Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Some people are born facing the sun, he thinks, backs bared against shadows as if petaled to that of a lemon-rose, others laved in susurrus strips of discarded moonlight, souls unfurling at night when sleep befalls its neighbors. Some are born babied, honed to selfishness from years and years of indulgence, shrouded in the scattered remnants of floral scents.

Some are forgotten, cradle themselves to human resemblance in the dust-filled corners of upbringing. His mother was born on a spindly web of silk, nested on the rigorous hills of rootless tradition. His step-father on the grumbling desert curve, gutted by canyons and all things a burning red.

Some are born lustful, grasping.

Hyunjin was born rotten.

It hasn’t taken him long to realize it, dirtied patterns lingering upon the lines of his palms, skin-deep and ugly. Reptilian, almost. In the ashen wake of his barren backyard he could spot them sometimes, ridge-nosed rattlesnakes and small, restless lizards.

He looked at them and they looked back. Sweaty, nervous, he would hunch down and rest his head on his knees, desperate not to scare them off. They were like monsters, he thought. Tiny, funny monsters that came to say hello.

At times Hyunjin felt bad for them. The sun was unbearable this time of the year, searing his flesh and soaking his clothes that were too small. They were always too small. But the reptiles did not seem to mind.

He never tried to touch one. He was scared that they might do something to him and he did not want to dirty himself further, grime and filth burrowed like a deep layer of something that watered him, kept him alive.

He was born rotten. At least, that is what his mother said. Shameful. Devil-made. A curse. She taught him many words like that, melodic and of strenuous exhales before she decided to stop speaking to him in Korean. They were in America after all and now that she had an American - gritty, sturdy, all things unbearable - husband, she would only utter words in thick-accented English. The insults turned a bit simpler after that.

Ugly. Disgusting. Hyunjin would repeat them back sandpaper-tongued and slow. He would have to learn too, before school started.

When his days soon became ridden with books and songs and silly, rhythmic games it did not take long for him to catch up. Surely rotten kids could read books too? Hyunjin did. He read many, fingers light and of ginger as he tried not to let his excitement scorn the pages when he flipped them.

When he finished, mind booming with a delicious exhaustion, he would check to see if there were any smudges of filth imprinted upon the ink from his touch. Hyunjin checked carefully, of course he did. He did not want others to know about his little secret, that he was born the way his mother said he was. But he never found any, which he thought odd.

Stories were fun, electrifying. Especially the fairytale ones. He read those the most, imagined the curving stick he found in the woods behind his house to be one of magic, swaying it wildly back and forth as he yelled out enchantments.

Sometimes he would see animals too, bugs of all kinds that came to greet him. Some of them were a little scary, but he liked the pretty ones. The butterflies and the lightning bugs especially. He would pretend they could talk, would tell them silly stories about witches and monsters they had to help him defeat. Of course they always helped him and he always won. Stories were fun.

Cartoons were even funner - no, that wasn’t a word. His teacher always had to remind him. But they were, he thought.

Often, before his mother came back from work, he would sit cross-legged on the floorboards, back bared against the frayed couch and laugh as he watched Wile. E Coyote try to catch the Road Runner. He never could, flashes of a deep brown and resounding blue blinking before his eyes magnetically. Sometimes if he laughed too loudly he would clap a hand over his mouth, embarrassed. His mother hated it when he was loud.

He couldn’t help it, he thought. It seemed he was born with simply too much coursing through him, his steadily growing bones not big enough to withhold it all, to keep it tightly locked and nursed to conformity. Yes, his limbs frenzied all over the place, bound itself to every tightly spaced crook and crevice of his small, cramped house.

Before childhood became wet with wrongdoing and all the heaviness it bore, Hyunjin would dance. He paid it all the love and energy his aching muscles could muster and to his delight, it paid him back. Passion - small stems of them ready to blossom every time he stole one of his mother’s CDs from the 80s and played it to his heart’s content.

His lungs would expand and swell, gasping for breath as he sang loud and incorrectly to the lyrics, his small body twisting and turning with every beat that dropped.

He knew then that feeling, that feeling he could not name because he had not learnt the words to describe it yet. The feeling of ‘this is what I must do and I do not know why, only that I must.’ Invigorated by his own belief, he molded into a mess of jangled bones and limbs flying everywhere - not that he particularly cared - until he stumbled upon the TV channels where dancers moved themselves with such grace and energy that his eyes bulged wide and his mouth would not stop stretching.

He began copying them, those pretty men and women, turning when they did, stretching his legs when they did, tapping his feet when they did. Once he got the moves down, he began forming his face as they did, smiling wide, scrunching his eyebrows together, pouting, smiling, pouting, smiling. He understood it then, that he was not only dancing. He was telling a story.

Hyunjin loved stories. If he could make one, a really good one like the people he watched on TV, then maybe it would not matter that he was born rotten. Perhaps the heatwave and the strong grip of his mother’s bumbling words would not throttle him so, would not suppress him and force him to the grainy Arizona earth.

One day he would dance on a stage in front of thousands of people, watchful eyes that would all admire and love him and they would cry from his storytelling! Yes, Hyunjin thought, that was what he would do.

He was born rotten, boundlessly so, but he didn’t think stage lights were bright enough for anyone to see it anyway.

-

“You really are down for anything, huh?” The man on top of him grunts, sweaty, red-faced. He reminds Hyunjin of a nose-ringed bull, pushing and pushing until the matador cruelly swivels the red banner away from his clogged up eyes.

Hyunjin can’t say anything, not when the bull’s hands are so tightly wrapped around his neck, squeezing and moaning so hard his eyes almost pop out of their sockets.

He only manages to let out a high-pitched whine, the sharp edges of the table digging roughly into his hipbones as the man thrusts in particularly hard from behind.

“Fuck,” He breathes out, rhythm turning erratic and faltering slightly. He retreats one of his hands from Hyunjin’s neck to press it harshly against his lower back, fingers creeping along to clutch at his waist.

The sporadic freedom around his neck finally produces sounds that come out only half-choked, eyes rolling to the back of his head as he pants. This guy is relentless.

Hyunjin hardly even notices the way his grip halts, squeezes and then lets go entirely as the man buries his face into his own nape, breathing heavy and disgusting and Hyunjin lets out an airy laugh as he tries to compose himself. The guy pulls out soon enough, wrapping the condom with the speed of someone who has done it many times before and tossing it into the trash can.

The sunlight streams from a small curtainless strip against the windowpane as it flickers unrighteously upon the glimmering stone nestled on the man’s finger. Hyunjin’s grin widens, fingers quick to start shimmying up his jeans and shirt as gracefully as his already set time limit will allow him to. He never stays after.

“Leaving already?” The man asks, his cheeks stretching as they form a mischievous smile.

Hyunjin only grins apologetically back, running a hand through his hair as he finishes up his appearance in front of the hallway mirror, fishing forward his favorite lip gloss and applying it concentratedly. Even though he’d worn a condom, Hyunjin thinks he can feel his remnants dripping ungodly down his leg. He needs several showers.

“Wouldn’t want to accidentally stay and scare your wife, is all.”

The man only gives him a pointed look before getting dressed, shaking his head as if wanting to discard himself of the reminder. He lets out a low, tittering mumble burning with something Hyunjin can’t recognize. “My husband.”

Oh. Hyunjin clocks the wedding photo on the credenza right below the mirror, two handsome men smiling blissfully up at the camera in finely tailored suits. Gay people cheat too, he supposes.

“Well,” Hyunjin starts, straightening himself up and already one foot out the door as he winks flirtatiously. “Give him my best!”

He doesn’t bother letting his gaze linger long enough to see the look on the man’s face before he slams the door shut, feet moving hastily on their own as he strolls out of the apartment building, blinding warmth pressing its way directly into his windpipe the moment he lets his feet tread upon the cracked out sidewalks of a crumbling concrete.

In many ways, he had found a home in Nevada with its hot, tightly compressed swells of heat that overwhelm you the minute you step outside and the heavy juxtaposition of that flashy, sparkly pulse keeping it alive and the spattered, coiling grit in its sidewalks, dirtying your feet as you walk on it.

The city was not a place of comfort, but neither was anywhere else Hyunjin had ever been. Perhaps he liked that about it. Living in Vegas was not for the mundane, suburban bound man or woman who shopped at Whole Foods and spent Saturday nights playing board games with the neighbors.

It was for the experienced, the hardened wild roots forever chasing something that didn’t exist, where headaches were a common occurrence and the predictability of a day was nonexistent.

Like today, for instance, when his impulsively spurred on decision to join the gym finally amounted to something after weeks of flirting with the bull-man - Hyunjin can’t remember his name - who always suspiciously began upping his weight limit whenever he came around.

It had been satisfactory enough, although he hadn’t even gotten off himself. Ugh. Whatever. His skin buzzed in a dangerous, jittery sort of anticipation, already thirsted and pruned in waiting languidly for the evening, for when the nocturnal yellowed force of his belly would rear itself alive and vigorous for what always seemed like the first time ever.

But as usual, during the droning, echoing slumber of day, he had things to do before work. Sleep, shower, clean his apartment, cigarette, fuck around if he had the energy, shower, cigarette, shop, eat, shower again, get ready for work, cigarette.

Hyunjin fishes forward his phone to check the time as he lets out a slow drag, exhaling the cloudy fumes with roots for lungs and marrow. Fuck. He didn’t have time to go home and shower before grocery shopping.

He rubs his arm mindlessly, tracing its grit and ridges with a billowing blanket of something horrid and wretched threatening to lull it asleep. He doesn’t have time for this, placing the butt of the cigarette gingerly against his lips as he lets it soothe his flesh.

His walk to the grocery store is always hasty and well-calculated, body twisting and filtering through the hoards of people with ease. At least here there are not that many tourists mingling hawk-eyed and gawking around as they point excitedly at glittering billboards and scrunch their noses in disgust at the wafting smell of homelessness all at the same time. He’ll save their delight for when it’s time to work, nose itching and grin lazy as he makes his way down the Strip.

For now he savors their absence, tossing his cigarette against the concrete and grinding it to a halt with the heel of his shoe as he approaches the store. He notices the huddled woman shrouded in shawls by the entrance, face tautly wound with the lines of all the years he had not yet come to live as she gives him a toothless grin and waves a paper cup shakily in front of him.

Normally he wouldn’t bother, but he remembers the woman from before, her voice echoing distinctly in his head as she had called him beautiful a couple of days ago. Hyunjin fishes forward his wallet and hands her a couple of bills. He supposes he’s always been a sucker for vain compliments anyway.

Her faint smile dwindles into remnants of a soon to be memory the moment he steps inside, his spine straightening itself immediately as the air condition runs a horrid chill through him.

Hyunjin sighs deeply, fingers scrubbing themselves together as he spills hand sanitizer all over them and feet moving on their own as he already knows exactly where to go. God, he wishes he weren’t sober.

The aisles in the grocery store are always horribly, illogically categorized. It shouldn’t bother him, not anymore when he’s lived here long enough to know them by the back of his hand and yet still, it does. Like the slightly delayed ticking hand of the clock.

It’s minuscule, hardly noticeable if one doesn’t pay attention. It isn’t important, to most people. To Hyunjin it is.

The shelves all extend themselves to the same length, long, wide and reminiscent of the city blocks right outside. The products are often misplaced, undoubtedly so, though that isn’t what usually bothers him, not on days where the sweltering heatwaves burn him in a comfortable, tolerable manner.

It’s the colors, the carefully arranged belt of a prism from each grouped together product - red, orange, yellow and so forth. It’s logical. Except when the cereal aisle comes to an abrupt halt and the subtly intentional display of hues becomes disrupted by a new, even wider range of products - cereal bars, cereal bars are always what come after the cereal boxes in his local, refulgently lit grocery store - the careful construction of the prism turns to fallacy. Red, orange, yellow, blue?

