Charlie pulled a joint from between his lips and, as white smoke drifted from between his teeth, he said, "Hold still. I'm still studying my canvas."

"I'll punch your teeth in. I swear to God I'll do it," Sora seethed, squirmy under Charlie's stare. "Just—Just do it. I don't give a fuck if it looks bad. It's just for tonight."

"Excuse you—it's for at least two weeks unless you plan on exfoliating your stomach off every damn day," Charlie said, setting the joint on the dish next to an assortment of semi-permanent tattoo pens. Charlie held the picture up as he crawled forward on the bench until he had to drop his feet on the ground and straddle the bench, effectively straddling Sora as well.

Sora put his eyes to the locker room ceiling and swallowed hard.

"Hold still, baby," Charlie teased with a little purr that made someone laugh at the locker room doorway. Sora didn't recognize the guy, but considering he was holding an amp, Sora assumed he was part of the band.

"Fuck off! Don't you have a job to do?" Sora seethed.

"Ooh, kitten's got claws," the band member quipped, licking his teeth. One of his buddies pushed him along as Sora cussed him out and went back to lying on the bench, covering his hands over his nipples.

"Just hurry up, God," Sora huffed.

"Give me a second. I'm relaxing so I'm not shaky," Charlie said, taking deep, meditative breaths as Sora laid there on the locker room bench in nothing but his sweatpants and underwear. As if he couldn't be any more pissed at Charlie, the idiot started humming under his breath as he dragged his hands up and down with each inhale and exhale.

As Charlie uncapped the pen and placed the reference photo on Sora's chest, he sang a little under his breath. As he started to punctuate dots along Sora's would-be happy trail, he sang, "'Oh, she's sweet but a psycho, a little bit psy-ycho, and she's singing oh mamai-mama-mai...'"

"I don't think those are the lyrics..." Sora sang.

Charlie matched Sora's sing-songy tone with, "And you better shut the fuck up or else I'll scribble the shit out of your stomach..."

It was a simple, minimal tattoo with delicate, fine lines and dots that accumulated into an abstract arrow pointing directly down to Sora's dick with curved points that Charlie said looked like, "a pair of ovaries", which Sora punched him for.

As they were finishing it up, some performers for that night were already gathering in the locker room. A few of them complimented Sora's tattoo, which always prompted a snarky, unnecessary response from Charlie along the lines of, "Yeah, you better like it, bitch. That shit's gonna save our boy's life tonight." Try as he might, Sora couldn't shut the guy up.

Among the performers, David waltzed in, unannounced and unfazed by the dirty looks the dancers gave him. "I heard y'all were doing belly shots off of Sora's abs," he said, hands on his hips.

Sora rolled his eyes, hands fanning his stomach to dry the ink. "Right, and I'm guessing you came to get in on that action, huh?"

David gave him a fake smile and said, "Don't flatter yourself. Actually came to deliver some goods for all you beautiful bitches. Dig in."

From the basket he set on the bench, he pulled out two massive bottles of vodka. The dancers all whooped in excitement, and Sora thought to himself, Thank God someone came in clutch tonight. As he got up—albeit carefully to avoid smearing the ink—he saw the rest of the basket's contents.

"Masks?" one of the dancers said.

"Holy shit—Ambrose said it was okay?" Sora said, eyes wide.

"Well, technically the band said it was okay," David said. "Sounds like masks are, like, their thing so consider these gifts from the main attraction tonight."

Sora dug into the basket with the others. The pickings thinned out quickly, and as everyone tried them on, it became abundantly clear that no one wanted to wear the full-head masks.

Except for Sora.

It was a blessing, truly, that the band performed in full-on helmets because holy shit, it was perfect. Sora could kiss his itchy wig goodbye at this rate.

Charlie strapped on a glossy, all-black mask and purred, "Ooh, kinky." He mimicked having a whip and snapped it at David, who shook out his hand as if struck.

Sora was too busy staring at the helmet. Thank fuck for weirdly-branded bands.

He pulled the helmet on. The visor was raised just a touch, leaving a gap for airflow—which was perfect considering how he'd be exerting himself on stage. The last thing he needed was to have his visor fog up. He knew, however, that at the end of the night, he'd be dying to get out of it.

But it would do the trick.

