Chapter Text
“You got piercings together?”
“It was that or a tattoo, Hanji, and fuck if I’m gonna get a tattoo on a first date. What is this, ‘Next?’”
The BLEEP over his expletive was nothing new but it never failed to make Levi flinch. The on-air censorship still surprised him every time. Awful, grating, intrusive sound. BLEEP, you’re a bad person. BLEEP, bad word. Did he really swear that much? Oh well. He never claimed to be a saint.
Hanji almost snorted on her water, and really, the girl should have been in film, not radio, because the facial expressions she made were hella noteworthy. But her whiskey-and-cigarette voice was iconic, as was the dry sarcastic way she bantered through the daily twenty-minute The Talk segment just after the 90s at noon. Raunchy entertainment for boring desk jobs and stuffed cubicles, courtesy of 102.9 FM, the highest-rated alt-rock station in the surrounding seventy miles. And Levi figured she looked no better anywhere else than she did behind the mic and the switchboard, headphones on and glasses perched atop her head, unneeded when she wasn’t reading.
“So where’d you get it?” Hanji prodded.
“Where’d I get what?”
“The piercing.”
“Oh, at Dirty Dave’s—”
“Not the parlor, you jerk—which, by the way, sounds incredibly worrisome—where on you?”
“Oh. My belly button.”
“Whaaat—”
“Yeah. She said she thought guys secure enough in their masculinity to get their navel pierced were hot.”
“And you were drunk enough to agree.”
“I was drunk enough to suggest it.”
Hanji was dying. Her laughter was infectious. Levi glanced at the glaring light of the live signal and chuckled low and soft into the mic, smirking meekly. Yeah, that had been an interesting first date to bring up on Flashback Friday. Way back in college, when he’d still been convinced his heterosexual side was the more dominant. And then after he and Isabel had risen the next morning half-naked on the lawn sofa and poked awake by the mailman with the rest of the Home Game victims, she’d said, “It’s probably not gonna work,” and Levi had said, “Move,” and just barely missed throwing up on her pretty red toenails, oh look at that cute butterfly ring. And Erwin had helped him get the belly button ring out between classes later that day, almost laughing too hard to carefully and painlessly extract it cramped as they were into a doorless stall in the Trost Hall bathrooms where everyone Sharpied the names of those who’d put out on the first night under soliciting messages and phone numbers. Call me for a good time – 2 0 6 7 9 8 1 3 1 3. Regina swallows. F A G H A G. God saw what you did to me and you’ll burn in hell for it. Oh, college.
“Okay, okay…” Hanji gathered composure again, clicking around through The Talk’s digital agenda. “One more listener question and then we’re outta here—”
“Two more,” Levi insisted. “I’ll answer fast, I promise.”
“All right—first is—‘Have the two of you ever dated?’”
Hanji met Levi’s eyes with the most ridiculous look of disgust on her face. Levi was sure he mirrored it, nose wrinkling. And together they both dissolved into laughter, fingers curling on scattered papers and memos.
“God no,” Hanji said.
“Not a chance in hell,” Levi said at about the same time.
“Aww, but look—they said we’re perfect for each other—no, I’m sorry, honey, we have great chemistry together but I’m happy with my man and our resident prince of pleasure Levi’s been strictly dickly since 1999. Er, 2000. 2001? Oh shit, can I say ‘dickly’ on-air?”
BLEEP. Apparently dickly was acceptable, but shit was not.
“Somewhere between ’99 and ’01,” Levi politely confirmed. “Last question.”
“‘How much longer do we get The Talk before you find someone you actually fall in love with?’”
Hanji glanced at Levi, her mouth open but nothing coming out. There was a strange apologetic light in her eyes like she knew that was a sore topic and she shouldn’t have read the question, but she had and now they had to deal with it. The silence in the wake of that one was too long. Too long for the airwaves. They’d get a tongue-lashing from Pixis, for sure. Dead air was no bueno.
Levi cleared his throat, not quite sure why he suddenly had a bad taste in his mouth. “Hey,” he grunted into the mic, voice gravelly, “are you asking me out? You’ve gotta come up with something a little wilder and more regrettable than that, the kind of stuff you’re terrified your relatives are gonna bring up over Thanksgiving dinner.”
Cut to the ending mash-up, light switching colors. Off-air. Commercials and then a couple cued songs to carry them over into Mike and Nanaba’s lame afternoon stint. Nobody gave a shit about current events and pop culture. From here on out, they were just waiting for the Top Five at 5.
