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 Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2025 6:31 pm
'Starlight’
The name emblazoned across the entrance of the venue, and he wondered what had been here before? The atmosphere so different from his usual haunts, and yet? Similar enough in all the ways that truly mattered; sample platters of people, charcuterie boards of bodies. Dressed up, dressed down, displayed to each one’s own fancy.
Built to attract by design—
Normally he was the bouncer, not the patron, nor the bait. Sometimes the hunter, but only of the deserving, never the boys and girls that served flesh and soul on shining stages and velvet couches in the back. His hands were built to be buried inside the chests of patrons who pushed a bit too far, it made for the justification of an easy quota source on the nights when he felt too lazy to do anything else....
A fresh cache of starseeds; so he didn’t have to look Cassian in the eye and explain himself properly.
None of which was really any kind of ******** excuse for why he was here, again, for the third night in the row. Staring at people from the bar as much as through them, his gaze lingering between the lines of shifting forms and barely dressed debutants. He was looking for something specific…
It didn’t help that his drink was dryer than his throat felt, that no amount of slaking one thirst seemed to quench another. Everything burned going down, like embalming fluid chased with everclear. And he told himself the hurt was worth it—
'Because what the ******** am I doing here?!'
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Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2025 6:32 pm
After the first night, when the place lulled in its late lunch bustle, Jean — the owner, he learned — had taken him aside to explain the hows of the strange little club's function. And never had he heard such an unusual hierarchy before, which inspired a fondness for Starlight. It felt, to him, like some sort of secret university front populated with the smart, the beautiful, and the driven, who had in common their college and their perpetually destitute bank accounts. To think such a place could be run off the cheap labor of college kids looking to pay their rent and tuition, college kids looking to build their work portfolios, and college kids who probably would have worked as theatre techs if they weren't on academic suspension for astonishingly severe alcohol addictions.
He hadn't expected the strippers to be smart. One of them, a short brunette girl with a bountiful personality and eyes that no one had ever noticed before, was working on her engineering degree. She was actually quite shy, but her twice-a-week evening gig helped bolster her confidence. Eles quickly liked her company; she never judged his reliance on ASL.
Despite being asked, several times, what his major was or when he expected to graduate, Eles felt like he fit in quickly. One of the fashion majors who was building her portfolio had already taken his measurements and designed a simple but eye-catching ensemble out of strips of black leather and rhinestone studs, using a few tooled pieces to break up the pattern's constancy. It came with a mask, too. Or a hat, he wasn't certain, but it fit over his face and rested snugly on the bridge of his nose and highlighted his cheekbones. She'd used a matte mesh to hide his eyes and added a cascade of oil-slick black feathers from the crown of the piece that rather reminded him of Malory. She thought it built up his air of aloof mystery.
Overall, rather revealing. Paradoxically, it blended in with the club's rather avant-garde collection of outfits.
As Eles wove through a crowd of besotted ********, he cut around the smooth curve of a lounge booth with his attention fixed on the glass-half-empty types. One, he found, was a glass-completely-empty type who looked like he'd need another quart of Everclear before he might finally put to rest whatever burdened him so. Quite the looker, too, he'd thought; seldom did he find such perfectly snatched waists and wide shoulders with faces so drawn and haggard and vulnerable-looking. So, naturally, Eles made his way over.
Leaning down, Eles tapped a yet-unpainted fingernail against the empty glass for its clarion chime. Then he waited, a smile lingering on his lips, for this woeful patron to notice.
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Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2025 6:35 pm
It took him what felt like too long a moment to catch the clear sound above the din of patron chatter; sultry tones layered over shiffing cloth sliding over skin. Ice added to glasses and the people behind the bar tending to those who, likely? Were never allowed to become too drunk for a good time. This wasn’t a place for black out wasted, laced with MDA, only one round more before they were on the floor, and needed extra arms to carry them out types.
But then again? Not everyone knew their own limits — their tolerance to gray goose versus well
Vodka — how hard the sweet stuff could hit, when the grenadine was poured thick enough to get sick off of alone.
