Standard disclaimer: The Law & Order universe and its characters belong to Dick Wolf and NBC. The Endless and its characters belong to Neil Gaiman and DC Comics.

Author's Note: This is not the Desire who moves people towards the fleshy pelvis-bumping. This is the Desire that is, for more than one reason, the twin of Despair. As usual, feedback and constructive criticism more than welcome.

The boy is 8 years old and whippet-thin, all pale skin and smoky eyes over sullen, animal endurance. He spends his days and some of his evenings on the apartment building's stoop, hugging his ribs through his jacket. The neighbors eye him askance. "Such a quiet boy," Mrs. Tucci says, shaking her head. "You have to watch that kind. My brother's boy, Frank, he was just like that."

"Troublemaker. Always getting in fights," her friend Mrs. Paolini says, eager to be the outside witness. "It's a disgrace."

"He didn't get it from our side of the family," Mrs. Tucci says, unheeding, producing as proof the pictures of her own son in the dress uniform of the Marines. Back on the subject of the phantom on their apartment stoop, she adds, "The way that boy looks at you, like he's half-starved."

"His parents try," Mrs. Paolini says. "They're proper churchgoers. Such a nice young couple. And his father."

"Such a nice man," Mrs. Tucci says. "And so handsome in his uniform."

The women exchange appreciative glances. They're not so old that they can't appreciate when God puts a little zing into His work.

The girl moves into the next building on a cold March day. The movers are Mexican, too bored by the business to crack a smile. The boy sits on the stairs and studies the furniture as it disembarks from the truck, making an exercise from the distraction, another excuse not to go home. One large bed. Two small dressers. A toy chest painted yellow and green. His new neighbors disembark from a battered Pontiac: a girl a little bit younger than him, dressed in a green wool coat; a man his Pop's age who could break bricks with his bare hands. The father swings his daughter into his arms when they cross the street, as though jealous that the earth will touch those small feet.

She catches sight of the boy and watches him watching her, turning her head to track him as they go up the stairs to their new home. Her eyes are tawny and sharp, cat-like and framed in black lashes. He waits a while longer, to see if she'll come out again, but she doesn't. All too soon, the street lights go on, and it's too dark to see the sky. He goes inside. "Someone new moved in next door," he tells his mother.

She is a soiled dishrag crumpled across the sofa, and doesn't hear. He pulls a blanket over her and eats stale toast and peanut butter for dinner.

The new neighbors barely emerge from their apartment over the next few days, though he watches for them when he can. Once or twice he sees the father leave in the car; the daughter he sees only once, a glimpse caught out of the corner of his eye. Her father has her firmly by the hand, guarding her from imaginary traffic with a ferocity that she seems to take for granted.

It is a week before he finally meets her. He sits on the front steps, hugging his ribs again, experimenting with his seat to find one that will not hurt. She steps out onto her front step and looks over the low wall at him. Ten seconds later, she is leaning against his legs, a small, pink dessert in an explosion of skirts and frills.

"What are you looking at?" she asks.

"Nothing," he says, and looks at her. Even without the brightness of her clothes, she is hard not to notice.

"I'm Desirée," she says, and smiles at him with a closed, rosebud mouth. Her hands grip his lap, sharing heat through his jeans.

"I'm Mike," he says, and adds, "Logan," because his last name is his father's. He doesn't wince at the way her weight hurts him, because he's not a baby, and she's just a girl.

She bumps her stomach against his knees. "Mike Logan." The way she says his name is sweet and soft, like she's eaten too much sugar. She tips her head to one side, the way his mother does sometimes when she wants something from Pop. "We're neighbors now."

"I saw you move in," he says, and watches her warily. "Was that your Dad?"

She turns a little, hiding her face in clouds of black hair, and glances sidelong through it at him. A little pink ribbon winks above her ear. "Yes," she says. "That was my Daddy."

Her voice is sing-song, like a playground chant. There is something in it that makes him think she is laughing at him. "Where's your Mom?" he asks.

"I don't have one."

"Where is she?"

"She went away." Desirée nibbles on a fingernail while Mike imagines a life without a mother. "It's just me and Daddy now," she says.

A pang goes through him. "Is she dead?" he asks, too loud.

Desirée shrugs, as though bored by the subject.

"I bet she's dead. Or she ran away."

"Mothers don't run away."

"Sometimes they do." Mike's friends have mothers who have left. Sometimes he pities them. "They run away and then they have a divorce, and they go to hell."

Desirée shrugs again. Hell does not frighten her.

"Don't you care if your Mom goes to hell?" he asks.

"No."

"If your Mom and Dad had a divorce, your Dad will go to hell, too."

