Chapter Text
Loneliness is a thing you get used to like anything else.
Or, well. You can, if you put your mind to it and have enough things around to distract yourself. Which Porchay does: it’s just after six p.m., and Chay has about ten minutes left before his friend Van arrives to take him to work.
This part, he has down to a science. He’s wearing comfortable clothes: light grey joggers, white t-shirt under his black rain jacket, because the weather has been shit lately, and he’s already packed his work duffel, including enough snacks and electrolyte drinks to get him through the night. Trainers by the door that he’ll grab on his way out. Pheromone blockers and scent neutralizers, pepper spray, even a small taser Porsche had gotten him years ago that Chay has never actually used.
He has a granola bar open and held between his teeth as he sends his usual weekly check-in text to Porsche. It goes through, as have all his other ones, though Porsche has never responded.
There are 36 of them now. Porsche started disappearing a little over a year ago—first he was just slow to answer his phone, but then he stopped responding altogether.
Chay has no idea where he is. The only reason he even knows his brother is alive is because someone has been leaving letters for him every so often—letters, like they’re in the fucking dark ages, but they’re in Porsche’s messy hand and have his voice and smell all over them, and they always end the same way.
I promise I’m fine. But don’t look for me, it isn’t safe.
The first time Chay had seen that, he’d laughed. Sure, he’s not about to get abducted by random alphas—if he ever really was, he’s never lived in a world where alphas are abundant and thus doesn’t know how much or little of what people say about them is urban legend—but it’s still getting dark. And when his friend pulls up in front of his house, Chay throws the wrapper of his granola bar away, dims his phone and pockets it, and grabs his duffel, locking the house and gate on the way and ignoring the feeling in his gut that he feels every week: that Porsche has abandoned him.
Chay arrives at the club just after sunset, maneuvering his duffel around the stacks of crates and empty kegs in the hall by club’s service entrance. He could go in through the front door, it’s not like he isn’t allowed, but this way he doesn’t have to deal with delivery staff or anyone else who might recognize him in plainclothes before he’s started his shift.
In the next room, he can hear Yok, the club owner, laughing with some of the staff as they tease her about the state of the hallway.
“I nearly broke my shoe, ate, what if there’s a fire?!”
Minna. Probably the only one in the group who is serious in her criticism.
“Ee, that’s what you get for running around in those clubs! If you have a problem, then you get rid of it. Maybe I like my clutter, hmm?” Yok spots Chay before any of the girls and winks, then throws up her hands and makes her way to the bar. “Aiy, no appreciation! What would your mothers say?”
His friend Tea spots him first. Her and Minna are the only two who are dressed right now—Tea in a black, mostly-opaque halter that covers her chest diagonally before looping around her neck and a truly excellent gauzy, floor-length half-skirt, Minna in a high-necked bustier set made entirely of gold chains—and Tea breaks away from the group and skips up to him barefoot, falling in step with him easily even though Chay is a head and a half taller than her.
“Soooo,” Tea says, rolling her head theatrically as she turns to look up at Chay. “Guess who’s here?”
This tone never means anything good.
“The queen of Sheba.”
Tea snorts a laugh, then hangs off Chay’s arm not holding his duffel. “No, silly, though that’s probably who Minna thinks she is. I mean, wolfboy is here.”
They’re in the dressing room now, and Chay frowns as he sets his bag on a vanity stool. “We have an alpha tonight?”
The campaigns were decades ago. Still, the population of alphas has never rebounded, not with how generations of social conditioning to fear alphas as feral, unhinged monsters has made daily existence nearly impossible for them. Unlike most people, though, Yok isn’t a bigot, and she offers a back room service for alphas in rut who need to get their rocks off and have nowhere else to go.
It's not especially glamorous. In addition to posting guards in the room for the safety of her staff, the alphas are restrained and muzzled so they can’t bite, and they are given a drug to keep their knot from swelling. Still, it’s not without risk, and Yok pays very well to anyone on her staff willing to take those clients.
Chay has done it before. Somewhat regularly, in fact. Some alphas will only fuck omegas no matter how desperate they are, and Yok only has a few omegas on staff.
“Yep,” Tea answers, popping the P. Chay unzips his duffel and starts unpacking his makeup and skin care products while Tea hops up on one end of the vanity counter, leaning heavily on a hand. “Sade. I’ve never heard of them. And that’s all it said.”