The same way he hadn’t expected to look left towards the gentle ‘tink,tink,tink’ reverberating over glass only to find his breath stolen, cruelly so. By eyes tucked away behind mesh, a brow crowned with feathers. A display of skin the likes of which he wanted to press his suddenly dry tongue so deeply into that he could taste what he knew was the tang of real leather, and the sweat gathering beneath it.
Because there must have been—
For all that the whip thin man, sliced apart by strips and shadows, didn’t look like he’d sweat at all. Not once in his life. Not for a single day.
‘We could work up one together—‘
But this wasn’t the place for that, he hadn’t paid enough to touch with more than just his eyes, didn’t know what that cost was, if there was one? Wasn’t here for that!!
So he told himself, and told himself, and told himself!!!
“They’d look good if they were longer, yanno?” The first thing to fall out of his skull and out from between dry lips, he licked them nervously, nodded towards the only unadorned thung on tbr man. Those short, blunt, clear nails. “Ravens should have talons…or…raptors? Black to match…”
Deadly.
He didn’t say, but he thought it hard enough that he had to swallow the urge to speak it. To ask to do more than look — ******** — to find out how much it would take to look his fill?
A comforting lie of an idea. A crazy man’s concept born of desperation, like heaven? Because there was no such thing as being full.
He was always starving —
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Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2025 6:36 pm
Thankful that half his face was obliterated by belts, Eles let his vacant half-smile linger a moment longer as he stared dumbly at the boy. What the ******** was he talking about? His lashes? His fingers? His d**k??? Was he hanging out —
Oh. Oh, he mouthed. His fingernails. Then he looked down at them, spread his fingers, looked at the transition of healthy pink to white free margins. They'd grown long, but nothing close to talons. And, he decided, this patron had a very good point. Wouldn't he look better with black talons? Wouldn't he look dangerous? And most importantly, wouldn't that fetch him more tips?
Good idea, he signed. As an afterthought, he wondered if his fingers would get tangled in one another if the talons were too long. Oh, maybe he could avoid commitment by putting false nails on gloves first? He was certain one of these college fashionistas had a fine pair of black gloves they'd collected for no particular reason.
This boy tried so earnestly hard to look him in the face, too. It was always fun for him to learn who stared shamelessly and who needed a little coaxing out of their shells. Clearly, this one was categorized as the latter. Still needed some rewards for acknowledging his existence here, for owning it. Certainly wasn't on the level of owning it like Malory owned that stripe of COWARD across his back, daring anyone to comment. Even the thought of it still got his blood running.
Get you another drink? This time he mouthed the words in tandem with his signing, in case he'd run into one of the astonishingly few people in Destiny City that didn't know ASL.
And in case reading lips was too much for the dumbstruck boy, Eles plucked one of the drink menus from whence it had been haphazardly discarded and laid it before this new stranger.
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Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2025 6:37 pm
Was this what the beginnings of a stroke felt like? Weren’t there supposed to be signs; the smell of burnt marshmallows, charred toast, an elephant on his chest crushing both his lungs and heart into a puddle. Spearing his soft, squishy bits on jagged bone.
‘Maybe I’m dying — maybe I deserve this? This is purgatory and I’ve been dead all along, ever since the hollow?’ he thought wildly, briefly looking at the empty glass as though it’d been drugged. Before blinking back to what he was sure had been ‘sign’ —
And how many pale boys in a city with such a huge population could possibly sign?
How many had dark hair —
Or fingers—
Or—-
‘I’m ******** insane—-‘ a reality check with his account balance on it. Signed to himself, in the name of mental rent, long past due, and he let the boy spelling things out in the most obvious way take him for the fool he was clearly proving himself to be. Nodding slowly, while looking over the menu shoved his direction. He ran his finger down thr list, letting it stop on the one with the prettiest picture. Something purple with flowers? A tourist trap of a drink. Real avant on guard or whatever? Fine. Everything tasted like everything else after a while.
