Chapter Text
October 20th – twenty minutes earlier
Angel Dust rested his cheek against the backstage doorframe, peering with amusement and fascination at Henry, still perched on a stool at the counter, occasionally talking to Rei.
He had spent the evening secretly observing him as he worked – in and out of the privè or small rooms where he was called by the higher-paying clients, usually friends of Valentino.
Valentino. He hadn’t crossed paths with him all evening, even though he had felt his gaze on him especially when he approached Henry.
Did you invite him on purpose to make him jealous?
He mentally silenced the annoying little voice, taking a deeper breath to release the tension and returning to look at Henry’s profile, who was currently finishing his last round of drinks.
The place was closing now and the last stragglers were promptly directed towards the exit by the bouncers.
“Angie, baby, are you taking a drink with us?”
Anthony turned to intercept one of his colleagues – a rather striking girl, with long blonde hair, caramel skin and a red heart tattooed on her right arm with her ex’s name crossed out by a very telling x.
She had told him that story who knows how many times.
“Thanks, sugar, but I’ll get ready right away. I have someone waiting for me.” he replied, with an eloquent smile, tilting his chin towards the room and pointing out Henry to the other girl, who in the meantime was lazily watching Rei tidy up.
The blonde scanned Husk up and down a couple of times, before looking back at Angel with a naughty smirk.
“Did you find yourself a nice daddy, anh?”
Anthony chuckled slightly, amused, running a hand through his blond tuft with deliberate nonchalance and ending up scattering glitter everywhere.
“When you know how to do it, baby.” he concluded the gesture with the unmistakable sign of a handjob, making the dancer and some other colleagues laugh as they passed by on their way to the bar.
“As you wish, honey. See you on Monday!”
Angel saluted her with a flying kiss, following her with his gaze for a couple of moments before leaving and heading towards his dressing room.
The evening had been less worse than he had predicted: Husk seemed to have taken to his job as performer better than expected, Valentino hadn’t shown up – neither he nor his irritating Wall Street boyfriend – and the johns who had requested his ‘services’ had only been a couple of the regulars. Travis, for one, who just needed a properly done blowjob to last two minutes.
As he opened the door to his dressing room and began to take off his stage costume, he thought that perhaps he should have tell to Husk that in that club he didn’t just dance , but if being a performer could be a fun and intriguing surprise, working as a hooker was perhaps not so easy to explain.
The truth is that he didn’t want to explain it, considering that this would inevitably lead to many other questions that he wasn’t sure he wanted to answer.
Or maybe, he didn’t know how to answer.
“Next time.” he muttered to himself, stepping over the shorts piled on the floor and slipping on his cyclamen-colored dressing gown with fur-lined sleeves – the one Valentino had given him one of the many times he wanted to make amends for something.
A ‘next time’ he hadn’t figured out ‘when’ yet, but revealing the guy you just started seeing that you’re a hooker and that your ex, the owner of the club, still takes a percentage of your sex work would probably be a bit much for a first date.
First date.
Anthony looked at himself in the vanity mirror, a silly smile lit up by the pink lights that ran along the frame.
He no longer knew whether it was the feeling of a first date or Husk himself that was making something flutter in the pit of his stomach.
A part of him, as he soaked the cotton ball in makeup remover, decided that it didn’t matter.
The knock knock!’s sound made his eyebrows rise as he turned toward the entrance.
It was a little too early for Husker, he had given Rei other instructions.
“It’s me, amorcito, may I come in?”
Valentino’s voice – warm and velvety, marked by a clear latino accent – sent a shiver down his spine.
He could never define the shivers Valentino gave him, whether they were fear, awe, or excitement. Maybe all three of them, as Charlie had speculated in their endless therapy sessions.
However, they had never reached a proper answer.
“Come on in.”
And as always, Angel was incapable of leaving him out – of his door or of his life, it was just the same, fucking old story.
The one who entered the door was a latino man much taller than Anthony with an athletic build and black, almost blue hair, tied in many thin braids that reached more or less under his ears. A very well-groomed goatee and a pair of almost drawn-on mustaches. Glasses with red lenses, heart-shaped, and a sort of coat of the same color with a fur-lined zebra collar. An open black shirt to show off his mulatto pectorals, several chains and rings and nipple piercings all gold – like the canine that mirrored Angel’s – and… A decidedly bulky bouquet of red roses.