Chay frowns at this. Chay has worked at Hum for a couple of years now, long enough to know who basically all of Yok’s back room regulars are. That’s not a name he’s seen before either. But they need to warm up in a few minutes, so he’ll need to talk and get dressed at the same time. He uncaps his toner and squirts some onto a cotton round as he sets in on his routine.
“Do we know who’s taking it?”
The nature of the service means it’s difficult for alphas to book in advance. Still, most of Yok’s regulars have at least an idea of when their ruts are going to be, and bookings are generally fairly regular and predictable. And there wasn’t anyone on the calendar until next week.
“Dunno,” Tea says with a shrug, pointing the toes of the foot hanging down off the vanity counter. She pokes Chay’s calf with her foot. “I thought you’d be more interested to know that wolfboy is still here. I wonder why he hasn’t left right away?”
Chay has been doing sex work for about five years now, and in that time has gotten very good at schooling his blush. Still, he can’t quite catch all of it.
“You’d have to ask him,” Chay answers.
He bends down and tosses the cotton round in the trash under the vanity to buy himself a few seconds. But Tea waits, and when he’s upright, she pokes him with her foot again. “You know he doesn’t talk to anyone else.”
Chay turns to her, one brow raised. “Or me.”
“Pff. You know as well as I do that Mr. Dark and Stormy has heart eyes the size of Yok’s implants for you.”
“Porchay, my love,” Yok’s voice says from down the hall.
Chay and Tea look at each other at the same time.
“Dressing room,” Chay answers after a beat. Tea hides a laugh behind her fist, straightening and smoothing her skirt as Yok walks into the room.
Yok is wearing a form-fitting silver disco ball of a dress over black sheers and patent leather platform pumps that put some of her best dancers’ highest stilettos to shame. Considering she’s already tall, this makes her a giant.
“That is my cue. I’m gonna go stretch, I’ll meet you on stage.”
In addition to being one of his closest friends, Tea is also his sometimes-dance partner, and they’re doing one of their partnered pole routines tonight. The black mesh harem-style trousers and headscarf he’ll be changing into once he’s done with his makeup match Tea’s outfit.
Yok walks all the way up to him, making easy work of the minefield of duffel bags, clothes, and shoes currently covering the floor. Something he really appreciates about Yok is that as long as everything is picked up at the end of the night, she doesn’t care how much of a disaster the dressing room is before then.
Much better than his last job.
“Porchay, honey,” she says again, this time just to him.
Like the vast majority of people on earth now, Yok is a beta. She’s so naturally empathetic, emotionally aware, and charming, though, that Chay had actually been surprised to find that out.
He anticipates Yok’s question before she actually says it.
“We have an alpha tonight?”
Yok nods. “Yes. Very last minute. I was going to ask Luna if she would be willing, but she’s out sick.”
Out sick is house speak for in heat. Yok is one of a small handful of club owners who secretly defies suppressant laws for sex workers and doesn’t require her employees to take them, but it’s a defiance that requires discretion in the event of surprise state inspections. Chay sees where this is going.
“And I’m guessing Dionne and Cherry aren’t working tonight?”
Yok shakes her head.
“I hate putting this on you, but Sade wants an omega. Do you think you could?”
Yet another thing Chay appreciates about Yok: her requests are actually requests, not demands. Chay has a real choice right now, one that won’t affect his job security.
Which is nice, because with Porsche gone, this job is basically what’s keeping him alive. And anyway, there’s something kind of comforting about knowing exactly how his night is going to go.
“Sure.”
Yok smiles in a way that makes her eyes crinkle and lays a hand on his shoulder, giving it a squeeze in thanks before going back out to the bar, already yelling fondly at some of the other dancers to go get changed as soon as she’s out the door.
Chay finishes getting ready in silence as some of the others come in together, loud and rowdy as they do each other’s makeup and hair. He feels some of them glance over and run their eyes up and down his body, clearly judgmental, but none of them talk to him.
This isn’t new. A side effect of the combined facts that a) some back room clients will only take an omega and b) that Yok pays her employees who take back room clients very large bonuses is that on average, her omegas take home more pay than her betas, once everything averages out. Privately, Chay thinks this is more than fair, considering the amount of harassment omegas deal with all the time, including by patrons whom the bar’s security staff aren’t able to get to in time. But to many of the dancers, it smells like favoritism toward the omegas, and more than a few don’t hide their bitterness about it.
