The screen flared into life just as Dash Sanam’s cigarette did. Smoke filled the tiny, one-room apartment as he tapped on the keys, pulling up the chat board.

Dash smiled around his cigarette and opened the article, wondering how creative Steve (M1ndS0ld1er) had been this time.

Dash wrote down the number 15, and scanned the article for the next number

Dash scrawled down 38 and 27

Dash added “A” to the combination

Dash added 9, 12, and 1997 to the combination and added a reply to the post.

He waited for the confirmation screen to load.

He clicked the button.

He tapped his cigarette into the ashtray while the new page came up. After a few minutes, an image started to load. Pixel by pixel, the bitmap image revealed what Dash had been dying to look at all week but hadn’t had time for. First, the hair. It was short and raven black. It stuck up at the back. Then he got a first glimpse of the skin, pale and soft looking, then the eyes. It was always the eyes that shot the first surge of adrenaline through him. They were round and huge, probably with fear, and red-rimmed from crying. The left one had a patch of black all around it. Both had thick black lashes and the brightest green pupils Dash had ever seen. The cheek bones were visible. The were highlighted by a pink flush, maybe makeup, maybe embarrassment, maybe slap marks. The cheeks themselves were dark and hollow. The nose was straight and narrow. The jaw-line was soft and unmarked, but the lips were ruby red and swollen, marked with a large cut and a deep purple bruise.

“Jesus, Steve!” Dash breathed, wondering what the kid had done to get his friend that mad.

He was distracted when the throat loaded. It was as white as a swan’s and just as graceful and thin. It sloped down to small, rounded shoulders, connected by the frail bar of the collarbone. Below that, the chest emerged from the blackness of cyberspace. It was perfectly white and flat but for the soft, tiny nipples, erect from cold and exposure, And maybe arousal? Dash thought, hoping the rest of the picture would answer that question. The arms were splotchy and blue/black/yellow in four long, thick stripes on the outside and one on the inside. In the middle, the stripes met in a blackish blob, the contours of S0ld1er’s hands. The ribcage was swollen and red on the right and Dash wondered if Steve had broken one of the kid’s ribs. The elbows were scabbed, but the forearms were unscathed. The belly was a shallow dip between his protruding ribs and hips, and it was the most badly bruised part of the entire body. Dash studied the picture, growing gradually excited by the way the hipbones lead down to the blankness, to where the picture hadn’t yet loaded, pointing the way. The loading seemed to stall, teasing, then it continued. The boy’s penis was small and uncut, the same sensuous, tortured colour that faded both out and in from the red rims of his eyes. He was pulling his own foreskin as far back as his youth allowed with one bony hand, just beginning to be aroused. Dash’s cock responded to the picture, pressing ever-more insistently up towards the desk. Dash began to stroke himself in time with the slow, line-by-thin-line load of the picture, watching the boy’s white thighs appear, adoring the dark, blotchy bruises on the insides, longing to pry them open and see everything concealed between them. The shot ended at the kid’s scabby knees. Dash looked the kid’s body over and over, appreciating the tiny beginnings of tears in his eyes and the trickle of blood that ran down his inner thigh, worshiping the spot of dried come at the corner of his lips, reveling in the beauty of his tiny fingers touching his tiny cock, the foreskin folding gently, revealing the very tip of the gorgeous pink head. Dash imagined swirling his tongue beneath that sensitive membrane and lost control of himself, coming hard and suddenly into the palm of his waiting, cupped hand. He grabbed a tissue and disposed of the mess, suddenly aware that a message had popped up on the screen.

Just now, Dash replied. The two had never been able to make themselves use net-speak.

Dash shut down his computer and crawled under the sheets, thinking about Ganymede and all the time he’d have alone with him during Steve’s vacation.