That made Anthony’s heart skip a beat, a sensation he recognized with great guilt and a little bit of shame: pleasure.
Valentino’s spell over him had never been broken, even though somewhere he heard Charlie’s voice explaining that all the attitude Val had towards him was a symptom of the toxicity of their relationship: exaggerated gifts, tons of messages, overwhelming compliments. Everything according to love-bombing script.
And yet.
Valentino smiled at him, languidly.
“A special gift for my special star, to celebrate tonight.” he began, closing the door and moving into the dressing room to find a vase to place them in. “You were divine, Angel.”
The latter cleared his throat, closing the gown over his chest and remaining seated at the vanity, trying to remain lucid.
“Thanks Val, but I was only doing my job.”
“Bullshit.” he cut short, placing the red roses in the vase – which he had just filled with a bottle found in the dressing room – one by one. “There are those who just do their job and those who put their heart and soul into it. You, cariño, are a natural.” he complimented, peeking over his shoulder.
Anthony met his dark eyes in the reflection of the mirror and smiled almost shyly, while the little voice inside his head insulted him again.
He started removing the makeup, in the silence of the dressing room punctuated by the rustling of the roses being arranged in the vase by Valentino – he kept an eye on him in the reflection, carefully, just in time to meet his gaze again as he stood behind him and placed both hands on his shoulders.
He couldn’t help but flinch, again, in that heady mix of fear and excitement.
That was the real drug Val had made him addicted to: an intoxicating poison that had entered his bloodstream and that the months of rehab had not managed to completely remove from his mind. He might not have taken drugs for almost a year – a very long year of which he even counted the days – but it was Valentino, the real substance from which he could not detox from.
He closed his eyes in a soft breath, feeling the man’s thumbs caress him over the fabric of his dressing gown in a sort of slow massage.
“Who’s that old timer you were hanging around tonight, hm?” he asked in his ear, leaning forward a little and pressing his fingers harder into his shoulders. It didn’t hurt, not yet , but it was a warning that made Anthony re-open his eyes and regain his alertness.
Did you invite him on purpose to make him jealous?
No, I invited him specifically to see how different he is from Valentino.
He blinked a few times and stared in the mirror into his ex’s dark eyes, which weren’t exactly friendly at the moment.
He cleared his throat.
“A friend.” At least that’s what he could call him. “I invited him out.”
“So now that’s how it works.” Val continued smoothly, not letting go of his shoulders and starting to squeeze harder; Anthony winced slightly in pain, but still didn’t move. “Giving freebies to the first guy you meet? If you feel lonely, Angelito, you know you can always come to me.”
Anthony scratched a half-laugh from his vocal cords, without a hint of joy.
“To you and Vox, you mean.”
“Oh you know baby, Vox ain’t the jealous type. And–”
Val’s right hand slid down from his shoulder to push aside the hems of his gown and slide right there on Angel’s still-glittered chest; he held his breath as he felt that touch smudge a little on the pink heart painted on his skin.
He shivered again, in that strange mix of feelings that went straight to his head.
“–we could have a lot of fun, us three.”
Anthony took another ragged breath before shaking off Valentino’s hands and rising from the stool, away from the vanity and the man. He stepped back without turning his back to him, closing his gown and straightening his posture to do one of the hardest things in the world: say no to Valentino.
He stared at him, seriously.
“I’ve told you many times that we’re over, Val.”
“And I told you that I don’t give a shit about what you want, Angie.”
“I’m clean now, I don’t–”
“Yeah yeah, no more drugs, okay.” Val raised his hands, dramatically, in surrender. “Be my guest to no longer having fun in your fucking life. But you know you love me, baby.”
“That’s not the point.”
“So what is it, huh?”
The tone was getting louder. It was probably also due to his latino attitude. Valentino was like a match: he set everything on fire, without stopping.
“Have you forgotten who you work for?” Val moved, closing the distance between them in a couple of steps that made Angel retreat further until he bumped against the small table on which the vase of roses was sitting.