She turns her white, even teeth to her hair instead, and stares at him with those shiny eyes, as if she's thinking about putting him in her mouth as well.

"You'll go to hell, too," he lies, inventing dogma on the spot. "If your parents get divorced, you go to hell. You burn forever and Satan stabs your feet with a pitchfork. I'm not going to hell, because my parents are still married."

The prospect does not appear to interest her. She leans on him like he's a piece of furniture, there for her use. Her hair tickles his nose. He draws back. "My daddy's a cook," she says. "He works in a restaurant."

"Mine's a cop," Mike says, trying not to boast. "That's better than a cook." (He doesn't try too hard.)

She looks up at him. "I've seen him." She pushes off of his support and then bumps back into it again. Bump. Bump. Bump. Pain sticks white and sharp needles through Mike's bones. He grits his teeth.

"Cops are important," he says. "They arrest bad guys and throw them in jail. Your Dad only cooks food."

Her eyes narrow, considering.

"I bet it's not even good food," Mike says.

She will not be provoked. The bumping stops, much to his relief; she twirls a new piece of hair through her fingers and nibbles on its end. "It's only your daddy," she says. "It's not you."

"Sometimes I go with him."

"To arrest bad guys?" Her scorn is light, but bites nonetheless.

He has the upper hand in knowledge, and regards her with pity. "No, stupid. To the station house. He takes me and I hang out there. I know all the cops."

Her face is thoughtful. "I bet you couldn't tell a bad guy from a good guy," she says.

"Bet I could."

"Bet you couldn't."

"Bet I could. I'm going to be a cop someday," he announces, and closes his hands into fists, his heart pounding a little faster.

This silences her. She puts her hand on his leg and bounces a little, thinking. "You'll take care of me," she says.

He thinks about standing, but it hurts too much to think about for long. "No I won't."

"Yes you will." There is a smugness in her voice. She leans across his lap to reach for his head, and ignores his first flinch back to curl a strand of hair around a finger. "Cops have to take care of people. And boys like girls."

"No they don't."

"Do too."

"Do not."

"You will someday," she argues.

"No I won't," he tells her, scrounging up an argument to trump all arguments. "Girls are gross."

She considers this with a skeptical air, unconvinced by the sincerity of his belief. "You're not in school," she says at last, shifting ground. "Why aren't you?"

"Why aren't you?" he counters.

She balances her arm on his shoulder to slide her fingers through his hair. Seen close up, her skin is pale as smoke, as smooth as paper. "You're a boy and I'm a girl." Her eyelashes sweep down, long and black. Through them, her eyes glitter like polished coins. "You have to do what I want."

He is confused and fascinated. And then, when her other hand slides up his thigh as though it belongs to her, revolted. He recoils and releases his ribs long enough to slap her hand away, hard. "Don't touch me," he says. His breath comes quick.

"Boys like to be touched," she says, as though it is a secret that everyone knows but him, and pouts.

His knuckles itch. He stares past her at the street, listening to the loud thud of his pulse. "Go away."

She steps up another stair and dips towards him. Her breath smells like summer peaches, warm and close and sweet. "Baby girl knows what Daddy wants," she whispers in his ear.

Something burning and heavy roils in his chest, and then he is standing and looking down at her sprawled on the sidewalk with her hand pressed to her cheek. His knuckles burn and blackness licks with forked tongues at his vision, and he knows, he knows he will be in trouble when Pop hears about it but over the guilt of knowing he's done wrong, but there's a wild, heady satisfaction that makes his head spin and almost entirely drowns out the warning of retribution to come. "Go away."

Her eyes are wide and startled. She sits up. Her shadow wavers under her. "You hit me," she says in wonder.

He shakes a little where he stands, his hands groping after fists and then opening again. Something too large for his body to contain stretches his skin. Pain shreds him. "Go away!" he shouts at her. "Leave me alone!"

"Make me," she says, and her smile is like broken glass.

He stares at her, imagining her face all battered and bloody while he pounds it in with his fists. It makes his heart beat faster and faster and he wants, oh, he wants--

She stands up and stares at him. His mother is inside; Desirée is outside.

He goes inside.

Pop finds out two days later, when he is taking out the garbage and one of the neighbors encounters him on the sidewalk. Mike watches from the window; he does not need to be able to hear in order to translate their conversation. "Saw your boy hitting that new girl," Mrs. Tucci says, shaking her head. "Kids nowadays. They play so rough."

"Hitting the new girl?" Pop asks. "My boy Mikey?"

"Sweet little thing, that girl. So well-behaved. I told your boy, I told him, he should take some lessons from his daddy. He's a proper man, a police officer."

