Work Text:
october 2013
The tequila burned, the lime bit, and Eric didn’t cough. The bass was vibrating through his feet. He put the shot glass down on the bar and turned back to the room, watching the lights play across the moving crowd. He’d come here with Erik, who he’d met on Grindr last week - their hookup had been uninspired, but their friendship seemed to have potential. He closed his eyes, breathed in, let the beat vibrate through him, let everything worrying at the edges of his mind - his dickhead manager at the coffee shop, that Marisol was probably getting sick of him crashing on her couch but he had no idea when he’d have money for rent, that he hadn’t talked to his mother in four months - be shaken apart and left as dust.
He startled when Erik grabbed him. “You good, babe?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Wanna dance?”
“Absolutely.”
He lost himself in the music, the bodies, the sweat, the blissful noise that obliterated the echoes in the silence of his head. Hours later, he surfaced, took the shot that Erik’s friend Gabe handed him, wondered if he should get some water. “Oh my god,” Gabe said. Eric followed his gaze to a go-go boy standing on top of a speaker box in the middle of the floor. He was wearing a pair of daisy dukes, his torso was smeared with glitter, and he was rolling his hips off beat to the song. He spun slowly, running his hands up and down his chest. “He’s so hot,” Gabe said.
“Can’t dance for shit,” Eric said, half to himself.
Gabe snorted. “Like you could do any better?”
Eric knew he was drunk, but he couldn’t take that lying down. He pulled off his shirt and handed it to Gabe. “Fuckin’ watch me, bitch,” he said, and strode over the the speaker box. Dimly, he realized that the track had segued into some awful remix of Katy Perry’s Roar. “Hey,” he said, tapping the go-go boy on his ankles.
The boy looked down at him. “You’re not supposed to touch me.”
“Get down,” Eric said.
“What?”
Screw this, Eric thought, and pulled himself onto the box to stand there next to the go-go boy. “My turn,” he said, hands on hips.
The go-go boy looked more than a little worried, but stepped back onto the walkway that he’d taken to get here. (Oh, there was a set of stairs over there. Well, fuck it.) Eric turned to the room and made aggressive eye contact with Gabe, beginning to roll his hips. Gabe, and Erik next to him, looked kind of freaked out, and that was not helping with Eric’s vibe, so he closed his eyes, channeled his inner Queen Bey, and followed the music. When he opened his eyes next, he could see people watching him, their admiration growing, starting to stretch out through the room. That’s right, he thought, closing his eyes again. Look at me. Aren’t I worth looking at?
Three songs later, the bouncer threw him out. “I don’t even have my fucking shirt,” Eric muttered, crossing his arms to keep himself warm. Erik wasn’t picking up his phone or responding to texts, and he didn’t have Gabe’s number, and — fuck. He’d planned to crash at Erik’s and therefore mooch off him for Uber. Goddamn it, he really needed enough money for his own place.
“Hey, topless boy,” a voice said. Eric turned around. A guy with a short salt-and-pepper beard was coming out of the club. He threw Eric’s shirt at him. Eric grabbed it out of the air and shook it out. It looked like it had been stepped on a couple of times. He pulled it over his head anyway, because it was too fucking cold to be topless outdoors. The guy paused to light a cigarette. “You know, you’re a bitty little thing, but you’re a pretty good dancer.”
“Thanks,” Eric said, warily. He was desperate, but he didn’t think he was go-home-with-a-thirty-year-old desperate yet.
“I know they kicked you out, but there are other places that might be interested in you as a performer. You twenty-one yet?”
Eric tried his best to sound self-assured. “Obviously.”
The guy snorted. “Yeah, sure.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a business card. “But seriously, the money’s pretty good. Gimme a call, I can set you up.” Eric hesitated, and the guy laughed. “Promise I’m not a creep. Just a bartender who’s tired of looking at shitty pole dancing while I’m on shift.”
Eric considered. He thought about being broke and alone and a burden. He thought about standing on that speaker, the sound vibrating through him, the feeling of eyes on him. He thought about how he liked it.
He reached out and took the card.
october 2015
“The hockey boys are back,” Cait said, dropping onto the couch as she counted her tips.
Bitty looked up from where he was touching up his makeup. “Hockey boys?”
“The whatsits, the team in town. A bunch of them have started coming in after games.”
“Falconers,” Larissa said, turning the page of her magazine.
“How the fuck do you know that?” Cait asked.
“Hockey knowledge comes in the Boston starter pack.”
“Ok, but back up. Are they cool? Have they given anyone any trouble?” Bitty couldn’t help but remember the jackass ball players he’d seen in clubs in Atlanta.
“No, they’re super sweet, c’mere.” Cait went over and stood near the edge of the stage, where there was space to peer out at the crowd. Bitty joined her, still wary. “That’s them, at that table. The giant one, he bought a dance from me, very polite, good tipper. Those two older ones seem like the team dads, some of the young ones tease them about being too old to appreciate the show. Honestly? They’ve been pretty chill.”