______

Meanwhile, Ray de Lucía could be found panicking after having wasted the rest of his day performing intermittent Netflix-binging with a side of Nap Time. By seven-thirty, he was in a panic trying to get ready for that night because Leo was asking to be picked up at the dorms—along with Barry and Huey.

"Sorry I'm late! I'm an embarrassment to humanity!" Ray cried as he waited for his friends to flock into his car. Once all the doors were closed and people were buckled up, they moved on to the venue.

"Did you get everything done?" Leo asked.

Ray groaned, thoroughly embarrassed. "No. I just watched Netflix all day and slept."

"You're living the college dream, dude," Huey said, leaning over the center console to clap Ray on the shoulder. "In other words: You're doing it right."

"Yeah, tell that to my stomach. I am only suffering right now," Ray said.

It took both Leo and Huey to navigate them to the club where they found event parking for the low price of twenty entire dollars and their will to live. Ray paid it, pouting as he did so, knowing that the cost would be reduced to five dollars after his friends paid him back.

Bandaids was on the block of several bars and a club that stood kitty-corner to it. The sidewalk was crowded with people waiting in line, and the four of them walked down the row and along the brick wall where event posters were printed and framed down the length of Bandaids.

They reached the end of the line beneath a poster that was mounted under the glow of two spotlights that illuminated a professional photo of a guy halfway up a pole and doused in dramatic back-lighting. Ray didn't look at it long enough to read the context.

"You don't think it's gonna be, like... super risqué, do you?" Ray asked, warily as Leo vibrated next to him, an absolute bundle of excitement.

"It better be," Leo said, wiggling his bum.

Ray rolled his eyes and reminded himself that they were here for the band, not the dancers. He made a point to catch up on their latest album—which he then processed during Nap Times—so that he wouldn't be entirely lost that night after having his ticket scanned at the door.

They followed after the stream of people flocking towards the main room of the warehouse: a wide open, several story-high atrium with exposed beams and an elaborate lighting system that had Ray hesitating at the edge of the balcony, his hands clasped together over his stomach.

The warehouse was massive and, down the center of it, there were cages mounted on stages that separated them from the dancers. The stages glowed through the rainbow, rising up and collecting on the smokey particles in the air from where fog machines spilled white residue out onto the dance floor.

The balcony encircled the warehouse perimeter, and from up here, Ray could distance himself from the cages.

"This place is incredible!" Leo screamed, thrusting both fists into the air. "I'm living the dream, baby!"

"I second that motion," Barry said.

"It's huge," Ray said, voice hoarse beneath the music playing on the speakers across the warehouse, echoing through the stream of people slowly flooding the floor below them. The crowds of people swarmed the cages with fascinated eyes illuminated under the spotlights and the glittering light underfoot.

At the far side of the warehouse, there was an elaborate staircase that split off at the base and converged at the top, perfectly framing an inlaid cage where a set of drums was positioned for the concert. At the two points halfway up the staircase, there were dancing cages arranged with LED light pillars at each corner, and as one of the opening bands started up, dancers stepped into the cages skantily dressed and sporting masks over their faces.

Ray thought his heart might explode out of his chest. He clutched at it through the fabric of his plain white tshirt and let out a shuddered breath. He let Leo take him by the hand and, with Leo as his support system, they descended the stairs together to become one with the mosh pit.

The opening cover band blasted songs from the 80s that had everyone on the floor chanting the lyrics, thrashing about under the strobe lights. The air was cold, though, despite all of the hot, sweaty bodies around them, pulsing to the music. Leo took Ray by the hands, his figure flitting in and out of focus between bursts of vibrant, red light.

They threw their hands up and pretended they weren't, in fact, at a strip club. It was just a concert.

Just a concert.

The four of them bopped to the music all through the opening band and into the filler sequence of EDM rave music. Ray had never been to a rave before, so the overstimulation was spinning his head in circles and turning his brain to mush. Their voices sounded muffled in his ears over the bass. He put his hands in the air and rocked to the music with a giddy smile on his face that felt all too real in this surreal venue.

At some point, Barry persuaded Ray to get on his shoulders after Leo very adamantly refused. Barry crouched down and, with Huey's help, Ray weaseled himself over Barry's back with his legs dangling off of Barry's shoulders. Huey held Ray's hands firmly, steadying him as Barry started to rise.

Ray's head swam with the lights that circled overhead. He swayed, laughing, as the two of them got their balance in order. He hooked his feet back around Barry's broad torso as Barry held onto him by the knees.