"I'll take care of it, Mrs. Tucci," Pop says, his mouth thinning. "My boy shouldn't be hitting the girls. Don't you worry. I'll talk to him."

He comes home and cuffs Mike across the ear. "Boys don't hit girls," he says, while Mike is still trying to find his feet again, still blinking back tears from the sting. The old man's disapproval is a roar over the echo in his head. "No matter what. You never hit a girl. You go over there and apologize."

"No, sir," he says, and earns another slap across the head. He sees it coming and manages to brace himself before it lands. He only wobbles a little bit, this time. It is a victory of sorts.

"You talking back to me, Mikey?"

"No, sir."

"Why'd you hit her?" Pop asks.

Mike looks down at his feet and feels his ears burn. He mumbles and is thumped again, lightly.

"Speak up, boy."

"She wouldn't stop touching me," he says loudly. His face is hot with embarrassment.

Pop looks surprised, then amused. "You hit her because she was flirting with you?"

There is something bemused about Pop's grin. Mike smolders with the unfairness of it. "I didn't want her to."

The old man laughs suddenly, his displeasure forgotten, and wraps his arm around his shoulders. Mike's heart expands until it crushes his lungs. Pop says, "One of these days you'll want her to, Mikey."

"No, sir," Mike says.

"Believe you me," Pop says, and squeezes. Mike is made to understand that he has made his father proud, though he doesn't know why. He doesn't question it. Adults are unpredictable. "You're gonna grow up to be a real man, so help me God. Apologize to the girl. No matter how much they piss you off, son, you don't lay a finger on them. Real men take care of women. You understand me?"

"Yes, sir," Mike says, and is relieved that his voice doesn't shake.

Pop chuckles. "Good boy," he says, and lets him go. "Where are my keys?"

Mike helps him get ready: goes to the bedroom to get his hat; digs out his keys from his other jacket. He doesn't dare ask if he can go to work with him. If he is helpful, Pop may ask him anyway.

His father sits on a kitchen chair to tie his shoelaces, still chuckling. "8 years old and already he's got girls after him," he says.

"I don't want girls after me," Mike says. He grips Pop's keys with both hands, tight, willing his father to notice how badly he wants to go with him.

Pop puts on his hat and picks up his holster. Mike watches him buckle it on, yearning for the invitation. "That's what you think now," Pop says. He grins. "One of these days, you'll be a cop just like your old man, and all the girls will be chasing you. You'll be a heartbreaker, boy."

"I don't want to break hearts."

"Trust me, Mikey," Pop says, and laughs again. "You treat a girl right, she'll treat you right, and you'll be the happiest guy on God's green earth."

"Like you and Mom," Mike says, reckless with desperation, and Pop looks at him, looks at him hard, before walking out the door without another word.

Mike goes to the window to watch him go, pressing himself against the glass in case his father looks up and sees him. He holds his breath. If he holds it to the count of fifty, Pop will look up at the window and yell, "Come on down to the precinct with me, Mike! We need someone to show the rookies how it's done!" And then Mike will snatch his coat and run downstairs, to spend a glorious afternoon surrounded by men in blue uniforms: men who will teach him how to fight dirty, how to recognize when a perp is lying, how to unhook a bra with one hand. How to be a man. "Jesus fucking Christ," Pop will say, catching Officer Kirk teaching him how to cheat at cards. "The wrong monkeys are wearing the uniforms in this zoo."

He counts to thirty. Pop gets in the car.

He counts to forty. The engine rumbles to life.

He counts to fifty.

Pop does not look up.

Mike lets his breath out in a gust that fogs the window. He scrubs it away with a hasty hand and watches the car head off down the street, feeling smaller and smaller the further it gets. It has barely turned the corner before his mother is there beside him, her eyes shiny and full of hunger. "Is your Daddy gone, honey?" she asks.

"Yes, ma'am," he says.

She wraps herself around him and ruffles his head with tender fingers. "We can spend some time together, just you and me," she says. "Would you like that?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Go run an errand for me first," she says, and gives him green bills, pressed and flat from Pop's wallet. "Mama's run out of her medicine. Go get some for her, sweetheart."

"Yes, ma'am."

She kisses him on the temple, then kisses him on the cheek and on the nose and on the mouth. Her lips are sweet. She teases the hair away from his scalp. "You have such curly hair," she says. "You got that from me."

He looks at her. "Your hair's not curly," he says.

"It used to be," she says, and laughs, curling a strand of it around a finger like Desirée did. "When I was younger and prettier. Do you think I'm still pretty, Mikey?" she asks, and there's a brittle edge to her voice that he recognizes.

