skwisgaar stood, half-smoked cigarette dangling between his full lips. The whore watched him with a carelessly raised eyebrow and he shook his head, wordlessly refusing whatever it was she had to offer. A white silk bathrobe was draped over a Louis XIVth era side chair and he slipped it over his shoulders, not bothering to close it further over his body as he padded on bare feet out of the bedroom.

The Persian carpet felt rough against his toes and too thin and he curled up on the settee in the adjoining sitting room as soon as he reached it. He was paying nearly five grand a night to stay in this suite of rooms and yet he could only find things about it he didn’t like. At least the service was excellent; no one who spent a night at a Ritz would ever truly be able to complain about the discretion and work of the staff. The Ritz Paris was among the world’s foremost hotels and he, Skwisgaar Skwigelf, had managed to secure the F. Scott Fitzgerald suite for himself for a week over Valentine’s Day. It was something of a coup, a small miracle that wouldn’t have been possible even six months ago, but certainly his pride had never expected anything less than the best for his future. Katten Älskaren was the most successful band he’d been in to date and they were the current darlings of the European metal scene. Skwisgaar had only played on one album but his speed, ferocity, and virtuoso technique had been joined with a halfway decent singer-songwriter to produce a hit. The third single was currently in heavy rotation on most metal stations and they’d gone platinum at the beginning of the month. As a reward, the band had opted to take February off and Skwisgaar had taken his cut and fled the frozen landscape of Sweden in favor of slumming around Europe.

Paris had been a whim, the momentary surprise that he COULD get a suite at the Ritz during one of the hotel’s busiest weeks of the year more than enough to have him saying yes before he truly thought about what he was doing. He’d strolled in very early Saturday morning with his guitar case over his back and a bulging backpack in his hands and the smile of resigned amusement he’d worn on his face had been stolen, taken from another proud, high-cheekboned face, because inside he marveled at the way the hotel treated him like royalty. Money and fame really could buy respectability it seemed, for he was escorted to his rooms even before they’d finished his credit check. An enormous sitting room, a bedroom only slightly smaller, and a bathroom that was bigger by itself than most of the hotel rooms Skwisgaar had seen comprised his suite and after he had seen his escort out – an unnecessary accompaniment seeing as he had no luggage and no immediate needs – he’d spun around and laughed out of sheer amazement.

The walls were a deep red with golden accents, rich wood paneling and pink and beige upholstery providing a lighter touch, and every stick of furniture, every painting and every tapestry, all of it was antique and his to use and lightly abuse for the next week. Fitzgerald, from what small amount of the phone spiel he’d gotten when he’d called to make his reservation, had been some sort of debauched American expatriate, and he sounded exactly like the kind of man Skwisgaar imagined himself to be. A lover and an artist, a man who went where he willed, loved whom he willed, did as he willed. It should have been perfect, and it was…for all of fifteen minutes.

Opulent surroundings had always been part of his childhood dreams. He’d grown up in the tatters of wealth, the tawdry remnants of fame faded into notoriety, and the few pictures kept in a locked box under his mother’s mammoth bed had revealed a home that was a far cry from the one he lived in. Serveta Skwigelf had been beautiful once, the most lovely woman in all of Sweden. She had had poise and dignity and grace and the press described her in glowing terms reserved for fairytale princesses. At first the money had poured in, advertising and modeling contracts mingled with the occasional public appearance, and Serveta had lived the good life, her every whim met and exceeded. But without any real skills, her fame had faded as the first blush of her beauty disappeared under the weight of excess and the flood of money gradually dried to a trickle. She hadn’t invested and was too stubborn for any of her initially many suitors to last and so slowly her wealth disappeared, sold off so that she could keep up her façade in public and so that the men who replaced her jobs would treat her better than the common whore she was swiftly becoming. By the time Skwisgaar had been born, a pregnancy that had snuck up on her with realization striking only when it was too late to dispose of her unwanted progeny, the mansion in Stockholm was gone and the middle-class row house was largely unfurnished.

Many of his earliest memories involved Serveta’s bedroom. It was the one place in the entire house that was always warm, always bright, always seemed more than just a shadow of life. And it was the one place where Skwisgaar, once he could walk and theoretically could be left to his own devices for more than twenty minutes – Serveta decided he was old enough for this when he was two and a half – was never ever allowed to go. Being nothing more than an innocent child, he’d been drawn irresistibly to his mother and to the comfort of her bedroom. He would sneak in, crawling on his hands and knees from the cold, bare floor of the hall onto the high-pile wool carpet dotted here and there with impossibly soft furs that felt as smooth as water running through his fingers. Light came from candles and lamps with jewel-toned shades, warm glows casting the room in favorable colors, and the fire in the fireplace was always burning. Heat and light and comfort, all things he craved, and in the middle of the room his mother’s massive bed.

