I was woken up from my five-hour break by a knock on my room door. I groaned and got up.
   "Doorman, I swear if you brought me customers during my only break, I will castrate you in your sleep." I grumbled. I walked over to the door and opened it.
   "Doorman, you know this is my only break," I said when I saw Doorman. Then I saw Rose behind him. "Okay I'll make an exception for her," I said. "But you better let me have my extra three hours."
   Rose blushed. Heh, cute, I thought. Doorman pinched the bridge of his nose. "Not why she's here Bird."
   "Then why—"
   "Let us in," Doorman interrupted me, "and I'll tell you."
   I raised an eyebrow at them, but walked back into my room nonetheless, flipping the light on.

The hot black guy let us into his room, and the first thing I noticed was the empty capsules on the coffee table. (Well, he wasn't black; his face gave it away that he was clearly Caucasian, but his skin was ink black.) There were also four lines of white powder on the table, with half of a straw next to them. He's been in here getting high, I realized. He didn't look any different right now than he did when I saw him yesterday. Probably slept it off already.
   I had first actually met him yesterday, but I've seen him before. It's kinda hard to forget a guy with pitch black skin and hair. I used to be the manager's pet when I worked here, but I was moved to be a pole dancer when Bird came in. He was younger than I was, I think. Later in the same year that Bird arrived was when I left.
Bird sat down on his couch, grabbing the straw and twirling it between his fingers. He looked a lot different than the boy that I saw tagging after the Beast. He was small and skinny then. Now he's taller than me, and evenly and well muscled, not to mention drop-dead gorgeous. Part of it is probably steroids and swinging around a pole too, but still. Puberty did him good.
The doorman— whom Bird calls 'Doorman'— stood over by the counter and looked disapprovingly at the drugs on the coffee table.
"What?" Bird said, stopping the twirling of the straw. "If you did nothing but have sex all day, wouldn't you want a bit of 'fun'?"
"Yes, but I would find ways other than blowing my money on cocaine and morphine," he replied. "Roben, you really should stop this—"
"Don't call me that." Bird snapped, pointing the straw at Doorman. So that's his name, I thought. I knew Bird was a nickname, but I never found out what his birth-given name was.
   "Fine. Bird, you should stop this. It's not healthy."
   "Is being pumped full of steroids healthy?" Bird replied, twirling the straw again. He took it and bent over the table, inhaling one of the lines of cocaine through the straw into his nose.
   I bit my tongue so that I didn't say anything to him about it. Doorman saw that, however, then looked at Bird snorting the cocaine.
"You know what," he said. "This is obviously a bad time. We'll come back some other time to present our offer."
He grabbed my wrist and pulled me out of the room before Bird could reply.