“Several…” Swallowed over a rough laugh, he shook his suspicions loose, reaching for the reasons why he’d come in the first place. Hunting for faces to snatch souls from — assholes — mainly — hunting for the body of his boy in all the wrong places, or at the bare minimum? A distraction from that.
Any distraction at all —
Staring at the slender man’s fingers, and for a moment he wanted to reach out and grab them. To squeeze them tight until something snapped between them and the pretty, pretty, thing adorned with feathers just had to use his words!! He was struck with it, probably looked like he was admiring something he wanted in half a daze, like he was one moment of whetting his lips away from telling the stranger what he wanted more than any drink. With detailed instructions for exactly *how* he felt like spending the rest of his night!
With some part of himself wrapped around those fingers till he could claim them as his own and take them with him — a souvenir —- a trophy —
Except that would’ve been so taboo, against policy, wrong. He could remind himself what ‘wrong’ was!! Knew better!! He could practically feel the glares of several fictional pairs of eyes searing down his spine for even entertaining the thought.
“But maybe just the one to start?” A smaller, tighter grin. He hedged his bet that he was wrong, imagining things, and that just because the boy's lips had moved didn’t mean anything deep! It was maybe all a stage whisper? Performative. Or he was misinterpreting it, seeing zebras instead of cows. Could’ve been the man was saving his voice for something later? A show, a patron? A special talent of some kind — could’ve just been tired from — ******** knew what — waru could only imagine.
“N’you? Even if you’re saving your voice, everyone gets thirsty, right?”
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Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2025 6:37 pm
Can't save what I don't have, he signed back. A voice, virginity, what did it matter what it meant? It was always more interesting to be missing parts that people expected him to have. It was the hook to a story that they all wanted to know. How did he lose his voice? What happened to him? Was he a victim? So they would invest their time and attention, and so they would corroborate that Malory wasn't the only person in the city so thirsty for a story.
He didn't know if it was a good story. Hell, Eles didn't know the true story, but he had time enough to make something up. Something that might appeal to a thirsty, dusky boy who looked half-past-paralyzed in one of Starlight's cute little epoxied tables with all their shiny, shiny pennies catching the lights. The boy looked so horribly smitten, those greens and blues casting a lurid underlighting to his neck. Eles felt like, if he stared for too long, he'd start feeling bad about this. About everything. Knowing there were people who hurt so much and so plainly, the feeling was uncanny.
With a single feathered nod, Eles was off to talk s**t with the bartender. It was some unspoken rule — this gruff, wiry, middle-aged man from the Eastern Bloc was far more in love with his craft than with any of the patrons here. He didn't care for them, thought they were loud, didn't hold their liquor well, and spilled too often on his bar. His bar, that he kept cleaner than his own house.
For the first week he worked at Starlight, Eles's drink requests were met with a staccato grunt and a look of severity as the man — Laszlo, he learned — whipped up a drink without measuring and without any regard for how much time it should have taken. Then Eles was shooed away like a fly. That was, until he learned two important facts: Laszlo was a snob in his own right and his favorite drink was scandal water.
Once he learned this, Eles began writing down his patrons' drink orders with a note underneath, detailing some observation — fact or fictional — about the one that placed the order. For this latest boy, Eles didn't have the heart to jot down some scathing line about cheating on his wife or burying his sexual identity in one of their more popular dancers. Instead, he wrote what he thought: Lonely one. Like his spouse left him, his dog died, and his house was foreclosed all in the same week. Like he's forgotten what it's like to be noticed. Or he lost his taste for it.
This, the bartender saw and received with a curt nod of approval. "Seen type before. They hold their drink badly over here." Over here, Eles knew, meant in America. "He needs fishing. Ice fishing. Where he too cold to cry and can have man-to-man talk over fishing rods. Only that will do." Laszlo punctuated his sage advice by clapping down the violet space-vodka drink requested.