Hyunjin always forcibly reminds himself not to let his itching fingers reach out and start moving things, gingerly placing every paper-stuffed packaging so that they make sense, so that they’re right.

He has half a mind to simply just do it - it would make coming to the grocery store a lot more bearable - until the extensive array of unseen germs quickly throttle his thought process to dust. Who knows what kind of sin-boiled hands have filtered through the aisles before him, assuredly bathed in the same dirt filled vices of the very ones he lets graze across his skin night after night.

Yes, it’s better to just let it be. His job does not include extending his unnecessary organizational skills to places he isn’t even employed.

He lets it go, eventually as he always does whenever his trailing mind sludges into incompletion, the bright edged colors of the cardboard boxes blurring his vision with bulging, cartooned googly eyes and lopsided smiles swirling along for as far as he can see. Hyunjin reaches for his regular, - cinnamon, sugary ridges sticky against his tongue - and places the cereal box into his basket without a second thought. He always gets the same things, isn’t one for experimenting with his weekly food shopping anyway.

His body twists as he’s ready to move on to the neighboring aisle - crackers, cookies. Red right after yellow - before slowing mindfully, catlike movements halted by an ogling mutt in his way.

Hyunjin grins, eyes glinting playfully in the way he knows has people’s minds reeling, the man smiling back at him confidently. He’s a bit older, calloused hands and finely trimmed haircut framing his unabashed expression nicely.

Hyunjin peer’s inconspicuously into his basket, an array of organic, overpriced greenery overflowing the red edges. There’s an odd packet of maple syrup flavored jerky in there too. He had been staring, it’s clear. Hyunjin doesn’t mind.

“Hey, sorry to disturb you but,” the man looks him up and down, lips tugging up further into a charming, lighthearted grin. “Do I know you? You seem familiar.”

Oh, so he was going that route. Hyunjin leans into it the way one exhales deeply in the swell of a Nevada-drenched summer; easily and with the hull of a comforting desperation. Second nature.

“Oh really?” He steps forward, soft and pillowy with only slightest of movement. The man’s gaze follows him like moths to a flame. “Well, if you say so I’m sure you’re right. I’m not very forgettable.” His words curl at the edges like gently rumpled silk, seductive and inviting. Mr. Jerky follows the slope of his lips with careful, greedy eyes.

It’s almost too easy, Hyunjin thinks, though he isn’t interested. He rarely is when he really thinks about it, but seldom does he bother contemplating such frivolities. Droning, intruding dates seem like anything but fun to him. Flirting on the other hand, he very much enjoys.

“Yeah yeah, I’m sure.” Glimmering eyes, overconfident smirk. They’re all the same. “I definitely wouldn’t forget a face like that.”

Hyunjin has heard the shtick before, the ‘I know you from somewhere, what’s your name again?’ charade and yet there’s something unsettling about the fixated gaze boring into him, desire and teasing prevalent as always, yes, but riddled with small kernels of what seems like…confusion? Maybe the man does know him from somewhere.

Inwardly, he frowns. Dappled with an expensive, gray-seamed suit and luxurious unpronounceable brand-named glasses, he doesn’t seem at all like he’d titter around the same sidewalk cracks and neighborhoods as Hyunjin does. Still, the man gauges him with a searching, scrutinizing expression. Yes, he definitely recognizes him.

“And what kind of face would that be, hm?” Hyunjin sends him an innocent, all too coy smile as he leans his upper arm against the shelf right next to him.

“A one as beautiful as yours.” Yawn. He could do better than that. Hyunjin’s certainly heard more interesting hooks. It’s like Mr. Jerky isn’t even trying to get him caught.

Hyunjin bares his neck slightly to the side, coy smile twisting into one of a shy, demure tilt. Then, before he can respond, the man asks him pointedly, eyebrows furrowed into slits as his ventures of flirtation halt momentarily. “Wait, did we go to school together?”

Hyunjin blinks, back straightening itself automatically. For a second he tries, tries to recall slivers of his yellow-bused past with a great unbecoming strain, the urge to alleviate it brewing strongly inside of him.

He could never remember much of his childhood. Not that he tried particularly hard to recall any of it, but there were moments of his life were he wished he could reach back, gather bits and fragments that could perhaps help him out in situations like these.

“Are you from Arizona?” Hyunjin asks, eyes flitting to the cereal boxes on the shelves right next to him, fluttering to the top row of light brown packages that are on sale. He’s tried one of them before, small dark chocolate pillows that mysteriously taste like nothing and everything at the same time.

They’re on sale, so it’s okay. He reaches for one of them, stretching his upper body as much as he can, lean and slender as he slots it between his fingers.

He can feel the man’s eyes burn against his skin and he smirks quietly to himself. Of course they do, with the prominent way the hem of his t-shirt rides up, exposing the bare strip of skin dipping into his waistline and revealing his tattoo-swirled hip. Hyunjin shoots him a knowing, playful look, amused at his gaping.

The man’s eyes widen momentarily, still stuck on the ascending kaleidoscope of butterflies etched onto his flesh, fluttering from his hipbone and dipping into his jeans where only lust-driven imagination can begin to do it justice. Something dawns on Mr. Jerky then, a surprised, almost intimidated recognition unscrewing his face.

Oh. Oh. So that’s where he recognizes him from. Hyunjin would have just rolled his eyes and left if his twisted, shock-frozen expression wasn’t so funny. He thinks with a reaction like that - so callow and puritan like - the man really had no business being where he was at all.

“Um, sorry,” He mumbles, cheeks reddening in obvious embarrassment. He looks panicked, like a small mouse trapped in a cage of his own hot-blooded sin. Most of the men who recognized him in public did not react like this at all. Strip clubs did attract people of all kinds, he supposed. “I uh, I think I should get going actually. I have a meeting to get to.”

Hyunjin only stares at him pitifully. Is he humiliated by the fact that he was a patron of Hyunjin’s job? Does he think he’ll judge him for it? Maybe he’s just one of those tightly bound religious types too scattered with years of denial and guilt to divulge in their desires when nightfall did not darken the sky.

Or maybe, maybe he judges Hyunjin for it. He knows that type all too well - sinner by night, preacher by day. Well then. Hyunjin tilts his head and cocks an eyebrow, patiently waiting for the fumbling man to compose himself. Since he’d already decided to make assumptions about him purely based off of his job, he supposes there’s no harm in playing along.

“Me too actually.” Hyunjin grins, straightening himself up. “They’ll get mad down at the rec center if I’m late again.”

“The rec center?” He asks, lips slightly downturned and eyebrows furrowed.

“Yeah, sex addicts anonymous,” Hyunjin says casually, feigning a bright smile and shrugging his shoulders as if there isn’t much to his statement.

He almost starts bursting out in laughter at the scandalized, shock-stricken expression that mars the man’s face, eyes even wider than before and cheeks burning in discomfort.

“Oh.”

Hyunjin tilts his head to the side, lets the uncomfortableness of the bug-eyed man before him burn into him in all the right places. His grin widens, tone playful and innocent. “You gotta show up if you want the chip, right?”

“Um,” Mr. Jerky stutters hopelessly, gaze flitting all over the place as if looking desperately for some sort of escape route. Hyunjin almost doubles over, but only brushes past him instead as he slinks up from his position, feet graceful and nimble as they begin to stretch.

“Anyway, see you around.” He throws him a wink, pearly teeth on charming display. “You know where to find me.”

-

The floorboards are clean enough for him to sit on, he’s certain of this every time he comes home and scrubs them mercilessly and yet still, his hesitation to sit on them lingers. He has far too much room for contemplation when he’s sober, this he already knows, but he forces himself to sit down on them anyway, knees drawn to his chest as his back rests against the couch.

He’d set aside his grocery items, carefully, methodically placed in his cupboards and fridge before beginning his cleaning routine. It usually takes a couple of hours, but Hyunjin doesn’t mind. He prefers his apartment to be gleaming and spotless.

It’s exhausting at times, mostly because he feels as if there’s a constant sheet of fatigue straining him from the inside but he knows far too well by now that leaving it untouched only does irreparable damage to his withering mind.

So, he’d scrubbed and scrubbed and then he’d scrubbed himself, as always, disgruntled and disappointed that he would only be able to take two showers before work and not three. It messes things up. He’d spent too long at that bull-man’s apartment.

It’s okay, he tells himself. It’s okay. Nothing bad will happen just because he took two showers instead of three. It’s okay. He could take one now, he knows he could, but his showers are anything but quick and if he doesn’t do them right, he doesn’t see the point in doing them at all. Besides, he needs to eat something before work anyway. A dull dusk begins to spread out from outside, the boundless lights illuminating the sleepless city before him as he looks out his window. The sun will set soon and then he’ll need to get going.

So he sighs, watching an old cartoon as he nibbles contentedly on a fudgesicle he’d just bought. They’re his favorite, a familiar token from his childhood where only icy drops of syrupy sweetness could cure the pounding, impenetrable undulates of heat. He recognizes the pictures on his screen vaguely, the displeased figure of Daffy Duck contorting in anger at something ridiculous once again. He doesn’t find them as funny as when he was a child. Still, he watches them.

Mindful of the clock, tick tock tick tock, as it nears his true witching hours, he turns the TV off and starts getting ready, treading into his bedroom as he filters through his clothing. Most of the stuff he needs is already at the club in his dressing room, piles of makeup and hangers of leather, lace and all things unchaste ready for the taking.

Still, he had forgotten to bring a change of clothes for last night and it had not been particularly fun walking back home at 4AM in nothing but knee-high stockings, a short ruffled schoolgirl skirt and a thin coat to cover his laced crop top. It was Las Vegas nonetheless, people didn’t exactly get miffed over his appearance but he hadn’t wanted to draw attention from a certain someone that had been stalking him at the club for weeks now.

Only a few days ago Hyunjin swore he had seen him follow him all the way home, clearly deciding that being banned from the club after daily harassment would not be enough to stop his sick desires in getting close to him.

Nothing had happened, thankfully but Hyunjin wouldn’t be giving him an open invitation to maul him in some alleyway this night. He stuffed some sweat clothes into his gym bag, grabbing a few makeup brushes and eyeliner along with him too. Just in case.

The path down to the Strip was a short one, his apartment complex thankfully only a few blocks away. He lights a cigarette as he walks past flashing bulbs of electrifying light, bedazzled, hypnotizing billboards and rhinestone-slathered showgirls filtering in and out of casinos like continuous streams of foaming water popping against the shore. The lack of a star-splattered sky due to light pollution swathes itself like a hot draping blanket of darkness, velvety and thick as he makes his way down to the club, mind whirring with the first genuine breaths of the day.

The club is large and unmissable, nestled lethally and seductively between a cabaret theatre and a casino resort expanding itself in tenfold along the curving path leading up to bigger, famous, household name hotels. There are multiple video screens displayed across the building, whirring and mesmerizing you like billboards as their film continues to repeat their now considered ’iconic’ photoshoot over and over again.

Hyunjin stares at himself in a clear-cut black and white, like the ads luxury fashion houses play in their display windows, his dark, silken hair tousled and wild as his kohl-lined eyes gaze sharply into the camera, biting seductively down onto the handle of the whip in his mouth.

The screen flickers again, his body changing positions as it projects down to his low-risen leather pants, his fingers tugging at the hem as if to tease, lower and lower and lower and fuck, the camera cuts back up to his face again, a smirking and lustful glint shimmering in his eyes. He looks good as shit. Hyunjin grins as his name illuminates at the bottom of the screen as if to introduce him to the masses, TIGER LILY swimming in front of the white back drop as he blows the camera a flirtatious kiss.