                 —/::-::\—

Okay, so the encounter with Rose and Doorman during my break went a little out of hand. Rose looked pissed at me. But it's been a few days, and Doorman told me that she just was upset about the drugs, and was over it now.
I know it's not good for me; the drugs. But it's addicting. Not the drugs themselves, but the false happiness that I get when I take or do them. There's so little in this hellhole that could make a person happy. I enjoy the sex, yeah; but it's never meaningful, so it's really just an empty feeling the whole time. At least drugs give me a feeling of happiness, even if it's false.
   Today I was on menu duty. I had just finished giving a guy in his thirties a blowjob (and got paid, of course) when Doorman told me that I had been bought out for a private room. I walked over to the room he had mentioned and walked in, having been told that the customer was already waiting. I turned around to see who it was and smirked.
"Well," I said to Rose. "Decided to actually order something this time?" I walked over to her on the couch and straddled her lap before she stopped me.
She looked up at my eyes. "So, are we gonna talk? I've seen many people swing their dicks in my face and it gets boring pretty fast. Also, I didn't get to talk to you last time, since you were too busy getting higher than the Empire State."
I raised an eyebrow at her. "You literally just bought me for a private lap dance."
"Well, I actually wanted to talk to you and give you a break," she replied.
I guess I must've made my 'done with this shit' face, because she laughed and added, "Is it better for you if we made out while we talk?"
"Yeah, cuz that's sorta what I do here."
She watched my face for a second, then grabbed me and pushed me onto the couch where she was. She took off her shirt— which, by the way, was hot as fuck— and sat on my lap, immediately kissing me. I can't say that I wasn't surprised.
I kissed her back, and the whole while she was asking me questions, most of which I only grunted in reply to. Things like "Are you okay? Physically and mentally?" Stuff like that. I could barely pay attention with her tongue in my mouth and her tits in almost full view, but I did my best.
   After a bit, when she started kissing me harder, I said, "You know you have to pay me for this." 
   She smirked against my lips. "I know," she said into my mouth, "I used to be doing the same damn thing."
   I pulled my lips away from hers. "I could give you a bit more than this for free if you'd like,"  I said lowly into her ear. I felt her shiver, but she said no.
   "But I could break you out of here for free," she said. "Give you a life. Give you a chance. You aren't a sex toy, Bird. You can be so much more if you let me help you out of here." Honestly, I was shocked. No one had ever suggested anything like that to me. Nobody seemed to care.
   "How?" I eventually said. "There are cameras everywhere."
   "Are there any windows? Or places without cameras?" She asked. I shrugged.
   "If there are I never see them."
   Rose groaned. "Then we have to do this the hard way. . . Will any bouncers chase after you if we just run out of here when a bunch of people leave?"
"Yeah, probably," I replied. "Or I'll get shot, they all carry guns."
   Rose thought again. "What if I distract them for you? Think they are dumb enough for that?"
   I shrugged. "I dunno. How did you get out?"
She stared at me for a moment, then shook her head. "My way wouldn't be possible within the next few days. Mine took years and I rather not go into detail."
"Okay," I said, nodding in understanding. "How am I getting out then?"
   She sighed and wrapped her arms around me, using my collarbone as a headrest. "I have no idea."
I looked around the room, then got an idea. "The vents," I said. I moved her off of me and straddled her lap, standing up over her and reaching towards the ceiling. I was aware that my dick was in her face now, and I was also aware that she was blushing like crazy, but I didn't care, so I didn't do anything about it. I touched the ceiling, then shifted and grabbed the bars of the ventilation shaft gate above us. I pulled the bars away so there was room for my fingers, then tore it from the ceiling. The ventilation shafts were big, so it would be easy to fit up there.
"Huh," Rose said from under me. "Let's just hope it leads outside and not to His office."
"These lead everywhere," I said. I bent the jagged edges of the shaft down so that we wouldn't lose any limbs when we climbed up. Rose stood up in front of me on the couch, looking up into the shaft too.
"Want me to come with? Or meet you outside?" She said.
I smirked. "Oh you're coming with me." Then I jumped and grabbed the rim of the vent, hauling myself up and into the ceiling. I looked back out and reached out to Rose, helping her up.
"I'll probably fall and alert somebody." She said.
   "Maybe, but if I get caught alone, they would know you had last bought me, and you would be in trouble," I countered. She grumbled something, and I smirked.
"Right." She eventually said. "Lead the way."
I began to crawl through the vents, occasionally looking into rooms through gates. My heart was pounding in my chest, but I managed to conceal it from affecting me. Soon we got to the gate above my room, and I grabbed the bars and pulled them out, slipping down and out of the vent.
Rose followed me, and looked around the room curiously. "What are we here for?" She asked, seeming to recognize the place.
   "I have money in here somewhere," I said, looking through drawers in my counter. So far all I found is boxes of XL condoms and little tubs of lube, but eventually I find a wad of cash stuffed in the very back of a drawer and pull it out.
"Want to bring those too?" Rose chuckled, seeing the condom boxes. I glanced back at her, smirking.
"May as well. You have pockets?" I said, tossing her a box when she nodded. She was sitting on my bed.
"Do you have any clothes?" Rose said, putting the box of condoms in her pocket. I noticed that she was trying to hide a small smirk. "I'd rather not bring you home with your thong as your only piece of clothing."
"Yeah," I grabbed a pair of sweatpants and slid them on, then a hoodie. Rose looked around the room after I tossed her one of the little tubs of lube and she maneuvered it into her pocket.
I nodded, then jumped back into the vent. I helped her up again, backing up so she was nearest to the gate gap. She looked down into my room, then turned to me and said, "Where next?"
"Outside," I said, crawling through the vent again. I could tell she relaxed a little— her breathing slowed to a normal pace— and she followed me.
   "My car is at the side of the building," she said from behind me as we crawled. "I'm not sure where this leads, but we could just sneak over to it. You'll probably have to hide in the back seat until we're out of this place's view."
   I nodded, peering through gates as we passed them. I finally found one that lead outside. "Here," I said as I kicked the gate off and slipped out.
Rose dropped down after me, glancing around for a minute. Then she grabbed my wrist and led me to her car, staying close to the wall. "How's your taste of the outside world?" She asked jokingly.
   I looked around as she dragged me to her car. "Shitty, but not too bad. Probably just the vibes of The Palace."
   Rose nodded. We get to her car (I'm assuming her car, at least) and she opens the door to the back seat for me. I crawled in and lay down on my stomach in the foot space. She got into the driver's seat and started the engine.
   "My name's Rose, by the way," she said. "Well, you already knew that."
   I chuckled a little. "Roben."
   Rose smiled at me from the mirror to acknowledge me. I felt the car moving as she drove, presumably out of the parking lot and away from the strip club. Eventually, she broke the silence we had formed and said, "Okay, you can come up now."
I looked through the window for a second before climbing into the passenger seat. Then I broke into a grin.
"We did it," I said, really to no one, but Rose turned her head a small bit towards me. "I'm free."