It dominated the space, proclaiming by its sheer size just what the purpose of the room was. Pillows and blankets and satin sheets, Skwisgaar had wanted nothing so much at that age than to just roll around on that luxurious bed. But it was always occupied and usually Serveta wasn’t the only one in it. Men came and went and most of them never saw her thin slip of a son but those that did either ignored him or hit him when they caught his blue eyes staring through the gap in the bedroom door. Serveta was lazy and that was the only reason Skwisgaar hadn’t been taken to an orphanage or left to starve. She used him once he turned five and went to school to run her errands and rarely left her bedroom except when she had to seek a new man. He grew up in a house where furniture and knick knacks disappeared sporadically whenever the electricity went off and his diet was mostly cereal, bread, and pre-made goods from the corner store. Sex was the only constant thing besides Serveta’s neglect and a part of the child that Skwisgaar had been always wondered when he would grow up and become old enough for his mother to love him too.

Of course that was impossible, a realization he’d had when he’d been ten and the first of his peers had finally caught on to just what occurred in the Skwigelf household. The names they’d called him hadn’t been nice and the terms for his mother had been even worse. At first Skwisgaar had fought back but quickly, beaten and bruised and without a mother who would care for his wounds or his broken heart, he grew to hate the woman who had birthed him for all that she was and was not. Selling her body, her vanishing beauty, was all she knew and that had been the only good thing to come from Serveta. Skwisgaar was determined not to follow in her footsteps and the first time a guitar had been thrust upon him thanks to Sweden’s educational system, he’d shown talent and he honed it with single-minded dedication. And at fifteen he’d left his home, abandoned it as his mother had largely abandoned him. But before he walked away forever, he’d waited until Serveta went out and then took his math teacher upstairs to her bed. It wasn’t the first time he’d had sex or even the first time he’d used it to get what he wanted. But it was the first time he’d ever done it for money and somehow it had seemed right when he pulled out of his teacher and sprayed his seed all over her belly and then wiped it off on Serveta’s sheets. The 1500 krona bought him the first decent meal he’d had in weeks and the seedy hotel bed he slept in that night was a hundred times more comfortable than the one he left behind.

Being in his suite, resting on the bed he was paying so much for, the memories had all come flooding back. Skwisgaar hadn’t been able to calm his mind and his fingers had danced over his guitar in a near-mindless daze for hours as he sought to lose himself in the music his mother would never understand. He’d only stopped when room service had dropped by to inquire after his comfort and to leave behind a selection of reading materials, menus, and brochures about all the many sites that surrounded him. And there, as he’d flipped absently through VOICI to see if the tabloid had any mention of himself, on page twenty-six was single small and unflattering picture of his slattern of a mother hanging off the arm of some low-level French soap star as they gallivanted on a beach in Portugal. He could only imagine the glossy had even bothered with it because Serveta was topless and she decidedly should not have been. It was enough to make him sick to his stomach and he dry-heaved in the bathroom and stared at himself in the mirror for half an hour until he was able to convince himself that he was the fastest and sexiest guitarist alive and that getting laid would prove it. So had begun his Parisian sexcapades, although even that had quickly palled.

Restlessness gripped him and Skwisgaar stirred from the settee almost as soon as he had gotten comfortable, rising to walk to the window. The Place Vendome was blurry, a ripple of stone and shadows as rain ran down the glass and dimmed the lights that stood around the courtyard. Valentine’s Day in Paris, a suite at the Ritz, more than enough money to buy all the champagne he could drink in a single night, two willing women in his bed, and he wasn’t content with any of it. Skwisgaar turned away from the dark, found his guitar. There was a pool with a bar somewhere downstairs and he wondered if anyone would say anything if he swam a few laps in the nude, had a drink, and then played the music that was the only thing that seemed to bring him any measure of happiness. Probably not but finding out seemed like a better prospect than moping in his rooms. Skwisgaar headed for the pool and by the time he arrived, white silk bathrobe billowing open as he walked, he had managed to collect a train of people just as interested in an answer as he.

A/N: First off, pardon my French. I used Babelfish so I'm sure it is atrocious. Secondly, 1500 krona is ~$200 in case anyone was wondering. Thirdly, the F.Scott Fitzgerald suite in the Paris Ritz is real (the cost is a best guess at US $ rates in 1995) and is as described, as is the pool w/bar and the French tabloid Voici. Fourth, pardon my het? XD Skwisgaar is such a man-whore and I love him all the more for it. Eeesh, at least it's finally done. Now on to the start of Part 2 hopefully some time next week.