This was not how Mel had pictured himself.
He had come to this country with one mission and one mission only: he wanted to undermine the local slaving ring. That hideous organization kidnapped young men, transformed them into monster boys and then sold them to greedy female clients as slaves and playthings.
Mel should have been in the streets, gathering information. He should have been in the alleys and bars, making contacts. He should have been mapping out the slavers' den and formulating his intricate plan of infiltration. Instead, Mel was in the arms of the woman who was doing all this for him in exchange for his body. What was even more of a surprise, Mel loved it.
Nuan was not an attractive woman. She was built like a brute, stoop-shouldered and worn out from years of ten-hour workdays, and at that, she was nearly twice Mel's age. He had no right to enjoy it this much.
But enjoy it he did. Nuan sat in her chair, the only one in her apartment, while her hands pushed and pulled and fondled Mel. She squeezed his butt. She pinched his nipples. Her fingertips kissed his cheeks and shoulders and arms. She kept him guessing, and his spine turned to water. His sighs and moans probably sounded fake, but they weren't.
Nuan tightened her arms around him, clasped him with her greedy fingers, then released him. Mel had to catch himself on the table to keep from falling over. He looked back at Nuan, expecting more, but she only leaned back and sighed, finished.
His consent for her help—that had been the deal. But in their day-and-a-half together, she had never once made him cum. She had kissed him on the mouth and made him finger her stocky, powerful body. She had pegged him and once even used his mouth, but only after tying his hands so he couldn't touch his cock. Sometimes she didn't even take his clothes off.
Mel finally mustered the courage to ask. "Nuan?"
"Yeah?" Nuan sat back in her stiff wooden chair as if it were the softest recliner in the world. She smiled a a wide, lazy, closed-lipped smile, as she always did after playing with his body.
"Why is it that you never make me cum?"
Nuan straightened her posture a little. "Was wondering when you were going to ask that." She gave a little sigh, sinking deeper into that old wooden chair. "You see, the way I figure, our best bet for getting into the slavers' place is by going in disguise. I'll pretend I'm one of those boy-snatchers, and you'll be my catch." She stopped, as if that explained it.
"And...?"
"You don't know?" Her face got a little more serious. "When you turn a man into a monster boy, two things need to happen. First, you need to get him to breathe the gas that comes up out of the rocks in the caves under this city. Easy enough. But there's another thing too. He has to cum while he breathes it, or it'll take days. So I figure a smart boy-catcher would make sure he doesn't cum on her watch, so that way his cock will be plump and juicy when it's time to turn him in."
"Wouldn't it look more authentic if you fucked me more?" Before coming to this country, Mel hadn't used the word 'fuck' in half a year, but this was his second time today. "Women who traffic in men aren't above raping them."
"Maybe. I've never met a boy-catcher, and even if I do, I won't ask her about it because I'll be too busy wringing her neck."
Mel approved.
"You're not disappointed about that, are you?" asked Nuan. "When we met, I thought you didn't like sex at all."
"It's true, I don't..." Mel stopped himself. It was an exaggeration to say he disliked sex. He was a man, and all non-asexual men felt desire. "I'm just not a slut." He stopped again. "Er, not that promiscuous men are bad—that's just a matriarchal shaming label that's used to oppress men. What I mean is, it would be a disservice to male dignity to lie back and let a woman use me just because I enjoyed it."
"You just said promiscuous men aren't bad. How's it figure it's a disservice?"
"It's not, but... slutty boys are the reason women don't respect us."
"It sounds to me like you like sex, but you don't want to like it."
Mel was silent. He was right, he simply knew it, but somehow he could not put the words together convincingly.
* * *
Nuan didn't know what to think of this boy. This pale, cracker-fed college boy with muscles like cooked noodles. She wanted to like him. He was brave, coming from his fancy rich home in his fancy rich country to work with the likes of her. He had principles too. Nuan had met a lot of men who'd sell their own brothers to be with her, and it was disgusting. And he seemed to hate the monster-boy trade even more than she did.
But his heart wasn't in it. He had told her, in no uncertain terms, that after they brought down Guan-Yin and her slaver gang, he was quitting and going home. Nuan had tried to talk him into taking up slaver-hunting full-time. Busting one slaver gang would be as useless as crushing one cockroach. But he didn't seem to care. 'It will send a symbolic message,' he had said, 'that treating men as property has consequences.' The truth was that as soon as people realized the slave-hunter was gone, they'd forget he'd ever existed.
If Nuan was a good judge of character, and she liked to think she was, then Mel didn't want the streets to be clean, not really. He wanted to feel like a hero so he could go back home and brag about how he fought against privilege and systemic bias and marginalization and whatever other fancy claptrap they taught him in school.
It was too bad.
Still, he was fun in bed. He was awkward and uptight, but that just made it more satisfying when she got him to cut loose and act like the whore he clearly wanted to be.
"Nuan?" said Mel. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Hm?" Nuan sat up straight. "Oh. Sorry, get lost in my head sometimes." She looked out at the twilight sky. The stars were just starting to glimmer. "I think I'll go see if our map is ready."
She took to the streets, away from her apartment that was shabby but safe—a good trade—and into the depths of the old city.
The map was ready, as promised. It was a nice map, really. It was good paper hand-drawn on both sides, and with good ink too. That was rare ever since the factories had pushed the ink-mixers out of business. The mass-produced stuff just didn't stick the same way.
One side of the map pinpointed the hideout on the city map, with some instructions written in scrawly male handwriting. The other showed the hideout in detail. The tunnels formed a maze, a web. Some of the tunnels were labeled with their purpose, others with vague things like 'Lots of boxes here,' or 'secret room.'
Nuan came back with a spring in her step. Mel saw the map, and for the first time she had seen, he smiled. When she informed him that they could do their caper tonight, he smiled wider.
Already, it was dark. At this time of year, it was always dark after Nuan's shift at the sawmill. For extra measure, they waited a few more hours to let the dusk turn all the way into blackness. Then they set out.
