Dirty Kiss by Rhys Ford Page B

under the eaves. Someone had tried to make the exterior more attractive, adding a decorative cinderblock enclosure around each doorway. Dried ivy strands clung to some of the scalloped stone. It didn’t do much to provide privacy. The dead plants only made the place look sadder.
     
    “It looks like a prison.” I was being nice. The place looked like bird shit on a hot windshield.
     
    “It’s cheap.” He struggled to get his keys out of his pocket. I snuck my fingers past his, struck by how cold they were. “The one on the end.”
     
    “Let’s get you inside.”
     
    Jae shivered against me and glanced up at me from under his lashes. My body growled in response, a primal goad into taking what was in front of me. I wanted him. Covered with his own blood and chilled from probable shock, I still wanted him underneath me. Every ounce of common sense in my brain told me I was an idiot, but guys are often idiots. “Tell me there’s hot water in your shower. You need one.”
     
    “Yeah.” The color was gone from his face, turning his already pale skin to porcelain. “I’ve even got a toilet in there.”
     
    “Good, because you’re probably going to want to throw up in it.” I opened the heavy metal door and grabbed at his waist before he slid down the wall. “You’ve got a concussion. You should be flat on your ass in a hospital bed.”
     
    Light came through stacks of windows along the back of the wall, illuminating the wide space. If I hadn’t been so concerned about carrying him over the threshold, I would have dropped Jae when I saw the enormous black and white photos leaning against the wall. He pulled away from me, staggering off toward a door in the side wall, waving off my half-mumbled offers to help. I didn’t offer out of kindness. I, like most men, was a pig. The thought of seeing him naked under a stream of hot water would go a long way in paying me back for the anger I was still nursing against him.
     
    He disappeared, closing the door behind him as I found the switch to the lights. The space was larger than it looked from the outside, cleaner than I’d expected too. The furnishings were Spartan, a pair of futons around a low, flat-topped wooden chest pocked with water rings. An enormous unmade bed against one wall, a nest of pillows imprinted with the shape of a long, lean body.
     
    Most of the floor space was taken up by mismatched tables, a few groaning under the weight of electronics and digital cameras. Long lenses sat sentinel on cheap shelves, accompanied by other equipment. I couldn’t even begin to guess at what it was used for.
     
    The photos still held me. I saw Scarlet’s face in one, stripped of makeup and pretense. This was the man under the makeup and smiles. A sadness clouded her dark eyes. Not loss, I decided. No, this was the face of a ladyboy who loved deeply and wanted the world to know that kind of love. She was still beautiful. Even naked of any pretense, there was a beauty there that I couldn’t deny.
     
    There were other images, starkly beautiful and sweepingly tragic. Flipping through them, I was walking into Jae-Min’s world, seeing private moments caught between his hands like short-lived fireflies. It hurt something inside of me. I couldn’t understand the nearly manic laughter captured in the back room of Dorthi Ki Seu, black and white portraits of men turning themselves into another man’s fantasy.
     
    He’d taken other pictures, pieces of urban life seen through unforgiving eyes. Jae-Min imprisoned his life in flat images. I wondered if he was trying to make sense of things or just showing the world what he saw. Either way, looking through the mounted photos made me ache and feel slightly ashamed, as if I was prying into his secret diary.
     
    A furry demon exploded into a hissing fit above my head. I fell back, almost knocking over a few cameras from the table behind me. I fought to catch them before they hit the ground, shoving the equipment back as