Ray high-fived people as they navigated through the crowds and called attention to themselves from across the floor. Someone threw him a necklace of festive beads, and if he wasn't so paranoid about touching things, he would have kept them. Instead, he dropped them to the floor and rubbed his hands off on his skinny jeans.

It wasn't until Barry turned that Ray realized that he had essentially been kidnapped in order for their group to come close to one of the dancing cages.

Ray turned and startled at the sight of a dancer directly in front of him, just beyond the stage's metal barrier.

Below him, Barry whistled and whooped a little, startling Ray all over again with the realization that he was within proximity to an actual professional stripper.

Ray swayed back, shrieking. He floundered until he felt Huey's hands on his back, steadying him. He fell into Huey's arms, his legs haphazardly strewn over Barry's shoulders until he more or less performed the splits to slide them off. He slumped to his feet, eyes wide and frantic. Sure, he could try to mentally prepare himself for this day all he wanted, but nothing could actually prepare him to see a guy in a g-string several feet in front of his face.

There was cash strewn across the stage, unreachable through the metal bars, and the stripper's platform heels glided through the paper like water as they turned their back to the pole. Ray's eyes slid up the smooth, pale texture of their calves and thighs where thick straps of black fabric plated up and around the black cup over the crotch and—

"Hoo, boy, I'm lightheaded," Ray said, staggering a little. He put a hand to his head and turned away.

Only to turn back a whole two seconds later to eye up that navel tattoo—

"No! I can't!" Ray cried, whipping back around and putting his blinders on (two hands on either side of his eyes like a common carriage horse).

"No, no, you have to," Leo said, slapping Ray around on the arm a bit. Ray fought him off to no avail, because the entire time, Leo was spitting truths at him that he couldn't handle: That he thought the stripper was doing an amazing job, sweetie, and they deserved a tip for having to put up with Ray's bullshit.

"Now I know why you made me go to the ATM," Ray muttered as he slapped a twenty into Leo's hand with a huff.

Leo slapped it right back into his hand. "You give it to them!"

"No! I don't wanna—"

"Oi, you two, quit being a bunch of pussies," Barry snapped, taking Ray by the wrist and holding it out through the bars. Ray shrieked in terror—what if there were booby traps? and he just thrust his hand into a slicer of some kind?

Instead, before Barry could pinch the nerves in Ray's wrist to get him to drop the twenty, the dancer swept down, legs wide apart, and Ray stared them right in the slick black helmet that reflected every dazzling part of that warehouse rave that Ray couldn't see beyond the stage. Ray and Barry stood there like a bunch of complete dumbasses as the dancer dragged the twenty out of Ray's fingers with nimble, calloused hands that sent shivers up Ray's spine.

The stripper had leather straps crossed over his collarbones where they then bracketed his chest. There were Xes over his nipples where black bandaids were crossed, and Ray realized then why the club was named as such.

Ray couldn't breathe for several, painful seconds when the dancer rose, turning on their heels as they went, and gave Ray and Barry a mighty view of their bulbous ass-cheeks.

And from that moment on, Ray refused to look at any other dancer on the floor. In fact, he refused to move. Period.

______

"I can't believe you tipped that dancer, like, eighty bucks!"

"Granted, five of that eighty was from me."

"That ten was from me."

"Ugh, you aren't making this any easier! Ray tipped that dancer sixty-five bucks and none of us stopped him! Isn't that what friends are supposed to do? Stop their friends from tipping strippers more than fifty bucks?"

"I was distracted by the concert! It's not my fault!"

Ray transcended at some point and wound up in his car, his hands on the wheel, but the four wheels outside just as stationary as his brain. He was transfixed, and every part of his mind was stuck in Bandaids wishing he had an ounce of dancing power like that. He couldn't tell what he was: turned on, impressed, or both. Sure, he could dance, but not like that.

Stripping was on another level he couldn't comprehend. He couldn't imagine being able to hoist his entire flimsy body up onto a pole like that, let alone flip upside down whilst doing so. And, sure, Ray was a trampoline master in his hay-day (elementary school) but he had nothing on the stripper he just tipped sixty-five bucks to.

"Do you think we could go back sometime?" Ray asked, turning to look at Leo, who made a point to turn once, twice, and three times to stare, dumbfounded, at Ray.