Considering how favorites had been treated at his last club, though, he’ll take it. At his last club, favorites had priority booking—meaning they were booked more often, by wealthier clients, the sorts of people who are not used to being told no. Especially not by the toys they buy.
And Chay hadn’t been allowed to tell them no. The one time he’d tried, he’d been punished personally by one of the club owners, a sadistic man who’d tied him up in that room, drawn a scalpel out of an inner pocket of his jacket, and carved a line on Chay’s inner thigh for each hundred baht Chay’s refusal had cost him.
It had taken him three years to get out of that place.
Even here, Tea is the exception, not the norm. Still, Chay is used to this, and it’s easy enough to block out the other dancers’ chatter and the offhand barely-veiled snide while he does his makeup and changes into his routine costume.
They’re debuting this routine tonight. He and Tea are calling it The Dark Paladin, and the character Chay plays in it is an Aladdin-inspired sorcerer who lures the young maiden into a romance only to betray her, turning her into a shadow. Tea’s costume for it has several other layers to it that she’ll strip away over the course of the routine, which Chay is actually kind of jealous of. They’re great pieces.
Chay finishes his prep before the other dancers. He caps his powder and sprays his face with a setting spray so his makeup will hold all night and grabs the black leather slippers he’ll be wearing for this routine, then heads out toward the stage.
Only to literally bump into someone as soon as he’s out the door.
A large, ringed hand steadies Chay at the chest, and Chay follows it up to the person’s face, trying and failing to ignore the swoop in his stomach when he sees who it is.
Kim looks really good tonight. Dark grey shirt under a black leather motorcycle jacket, the neckline low enough that the thick silver chain he’s wearing at his collarbone is fully visible against skin. The edges of the tattoo on his chest are peeking out of it. His hair is down, slightly wavy with the stormy weather they’ve had of late, though the hardware from his orbital piercing and helices is still visible through it.
And as with all alphas, the air around him is charged. Thicker, somehow. Like his presence has physical mass.
Chay’s heart skips a beat. He’s never known what to make of the way Kim looks at him, only that it makes Chay feel hot in ways he’s never felt with anyone else before. It’s never gone further than that, though, so Chay has long since assumed it’s just an alpha looking at an omega, the fact that there’s always a certain automatic level of interest, considering how rare both alphas and omegas are now.
And anyway, he knows why Kim is here. Kim delivers the drug that alphas are given in back room appointments to keep their knot from forming. From what Chay understands, it’s derived from a hallucinogenic plant called yompari and it doesn’t keep very long, which is why Kim has to deliver it the day of, as close to the start time of the appointment as he can manage.
“Sorry,” Chay says after a beat.
Kim looks from his hand on Chay’s chest up to his eyes. “You’re fine.”
He doesn’t look away right away. Neither does Chay, though Chay does feel himself blush.
After a long beat, Kim lowers his hand and keeps going down the hall. Chay’s stomach swoops again. A few seconds later, Chay chances a glance back at him—that hall doesn’t lead to the exit, just to storage and the giant fridge that’s half the size of the dressing room.
He feels his blush deepen. But Kim doesn’t look back, so Chay shakes his head to clear it and heads out to the stage.
× × × × ×
Things tend to start in a whisper rather than a roar when Hum opens for the night.
The patrons who come first, the ones who come in shortly after they open—they’re the lonely ones. Many come by themselves. Or they’re new, sometimes even first-timers, or those who need to escape something for a while and delve into a fantasy.
Chay has gotten good at spotting those. And for the first couple of hours, before their in-house DJ turns the music up really loud, Chay mingles with patrons, as do many of the other dancers. It’s not uncommon at all for him to find himself in extended one-on-one conversation with the ones who look the loneliest.
The vast majority of them are very respectful. Especially considering the dancers mingle in costume. Tonight, though, the first man he approaches doesn’t even seem to recognize him as a dancer, because the first thing he does is order a drink.
“I can send someone else to get that for you,” Chay says with a wink. “Is there anything else you need?”
He keeps his tone light, a little teasing. The man is a good bit older than him, probably late 30s, early 40s, his hair just barely starting to grey at the temples, and a strikingly handsome face, and he has the vibe of someone who makes a lot of money but works extremely long hours to do it. There’s no ring on his finger.
Chay has never seen him before. He’s also very definitely interested, if the sudden look of appraisal that bleeds into interest tells him anything. And Chay gives him something to look at, shifting slightly so the multicolored lights around the darkened room paint his skin in swaths of pink, blue, and violet, accentuating his bone structure, sharp jawline, and the hooded look in his eyes.
