Monk, After Hours
Nine tickets left and Monk's already on his second can, balanced on his gut, caught without looking every time he leans in to squint at the screen. The phone hasn't rung in forty minutes. Upstairs, Pune closed fourteen while he was in the toilet, and he tells you this like a war crime. "Fourteen. Half of 'em weren't even real faults. Priya's got a *dashboard*."
He's thirty-five and built like a man twenty years further along — grey in the stubble, shirt stretched over the gut, eyes pink at the edges. Taped inside his monitor bezel is a photo he thinks nobody sees: him at twenty-four in Nha Trang, lean and sunburnt, arm around a girl, grinning like the world had just paid up.
"Six months out there," he says, because he's told you before. "Siem Reap, Vung Tau, Pattaya. You'd get off the bus and they'd *fight* over your bag. Little things, all of 'em. Gook pussy's tight as a fist and they'd go *mental* for it." He takes a pull. "You know what they called it? The gorilla mong dong. Word got round. Girls'd text me from other towns. Two of 'em turned up at the same hostel once and just — sorted it out between themselves." Another pull. "You know what I gave 'em? Disease. Half of them. Didn't even know I had it." He says it proudly, like a legacy.
Then he stands, knee cracking, says "Right," and locks the office door.
He doesn't ask. He takes your wrist, walks you into the comms room, and the door swings shut on its own weight. Fans roaring, warm, hot dust and beer. His mouth is all tongue and no finesse and his hand goes up your shirt like he's checking a connection. "Been thinking about this since lunch." Probably a lie.
Belt off, clatter, trousers to his thighs. He's got the build of a man who used to be something and he still carries the swagger — takes himself in hand, presents it, and it's *nearly* there. Thick, heavy, a bit slow off the mark. "Give it a minute," he says, like the delay's a formality.
Then he shoves you back against the rack and puts his hand between your legs, and he doesn't wait for it either — blunt, certain, no build, pressure and friction and the heel of his palm grinding down, watching your face with flat professional interest and correcting like he's tuning a fault he's seen a hundred times. "That's it. Don't fight it."
You fight it. He wins. It comes up fast and mean and he doesn't ease off, keeps the rhythm through it, shoulders your leg open when you try to close it, and the second one hurts and he still doesn't stop. "Again." — "I can't—" — "*Again.*"
Attrition. His knee's between yours, he's got you flat to the rack, breathing hard, and he's hard enough now that it doesn't matter what he calls it. He gets in — not all the way, not gracefully, muttering "*come on*" at his own body like a bad driver — and then he fucks you like he's got a personal grudge. The rack rattles. He pins your hips so you can't shift off the angle. Sweat through his shirt. On and on, past where he should have finished, because he's spent a decade learning the only thing that matters is outlasting everyone.
It goes soft halfway, slips out, and he doesn't say anything about it — just swears once, gets his hand back between your legs and carries on with his fingers while his cock sulks against your thigh, rhythm unbroken. The third one's dragged out of you while he's still complaining about the tickets.
You go limp. "You're not done," he says. "You go quiet when you're done."
He's right. He keeps going till you're shaking, telling him so, and he says "I know" and doesn't stop, and the fourth is more spasm than anything, dry and wrenching, your nails in his forearm.
He comes on your stomach with a grunt that turns into a cough, braced on the rack, chest heaving. Then he doesn't let you up. Sits on the step-stool, pulls you down by the wrist, puts his hand back between your legs. "One more, then we'll see about these tickets."
Fans roaring. Monk keeps you there, patient and mean, till your legs have gone and the queue is nobody's problem.