"You're beautiful, Mama," he says, because he has learned things, at 8 years old. "Everybody says so."

Her face softens. "You sweet-talker, you," she says, and hugs his head. For a moment his entire world is the close, dark warmth of her breasts and the cotton of her blouse. He closes his eyes and inhales the smell of her. His heart pounds a little faster, a little harder, like it's trying to burrow its way out of his chest and make its way to her.

She releases him. "Now, scoot," she orders, and slaps him on the rear hard enough for it to sting. "No dawdling. I'll start making cookies while you're out. How does chocolate chip sound to you?"

He puts on his shoes and his jacket, listening while she sings to herself in the kitchen. The liquor store is two blocks away, straight down the stairs, turn right and then go straight, look both ways when you're crossing the street. They greet him by name and hand him a bottle without asking for his order. He drags his feet on the way back, looking for distractions that will delay his return, but the sidewalks are mostly empty, and the one neighbor he sees only stops long enough to say hello before hurrying on with her dog.

His mother is watching for him from their apartment window. Once he comes into her view, he has no more excuses. He goes up the stairs, slapping each concrete step with his feet to punish them, and keys himself into the building.

She falls asleep six hours later, sprawled across the sofa that will be her bed for the rest of the night.

He waits in the closet until he is certain she is down.

It takes a long time to move out of the dark. The light stabs his eyes when he opens the door. He has to crawl at first, inching his way across the floor until he can grow accustomed to his limbs again. He needs a wall to pull himself up to his feet. He clings to it with stiff fingers, waiting for the world to stop spinning. Most of the cuts have stopped bleeding.

She has vomited on the sofa cushions. He stares at her, the blood thudding unpleasantly in his ears. He thinks for a long time before turning her head to the side so she won't choke. Her blouse has crept up over her stomach; he pulls it down to cover her, and draws a blanket over her so she won't get cold.

Her rosary dangles from one of her hands. He leaves it where it is.

He goes to his room on slow and clumsy feet, avoiding a direct glance in the hallway mirror as he passes. He doesn't need to see to know how he looks. It takes a long time to change out of his clothes; he shoves a sock in his mouth to keep himself from whimpering, and has to stop twice to rest. There is blood on his shirt and pants. He will need to do the laundry tonight.

It hurts to swallow. When he tips his chin back, he can feel the pull of skin where her fingers dug into his throat. He wraps a scarf around his neck; he can dip his face in it to hide his split lip, if someone sees him.

The afternoon is only half over, but it is already cold outside. He takes the steps one at a time -- down his, up hers -- his hand on the railing, and lets himself rest on each one before taking the next. He is stymied at the entrance by the fact that he does not know what Desirée's last name is, but one of the names in the slips next to the mailbox numbers is written in fresh, black ink. He makes a note of the apartment number, and is grateful that it is on the first floor.

It is the first apartment in the hallway. He can hear a television through the door. It opens at his knock, pulled back a crack that stops dead when it meets the length of the security chain. Desirée peers at him from inside. She smiles when she sees him. "Hi, Mike," she says. "You came to see me." Her smile dies away when she takes in his face.

"Pop sent me over," Mike says. It is the first sound he's made in hours. His split lip cracks with motion and he can taste blood in his mouth again, salty and thick. His voice sounds fuzzy, like he's just woken up.

"Who's at the door, honey?" a man asks inside the apartment. Her father appears behind Desirée, running possessive fingers through her hair before dropping his hand on her shoulder. He regards Mike through the doorway and frowns. "Making friends already?" His voice is hard and hostile.

"Do you want to come in?" Desirée asks, and then flinches.

"I'm supposed to apologize," Mike says.

"For what?" Desirée's father asks.

Desirée looks at Mike's bruised eye. Mike looks at her father's hand on her shoulder, with its white knuckles. He remembers that she doesn't have a mother.

"I'm not sorry," he says clearly, and turns away to head back down the hall, his back straight, his steps even. He can feel her watching him go, so he makes himself walk as though he doesn't feel a thing, biting down so hard on tears that it makes it teeth groan.

He doesn't see Pop until the next morning. Mike limps into the kitchen to find the old man already there, eating toast and reading the newspaper. Pop looks up as he enters and then looks away, his glance shying away from the swollen eye that is darkening around the socket. It hurts to open. Mike keeps it shut.

"I went next door to tell Desirée I was sorry," he says. It sounds too loud in the quiet room.

"Well," Pop says, and folds his newspaper over to read the other side. "Good for you, Mikey."

Mike stares at his father for a moment longer, his heart thumping so fiercely he's certain Pop can hear it. The old man doesn't look at him again.

He goes back to his room to get ready for another sick day.