Levi threw his headphones to his shoulders and stared at the memos where he’d been playing Hangman with himself earlier. Hanji swayed to and fro in her roller chair, nibbling on the eraser end of a pencil.
“Nice save there at the end,” she muttered.
“Mm,” Levi hummed noncommittally.
“Sorry I read that question—”
“I’m not so fragile about the fact that I’m six months from thirty and still coasting by on the entertainment value of my failing love life that you can’t read a damn question, Hanji.”
“Your love life isn’t failing—”
“It’s nose-diving. It’s a fucking suicide bomber.”
“That implies it had a high point to begin with and I’m not so sure it ever did.”
Friendly jab, with a little nugget of truth wrapped inside. Levi’s shrugged in offhanded agreement.
Because it was the truth, after all. He was closing in on thirty and his peakless love life—well, didn’t actually exist yet. It was just a never-ending chain of one-night stands and zipless fucks and casual dates and friends with too many benefits, full of worthless connections and a steaming hot side order of self-hatred. At least he could still laugh at himself. At least he amused tens of thousands in the range of their FM waves with the scandalous and kinky mishaps and mistakes.
“You’ll find someone,” Hanji encouraged.
“I’m not changing for anyone,” Levi countered, more like a defiant kid than a man whose longest relationship had lasted nine months.
“…Someone will find you,” Hanji reworded. Levi threw a crumpled-up memo at her. She laughed and batted it away.
The door opened. It was Pixis, the program director, looking characteristically tired and distracted. His two midday disc jockeys quickly attempted to look busy and productive, avoiding his once-over. He had the most awful way of smiling like he knew everything you didn’t want him to know, right before he dropped all his heaviest bombs.
Ah, and there it was, sending Levi’s heart plummeting to the pit of his gut:
“Can I have a word with you before you head out today, Levi?”
“You’re reviewing the Hole concert at the Moore, next week, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you’re updating the blog with today’s Talk Q&A.”
“As soon as I get home. And the Facebook, and the Twitter.”
“Do you know what your two most popular posts of all time are?”
“Obviously you do, Pixis. Which ones?”
“‘Sex in Public’ and ‘That’s Not a Hickey, That’s a Bruise.’”
“Really? Not even the toys one beats those two?”
“By the comments, people apparently love hearing about getting jiggy on top of your car and twisting your ankle falling in laundry baskets.”
“I feel so special.”
“It’s a controversial program, but people love it…”
“We’re not the Disney station, that’s for sure.”
“Listen. The ratings have fallen since January. Do I even need to say it?”
“No, I get it. My stories aren’t…controversial enough anymore?”
“Well, no, not that… You Olympic medal skate across that thin ice. You’d think all the redneck listeners would blackball us for the mere fact of your sexuality. But it’s a new age, and people crave train wrecks.”
“…Train wrecks. My sex life isn’t crazy enough anymore, is what you’re saying.”
“Exactly! If we don’t get the ratings back up in two months, the program is in deep water and may not be around by next year. If we can make it stick, though… Well, I think a raise is worth it. Right?”
“So what do you suggest, Pixis? Any romantic advice you can give me?”
“I don’t know, Levi! I’m sixty-five years old and have to drink to listen to my wife. Hell if I have any advice for you—try some nasty positions? Oh, you know what… We are supposed to do a review of this strip club downtown… You wanna do that?”
“Sure, but—if I’m technically on the job—can I still drink?”
Levi didn’t think he was all that unattractive for a guy in his late twenties. Late—late—latest twenties, anyway. And if it didn’t matter to a potential hook-up and maybe steady thing that he stripped himself bare and told a seventy-mile radius (and the whole world online) the nitty-gritty of almost all action he scored, well, they were worth a shot, right? Or they were missing more screws than he was, and no wonder there were so many disasters.
“So Petra and Mr. Handsome slept together again, huh?”
Levi shrugged limply, flipping his straw in and out of his drink. He blinked against a scattering of droplets and scowled.
“Ohhh, it all makes sense now!” Hanji cried, slamming a hand down on the bar. The dim smoky lights flashed off their own reflections in her glasses. Rocks jumped in her lowball. And through the voices and the music and the clatta-clat of the bartender behind the counter like the pool balls in the loft upstairs, Levi slid a resentful look around to meet her dancing eyes, wary of the answer to his painfully obvious but unfortunately requisite question.
“What makes sense now?” he gritted out.