“Have you forgotten who you give the money you make when you get fucked like the pathetic slut you are? Have you forgotten who owns you?!”
Anthony watched Val’s face grow redder and redder with rage as he yelled at him; while part of him just wanted to curl up and agree with him – the part that the other had spent years shaping and conditioning – the other part, the part that had always been there, lifted his chin proudly and looked at his abuser.
“You may be my boss, Val, but you don’t own me anymore for months,” he replied. “And now, go fuck yourself and your Wall Street Prince.”
He barely had time to finish the sentence when Valentino’s backhanded slap hit him on his right cheek; the rings hurt more than usual and the impact made him lose his balance just enough to hit the table again and knock the vase and all the roses to the floor.
Water, shards, angry tears and a hand on his throbbing cheek, Anthony watched his furious ex march out of the dressing room as he lit a red-smoked cigarette and disappeared down the hallway, cursing in Spanish.
Just like a drug, what remained after Valentino was a down that threatened to devour him.
Every. Fucking. Time.
“Hey, Tony, is everything–”
Confused and still slightly shocked, what he didn’t expect to see – his eyes still a little swollen with tears – was Henry’s amber gaze staring at him from the door that had just opened under his knock.
No, he definitely didn’t need an answer.
October 20th – present
He had finished removing his makeup and getting ready to leave in silence; Henry hadn’t spoken, or asked any questions. He had sat down in one of the dressing room chairs, pushing aside a bulky, shocking pink ostrich feather boa and checking that there wasn’t too much glitter – but not paying much attention to it, really. He had waited calmly, without rushing him.
He had ignored his sniffling and the spare tears, meeting his gaze in the mirror in a soft, welcoming silence, tinged with a gloomy anger that Anthony sensed perfectly well was not directed at him.
When Tony had slipped into an oversized lilac hoodie, a pair of black leggings and his usual black Docs with fuchsia laces, having also retrieved that unlikely teddy jacket, equally fuchsia, Husk had preceded him out of the dressing room and they had exited through the back entrance.
They had waited for a taxi and, with Anthony still silent, Henry had spoken for him, asking the driver to drop them off at a 24/7 diner in Brooklyn.
So it was four in the morning when Anthony found himself faced with a full menu – cheeseburger, greasy fries and strawberry milkshake – that Husk himself had placed under his nose, before sitting down in front of him and taking a bite of his burger.
“Eat.” the man muttered, mouth full, staring at him eloquently.
Anthony sighed, trying to untangle the knot in his stomach and picking at a few fries, which did the trick: he slowly began to relax, while a jukebox in the background played a series of corny songs chosen by a small group of drunks in the corner of the diner.
They remained quiet for a few more moments. Husk was the first to break the silence game.
“I thought you only picked up dog shit.” he said lighty, looking up at him a little with amusement.
Either he was taking a long way around it, or he was trying not to directly address what happened. Either way, Anthony found himself chuckling a little, shoveling more fries into his mouth.
“Yeah.” he followed the trail of that conversation. “You know, I could have told you when I was sucking you off but—” a knowingly mischievous wink. “Surprises are more fun.”
Husk, the picture of nonchalance, deliberately ignored the provocation; Anthony swore to himself that no one, no one had ever had such an effect on him.
What kind of man remains unmoved when there are sex-jokes involved?
Certainly not the same one who had fucked him from behind, standing against the sink, because they even hadn’t had time to–
“... doing this?”
“Anh?” Anthony blinked a couple of times, coming back to earth. He met Henry’s amber eyes again, who was looking at him calmly as before.
“I said, how long have you been doing this?”
He's showing interest in you only out of courtesy, Anthony, don't get your hopes up.
Valentino’s voice always had a stinging comment, whenever someone addressed Angel in a certain way. And now, thanks to that adorable bitch of his sister – she had saved his life by grabbing him by the hair, but god how she could still get on his fucking nerves – he didn’t even have the drugs to keep that voice quiet, drowning her in a sea of white dust.
He went back to eating his fries.