Eles, smiling for the fresh dose of entertainment, nodded his thanks and promptly got out of Laszlo's way. Flitting back to this Nameless Patron Boy took a bit of doing, having to pivot this way and that to dodge yet more people who were gently asked to leave due to their dwindling sobriety levels. Michelle, who was sorority sisters with one of the dancers, was always blessedly good with coaxing them outside and calling the university hotline for a ride back to campus. She seemed to know every college-aged individual that walked through the door, too. Maybe she knew this boy?
Letting the thought slide, Eles parked one of the fresh drinks in front of Mr. Puppy Eyes. One for him, one for Eles. He held out his drink for a silent toast before he drew a strong pull from it and savored the tangy, fruity burn.
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Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2025 6:38 pm
‘Gods, he is using sign — ******** me holy —‘
Auburn eyes flickering, fingers to lips, crossing at some point as the delicate hands made quick work of what was really just a smattering of words. Waru lamented intimately that he had no voice to lay over the practiced movements like a soundtrack. That the only sound was the whisper of the eyeless maiden of a boy shiffing away to get whatever the hell he’d pointed to, and his eyes lingered, across the smoothe back, the scarless body.
Not a mark anywhere, and he could’ve painted them on by memory? Used all that close enough to his boys skin-tone to re-write Eion in infinity—
Pissed all over some faceless, nameless, soft yet man’s identity. Was that the erasure of fantasy? The curse of seeing his boy in every window, puddle, broken backsplash of a gas station mirror?
“What the hell is wrong with me—“ Waru whispered to himself, shuddering where he sat, damn near bolting in moments of chance between the supple stranger going and coming back. A deeply unsettled part of him wanted to run. He didn’t ******** with other peoples autonomy like this, he didnt entertain empty fantasies this way!! Indulging in the pay to play industry as an insider was one thing? But he wasn’t into pouring dollars and dimes out on escorts, hookers, or—-
It wasn’t even his money. It was ‘theirs’. A shared account! Because he didn’t want Cassian to see it so —
The boy was back.
He didn’t run—-
Dragging lighter palms down his face and back through his dreads like he was trying to kill in its infancy whatever look he feared might show just then. Waru collected himself and joined the toast, *sipped*, damn near gingerly (he wanted to leave the place conscious!), at what turned out to be a rather charming cocktail? A bit on the sweet side, full of the right kind of punch. A fruity treat reeking of summer.
“Can I ask—-“ teeth sunk over lip as he drummed nervous digits over his own thigh, the drink in his other hand a point of refuge. Safe haven and ‘shut the hell up juice’ all in one. “If I wanted more than just a drink?” And he made sure to watch the mans lips this time, better than torture himself with dancing fingers, with eyes that were veiled. “With you, specifically.”
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Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2025 6:38 pm
This sad ******** was kind of pathetic, actually. Eles wore a smile for that — simple delight, malice absent, no schadenfreude or predation. There was something indelibly honest about him. Something else, too — like he didn't know what the hell he wanted, so he may as well reach for the nearest thing until he could figure it out. If he could figure it out.
Eles wasn't sure what to make of that. On one hand, meeting people that couldn't discern what they wanted seemed fairly normal. But, even Destiny City's misguided mope-abouts weren't half as desperate as this boy. Like he toed the edge of a skyscraper, knowing all he needed to do was take a step, the timer to his right nearly run out. Some melodramatic death contraption rigged up to him until he made a decision. Tie yourself a bungee cord and jump, jump and freefall, or step off the parapet. Make a decision or there'll be a hole in your head the size of your brain in six minutes.
In fact, Eles kind of pitied him. He wondered what that pity was worth.
So did this stranger, apparently. How about that? Not so scared that he forgot his every base urge. Could've been one of those adrenaline junkie types that needed that fear of death to get them interested in another human being. Eles didn't think he knew any of those. Could be fun.
Oh, and he was really starting to sweat, too. Starting to cook. Another few minutes and Eles could've put a fork in him and eaten him unadorned, exactly as he was. Like a treat he didn't have to earn.