"Did... Did you not just hear the concern in my voice? Or do I need to make it more apparent?" Leo said.

Huey shrugged in the back seat and slapped his hands down on his lap, saying, "Hey, you insisted on bringing the guy."

Ray rolled his eyes and, as nonchalantly as he could manage, said, "I'm just saying that it was fun. I'm not saying we go specifically to see that... stripper... but just to go to Bandaids again!"

Behind him, Barry slapped his hand over his face.

"Unbelievable," Huey said.

"I'm telling you! Classic case of Pretty Woman—man meets hooker, man buys hooker, man falls in love with hooker," Leo said.

"I'm not in love!" Ray shrieked, voice shrill and thoroughly offended. Before they could start a tousle on the road, Huey cut between them, waving his hands desperately about to avoid such shenanigans from happening.

"Hey, hey, hey! Everyone, calm the fuck down! Your local voice of reason is talking here," Huey said.

"VOICE OF REASON!" Barry roared, laughing his ass off as Leo screamed with laughter. The car was absolute chaos all the way to the front door of the dormitory where Ray parked, pouted, and watched his friends leave.

After stepping out, Leo leant back in, a hand on the open passenger door, and said, "But seriously—that was fun. Text me when you've made it home?"

"Yeah, sure," Ray sighed with a light, cheerful smile. They said their farewells before Leo shut the door and chased after Huey and Barry as the clock on Ray's dash ticked towards midnight.

Now left alone to his thoughts, Ray's mind was left adrift thinking about the fluid sway of the dancer's hips like Shakira had nothing on them. This was an entirely different playing field that Ray was unfamiliar and oh-so taken with. The glamor, the outfits, the sheer strength in those muscular but lean arms. That dancer could probably snap Ray's leg in half.

"Are all dancers like that?" Ray wondered aloud, reminded then that he hadn't even... really looked at the other dancers. He sighed, almost dreamily, and decided that he'd have to go back again to decide.

Ray pulled into the parking lot behind the apartment and, after shutting his car off, remembered what he was going back to—or rather, who he was going back to.

Sora.

Shit.

"He's on a date though—how long do dates go, though?" Ray wondered, because he had never been on one.

At the exact moment Ray was walking across the parking lot, Sora Ikeda could be seen running like a banshee from the bus stop, duffle bag askew, jacket wide open, and makeup just barely smudged off. Thankfully, their apartment window was black as the pits of Hell, so Sora could only hope and dream that Ray hadn't come home to find Sora not there. He had a backup plan for that, though, but now it was just a matter of beating de Lucía there.

As he raced through the front door of the apartment building, he cursed and cursed all the way up the two flights of stairs to his floor. "Fuck, shit, fucking hell, Jesus H. Christ—" he seethed, skidding onto the second floor with his lungs on the verge of collapsing.

He slid up to his door, keys in hand, just as he heard the back door on the first floor open. It was probably Ray, but maybe not? No, probably was Ray.

Sora flew inside, swung the door shut, and locked it. Panting, he waited, tense as hell and eyes wild with panic. He started to take off his boots, and as soon as he started, he flew through them and kicked them to the side. It was all just in time for Ray to put his keys into the door and start turning.

"Fuck," Sora cursed under his breath. He flung open the laundry door, threw his duffle in, shut it, and skidded into the bathroom before Ray could see him.

Ray stepped into the pitch-black apartment just as hesitant as Sora, but for different reasons. He wasn't quite sure what to expect—How long did dates go, and would Sora bring his date through their apartment? He wasn't sure why Sora would, considering all the fuss he made about having a roommate.

Internally, Ray felt self-conscious about dating when he had a roommate around to worry about. He wanted to respect Sora's boundaries, dammit! Did that mean he just... wouldn't be able to bring his dates over? Would Ray even date?

"Of course I'll date," Ray reasoned under his breath as he sat on the step and peeled his shoes off. "I'm a handsome young man."

Behind the bathroom door, Sora had his ear to the door and bit his lip, thinking, What the fuck is this guy on? It didn't concern him, so he flicked on the bathroom light and got a frightening view of his raccoon eyes in the mirror. He startled with a gasp, heart nearly escaping through his ribcage.

"Jesus Christ Almighty," he huffed, a hand over his chest. He reached for his supply of cotton balls and (discrete) makeup remover in the medicine cabinet.