It works. He gestures for Chay to take a seat. “Is there anything you would like?”
Chay laughs warmly as he joins the man in one of the vacant seats, sprinkling in just a hint what he knows is a very convincing imitation of affection into his tone as he rests a hand on the table.
“I can’t, not while I’m working. But thank you for the offer.” Chay pretends to look at the cocktail menu even though he’s long since memorized it. “Though if I were allowed right now, my answer would be a Yellowjacket.”
A house original, deceptively simple: floral gin, their cleanest top-shelf triple sec, and freshly-juiced blood orange, and a hint of rose-infused syrup if patrons prefer their drinks sweeter. Chay doesn’t, though he also doesn’t drink very often anymore.
The man looks at the menu. While he considers, Chay flags down a server.
“If I may, you look like you drink cognac,” Chay says after a few beats.
It’s a total shot in the dark, but it hits. The man looks up at him, blinks, and after a moment what was once hard appraisal softens a few degrees into what could easily become fondness.
“Excellent guess. Any suggestions?”
Chay gets a little bit more information out of him about his tastes, then makes a recommendation. And as if on cue, the server he flagged down appears tableside and the man orders.
Chay knows not to stay too long with any particular patron. He lingers about half an hour with the man, long enough for him to have a couple of drinks and loosen up a bit. By then, two other dancers have joined them, providing Chay the chance for a graceful exit.
“What’s your name?” The man says as Chay stands up to go.
Chay smiles. He never gives out his real name while he’s working.
“Midnight.”
“Midnight,” the man repeats, then grabs his wallet and pulls out a business card.
Chay takes it, careful not to let his fingers brush the man’s hand. The man is a beta, and therefore mostly immune to the calm, warm effects of an omega’s touch, but he still has to be careful.
“Aw, you’re so cute! Can I have one?” One of the other dancers asks.
The man looks at her, still facing Chay.
“Apologies, that was my last one.”
That’s a lie. Chay immediately knows. But the dancer just pouts and leans onto the table on a forearm, picking up their conversation again.
Chay slips away while the man’s attention is turned, making for the other side of the club. On the way, he swipes a cocktail napkin off one of the few empty tables he passes and folds the man’s card into it, not even looking at the name before he tosses it discreetly in the trash.
It’s then that he feels eyes on him. Chay quickly scans around, but there aren’t any patrons staring at him that he can see. Kim, on the other hand, is watching him from the entrance to the hall that leads to both the staff only areas and the back room with a look Chay once again cannot decipher.
Chay feels himself blush. He doesn’t doubt that Kim saw that.
The fact Kim is still here is very unusual. He almost always leaves right after dropping off the drug. But for the entire next hour, as Chay mingles with patrons a bit more—out of eyeshot of the first man—he feels Kim’s eyes on him more often than not.
He heads back to the staff rooms after making his rounds. His set with Tea is third up tonight, about 45 minutes from now, and it’s probably going to take Tea that entire time to finish getting ready.
Kim stops him with a hand at his hip as he walks into the hall.
“That man wasn’t bothering you, was he?”
Kim’s voice is a little rough. He smells like cigarettes, which is probably the culprit. Chay fixes on that fact as he attempts to still his heartbeat, which has suddenly kicked up.
Kim hasn’t clarified, but it seems like he’s talking about the first man. Chay shakes his head.
“No. I get that a lot, it’s part of the job.”
Something dark flashes in Kim’s eyes, there and gone, so fast that someone less perceptive than him probably would have missed it.
It’s a long beat before he lowers his hand. When he does, his nostrils flare slightly as he lets out a breath, and he looks to be possibly literally biting his tongue.
“If anyone does—”
Kim cuts himself off. Chay tips his head a bit, a question on his face.
“If anyone does…what?”
Kim’s eyes land on Chay’s neck before he looks away. Chay feels a rush of something that makes him feel hot, even a little bit out of breath.
Kim inhales slowly, lets it out, then looks back at Chay, his eyes hard and serious.
“Don’t let anyone harass you.”
That hot feeling runs through Chay’s body like scalding water. All of a sudden, he really wants Kim to touch him.
On his skin.
“I—won’t,” Chay answers.
And with that, Kim heads down the hall, turning the other direction from the dressing room toward the back entrance, away from the main area of the club.