The screen cuts off, begins a new sequence introducing another dancer, - FAWN - Felix’s innocent, pure wide eyes blinking demurely up at the camera. Hyunjin only shakes his head at the dramatic display, though Jinyoung’s idea to market them - his top three performers - instead of the club’s services themselves had made their profits skyrocket in the last two years.

Jinyoung liked to label himself an entrepreneur, considering his strip club to be of the outskirts of fine, high-end art. Hyunjin hated admitting he was right, mostly because Jinyoung was a sleazy business owner before anything else but careful, intricate design mimicking the beauty of Ancient Egypt and the blend between mythological and hyper-futuristic had certainly garnered a name for their club.

It had transformed, birthed from a hollow cocoon into a wondrous butterfly thanks to Jinyoung’s innovations and them of course - mostly him, Hyunjin thinks. Hyunjin’s gaze flickers back to the letter-blocked name glittering inescapably above the front door, decorative borders of gold beetles and pitch black cats encircling the letters spelling CLEOPATRA’S as men filter in and out beneath it. There’s a long line waiting to get in. There always is.

Cleopatra’s had become a staple of high-end Las Vegas strip clubs, sought after by clientele ranging from bachelor parties ready to blow their gambling savings away to successful businessmen with suits and watches Hyunjin could only dream of being able to pronounce. The large nuances of their customers were what kept the job interesting, diverging from the same lowlife men he used to get at the seedy, cheap club with signs that were falling apart where he worked at before he met Jinyoung and moved to Nevada.

Hyunjin walks quickly into a small sliver that separates the club from the casino and makes his way into the backdoor for employees, the pounding thud of a music only walls away reverberating through his head the moment he closes the door behind him. The back entrance isn’t anything special, but Hyunjin trudges up the staircase that greets him to where their backstage rooms are all scattered next to each other, walking quickly up to the one with his stage name on it.

Not all of the dancers have their own vanity rooms, most of them not permanently employed by Jinyoung like he and a select few others are, having to use the common, much less private dressing rooms instead. He’s grateful for his own space, slinking into it and setting down his gym bag as he starts getting undressed.

He’s early, like usual but it helps settle his nerves, for once in an element he dominates completely. And of course, for the free coke Jinyoung will offer him in approximately half an hour.

Hyunjin hangs his clothes carefully into his closet, draping a silk robe across himself as he starts moisturizing his face in front of his vanity mirror, rubbing lotion across his chest and collarbones as he goes over his routine in his head over and over again. He’ll do his Medusa routine for his main stage tonight, the destructive seduction of a scorned, yet still equally as beautiful Medusa luring the watchers to his captivity.

He starts applying his makeup carefully, darkly outlining his eyes to sharpen them even further when a soft knock interrupts his thoughts. Hyunjin grins quietly to himself. Maybe Jinyoung is early.

His disappointment rests groaningly from its slumber as the deadpanned gaze of Minho stares him blankly in the eyes as soon as he opens the door. Hyunjin quenches his desire to roll his eyes so far to the back of his head that they threaten to implode. “What do you want?”

Minho does, actually, roll his eyes and mirrors the haughty hand Hyunjin has placed on his hip as he stares him down expectantly. “Always so charming.”

“Like you’re one to talk.”

Minho ignores him, stepping promptly into his dressing room before Hyunjin slams the door shut. Interactions with Minho are hardly anything short of pleasant, the constant, disgruntled pinch of his nose as if breathing the same air as Hyunjin might contaminate him always making his skull pound in vexation. Minho knows exactly how to get under his skin, venomous words and hurling insults bubbling beneath his flesh like kernels just waiting to explode and seep their own fury straight into him.

Hyunjin flurries over to his bag and reaches for his packet of cigarettes, lighting the Marlboro as soon as he can. He technically isn’t supposed to smoke inside, but whatever. He doesn’t care. His inescapable Minho-induced migraine will do nothing to help his performance.

“There are some potential investors coming tonight,” Minho states blankly, completely unfazed by the smoke filtering between the two of them. “Jinyoung wants us to impress them.”

Hyunjin looks him subtly up and down, eyes narrowing at the stained college sweater he definitely had not gone to and the oversized sweatpants pooling around his ankles. Minho never got ready until last minute, clocking in and out with the convictions of someone half-minded and unattached.

He was still one of the best performers, competing with Felix every month to get the number two spot. After him. Hyunjin grins sweetly, feigning kindness. “Great. You can leave now.”

Minho rolls his eyes yet again, scanning around the room rapidly as if the gleaming mirror and carefully categorized makeup boxes were completely unnecessary. “Together. You know what that means?”

Hyunjin grits his teeth, nerves rattled like always. “Yes Minho, I’m not a fucking idiot.”

“Really?” Minho’s eyebrows raise needlessly high. “That’s news to me.”

“We'll just do what we always do, why did you need to come in here anyway?” Hyunjin sighs, arms crossing together as he cocks his head to the side. “Or did you want some pointers maybe?”

Minho sneers, pretty face contorting into something marred and disgusted. He steps closer to him, their bodies only inches apart as Minho’s voice lowers threateningly. Hyunjin is certain Minho is probably the most clinically insane person at the club, but he isn’t scared. He’s met worse. It’s almost laughable, actually.

“I came because I wanted to let you know that you’re not pulling that same shit you did last time when you nearly stole all my fucking tips!” Minho spits out the last words, droplets hitting his face gratingly. Hyunjin's hand itches to douse himself in soap and water but he ignores it, chest rippling in rage as he glares back.

“It’s not my fault they liked me better than you.” He smiles innocently, his head tilting back as he relishes in their height differences for a short, illustrious moment. “Thought you would’ve been used to that by now.”

Minho scoffs, the lack of distance between them making his breath unfurl like small whispers of loathing upon his face. “Please,” He exhales, unperturbed from the smoke Hyunjin blows from his cigarette. “Everyone knows you’re only the top performer ‘cause you keep yourself loose like a whore for Jinyoung to use.”

Hyunjin hollows his cheeks as his tongue clicks against it, eyes never once leaving the dull, spiteful brown eyes in front of him as he takes another drag. “Jealousy doesn’t look good on you.”

“Right. Like I’d ever let that man touch me.”

“I’m sure you’ve had worse touch you-“

“Not for free.” Minho lets a sickening, almost nauseating smile encompass him. “Some people are only sluts for the money, whilst others…” He looks him up and down, eyes clouded with something blackened and revolted. Hyunjin can feel his stomach rumble in fury. “Guess maybe you were just born that way.”

The comment billows against his cratered marrow, his gut clenching uncomfortably as he feels his skin begin to foam, deep-seated layers of grime caressing his bones like an illness he’d spent his entire life trying to run from. He really should have had that third shower.

“Didn’t your mother used to pimp you out for crack?” Hyunjin stares at him candied and nice as Minho’s face twists into something momentarily aggrieved, muscles twitching in a menacing silence as if he had not expected that comment, his brow furrowing and jaw hardening indignantly as each second passes.

Clearly he’d struck a nerve Minho probably thought Hyunjin was incapable of locating. Truth be told Hyunjin doesn’t particularly remember what Jinyoung had told him about Minho that one night they were both high out of their minds, although he knew it was something of the sort.

Minho grumbles something disdainful under his breath before forcibly brushing his shoulder against his own and heading adamantly toward his vanity desk, pulling out the drawer so harshly it almost threatens to shake loose.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Hyunjin shouts, walking briskly toward him as he watches indignantly Minho filter and rumble through all his very carefully placed, carefully organized stuff! “Stop it!”

His mind starts panicking as Minho begins throwing out items he clearly isn’t looking for onto the floor, his stomach spiking in anxiety. Now he had to clean everything that had touched his floor and he didn’t have time for that, fuck, fuck, fuck! Hyunjin grips his shoulder tightly in an attempt to push him away but Minho spins around gleefully, hand clutching onto something pink and long and not at all something he should be touching!

“Found it,” Minho says, dangling his vibrator mockingly in front of him before turning around and pocketing the remote controller it belonged to. “Now you won’t be using it like last time.”

“What the fuck?”

“The game’s not fair when you decide to invent your own fucking rules,” Minho spits. “You betrayed me and our shitty go-to routine and used this instead to one up me? Fuck you Hwang. I’m taking this with me.” Minho opens the door so abruptly Hyunjin barely has time to react to the shocked face on the other side staring at them both, clearly having been just about to knock and was instead almost wiped out on his own feet from nearly crashing into Minho.

Minho’s expression diminishes into his usual blank and indifferent one as he gives Hyunjin a knowing look before walking away briskly, Jinyoung’s puzzled gaze staring into him lopsidedly.

Hyunjin looks down to his lip-glosses and makeup brushes scattered across the floor, his chest constricting tightly and painfully. His hold against his cigarette sharpens momentarily before he grabs one of the napkins by his desk, crushes it into the softness and throws it into his own trash can. Jinyoung only sighs, clearly already more than used to Minho and his constant turbulent disagreements.

Hyunjin lets his gaze sear itself into Jinyoung’s for a second, takes in the barely visible lines on his forehead and the sturdy, subtle clenching of his jaw in that hardened, antipathic masculinity he so often bears. He looks good for a man nearing his forties, well-built and honed with years and years of a business that lingers only in the shadows.

Hyunjin had met Jinyoung only three years ago in the whiskey-scented corners of the old strip club he used to work at back in a sweltering Arizona, the low-hanging lights dim and casting a mystifying darkness upon his pole-twisting body that, according to Jinyoung, had only dulled him. It didn’t do his beauty justice, he’d said. He deserved some place better, a stage where he could truly shine.

Tiger Lily had agreed, although that had not been his name back then. Dove. A terrible, wretched name really, one that always made his insides prickle as if being stabbed by a hundred blunted needles whenever he heard it called out.

He didn’t know why he had chosen it, had not been able to truly recognize himself as anything else. He didn’t like to think about it. But the Dove had been eager, almost deterioratingly so, to break free from the rusty confines of his decaying cage, nights endless and swathing in the faceless hoards of men whose hands were anything but gentle and mouths watered from vulgarities.

Jinyoung had met him coincidentally, enthralled, hypnotized by his performance. Hyunjin understood him all too well. He’d probably be spellbound too, if he were someone else.

And so like the continuous tidal waves of tumultuous shores, he had come every week to visit him, talk to him, buy him drinks. Snort pretty white lines off of his stomach. Jinyoung was like a burst of a hot, volcanic fire in an otherwise monotonous, sand-colored neighborhood of drifters, someone with youth, passion, vigor born from greatness and not of red, sizzling hot blood.

When he offered him a job - a brand new strip club in the heart of Las Vegas, a guaranteed success - the dove had accepted almost immediately, eager and thirsty to spread its wings upon skies previously unexplored.

Besides, it was nice leaving the gritty splendor of Arizona. The sun always hung too low there, too low and too hot, like its breaths could turn him to cinders if it wanted to. Not that Nevada was anything different really, but it was. It was and Hyunjin was anything but homebound.

In the diamond-cut hollows of Sin City, he had decided to strip himself of his wings and feathers, slaughtering that godless dove with one excruciating pinch of his finger and hearty determination. He needed someone new, a rebirth. Resurrection, perhaps. Not of a creature, but of something greater, more beautiful, gentle, delicate - something he could smolder with his own teeth.

The Tiger Lily represents forgiveness. Perfect for him, really. Begging for absolution as he commits sin after sin through the binding tunnels of a swathing night. Well, Hyunjin loves a good irony.