Ray shuffled down the foyer hallway, his feet passing through the stretch of light from underneath the bathroom door. That confirmed that Sora was home, but did not confirm who was or wasn't in Sora's bedroom.

Ray hesitated in the living room, his eyes on Sora's door. He wanted to know... but no, he shouldn't. But should he? "No, definitely not a good idea," he told himself, crossing his arms resolutely. He would not sneak into Sora's room just to see, just to take a peek. Today was not his day to die.

Ray started towards his room, only to hesitate again.

"Just one peek," he whispered. "Just open the door, just a crack, that's it."

The living room light flicked on. "What're you muttering about."

Ray yelped and spun around to where Sora was standing with a hand on the light switch, the other on his hip. He was wearing a pair of sweatpants that sagged around his ankles and a plain hoodie but somehow managed to look stellar in it.

"I, um, nothing," Ray lied, clasping his hands behind his back. "Just got back."

"So it seems," Sora huffed. Ray's wide, childlike eyes were still stuck on him as he went to the kitchen. It reminded him too much of the wonderment Ray displayed during the main, hour-long event at Bandaids. He would have had to have been blind to not see de Lucía standing there the whole damn time.

And his wallet was proof enough of de Lucía' stupidity.

Sora's cheeks flushed as he opened the fridge and ducked down, out of view. He paused at the sight of the mostly-empty fridge.

"How was... your date?"

Oh, fuck, I said I was on a date, Sora realized. "Fine. Did you go grocery shopping?"

Ray's cheeks turned red in an instant. "Uh, not yet, sorry. I'm gonna go tomorrow morning."

Before Sora could admit to wanting to go with, he caught sight of Ray staring at him. Sora never straightened himself so fast in his life. Fuck, could he not do squats anymore, or would that just remind Ray of who he stared at the entire damn concert?

A headache was coming on like a goddamn semi off the guardrails.

Sora massaged his temples as Ray asked, "Is your date here or...?"

"No. I told you, I'm not bringing people through here and you shouldn't either," Sora said.

Ray put his hands up in surrender. "All right, I won't. Geez."

Sora sighed and dropped his hands, saying, "Do you still have that twenty I gave you? I might as well just come with you to get my own groceries."

Ray grimaced and Sora thought to himself, Well, I guess he did give it back to me.

"I... might have used it at the strip club. But I can just cover twenty dollars of groceries for you! I just—I only brought cash with me and the twenty was part of it—"

"Dude, it's fine," Sora said, and when Ray visibly sighed, shoulders slumping with relief, he added, "And by the way: Twenty is way too big a tip for a stripper. Just saying."

Sora started towards the foyer archway and hesitated when Ray leapt at the chance to start a conversation over that. Sora shut his eyes and cursed internally as Ray said, "Really? How much are you supposed to tip them?"

Sora put a hand to the archway and resisted the urge to slap a hand over his face. Stupid. Not only that, but he could hear Ray's footsteps hurrying after him as he reached for the laundry door. He opened the laundry door, blocking Ray's passage through the hallway, or his view of Sora's lingerie dufflebag.

"I don't know. Like, a dollar per song? If you're forking out twenty bucks, that's asking for a lap dance or some shit," he said as he ducked down to the washing machine and started shoveling his lingerie into a mesh bag and tossing it in.

"Oh, God, really? But I never got a lap dance—"

"It was a rave, dude. There... probably weren't chairs around. And maybe the dancer couldn't leave the stage? I don't know."

On the other side of the door, Ray bit his lip, grimacing a little as he thought of the sixty-five dollars he was short of. He tucked his hands together behind his back, scuffing his feet on the wood flooring. "What if I... hypothetically speaking, what could you get with, like... sixty bucks?"

Sora could have bashed his head into the washing machine, but somehow managed to avoid doing so. He sighed through his nose and told himself that he was doing the Lord's work by shattering Ray's naiveté.

"You could get a private showing with that," he said.

The instant Sora said it, though, Ray's brain was running wild. How did Sora know this much? Only one way to find out, he thought just before asking, "How come you know so much about strip clubs?"

After a beat of silence, Ray heard the machine door shut. "Common sense," Sora said, and a moment later, the machine began to hum.

Ray didn't question it—though he should have, because no more than two paces away from him sat a washing machine full of lingerie that he would have recognized in an instant.