“The way Petra was acting the other day,” Hanji explained. “It makes sense now.”
Goddammit. “I don’t understand what you mean.” I do understand what you mean, though. Regrettably.
“You know, all cute and Petra but—with this overhanging storm cloud of remorse and self-loathing and ‘It’s complicated’ deflection.”
Levi almost choked on his drink. “You see? Erwin is selfish and absolutely blind to the repercussions of his actions. He thinks he can just swoop in all tall and rich, and girls will toss their completely relevant feelings out the back door, but—no. That’s not how it works. He’s using Petra and she’s falling right for it, each time, every time.
“Hnmm…” Hanji drummed her fingers with a little staccato of her nails. “I think you’re jealous.”
It felt like the buzz of the little crowd around the bar attenuated just at that instant, so Levi could make a lovely spectacle of himself as he fired back, “I’m not jealous—” Eyes. Too many eyes. Levi scowled, hunching down over his drink. “I’m not jealous,” he said again, meeting Hanji’s glance grumpily. God, he hated that mad smirk of hers. “It’s just that—as his friend, I hold myself personally responsible when his Rich Hunk Syndrome begins to flare again.”
“As his friend with benefits.” Hanji snorted on her whiskey. “Rich Hunk Syndrome?”
“I could write a case study on it.”
“And you started DJing when you could have majored in snarky psychology…why, again?”
“Waving my dirty laundry for the world just seemed so much more rewarding.”
Hanji’s whiskey-and-cigarette laugh bounced off the bodies around them. “Whatever, buddy,” she hummed, and she tousled his hair like an older sister. She knew it drove him crazy. She also knew she was the only one allowed to do it. Except for Erwin, of course.
Heaven and Hell, the strip club was called, and it was ritzy as fuck. All blue and silver glow inside, ice sculptures and flat-screens flashing football games above the pseudo-futuristic glass bar, with something of a gothic flair like Trinity and The Unicorn had merged with Showgirls. Except the Heaven part was the girls, and the Hell part was the boys. A co-ed strip joint. Was that legal? Was that politically correct? Whatever, it was clean and smart and smelled like incense, not booze and sweat.
“Let’s go by the dancers,” Hanji begged, and Levi was just glad he had Hanji with him. Hanji was the best wingman. But Levi wished Hanji couldn’t read him so well. That Hanji wasn’t right. But she was just so damn good at seeing through the bullshit—
“I’m just feeling restless!” Levi sputtered over his beer, slamming a hand down on the central bar that wound and snaked through the club, rising up a foot or two to the stripper’s walkway. The DJ of the place had a nice fast-paced electronic track going, one that kept the crowd energized enough to forget they were drinking too much and throwing too many dollar bills. The girl strutting and shimmying her way up and down their end of the walkway was cute, but Levi was at the point where he was tipsy enough to give in to anxiety and not yet drunk enough to let it go.
“You’re worried,” Hanji deduced.
“Yeah, I’m worried!”
“About work?”
“No, about life, Hanji. About life. The only person I see myself with in ten years is Erwin, but that’s because we already live together and I’m sure as hell not about to readjust with someone else. But—I just—it’s like that question you read today—how much longer can I really keep doing The Talk before I find someone? And what if I just fuck it up and lose my chance because of The Talk? And if I don’t, well, what if I get boring because it’s just the same old same with the same person?”
“Jesus, did Pixis really upset you that much?”
“I’ve gotta get fresh material for The Talk, Hanji. I’m not crazy enough anymore. I’m thinking maybe angry breakup. Angry breakup sex. New positions. Bondage. Trips to Lovers…?”
“Look, the boys are coming down this way now!”
Hanji bounced in her seat excitedly, lighting up like Christmas morning. Levi sighed, slouching down miserably and picking at his straw again. He just couldn’t stop feeling restless and dissatisfied. And Pixis’s little chat had felt vaguely threatening, and deposited so much pressure on his shoulders—because if he couldn’t save a simple segment like The Talk, what sort of asset did that make him to the station? Not much better than an intern anymore. Just another humdrum lame-ass DJ who talked sports and Kanye’s latest tantrum, and slammed reality TV and got shitfaced at concerts and called it a review. All right, so maybe it wasn’t that bad. He got into incredibly expensive festivals and concerts with VIP access just because of the 102.9 stamp on his badge, didn’t he? He got to meet artists and managers and rub elbows with a lot of great, talented people, and it wasn’t like he was pretending he really wanted to be anything other than the peanut gallery—fuck, was this a midlife crisis? But he was hardly past the quarter-life crisis that had led him to 102.9 in the first place!