He’d stayed in the upper apartment where Jinyoung lived as finishing building touches were completed, eager and ready to make some decent money for once in his life. Felix, another stray he seemed to have picked up God knows where - Hyunjin doesn’t remember asking - was also staying.

It was strange, really but Hyunjin had had weirder living arrangements. As soon as the club opened, its innovative design and talented dancers had surged it through the roof, marking it a sought-after, must experience Vegas strip club.

For the first time in his entire life, Hyunjin was practically swimming in money. Well, maybe not swimming. But money was no longer a struggle, no longer something that kept him awake and grating until he collapsed from a strenuous lack of sleep. To him, that was practically the same.

The tips were good in the beginning, a lot higher than he had anticipated but a year into the business and he was earning more than he ever could have imagined. He bought an apartment not far off, drifting from the luxurious but big and expensive nonetheless, and everything he could only have dreamt of even being allowed inside just a couple of years ago.

“I need to talk to you.”

Hyunjin’s head pounds at the gravity with which Jinyoung speaks, his tone clearly awaiting something of great exhaustion by the heaviness in which his head is tilted to the side. God, fucking damnit. All he wants is the fucking coke, not a pep talk.

“If this is about Minho and those investors, then forget it. He already spoke to me.”

Jinyoung closes the door gently behind him, treading toward where Hyunjin stands by the vanity desk with languid, weary steps as if he’s some rattled feline with bared teeth ready to pounce. Jinyoung knows him too well. Or at least the way his body reacts. His chest flares as he thinks about it.

“Listen, I wanted to talk to you about that creep stalking you.” Jinyoung leans in closely, the deep fragrance of woody accord and narcissus flower wafting straight into Hyunjin’s face as he leans in. Jinyoung always wore an obnoxious amount of cologne. He could never figure out if it drove him crazy with fury or with greed. “I found a solution.”

Hyunjin rolls his eyes, the cavernous sense of anxiety burrowing into him the longer he’s reminded of the dust-stained makeup items scattered all across his floorboards. Either he needs to clean them up or he needs the coke now!

“What?” He deadpans, staring directly into Jinyoung’s unusually hardened eyes. God. This wasn’t going at all how he’d hoped it would.

“I hired a bodyguard,” Jinyoung says simply, as if it’s obvious. Hyunjin blinks at him rapidly. “A personal one, for you.”

“What?!” He screeches, his arms throwing themselves in the air wildly before he forces them down, crossing each other. His throat feels clogged, annoyance seeping into his skin at the overbearing, stupid look on Jinyoung’s face.

“You need extra protection Hyunjin. As the owner of this club I can’t be responsible for something happening to you!”

“But-”

Jinyoung interrupts him, air of someone far too busy for the dawdling complaints of a rotten, rotten child. “Changbin has good credentials, it’s just a part-time job-”

“I don’t need a babysitter! I’m not a kid!” Hyunjin’s head spins, the wide, extending walls of his dressing room shrinking with each passing second, enclosing him in a puny, sinking quicksand of a festering nest.

“Changbin is not a babysitter Hyunjin, he’s a bodyguard,” Jinyoung stresses, lines on his forehead deepening as his mouth tilts downward. “It’s just an extra precaution, okay? God, why do you always have to make things so difficult.”

“I don’t need him, I’m fine,” He grits out, the muscles in his jaw clenching viciously.

His little stalker was hardly a problem. He’d dealt with more than his fair share of pathetic, desperate virgins with unhealthy obsessions over sex workers. He didn’t need some big-boned, brain dead heap of muscles and sharpened glares to trail after him while he tried to work!

“Felix told me that just two days ago you said that guy was following you home from the club!”

That fucking bitch. Hyunjin makes a mental note to yell at Felix later. “Yeah and nothing happened, did it? I can handle some degenerate little stalker okay, I’ve handled worse.”

Jinyoung groans, rubbing his hands across his face as he lets out a deep sigh. “Jesus Christ, you are such a piece of work. This is my club and you will do as I say. It’s for your protection.”

Hyunjin’s stance grows rigid, spine straightening itself as his hands ball up into thrusting fists toward the floor. Petulant, fence-strung child unable to run into traffic. “He’s just gonna hover around and mess up my performances, is that what you want?”

Jinyoung only deadpans, harsh stare glaring into him for an uncomfortable amount of passing seconds. Hyunjin’s scowl never withers, far too used to being reprimanded by now. He doesn’t care. The club would go to shit without him anyway.

“Are you telling me you’re not professional enough to let someone watch you perform undisturbed?” Jinyoung gives him a pointed look, eyebrow raised condescendingly. “That’s your entire fucking job Hyunjin, don’t give me that bullshit.”

Hyunjin ignores his question, silken threads of his robe clinging like hot, sticky glue against his skin. He wants to sear it off. “It’s a waste of money Jinyoung! I can handle myself!”

“You’re my top money maker, so no. It’s not a waste.”

Hyunjin rolls his eyes at the adamant expression plastered across the lines of Jinyoung’s face, always so determined, always the businessman. He’d worn the same expression when he decided to change the line-ups last minute, eyes hardened just as viciously when he tossed one of his outfits - too revealing, he’d said - into the trash can and lips sloped downward in that same harrowing curve when he realized there was no way in fucking hell Hyunjin would ever perform sober. He knows it’s a lost battle already. Jinyoung always gets his way.

“He’s only going to be here a few days a week anyway, don’t be so dramatic.”

“I’m not-” Hyunjin starts, the familiar scratchy chest-bundled feeling making him lightheaded.

“Shh!” Jinyoung pinches his fingers together and flicks them over his own lips in a zip-it motion. “I’m done with this discussion.”

“But-”

Calling after him is fruitless, Hyunjin knows it all too well. He thinks the only person he’s ever met more stubborn than Jinyoung would be his mother. And himself. He wants to shudder just thinking about it, eyes trailing Jinyoung’s retreating body with a desperate, gleaming swell he would rather pluck from their sockets than let wash over him again.

“Done!” Jinyoung shouts, hand already gripping the rough handle of the door in the first attempt at turning it, broad back and heavy-hanging head outspread like a scale-winged insect against the darkened hue of his wallpaper.

Hyunjin almost screams as he realizes his hands are empty from raptures and nose clean from little pinpricks of snow. Jinyoung knows he can’t go on sober, he won’t.

Before he can start yelling hysterically at him to come back, Jinyoung twists his body toward him right before he’s about to leave, hands digging through his pocket as if seemingly just having remembered something of great importance. He fishes forward a small white packet, seeds of goodness swirling around before tossing it to Hyunjin who catches it eagerly, claw so tight he thinks he might start growing talons to tear it apart. Jinyoung only shoots him one last look, one he simultaneously cannot read but understands all at the same time.

“And he’s starting today, so play fucking nice for once!” Jinyoung gives him his last withering words to fester in before he shuts the door behind him, leaving him in a wake of empty, hollowed silence that practically fumes from his own fury.

Hyunjin bristles as he tries to shake it off, hands twitching as he starts unzipping the little packet and spreading the coke out in thin, nice lines on his vanity desk.

He doesn’t bother cleaning up the products scattered on the floor, knows full well that as soon as his head starts to swivel in that all too familiar high, he won’t care anymore. Desperate, yearning, like some sickened starved animal, his head bows itself immediately toward the white lines, finger pressed against one side of his nostrils as the other burns deliciously.

There’s no beauty in the way he snorts coke, jarring, jagged edges unfurling within him as it slithers and wraps itself around his mind. Hyunjin isn’t pretty then, he thinks, isn’t sexy, charming, alluring, isn’t anything of the things he’s supposed to be despite having had years to hone his own grace, no - he’s starved. He’s a starved, starved man and his flesh will be but remnants of something horrid lest he give in, lest he empty and pour his soul into that one single action, that simple, blasphemous snorting of lines as it turns him magnificent and pearly and into something inhuman.

No, he isn’t beautiful when he does it, isn’t beautiful before either - nervous, wired and strung tight like cogs in an old, decaying clock as it ticks back and forth, back and forth. He needs to scrub, scrub, scrub until he’s certain there’s something bleeding, be it his mind or his skin.

But now, with the lining of sweet metamorphosis, he becomes the godly petals of the tiger lily. Confident. Free. Desirable. Hyunjin can’t wait to crush the flower with his own heels as soon as he’s on that stage.

It doesn’t matter, now. If things are in ruin. He’s okay with it. And so he dresses himself with a gentle lull in his neck and hum through his lips, finishes applying his makeup as precisely as he can and forgoes any sort of washing of floor-ridden products. It’s okay. He doesn’t mind it.

He’s sure if this were any other type of job, he would be deemed unprofessional for being high during the remainder of his shift, which is exactly why he can’t ever imagine himself in any other place. Jinyoung knows he only functions in the way he wants him to - sweaty, toned, bared strings of a diamond to salivate for - when he’s hopped up on something, anything really but coke is what he manages the best.

It turns him into something breathtaking, hatching from his rotten pupa to spread his wings in what can only be described as otherworldly. The Tiger Lily is not human nor flower, but something mythical, fantastical. Wondrous showers of shimmers, something just beyond your reach. Impossible to catch.

Yes, now, dilated pupils and a buzzing, pounding thrill in his bones, he becomes beautiful. And so he finishes fixing his hair, long silky black strands falling gracefully just above his shoulders. He’d been wanting to dye it for months now, smoothened blackness reminding him too much of something he’d rather just forget.

It doesn’t matter now, doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter. Grinning to himself in the mirror, he applies the last touch of eyeliner, his eyes cloudy and darkened and ready for the harsh glare of the spotlight before leaving his dressing room without a single thought in his head.

This is what he likes the most, he decides, about those pretty white lines. When untouched from pearls of ecstasy, his mind is anything but pacified, bouncing off of the walls until they tumble into the dark spirals of the night. Drugged, buzzed - his brain tunnels into himself, creating a narrow slope of light in which to focus on. He’s excited, lips numb and eyes hazy. He fucking loves it.

He passes the common dressing rooms with the precise clicking of his heels, long leather boots strapping around his legs as he approaches the staircase leading down to the club. His performance starts soon, can already feel the invigorating thrum course through his veins the moment he steps down.

He passes a few of the other dancers, mind ignoring them completely as he makes his way behind the curtains to the main stage, propping his leg up on one of the railings and stretching it contentedly.

He’s the main act, - as much as Felix and Minho would like to think otherwise - most of the people there come for him. Hyunjin doesn’t blame them, especially with the Medusa performance he’s been cultivating for the last few months, tight black corset crystallized with twisting diamond snakes cinching his waist, a beaded headpiece with small shining rhinestones dipping like strands of silver against his hair and glossy, pouty lips - he knows he looks sinfully holy. Something of the Ancient Greek gods. A nymph, a pearl of foam from an old, marble bathhouse.

Bridal, almost if not for how laughable such a sentiment would be in the hollowed whispers of godless stage lights. But no, the virginal, pure act is not something he’s ever used, too drenched in black eyeliner, heavy makeup and hooded gazes to make it believable. Besides. He’ll leave that to Felix.

Hyunjin scans the backstage briefly, hands thrumming against the railing he’s leaning against in an incessant inability to stand still. Usually Jinyoung would never pass up the opportunity to grab at him right before his stage, sneaking hands touching as they please in whatever irresistible get up Hyunjin adorns himself in that very night.

Now he’s nowhere to be found, probably too disgruntled from their previous argument. Hyunjin only cracks his neck as he waits for the announcer to call his name. He really could care less.

At last, after far too many minutes of jumping restlessly all over the place, he hears his stage name being introduced, a low sultry voice calling for the Tiger Lily to unfurl its petals.

Hyunjin grins, leaping from the railing as he strolls toward the stage, nimble fingers resisting the urge to rip apart the curtains with all the energy flowing through him.