That depends on you, he signed back, echoing the words with his mouth. On how much you're asking for. And I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you to come back. Jean would destroy me. Another smile. It was as good a time as any to drink down more of that lurid purple cocktail, feel the burn, lose track of the flavors. The simple heat of alcohol was always a comfort, a diabolical delight that likely got him into trouble more often than it got him out of it.
Tell you what — I'll give you my name tonight. Come back again and I'll give you something more. Like an impromptu loyalty program.
Tearing off a ticket from the slip he'd tucked into his garter belt, Eles wrote through the lines in handwriting as crisp as it was dagger sharp. Ebon Aphelion, it said.
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Posted: Sun Jun 29, 2025 6:39 pm
The smile sat before him was so unfamiliar for how easily it came, attached to lips that laid out words like a red carpet; lights adorned the walkways edges, Waru could’ve stepped down it catwalk style and not have stumbled a single misstep for how clearly the – <********, was he calling this person a stripper? - stripper, yes. For how clearly the stripper, perched like a feast-friendly vulture, laid the process out.
‘As if Ebon is anyone's real name—’
Stripper in name, never on paper. The person on paper would be ‘Ebon Aphelion’, because even if stripping was technically the man's profession? For his own intents and purposes – for playing duck, dodge, dive. With x,y,z. Saying he was seeing a ‘Model’ worked best! Least for those with ears that required tamer norms to follow. No one Waru knew personally, mind. But in case he ever had to go down and have an actual conversation with, like, an adult at a bank?
‘I am an adult— I go to banks –’
Not himself. Not his friends. But when dealing with ‘A Real Adult’ with an honest nine-five job, who wasn’t in the Negaverses back, front, side pockets! Because he’d been considering looking at houses, because that required legal things, and financing, and –
Sponsoring a college intern named Ebon Aphelion at an avant garde’, art-haus full to the brim of ‘models’, stating he was giving – ********, what was it? Donations for tax write offs, or whatever the cause was? Treating this sort of thing like an expenditure on a charity…
That was the easiest thing to do.
Even if it would only ever be seen as a desperate one, done in the name of he and himself alone, where every dime spent was a dime spent on his dwindling sanity and crumbling foundation of mind. He was the ******** charity case here! He knew it, he could taste it, he didn’t care—
“Ebon Aphelion…” Saying it aloud made it real, left him thirsty for more than liquor poured neat and faces obscured by ebony. It left him with cravings that had no room in their margins for ‘loyalty’, at least, not the kind that ended in anything other than flames. So he didn’t promise Ebon that, eyes on lips instead of fingers, hungry, thirsty, begging for another time. Five more minutes. Just tonight. For whatever Ebon could stand of him before throwing him out like the dog he was to the streets that claimed him with open, loving arms.
Because he had people in those streets, husbands, lovers, friends galore! He was no homeless stray, and he wasn’t really starving, he just felt like he was. And so he gave himself permission to do things like this. Telling himself all the while what a faithless liar he was for having those other messy feelings at all. Or? Maybe he was simply someone who didn’t care anymore, how messy it all got, if he felt guilty for it tomorrow. If the look on his face was unobscured carnage, glowing as stark as daylight down an alley. The same way he didn’t care if the masked boy offering him ‘next go’ swallowed it all down like a black hole.
It was the raptors feast, and he was just happy to be a carcass—
“Can we play it by ear, then?” He tried to be amusing, “When I come back,” definitive, no room for ifs in any breath. He took the paper like it was too precious to crease, like he feared the ink would smudge. It went into an honest to gods *wallet* instead of getting shoved crudely into a pocket. “Wouldn’t want…John? Jeans? T’ah…to destroy you or nuthin’.”
“At least….not before I get to finish my drink.”
‘Because it tastes better sitting beside you, because I don’t want to spend the next five minutes staring through a crowd instead of at someone. Because you remind me of him in all the ways that hurt and not a one of them is familiar—
And I wanna sit in it, just for a little while.’
“Hopefully, there's no loyalty program needed for that? Just…a few more minutes of your time.”
(Fin)
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