“Oh…” Hanji’s elbow dug into his side. She threw her arm around his shoulders and pressed her mouth to the shell of his ear, eyes trained on the guy making his way to the end of the walkway. “Oh, look at him,” she purred.
Levi wasn’t too excited—he was very preoccupied pitying himself—but then he lifted his eyes—and he froze as if a toy whose key needed another twist or two.
Him. Dark hair, flashing eyes. A shade of seduction about him that seemed mildly volatile and mysterious. Had to be freshly eighteen or at least a twenty-something whose youth clung to him, like that long slim frame and the flicker of tight muscles under sunkissed skin. Sunkissed skin that looked silky-soft and fever-hot to the touch, and he was barefoot on the glowing walkway, which gave for a strange primal boyish childhood summer sensuality that leather and boots failed to evoke. All he wore was a pair of shorts, tight shorts, clinging shorts, shorts that nipped at the jut of his hips and drew attention to the perfect smooth stretch of his legs. Virility. Ganymede. God of youthful masculinity, right there, with a cute heart-shaped face and the ghost of a smirk on a precious parted mouth. His hair was in his eyes. But he caught Levi staring, and maybe the best part about him was that there wasn’t an ounce of shame in him to be found. Or so it seemed.
The club’s thudding beat cascaded down Levi’s spine. The stripper wouldn’t break the stare-down. His toes splayed on the white walkway as he went down into an erotic crouch, rolled forward on the balls of his feet and onto his knees. Fuck, look at the shadow of ribs. The tension in his abs. Nipples. The roll of his shoulders was feline, the hunter’s glint in his eyes intense. He knew he had Levi ensnared. It was his job. And he was fucking good at it. It looked like he was trying not to laugh at Levi’s open-mouthed stare. But Levi was too bewitched to be offended. Right, feline, but now serpentine as he swung his hips forward and stood without using his hands. And then he just moved to the music, tearing his eyes from Levi’s only when a group of bachelorettes whistled at him from the other end of the walkway and he went down on his knees still bouncing to the music to take their crumpled bills in the waist of his tiny shorts.
“They call him Jaeger Bomb,” Hanji yelled over the noise. The crowd was going wild suddenly, now that the performers were really making their rounds.
“How original,” Levi scoffed.
“I guess his last name is Jäger, though. I think it’s cute. I think he’s cute.”
Levi didn’t agree or disagree. His heart was in his throat and his face was on fire. He couldn’t rip his eyes from the guy, watching the way he slithered and moved for strangers. The cocktail waitress with the shimmering wedge cut was talking to him, but he heard nothing. Eventually she left.
“I got it!” Hanji cried, so close to Levi’s ear that he actually jumped.
“What the hell—”
“I got it! Something crazy for you to do for The Talk! Sleep with a stripper!”
Levi burst into laughter. “Oh my God, I’m still too sober for this.” But the laughter died away as he realized Hanji was staring at him pointedly like she’d missed the joke. “What? Excuse me? How about I just get a lap dance and we’ll call it good? You don’t sleep with strippers, Hanji. They just strip. Stripper. Not sleeper.”
“Prostitute,” Hanji corrected. “Sleepers are the eye boogers you have in the morning.”
“I’m too sober for this,” Levi repeated.
And so it was another round, and somewhere between his third rum and Coke and a mixed drink the bartender proudly called “Dante’s Inferno,” Levi found himself turned away from the bar on the receiving end of a lap dance from Jaeger Bomb.
All the patrons in watching range whooped and heckled good-naturedly as the stripper worked his black magic. The loudest of all was Hanji, little shit of a wingman. She’d bought it for him, of course. Rock of the hips, swing of the ass, tantalizing closeness and that hardened look of carnal need in his little half-smirk. Hardened—practiced. And Levi blushed like he was a kid with a crush again, wondering if he tasted like licorice, like Jaeger. Dreamily thinking he looked so soft and beautiful, he could crush him like a rose in his palm. But this was clearly a kid with experience. A vagabond angel who knew his way around the block. Oh shit, he was getting poetic. He was head over heels. Fuck.
“You’re good at this,” Levi husked when Jaeger Bomb was close enough to be the only one in earshot.