Sometimes it gets the best of him, - the drugs - turns him erratic and billowing with far too many emotions for others to handle but Hyunjin holds it back this time, careful and slowly like he’s supposed to. Seduction is nothing without control.

He parts the velvet curtains teasingly as the familiar bass-line of his song starts playing and this is where he hardly has to think at all, moving like a slinking cat across the stage as a playful smirk becomes him. It’s too easy. Always too easy.

When the lights flicker their daunting redness upon him and the old lines of familiar faces blur together in the darkness that comes with being a watcher, he feels, for one skin-prickling moment, utterly untouchable.

His transformation was never one of a Blue Clipper, his body did not writhe and twist in the metamorphosis that occurred backstage with the honoring of white lines - Sudden, magnificent. Euphoria. Instead it was slow and firm and bound entirely by the muscles of every bodily crevice yearning to stretch and unfurl itself from all the years of being coiled too tight.

Like the slow ticking of a clock, he feels his body begin to move, the extending of his finger pulling together the rest of his limbs as he dances and spins himself to the pole in the middle. He knew his dancing is not what the watchers came for, but is sure that it is what made them stay.

Perhaps if his growing grin was not sinful in nature, if he did not bend over salaciously and graze his fingers along the hem of his underwear before tugging it down as he winked to the blackness, perhaps then he could convince himself that his talent for dancing was God given. People whistle and holler, dollar bills flooding the stage floor. He blows some poor sucker a kiss as he grabs the cash and stuffs it in his boot. Wedding rings. Everywhere. His smile grows wider. There had never been anything God given in the places he called home.

And so he undoes the strings tying his corset together in a sensual whisking of his fingers, slowly and teasingly as if it causes him a great strain. Hyunjin drags it out, an expert by now at making the crowd lose their minds and then - waiting, waiting, waiting - it’s off, falling gracefully to the stage floor as he bends down to his knees, crawling seductively away from the pole and to the edge of the stage.

The yells and whistles resound almost like background noise by now, his bare torso stretching itself in every indecent manner he can possibly think of, the print of his tattoo swirling from his waist and dipping into his hip enticingly. He’s wearing only a small pair of black shorts, the fabric clinging to his skin in a way that leaves little to the imagination. His bejeweled headpiece makes it all feel more artistic anyway.

Not that he really cares, he thinks, as he runs his fingers teasingly up and down his chest. He feels too good to care about anything, lips stretching into a sinful smirk as he extends himself out into the crowd to reach for the money. He recognizes a few of his regulars - eyes all sparkly and clouded like born from a wretched hypnosis - and luckily his little stalker is nowhere to be seen.

Hyunjin stands languidly back up again, ready to slink back onto the pole to complete his routine as the music starts to change when he catches sight of a shadowed man by the very edge of the stage, back turned to him, gazing forward into the crowd.

Hyunjin’s stomach sours immediately, the tight-fitted black shirt and matching pants a clear indicator of who this guy was. He can’t remember the name Jinyoung had told him, but his eyes sharpen like that of an eagle right away. He doesn’t have time to think about it. He has to be professional, gripping onto the pole with a fake, nauseating smile as he twists himself back up.

Usually, because his routines have developed a lot from the simple twirls he’d done early on, Hyunjin has to pay attention to what he’s doing. There’s a fine line he’s mastered between gauging the way his own body moves and making sure his twists are graceful - God forbid he should fall - and still engaging with the audience, letting his hooded eyes stare into a smolder of blackness like he wants it to devour him whole.

Maybe he does, actually, wish for it to devour him but he performs like he was given birth on that very stage every damn night. He’s ruthless, sharp-cut and precise. Alluring, honeyed, glimmering like the crystals dangling from his head.

So why is it that he feels a deep, unsettling feeling in his chest as if there’s something coming loose, something horrid and furious bubbling inside of him as he tries not to stare at that stupid, fucking bodyguard.

He catches sight of his side profile the few moments he decides to scan the far right of the crowd, sharp-bridged nose and thick, low-set eyebrows furrowed as if molded from stone. It infuriates him for some reason, that he refuses to look at him.

Sure, Hyunjin gets it, he’s supposed to be looking out for creeps. He hooks the pole in the alcove of his inner knee, twisting his body so that he’s hanging from his legs upside down. It’s still fucking rude for some reason, though he doesn’t know exactly why. He stretches his torso upward, switching his position as his body climbs higher up the pole, legs rotating around it a bit too fast.

He’s supposed to be going slow, sensual. Seductive. Fuck. He hates messing up, even more so when his chest can’t stop pulsating in vicious beats of anger and his skin burns as if about to come peeling right off.

He flashes another look toward the bodyguard, mind seething as he still only stares out into the crowd. He thinks of the man from the grocery store - flesh and soul simply too good for the dirtied backs of his own tainted skin. Too pure, too clean for someone like him, someone born rotten in the sand-colored hues of a town on fire.

Hyunjin slinks down from the pole, deciding to simply freestyle the last bit as his hands are too shaky to grip onto the steel any longer. He must be coming down from his high already, cannot begin to fathom how his anger had overcome him so abruptly, so jarringly from something as stupid as a man he’d never even in his dreams bother wasting time on.

He shakes it off, smoothening his hands across his ink-soiled splatter of skin, trailing along the edges of the winged kaleidoscope as he drops to his knees and finishes his dance routine.

On the ground, legs flying and crossing over each other into the air, extending and stretching until he’s almost into a split, back arching in feigned pleasure as his expression contorts salaciously and then he hears the familiar droning of his song coming to its end - where he usually would do a sharp drop from the top of his pole to the bottom - and twists his legs beneath his knees and drops his back in a desperate, yearning manner toward the floor as if he’d just let go of some rope, of some hopeless string of life tying him to the earth.

Now he’s falling, deep and plunging as Medusa chooses death over her own wicked, stone-cut fate and then the lights black out, collective whistles and applauses filling the darkness as Hyunjin crawls indiscreetly backstage again.

He’s exhausted, more than usual and his shift had only just started, face twisting into a scowl the minute he’s no longer branded by any lights. He needs to go back to his dressing room and snort another line before he combusts from the scratchy feeling tearing him apart.

Felix is there waiting for him, white-laced lingerie glimmering against his tanned skin as he looks up at him confusedly, big eyes pointed in concern at his very blatantly sour expression.

“Are you okay?” Felix asks, adjusting his straps as he gets ready to go on. He hates that fucking look he gives him, like he’s not the one that had snitched to Jinyoung about his stalker.

“I’m fine!” Hyunjin snaps, grumbling under his breath as he shoves his way forward, not bothering to listen to the remnants of Felix’s obvious confusion.

He needs to get back, needs to get back now, before he starts hyperventilating and bleeding from his nose like some child. Shit. Usually he managed to keep his levels consistent throughout his shifts - dance, another line of coke, striptease, another line of coke, private rooms, lap dances, another line of coke, smaller stages, private rooms again, another line of coke and so on and so on until he finally got home and got to crash in peace.

Everything’s going wrong today, just slightly behind like that delayed ticking of the clock. It’s because he only took two showers. That’s why he’s angry for no reason, why he messed up his routine, why he’s coming down far earlier than he usually does. He didn’t shower three times like he was supposed to and now things aren’t right.

That’s ridiculous, he tells himself as he starts heading toward the staircase, legs flying at a tremendous speed until he almost crashes into someone appearing out of nowhere, sturdy chest making him tumble backward and come to an abrupt halt.

Hyunjin blinks, gaze hardening as his vision narrows into his sudden blockade. His throat lodges itself with something hot and furious as he recognizes who it is.

“Shit, sorry,” The man says, looking genuinely apologetic. His t-shirt is tight against his skin, muscled arms littered with an array of tattoos Hyunjin hadn’t noticed from the stage. “You’re Tiger Lily, right?”

Hyunjin only crosses his arms, neck bending in a slight nod as he purses his lips. He really isn’t in the mood for this. The man smiles at his indifference.

“I’m Changbin,” He says, steely expression softening just a little. He’s oddly short for a bodyguard, Hyunjin thinks. “I’m sure Jinyoung already told you about-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hyunjin cuts him off, shouldering his way forward as he starts walking toward the staircase. Changbin seems momentarily confused, but follows him nonetheless as he begins his ascent upward.

“Hold on,” He says and Hyunjin spins around, hands gripping the railing so tightly his knuckles turn white.

There’s something soft and bundled in Changbin’s clutch, his arm extending itself toward him. “I got you a robe. Thought you might want to cover up.”

Hyunjin has half a mind to roll his eyes, but he lets a smug little smirk encompass him instead. He tilts his head slightly, swallowing his rage. “You don’t like the view?”

Changbin’s gaze remains frustratingly trained upon his eyes, as if refusing to let it wander down even just to linger upon his exposed collarbones. It’s clear he’s one of those types priding themselves in their professionalism. Hyunjin almost scoffs out loud.

“I like your headpiece,” Is all he says as Hyunjin snatches the robe from him and drapes it across his torso. “It’s pretty.”

“Thanks,” He utters, voice hollow and empty and he spins back around, steps brisk and determined as he makes his way to the second floor. He’s almost in his dressing room, nose practically itching from their bareness.

Hyunjin can feel him, like a prolonged sliver of shadow, follow him into the corridor. His head prickles with irritation, small jabs of punctures filling up his mind in a dull, terrible ache.

“Wait, can we talk-”

“Listen here Changmin-” Hyunjin halts as he arrives at his door, body twisting itself viciously to point at the dark-haired man in front of him, finger pointing accusingly into his stupid, punchable face.

“It’s Changbin-”

“I don’t care what Jinyoung told you to do, okay?” His eyes narrow like sharpened slits of a carefully serrated knife. “I don’t need your protection, I don’t need your kindness and I definitely do not need you to follow me around like some sick little puppy. Got it?”

Changbin only stares at him, eyebrows raised incredulously as if witnessing something pitiful and irrational, something beneath him. The corner of his mouth etches up into a small, disbelieving smirk.

“Wow,” He says, letting out an airy, humorless laugh. Hyunjin wants to fucking scream. “Jinyoung warned me you were kind of a brat, but I honestly thought he was just exaggerating a little.”

“Excuse me?” Hyunjin’s eyes narrow even further, piercing into him with all the venom he can muster. It’s surprisingly easy now that his soul has become unclogged from the goodness of sweet, white powder. Changbin seems unfazed, however.

“I’m just trying to introduce myself, you know, since I’m your personal bodyguard,” Changbin says it as if it’s obvious, smirk fading only slightly. “What’s your problem, man?”

Hyunjin’s irises practically pop out of their sockets, jaw hardening so tightly his teeth start grating against each other. “My problem, man, is that I don’t need a bodyguard. I can take care of myself.”

The weary look upon Changbin’s face placates itself just a little, his raised shoulders lowering as he takes a step forward, voice deep and soothing as if attempting to console some crazed, hysterical child not getting what he wants. Hyunjin wants to kick him in the shins.

“Look, I don’t doubt you can take care of yourself, but from what I’ve heard you definitely should have some type of protection. Jinyoung made the right decision, I mean that guy stalking you sounds like a real creep.”

“Guess you’d know, huh.”

“What?” Changbin raises an eyebrow at him, pacified expression withering immediately.

“Sounds to me like you’re just like him, trailing after me when I clearly don’t want to talk to you.”

Hyunjin knows it’s different, of course he does but he can’t be fucking bothered to think twice about what he’s saying when his tongue is scorching from the unbearable heat of Nevada deserts. He thinks he might start thrashing on the ground and clawing at the floorboards if this man doesn’t leave him alone soon.