Bitty scanned them all, and he didn’t get a bad vibe, but still. “Any bullshit with male dancers?”
“They came in once when Rans was on the schedule and no problems - I think he got their autographs?”
A new guy came to the table carrying some beers and Bitty startled. “Hey, what’s the deal with the hottie?”
“Which one?” Larissa said, coming to peek with them.
“Blue eyes, killer cheekbones, fat ass.” Hottie was sitting down with them now, and the good tipper giant was elbowing him.
“I feel like I’ve seen him on the side of a bus,” Larissa offered.
“I dunno, he kinda feels like a dead fish? Doesn’t flirt, doesn’t watch the dancers too much. Not weird about it, just, like, not here to party.” Cait struggled. “Anyway. You’re up in ten, Bits. What music do you want?”
Bitty cracked his neck. “Gimme Formation. I’m in a showing-off mood.”
***
Even though he’d seen that they weren’t troublemakers, Bitty still found he needed to take a calming breath before going over to the hockey table. (Don’t blame him, blame the PTSD.) He put on his customer service smile and made sure his hands weren’t tucked away - they seemed a touchy group, maybe the casual touches he usually used (he called it his diner waitress energy) wouldn’t be disastrous here. “Hey, y’all. Welcome to the Haus. I don’t think we’ve had the chance to meet yet.”
They looked over at him, and he saw a number of excited eyes. “Oh, you’re the guy who did the tricks!” the black one said.
“That’s me,” he said, trying to strike a balance between modesty and confidence.
“Hello, yes, pretty blond boy,” the big one said, and wow, did that accent take him back to 4am Soviet calisthenics. “I am Tater, like small potato. What is your name?”
“I’m Bitty. Nice to meet you, mister Tater.”
“Bitty,” said the blond one, reaching out to put an arm around the hot one, “have you met our friend Jack?” The hot one immediately turned pink, with a bit of a deer in the headlights look.
Bitty arched an eyebrow. Was this some kind of advanced bullying technique he was about to see? “I haven’t had the pleasure.”
“Jack is great,” the black one said. “He’s a rookie, but we’ve already got him playing first line. Got his first point last week.”
“He went to college,” the blond one said, shaking him a little. “Like, a good one, not normal college. He’s super smart.”
“And rich,” the big one said. “He shy, but not a problem. Jack, stand up, you wearing those jeans today.”
This wasn’t bullying, Bitty realized with some confusion, this was wingmanning. And the hot one - Jack - might be the color of a tomato and not quite able to make eye contact, but he was also…kind of smiling. Like a guy whose friends were trying to get him to talk to someone he was interested in.
So Bitty did what he was good at. He jutted out a hip, leaned down to rest his weight on the table through his arms to show off his pecs. “Well, Jack, it’s very nice to meet you. Do you want to buy me a drink?”
Every eye at the table turned to Jack expectantly.
“Um…sure?” he said.
The black one and the other old one high-fived each other. The giant one pulled a chair over next to Jack and waved an arm towards the bar. “He getting a whole round.”
Bitty settled in and leaned on the table. He was about to start in on his small-talk routine, but Jack cut him off. “How do you train your flexors?”
Bitty blinked. “Excuse me?”
Jack shook his head. “Sorry, that was - it’s just, you do so many splits in your routine. Especially the upside down ones. To hold for as long as you did you need a lot of strength in your hip flexors. And you didn’t hyper-extend your knee while you were doing it, either. Your adductors - um, I mean - sorry, I didn’t mean to stare - “
“You are absolutely supposed to stare when I’m up there, hon,” Bitty said, increasingly charmed.
Jack could not possibly turn more red than he currently was. “I guess, I’m just - the trainers always talk about the balance between strength and flexibility, especially in the hip chain, but you made it look effortless.”
Oh dear lord. Bitty was starting to get the idea why his friends were so enthusiastic about setting him up, because Jack would never be able to pick someone up like this. “Let’s be real, hon, I’m hauling around a lot less bulk than you are.” He suggestively scanned over Jack’s body with his eyes. “Not that I’m complaining.”
Jack’s shoulders came up a little, but he smiled, embarrassed but pleased. “Sorry, I don’t really talk about things other than training these days.”
“It’s good that you’re passionate about your job.” He took the drink that he was handed - which was, in line with policy, a soda water and lime so the douchebag bosses could keep the money the customers spent on him - and took a sip. “Tell me more,” he said.
***
“Not so much a dead fish,” Larissa commented when he came backstage after three drinks with the hockey boys.
“A fish that prefers twinks to tits,” Bitty said. He might be cynical - after two years in this business, who wouldn’t be? But he thought about Jack’s sharp blue eyes, his embarrassed shoulders, the hopeful curve of his lips. He hoped he came back.