“I kind of do it often,” Jaeger Bomb whispered back, and the heat between their laps was almost too much to endure. Shit. Levi was hard. Fuck this shit. It was all a well-manicured act, of course. It was the kid’s job. And he did it so well—
“Do you ever sleep with your patrons?” Levi grumbled next, raising a tentative glance to seek out Jaeger Bomb’s burning eyes. It was honest and harmless curiosity, really, but it had come out sounding all too hinty-hint. Damn it.
Jaeger Bomb’s body ground to a halt. The distance of inches, of breaths between them was torturous. And there was something so raw and vulnerable about the way Jaeger Bomb frantically met Levi’s stare like he’d been caught with the reddest of red hands. Was he blushing? Goddamn, leave it to Levi to make a stripper blush. Why couldn’t he just be a normal man with a normal sex life?
“I don’t kiss and tell,” Jaeger Bomb husked, voice like burnt velvet on Levi’s ears. A shudder snaked down his spine. “You should buy an hour in the Red Room—the VIP room—”
“No.” Levi shook his head, shifting below the dance of Jaeger Bomb’s hips. He cleared his throat. “Maybe next time. I mean, if there’s a next time. See, this is for work…”
Jaeger Bomb laughed and it was probably the most amazing thing to grace Levi’s ears in a long time. “For work? Where the hell do you work, buddy?”
“102.9, The Ex.”
Jaeger Bomb dropped his leg from where he’d thrown it up near Levi’s shoulder. His eyes danced—with a new light, an unpracticed and childish sort of light. “I knew it!” he sputtered. “I knew I recognized your voice! You do the 90s at noon, right?”
“Yeah…”
“I won tickets from you guys once! Yeah, I’d like—just woken up and I ran around my apartment naked trying to call in and I totally got on-air and I won tickets to NIN from you guys.”
Levi was briefly distracted by the image of a messy apartment and a naked Jaeger Bomb with bedhead and sleepers. Maybe the kind of studio with a fire escape out the window. Maybe hickeys.
“You wanna go see Hole?” Levi asked before he could keep check of how fast the rum talked.
Jaeger Bomb was ecstatic. Professional character gave way to a little bit of hopping from foot to foot and an awkward shuffle of the hands through his lovely dark hair. “Are you serious right now? You’d just give me tickets, right here, right now?”
“Yeah. I’m going next week, at the Moore down on Skid Row. You can come with me.”
Jaeger Bomb snapped back into work mode, propping a heel on the edge of Levi’s chair—right between Levi’s thighs. He smirked, and although every inch of his body was back in gear, his eyes still gleamed with that honest excitement. “I’m not allowed to give out personal info on the clock,” he murmured. “You know, don’t wanna invite advances from dangerous creeps and weirdoes. This is a tightly-run ship, my radio friend, but—seriously, if you’re telling the truth, slip the waitress with the red scarf your digits and she’ll give them to me later. Mikasa is her name.”
Digits. This kid was unreal. Or he knew how to sweet talk his way through any patron. Probably the latter. Levi scowled up at him, struggling for something clever to retort.
“Okay,” was all he could come up with.
“Jesus, you’re awkward!” Hanji laughed once Jaeger Bomb had drifted off again, climbing up to dance on one of the raised platforms near the DJ’s booth. “You could have looked like you enjoyed it a little more than that. It was forty bucks, Levi.”
“Oh, I enjoyed it enough,” Levi husked, crossing his legs to try and ignore just how much he’d enjoyed it. “I haven’t gotten a lap dance in… Christ, I don’t know. Years?”
He stole a pen from Hanji’s purse and scribbled his phone number onto a napkin, below the Heaven and Hell logo. There she was—the waitress with the red scarf. He flagged her down and handed her the napkin. Then snatched the napkin back and wrote
JAEGER
at the top before coyly passing it back.
The waitress with the red scarf stared at him grimly, waiting. She tucked the napkin into her bra and continued to stare. Levi snorted. “What?” he grunted. But then he understood. He sighed, offering her five bucks for playing the messenger. She nodded and tucked that away into her bra as well, disappearing into the crowd again.
Oh God, was it going to be an interesting Talk tomorrow after the 90s at noon.
“Hanji,” Levi mumbled.
“Mm?”
“Can I sleep at your place tonight?”
Hanji visibly softened, brow knotting. She ran her fingers through Levi’s hair and nodded, once again playing the older sister. He didn’t even have to explain how much he really didn’t want to see Erwin after his return to Petra. At least not for a day or so.
“Sure thing, baby,” Hanji hummed. “I’ll take the couch and you can have my bed.”