“Okay, wow.” Changbin seems slightly angry now, the muscles in his jaw tensing discreetly below the low-lit light of the hallway. Good, Hyunjin thinks. “Well, you’re not getting rid of me that easily princess. It’s my job.”

Hyunjin’s chest flares, eye twitching as he crosses his arms indignantly. “What did you just fucking call me?”

“I called you princess because you seem like a spoiled little princess who thinks they’re above the rest of us commoners just ‘cause you’re in the spotlight,” Changbin spits, eyebrows furrowing even more, the conviction with which he speaks sharp and loud in remnants of a distilled, bass infused silence. “I don’t care who you think you are, I’m not letting you or anyone else screw up my job.”

“You don’t know fucking shit about me,” Hyunjin grits out, gripping the door handle tightly before swinging it open and slamming it promptly shut in his face.

Hyunjin thinks his mind is fuming like never before, chest heaving unsteadily up and down as he nearly tears the little plastic packet in half before lining up the powder on his desk again, separating the lines with his credit card as he leans down.

It burns, but only slightly so, relief washing over him in tidal waves as his tensed muscles fall to a buzzing relaxation. He exhales contentedly, closing his eyes and leaning backward as if testing his own balance as he extends his arms, pushing out his chest as he lets it fall to a gentle rhythm of ease. He imagines his arms sprouting scales of a deep black and yellow, fluttering to that of the docile, freed Swallowtail as he ripples his way out the window and into the deep, pulsating vibrations of the night.

A comfortable swell of something giddy, something that tickles within him settles in his chest and he flings the robe draping his torso onto the floor, searching absentmindedly for a laced top exposing his stomach to match with his small, black shorts.

On his knees, fingers fumbling through one of his gym bags, Hyunjin preens against the soft lighting bouncing off his hair, his eyes shutting closed as a small whine threatens to spill from his tongue. He feels hot, sweaty, like he just wants to lie down on the dirty floor and drag his hands across his chest until someone finds him and decides to give him what he wants.

Hyunjin sighs, cheeks stretching into a small, secretive smile as if carrying something mighty and great within it when a harsh knock resounds at his door. Grumbling, Hyunjin stumbles toward it, fully prepared to cuss out whatever infuriating look Changbin’s decided to put on but only halts in surprise as Jinyoung’s tightly held expression greets him instead.

“Mm.” Hyunjin leans his head against the doorframe, the light filtering magnetically across his neck. “You came.”

Jinyoung opens his mouth for a second then closes it, clearly unsure of what to say. Hyunjin’s hands trail against his chest as he pushes their bodies together, fingers eager and greedy to start grabbing at what he wants.

“We can do this later Hyunjin,” He says firmly, though there are clear seeds of a quiet desperation lingering in his eyes.

Hyunjin only pouts up at him, eyes wide and needy and he would fucking hate it if it didn’t work so well. “I want you.” His tongue grazes against the shell of his ear as he leans in to whisper, Jinyoung making some strange, almost strangled sound in the back of his throat.

Suddenly he grips both of Hyunjin’s wrists as he forces him to stumble back, eyes hardened and determined as they bore into him. “The investors are here. Minho’s waiting for you down in the silver room.”

Hyunjin huffs, scrutinizing the persistence across Jinyoung’s face as he tries to find some sort of twitch of weakness or urge to succumb to his usual, lustful desires. Jinyoung remains frustratingly expressionless, would normally never pass up an opportunity to maul Hyunjin into pieces but money prevails through even the most human of vices.

Rolling his eyes, he brushes past Jinyoung and begins his retreat back down into the club, knot in his stomach loosening with the gentle brush of ecstasy expanding within. He twists his neck around as he descends into the main area of the club, searching frantically for any sights of a bulky, short, black-haired meathead. Luckily, he doesn’t see him and a relieving smile surges across his face.

Large, plush velvet couches expand themselves like coils beneath the dim hues of red and blue flashing across the floorboards. There, before the main stage, groups of men, friends, colleagues, strangers even, all huddled together on different couches drink merrily from their own cocktail glasses, hollering every few seconds at something undoubtedly unchaste Felix is doing.

He turns a few heads as he makes his way to where the smaller groups of cushioned chairs are, all scattered across smaller stages with pole dancers freestyling languidly, lazy smiles plastered across their faces as they bend down to collect their tips. Hyunjin almost prefers performing on the smaller stages, the chances of interactions and draining of tips from the same person much higher.

He cranes his neck toward the bar by the entrance of the club, wide and circular table stretching with illuminated neon blue strips adorning the sides. Hyunjin has half a mind to go over, bat his eyes flirtatiously at their bartender as he disgruntedly starts giving him free shots, the highlighted blue tree sprouting from the middle of the table casting a dark, fluorescent shade across his face. The bar’s design is hyper-futuristic with ties to the old and ancient world through the tree, its branches and roots extending to fasten themselves into the ceiling.

Hyunjin digresses away, already knowing that the investors will undoubtedly be ordering them all drinks if not something stronger. It’s always the same.

He makes his way into one of the two narrow corridors separating the main club area, his hand brushing against the wall as if hazily clinging onto the dreamscape of the private rooms all lined up. The Silver Room is their most exclusive, at the very end with a shimmering door burning like a beacon in the dark-hued blur of everything around him. He can see Minho waiting by the door, eyes boring disinterestedly into the ceiling as if he couldn’t care less about where he was.

Then, as if something looming in his wake suddenly prickles the back of his neck, Hyunjin spins around and nearly starts screaming at the person behind him. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

Changbin gives him a bored, pointed look. “Doing my job.”

Hyunjin scoffs, nauseating feeling already brewing in the depths of his gut. “Someone requested a private room. You don’t need to be here.”

He turns around again, walking toward Minho who only now seems to have noticed their presence, his eyebrows quirking up as they follow Changbin’s lingering figure behind him.

“I’ll wait right outside the door.”

Hyunjin laughs, turning his head back to Changbin with a mocking smile on his face. “No, the fuck you won't.”

“I have to. It’s my job,” He stresses, frustration once again seeping into his skin as his muscles give away the slightest of twitches. Minho, who’s close enough to them by now to hear, lets out a loud, wicked laugh as if the situation is entirely too amusing to be taken seriously. Hyunjin wants to punch him in the face.

“Are you a pervert or something?” Hyunjin asks, cocking his head to the side as his narrowed gaze burrows into him.

Changbin’s face slackens, jaw dropping open as he exhales incredulously. “No! The fuck? I’m just gonna stay outside to make sure they don’t, you know, do something they shouldn’t.”

Minho’s laughter only doubles, Changbin’s eyes shooting him an irritated glare. Hyunjin grins, placing a hand on Changbin’s shoulder in mocking comfort. “Listen, I understand this is your first day and everything, but what exactly is it that you think is going to happen?”

Changbin’s gaze lingers on his hand before turning back to stare at him. He seems unfazed, once again, like someone who can’t be bothered to be upset by that of children and their inescapable irrationality. “I’m not dumb, alright? This isn’t the first strip club I’ve worked at. I know customers can get handsy, cross lines that are very clearly put in place. All I want is to ensure you that that isn’t going to happen.”

Hyunjin’s smile diminishes into a small, minuscule smirk as he opens his mouth to say something, hopefully enough to provoke him to fuck off before Minho beats him to it.

“They’re investors,” Minho deadpans. “They can do whatever they want.”

“Just stay out of it,” Hyunjin hisses, quickly before Changbin starts opening his mouth again. “Don’t mess this up.”

Changbin looks at him dubiously, something uncomfortable swirling in his eyes as he starts out slowly, tongue withering as if not fully committing to the own sound it makes. “Jinyoung made it very clear that you guys do not solicit.”

“Do you have a problem with that, huh?” Hyunjin starts but Minho only rolls his eyes and pushes himself in front of him, Hyunjin’s back hitting the shimmering door softly. He gives Hyunjin a sharp glare before painting a feigned smile on his face as he turns back to face Changbin.

“We don’t.” He says, an unnerving edge to his voice. It’s clear he would rather Changbin just leave them alone. He lowers his voice, leaning in to whisper so that no one overhears them. “We don’t sell sex, but certain customers require certain…services to keep them satisfied. But this isn’t a fucking brothel, so calm down. The less you know the better.”

Changbin’s face twists into something exasperated, eyebrows furrowing in what’s either bewilderment or disgust. Maybe a mixture of both. Hyunjin’s light-boned dazed high is starting to wither by the second.

“Now let us do our jobs,” He tuts, sending him a harsh glare before he swings open the door to the Silver Room and slams it admittedly too loudly shut once Minho’s inside.

Hyunjin barely even manages to register the whispered “You know where to find me princess” muttered under his breath before there’s a gleaming door and soundproof walls separating them, his heart beating erratically in anger as he tries to calm down.

Minho greets the clients immediately, slinking toward them gracefully from where they’re all already seated comfortably upon the lush velvet couches, whiskey glasses swaying dangerously in their hands and the musky scent of cigars wafting through the room.

Hyunjin quickly shakes the feeling off, sitting down next to one of the men he assumes to be the most important based off of his attire and cocky tilt of his head, body purring seductively from years of practice as he leans into his side. He’s not going to let Minho outshine him.

Hyunjin lets his head spin delightedly as the fumes from the cigar start whirling around his head, smiling demurely as the man lets him take a drag, lungs puffing and coughing as they all stare at him with amusement. He smokes, but even that was fucking awful. Hyunjin only giggles instead, preening beneath their gazes and compliments, sturdy hands he doesn’t know where come from grazing along his thighs as the night unfolds.

It starts out surprisingly slow, tedious repetitions of flirting, feigning bashfulness and the obligatory tantalizing biting of his lip, dragging and trailing their attention along like he was supposed to, like he was made for nothing else.

He doesn’t pay much attention to Minho, too focused on letting out pretty laughs at jokes he doesn’t really understand, nimble fingers accepting drink after drink gratefully as he wets his tongue in the hot billow of temptation. He knows how to play the game too well. A butterfly knows its home after all and Hyunjin drinks in the sickly sweet fragrance of his greenhouse with all that he is. Sensual, coquettish, everything they want him to be.

They play card games, his lips pouting when he loses on purpose, the inflated egos of the men surrounding him paying him candied, patronizing compliments to boost their own arrogance. Hyunjin soaks them up greedily, leaning into them with all the confidence he exudes and then he’s on someone’s lap as they fiddle with the hem of his lace, on the couch on all fours as dollar bills are slipped crudely into his shorts, back sticky against the table as tequila shot after tequila shot is downed from his belly button.

Hyunjin laughs and smirks through it all, head dizzy from the amount of alcohol they’d consumed. They’d bought their club’s special - Water of the Nile.

The sickening floral sweetness always makes his vision tunnel even more than the lines of cocaine in his dressing room, the soft hues of the lights above him turning blurry and doubling in his vision as his eyes crinkle with amusement. It’s funny, really. It’s funny. He never quite knows what to expect when he gets sent to a private room, playing along to whatever role they give him as soon as the door shuts.

Now that he’s splayed upon his back and pretty sure he’d seen Minho’s hand down some guy’s pants just moments before, he thinks his role is quite clear. He likes it when they’re obvious, no layered rules and hidden expectations he has to seek in order to fulfill. What these gentlemen want is not a prostitute, a partner or a plaything. They simply want to have fun. Hyunjin can give them fun.

Champagne. Hyunjin orders it greedily, fingers wrapping themselves around the bottle as soon as it arrives, knees hard against the tabletop as he pops the cork and sprays the room. Laughter, shouting and eager touches all surround him cheerfully, the pearly stream surging everywhere as it renders him soaking and sticky from where he sits, his lace top turning see-through from the wetness.

Jinyoung is going to murder him he thinks, but the thought is only vague and in the very shallowest parts of his brain so he lets it go without much contemplation. He’s sure the other patrons won’t mind him dancing in champagne-soaked clothes.

Someone clutches at the sides of his waist, a sudden tongue licking stripes up and down his exposed midriff. Hyunjin can’t even see who it is, his mind dazed in a lighthearted high as it floats around and runs to somewhere he can’t catch it. He doesn’t mind, only laughs when all of the sudden Minho is tugging him from down the table and shoving his tongue into his mouth as he pushes him onto the couch.

Hyunjin can’t help but giggle through the kiss, bubbling laughter turning strangled the deeper it becomes and he finally understands what the fuck is going on. Of course. They’re putting on a show, it’s part of their routine. Some guys whistle in appreciation and it spurs Minho on, lips numb and spit-soaked against his own.

Minho's mouth tastes oddly of nothing despite the amount of alcohol he assumes he'd consumed, like something wrapped in cotton and plastic trying to lodge itself down his throat. It's uncomfortable, but Hyunjin's head is far too gone to really care. These investors are going to be giving them the tips of their lives. Hyunjin grins into Minho's mouth, pushing himself upward as he tries to switch their positions, battling for a futile, show-driven dominance.

Hyunjin doesn't know how long it lasts, feels like an eternity if not for the steady yearning of something that lies neatly locked in his vanity desk drawer, a small white packet greedy for the dim light of freedom and paradise. Being drunk is not enough, never enough. It only makes him sick, in the end. He wants something else, wants his candy so bad he thinks his eyes might start rolling to the back of his head from desperation.

Luckily - and because he asks prettily - high-end investors never visit without bringing their own snow, drawing forth small golden tins filled to the brim with white ecstasy. Hyunjin indulges in it gladly, the last thing he remembers before it's time for them to leave and Hyunjin stumbles out back into the corridor with Minho in hand, throwing flirtatious kisses goodbye as they do so.

He's vibrating he thinks, can almost feel the way his skin is about to loosen from his bones. He walks away from the corridor happily, ignoring the shocked look on his idiot bodyguard's face the moment he stepped out, champagne-dry and sticky still.

Changbin tries to ask him something, undoubtedly something of great stupidity but Hyunjin can't hear him, too busy strolling away to one of the smaller poles in the main area, eager and ready to dance.

Oddly enough, Jinyoung doesn't complain about his appearance. The investors must have been impressed, exceedingly so. Of course they would be, Hyunjin knew that they would. He never disappoints. Not even throughout the rest of the night, his body swaying and twisting and lapping up every lust-filled whisper that carries throughout the sweltering club air, not even when the persistent presence of his bodyguard hovers alongside him like the shadow of his shadow, hidden yet piercing him through the hours of darkness.

Hyunjin can feel his gaze upon him like something hot and sweaty, lathered glue all against his body, unable to tear it off. He pays it no mind, does his job like he does every night, every night. He isn't going to let some stranger take away the magnitude of his lifestyle, the thrill in which his very bones were made for.

Only when the darkness starts to wean and the sun is not far from rising, does he retreat back to his dressing room, body sweaty and imprinted with a hundred grasping hands as he slumps tiredly against his desk. He'll be coming down soon, as he always does on the venomous pilgrimage home to a mind no longer hiding in the tunnels.

It starts with the pounding of his skull, thick and large sets of something edged and sharp swiveling through his cranium until it becomes difficult to breathe. He gets through it, as he always does.

Then, the nosebleed. Hyunjin shakily strips himself of his clothes and pulls over his sweats, small streams of blood running steadily down onto his lips. He can handle it, he can handle it. His desk is stuffed with baby wipes - antibacterial, tissues, soap, washcloths, anything really to clean up his messes. He handles it.

He's got it down by now - walk home clutching his stomach, spend an unnecessary time in the bathroom, shower and scrub himself raw, eat something, sleep. Wake up. Repeat.

Hyunjin only sighs, wiping off the last remnants of makeup from his face as he begins his descent back home, bag tightly gripped in his hands as he tries not to stumble down the staircase. It isn't until he's almost out the door when a voice nearly makes him jump out of his own skin, hand flying to his chest in a brief fleet of panic. His migraine only deepens when he sees who it is.

"Hey," Changbin says, gym bag strapped against his shoulder. It's clear he's about to head home as well. "Look, I feel like we got off to a bad start."

Hyunjin wants to sneer, would normally do so with glee, but his aching head holds him back. He only stares back for a second before opening the door and letting the desert-kissed heatwaves filter through him as he steps outside. Changbin follows suit.

"If I did something to offend you, I'm really sorry."

That makes him halt, his neck snapping back to look at him before the rest of his body turns with it. The shimmering lights of the city flicker against his face, eyes sincere and mouth downturned in a genuine, quiet sort of desperation. Hyunjin only gauges him carefully, searching frantically through his face for any signs of dishonesty. He can't find any. It only makes his hatred grow.

"Are you okay walking home alone? 'Cause, I can walk you to your apartment you know."

Hyunjin scoffs, mocking smirk filtering across his face as he looks him up and down. "Yeah? I bet you'd like that."

Changbin only shakes his head like he couldn't believe he'd even considered asking. Hyunjin's eyes linger momentarily on a few of the tattoos soaking his arms, a large snake curling itself around one of his biceps.

Changbin sighs loudly, interrupting his train of thoughts as his eyes snap back up to his face, eyebrow quirked upward in amusement. He fumbles for a moment, trying to retrieve something from his pocket before handing him a small strip of paper.

Hyunjin only stares at him, not wanting to take it but he snatches it away nonetheless once he realizes Changbin isn't going to retreat his hand. "My number," He says and Hyunjin's face immediately scrunches up into one of disgust. "For security reasons. If for some reason your stalker shows up and you don't want to call the police...call me."

"In your dreams," Hyunjin mutters and Changbin only laughs, unfazed once again. He seems to be getting uncomfortably at ease with Hyunjin's attitude.

"Good night, princess," Is all he says before turning his back to him and strolling away, broad back fading into the heap of a mingled crowd tying themselves to the billboard shadowed sidewalks. Hyunjin only stares, eyes narrowing before he begrudgingly pockets the strip of paper into his pants. The fucking ego of this guy.

The thought stays with him for an unsettling, itching amount of time as he gets home, but it withers away into dust and empty screams as with everything else. Once the lights are on and his shoes are off, his mind becomes occupied with other things. He needs to shower.

-

Hyunjin does not have many friends. He thinks he doesn't mind it, really. His mother tells him he's too much, too much, too much for other people to handle. Hyunjin thinks she might be right, the other kids avoid his bashful eye contact and stuttering introductions in the scorching courtyard of his school. They think he's weird, his mother tells him. Hyunjin doesn't know why. He's quiet, yes, clamping a hand over his mouth whenever he accidentally lets out a noise too loud. But children are supposed to be quiet.

He's nervous. Maybe that is why, his stomach clenching like hot coals every time his small legs and twitching fingers hop off the yellow bus. Surely, that is normal too. He's only nervous because he doesn't want to make mistakes. Nobody wants to make mistakes.

Maybe it is because he spends a lot of the time staring at the ground. He just prefers it. He doesn't know why. So no, Hyunjin doesn't have many friends, but it's okay. Because he has one. And he had read in a book once that one good friend is much better than ten fake ones. And his friend is the bestest of all, he thinks.

Hyunjin can't quite remember when he had first gotten Bunny. It must have been when he was a baby. Soft, furrry and with black-beaded eyes. Bunny has almost become gray now. It's because he'd loved it a lot, through all the years he'd been alive. Hyunjin thinks that's a long time to love someone. But he doesn't mind it. Bunny is his best friend.

He likes to make lists in his head of different things, the colors that he likes, the numbers, the foods, the bugs in his backyard. He makes his lists and then he writes them down, careful and slowly in order to not make mistakes. He has a small box of crayons under his bed, although most of them have become cracked in half by now.

His mother doesn't want to buy new ones. He doesn't need them. His mother doesn't like buying things they don't need. Like toys and new shoes or clothes that fit him. He grows too fast, she says. If he can still wear something, he will. It doesn't matter if they're tight and uncomfortable against his skin.

Hyunjin thinks he understands. Their house is small, cramped. His mother is always complaining about money. Sometimes he thinks he can see mold in some of the corners. Once, there had been a rat in their cupboard and his mother had screamed and attacked it with the end of a broom. Hyunjin was sad when the rat died and he cried quietly under the covers of his bed because his mother hated it when he cried in front of her.

But it was okay, for now, if his mother didn't buy new crayons. He had enough to make his lists. One day he thinks he should make a list of why Bunny is his best friend in the whole world. He spends a lot of time thinking about it, wandering through the woods with a stick in his hand as he balances clumsily on a big, ugly log. He doesn't come back inside until his mother calls for dinner. He's excited then, hungry like he usually is. So hungry he doesn't even think about his list at all!

Dinner is rice and broccoli, but there isn't enough for all three of them. Hyunjin gets crackers instead. It's okay. He likes crackers, but he's still hungry when he's finished. It hurts and he cries a little in his room. Bunny listens to him. Yes, that is his number one spot on his list! Bunny is a good listener. He writes it down immediately.

Bunny never tells him to be quiet or to stop weeping, or that he should shut up. Hyunjin thinks saying 'shut up' is mean. But Bunny never says it. The second thing on his list is that Bunny is very cute. And he's an animal. Animals are always super cute. Well, most of them anyway. Maybe not some of the beetles in his backyard.

The third...Hyunjin thinks for a while, staring intently at the little digital clock by his bedside. The numbers are boxed and red and always tell him when it's time to go to sleep. Eight o'clock! Hyunjin likes the color.

The third has to be that Bunny is very funny, yes, he writes it down eagerly. Bunny and funny even rhyme, he discovers. Bunny makes him laugh when he decides to hide in the cupboards or jump from his window to the ground outside. Bunny thinks he can fly, but Hyunjin knows that he can't. Only birds can fly.

Bunny jumps anyway, falling upside down onto the sand colored dust right outside his house. Then, because Hyunjin is a good friend, he runs outside and scrapes off the dirt from Bunny's little body. He has to check carefully of course, to make sure Bunny isn't hurt.

Usually he isn't and they laugh about it. Silly Bunny. He wants to be an astronaut after they watched it on TV together once. There was an astronaut rabbit, jumping from planet to planet and even sleeping on a star one time.

Sometimes, Bunny gets bruised a little. His cotton-stuffed body turns a little black, a little red even. But Bunny is brave and Hyunjin lets him cry from the pain. He'll patch him up in no time! Blood is easy to wipe away and bruises fade after a while. Then Bunny is as good as new!

Hyunjin also likes that Bunny agrees with him. They never argue. They like the same food, - cereal and gummies - they like the same cartoons, the same colors - red, like his clock - and even the same numbers. Three. Three is a good number. It's easy to count to and pretty when he writes it, crayons looping and curving like large half-moons. Bunny also dislikes the same things he dislikes, like vegetables and being cold and being yelled at. His mother yells at him a lot.

Sometimes Bunny whispers mean things about her when no one is listening and then Hyunjin has to scold him. He shouldn't say things like that!

When his mother married his stepfather, Bunny didn't like it at first. He was big, muscly and towered over his mother like a giant. He even smelled different. Bunny didn't like the smell. Hyunjin didn't either. Bunny tells him he smells like exhaust because he's a mechanic. Hyunjin thinks that makes sense, but he thinks he smells more like the dust bunnies always hiding under his bed.

His stepfather likes to eat meat for dinner, so his mother starts making more meat. Hyunjin likes it, but he's never allowed to get seconds. It's okay, even when his stomach rumbles and hurts afterward. His mother is nicer sometimes because his stepfather is always around. Bunny decides then that maybe he isn't so bad after all.

Sometimes, when his mother isn't looking, he'll push some extra potatoes or beans onto Hyunjin's plate. Sometimes he even asks him about his day. Bunny thinks his stepfather is really, really nice. Hyunjin agrees.

He thinks he might have to change his list a little, as time passes by. He thinks the number one thing about Bunny is that Bunny is always there for him when he's sad. When his body aches and his limbs throb, Bunny presses soft kisses against his skin. When he sits alone during lunch, nibbling on his crackers, Bunny keeps him company. Even when he gets older, grows taller and skinnier and gets made fun of for wearing clothes that are too small, Bunny holds his hand tight and tells him everything's going to be okay.

Yes, Bunny is always there. His friend, his best friend.

More things change, like his bedtime. Now it's three o'clock, three o'clock at night! He always wakes up unbearably sleepy in the mornings, head often drooping against his desk at school as his eyes flutter shut. His teachers yell at him then and he hates being yelled at so he forces himself to stay awake. It's okay, he can do it. It just makes him feel sick.

Lots of things make him feel sick. But Bunny keeps him company. When he lies awake in bed, staring at the shadows across his ceiling as he waits for the clock to turn three, he clutches Bunny tightly by his side and whispers to him all night. Bunny never changes.

-

His eyelids always become weighted with something far too heavy for his slender body and hollowed chest in the mornings, hard and high-strung against his sockets as the soft yellow light from his window filters through his translucent chiffon curtains.

Hyunjin groans, as he always does, head pounding and mouth aching while he buries his head deeply beneath his pillow, shoulder muscles clenching as he drags his arm over his head to shield himself from the light.

The alarm by his bedside buzzes incessantly, harsh ringing burrowing into his muffled ears like something knocking at its door; begging to be let in. Begrudgingly he untangles himself from his sheets and slams his hand on the digital clock to silence it, hands dragging themselves across his face as he tries to ebb away the fatigue from his eyes. Mornings always feel like a few steps away from death. Before his shower at least. It's the first thing he does when he goes to sleep and the first thing he does when he wakes up.

His feet feel cold against his floorboards despite the abundance of sweltering undulations springing from right outside his apartment. Hyunjin shivers slightly, limbs moving quickly from the white-gleaming surfaces of his bedroom to his bathroom, stripping himself of his oversized shirt and underwear before stepping beneath the burning sprouts of water clogging up his screens with thick, misty fog.

If there's one thing he takes seriously, it's his shower routine, fingers massaging his scalp with shampoo and conditioner for five minutes each before he begins to purify the rest of his body, fingers aching from the pain it takes to do it slowly. It has to be slow, because it has to be right.

Hyunjin thinks purifying is the wrong word to use, the word swiveling through fields of something bitter in his mind as it lingers there for too long. He knows full well that if there's one thing his body will never be, it's pure. Still, he will attempt to scrub away at his flesh like he always does, starting from the top and clawing his way to the bottom with sharp, violent fingernails.

He rubs his neck with soap, three times, then his collarbones, one two three, his ribcage flourishing dull red streaks from how hard he scrubs. His stomach then, - one two three - waist and pretty tattoo, - one two three - then his legs - one two and three - and at last, hunching down, his feet.

Hyunjin exhales, his chest loosening itself a little. Alright. Now two more times, the entire body. He makes sure to repeat the movements harshly, forceful enough to feel the muted ache that spreads throughout his bones, softly, harrowingly. His eyes flutter shut, the back of his head hitting the tiles gently. Relief overcomes him. In this short-lived, flicker of time, his mind quiets. He knows it won't last long, his scattered bundle of nerves puncturing into him the minute he finishes, but for now at least, Hyunjin enjoys it.

When he finally steps out, he knows his body has been scrubbed raw and red. He doesn't need to look in the mirror to know that it looks ugly, disfigured even. Hyunjin avoids most mirrors anyway.

It's okay, he tells himself as he dries off thoroughly before searching through his carefully organized cupboards for his lotions and creams. He applies them gingerly across his body, three times, and watches silently as the redness begins to fade away. Like clockwork.

Breakfast next, tedious and repetitive as he nibbles on a small bowl of dry cereal, the sugary flavors crunching jarringly against his teeth as he sits in front of the TV. He doesn't watch anything this time, mind nothing but static and needles.

Then, when he's done, because he always becomes terribly reminded of the things he has to do, he gets dressed in sweats and falls to his knees immediately.

Hyunjin takes cleaning seriously, glove-covered hands scrubbing his bathroom tiles ritualistically as he makes his way across it. The floor isn't what takes the most time, but he's meticulous and thorough, of course he is. He doesn't think much of it. He just likes his place to be gleaming.

He scrubs the toilet, the mirrors, the sink, scours the entirety of the bathroom until he can feel droplets of sweat start beading on his forehead before he moves on to the next room. It's simple. He moves in order of logic, crawling into his connected bedroom and getting to work. Then, his living room and then his kitchen. His apartment wouldn't be considered big by any means, but Hyunjin knows that it's spacious enough for one person and compared to the cramped, indented walls of his childhood home, his current nest was an outpouring canyon.

Cleaning always took hours, shaved up most of his day before evening arrived but he doesn't mind, hands working ferociously, up and down, up and down, careful not to miss that spot or that spot and of course, he's extremely meticulous when it comes to corners. He may commit blasphemy night after night but he isn't a brute.

He likes things neat. Sure, his mother had always told him he was too obsessive about it, freakishly so but Hyunjin doesn't understand how liking things to be free of grime and filth and all the dirt he'd constantly clung onto his skin growing up was such a problem.

His nose scrunches in concentration as his sponge works its way across his kitchen counter in perfectly curved, determinately pressed, circles. Round and round, up and down, one time, two times, three times, next spot and he's focused, so so focused like he always is because his mind will scream at him otherwise and he supposes it isn't uncommon for him to start thinking about something else, - his mind is a haywire of static most mornings anyway, scurrying around everywhere that resonates with the booming curse of noise - but rather unfortunate because before he can stop the muscles in his arms, he's moved on to the next spot on the counter after merely two circles. Not three. Two.

Hyunjin freezes, his chest tightening uncomfortably as familiar pinpricks of panic start settling throughout him. He's already started on the next spot, he can't go back and complete it because that would ruin the entire order, it just wouldn't be right and now his whole kitchen is ruined and won't be clean after all his hard work and he thinks he can already start smelling something festering just out of his reach and he fucked up, he fucked up, he fucked up and-

He can't breathe. It's okay. Hyunjin closes his eyes, clenches them shut so tightly he starts seeing spots and exhales in and out, in and out until he finally manages to calm down just slightly. His reaction does nothing but unnerve him despite its aching familiarity.

Everything's okay. Nothing bad will happen just because he missed a spot and can't go back to fix it. It's okay. It's normal. He shouldn't be on the verge of tears for something like this because if he was that would mean something was wrong. That he has a problem, that his mother is right.

And Hyunjin doesn't have a problem and he certainly doesn't fucking cry, so he simply opens his eyes again and blinks rapidly to adjust to the harsh, bright lights hanging over his head. He continues as if nothing's wrong, chest falling and rising at a gentle pace, hands scrubbing small circles until his entire kitchen is finished.

One mishap won't do anything. It's okay, he tells himself, mind repeating the words like desperate mantras to live by. Hyunjin clings onto them with all the might his wreaking bones can manage.

He showers, again. Because of course he has to, he just spent the entire day on his hands and knees cleaning! It's completely warranted, just another part of his routine.

His shower is longer this time, than the one he took that morning. There's something unsettling swiveling in the back of his mind, his brain struggling to fully grasp onto everything running through it. He's being sloppy today. Distracted.

His neck prickles in discomfort, the muscles lodged between his shoulder blades tense and taut like something on the verge of snapping. His stalker issue had gotten way out of hand, he thinks. He doesn't need people making a fuss, especially not with someone so infuriatingly annoying.

Hyunjin's skin burns the minute he steps back onto the tiled floor, bloody and raw with the religion of his own mind. He slathers himself in lotions and creams once more, staring tiredly into his own reflection as he watches his skin turn the dulled, tan sandstone hues he was born with.

Despite how sharply and finely cut his face and body has become, Hyunjin thinks he looks the same as when he was younger. It's a strange musing, he's sure of it, but perhaps he had never trult been a child to begin with.

The soaked pits of his eyes linger with that same purgatory woven into him since the very first day he could talk - neither here nor there, stuck in an endless limbo of pain and innocence. In the end, innocence had always been a mere hope too flimsy to grasp onto, something glimmering and holy in a distance not permitted for he who lived in the shadows.

Pain on the other hand, is born from dirt, fleshed out from the very tatters of his own backyard. Pain is sin, pain is blunder. Hyunjin wears pain like the sea discards its own foam; weeping. Bleeding.

But Hyunjin is used to blood and so he pays it no attention, simply gets dressed and slams the door on the way out of his apartment with as much force as he can muster, the sound echoing in thrums of anger in his wake.

The sun flares cruelly so the minute he's out of his building complex, thin layers of sweat already gathering between the crooks of his arms. Thankfully his existence is a nocturnal one, the lack of sun made up for with the blinking stream of lights, where heat is not born from the earth and sky but from his own slithering belly, writhing in ecstasy. He still has to endure the daylight for a bit, at least until the heavens start to leak.

He'd gone to the grocery store yesterday and he certainly had no thoughts on going back to the gym anytime soon. He makes his way to the library instead, itchy for something new, something weighty and with enough soul to entrap him entirely.

It had been too long since he'd read anything, but Hyunjin figures his longing for storytelling is not something he can evade. He'd been born with it, after all.

His fingers burst with the urge to soothe themselves against every spine he sees, as if the imprints of their titles can somehow seep into his very own flesh. He resists of course, the constant reminder of germs enough to keep him from doing so. The library is big, enough so that he already becomes overwhelmed the moment he steps in but he doesn't like asking for help, pointedly ignoring the workers trying to get his attention.

He meanders to the classical section, scans the covers with an eager tilt to his eyes as he tries to discern what they could possibly be about. He had heard of a few of them, but not many, not having bothered to read most of the required high school material before he dropped out. As a child he'd enjoyed fairytales the most. And comics. Hyunjin frowns, the urge to just walk over to the children's section and pick something out from there tugging erratically at his gut.

He shakes his head, willing the desire to wash away. He can already hear his mother's voice scratch against his head. You're too old for that. It would have made him shudder, if not for how ingrained in him it had become. You're not a child!

Hyunjin squeezes his eyes shut tightly, forcing himself to focus once he opens them again, head sloping to the side as he scans and scans and scans and...his neck straightens itself stiffly. There, in the middle of the row hastily labeled Russian Classics, stand the bare legs of a schoolchild idly against a muted wall, white socks and black suede shoes slightly pointed to one another in the childish stillness of what he can only presume to be daydreaming.

It's a girl, Hyunjin thinks but it's hard to tell. He recognizes the title, had heard Felix mention it once or twice before as he tries to recall what he'd said about it. Well-written, Felix had boasted. But sick.

He doesn't know what possesses him to grab it but he does so almost immediately, forgetting entirely that he has to sanitize his hands before touching it. Hyunjin can't think about that, not now, not when there's something about this book that makes him want to rip out the pages and stick them to his bathroom tiles, smudging and wetting the ink as he attempts to read its bleeding.

He doesn't know what the book is about, but he recognizes those feet on the cover. They're his. And so he loans Lolita with a sickened feeling swirling in his gut, tucking it neatly away into his bedside drawer the moment he gets home. He thinks he knows what it's about. His stomach lurches.