“Five years, give or take.” he explained, picking one up and dipping it into his milkshake under Husker’s perplexed gaze. “I used to dance in another club, then one night Valent–”
Again, the thought got stuck in his throat.
His now purple cheek – a bruise where the ring had caught it, which had caught the cashier’s eye – throbbed again, and suddenly Angel seemed to forget how to articulate a sentence.
He swallowed dryly, looking away and silently going back to eating his fries.
“Valentino.”
It was Husk’s voice who finished the name out loud, before taking another bite of his now almost finished burger.
Angel instinctively sunk his head into his shoulders, sinking a little into the white wool scarf that he had wrapped around his neck as he left the club and that he had not yet taken off. Maybe the courage to look Henry in the face was in there, who could say.
Above all, the hilarious thing was that Anthony would never have foreseen that the embarrassment of the evening was not due to the surprise of his work as a performer but for something else entirely.
“He’s my boss. And my ex.”
A small syllable that didn’t even begin to capture all that Valentino meant to Angel: the reason he had started taking drugs, filming porn and working as a hooker. The reason that had made him addicted, weak and in love. The reason he had injected himself with a dose he knew would kill him, ‘cause it was the only act of rebellion he could have come out with.
He had never confessed it to anyone; even talking about it openly with Charlie was difficult, let alone telling the man he had asked out after an almost-fuck and a night of wonderful sex.
So much for avoiding the ‘ex’ talk on the first date.
In fact, he munched on his pierced tongue and stayed silent.
Husk’s heavy sigh after a few moments caught his attention and he looked back at him.
“Look, kid,” he began, crumpling up the burger wrapper. “I’m no one to tell you what you should do, but relationships of this–”
“We’re not together anymore.” he specified, cutting him off and straightening his chin to look at him.
Henry rubbed his salt‘n’pepper muzzle, as if searching for the right words.
“Relationships of this kind–” he continued, “–don’t end just because someone said ‘okay that’s enough’. It’s a bit more complicated, huh?”
The rhetorical question clearly implied that Husker imagined how Anthony felt and what kind of cobweb he had gotten himself tangled in.
A part of him felt a kind of immediate relief, as if the knot in his stomach had loosened even more. He reached for the fries again, to eat them a little more hungrily as Husk continued his speech.
“I’m still having a relationship with my wife, despite the divorce. And so are you with this–” he seemed to be searching his brain for something that perhaps wasn’t too offensive, but given his grimace, the venture was a total failure.
“Asshole?” Anthony suggested, dipping another fry into his milkshake.
“I’d have said ‘piece of shit’, but I guess ‘asshole’ would work too. Will you please stop with that crap?” the last part of the sentence was decidedly disconnected from the rest and stopped Angel from yet another dip in the milkshake.
He blinked, looking innocent.
“What?”
“How the fuck can you eat them like that?”
Anthony looked down at the fry half-submerged in the pink foam of strawberry milkshake, before looking up to meet Husker’s amber eyes in an amused smirk.
“You should try it.”
“Not a fucking chance.”
“Come ooooon whiskers ~” he sing-songed, holding the fry out under Henry’s nose and jiggling it a little, a mischievous smirk on his lips. “Trust me, huh?”
The other narrowed his gaze, looking at him with a deeply skeptical expression, before giving an exasperated snort; he opened his mouth and allowed Anthony to pop the fry into his mouth. The blond lingered with his thumb on his lower lip a moment or two too long, perhaps, before letting him chew.
“So?”
Henry swallowed, silently considered the verdict before metaphorically ruffling his fur and muttering an assent, which made Anthony wiggle his brows with a knowing look.
“See? You can’t judge a book by its cover.”
“That’s for sure.”
Judging by the way he was now staring at him, Angel was no longer sure that the conversation was about the bizarre combination of milkshake and fries.
Was it flush what he felt burning on his cheeks?
He decided he didn’t want an answer as he grabbed the cheeseburger.
“Anyway.” Henry continued. “Relationships like this always suck. It’s all fun and games at first, and then you wonder how the fuck you ended up letting your partner control everything you do.”
“Speaking from experience, Husky?” Anthony retorted, rather scathingly, chewing on his sandwich.
The other stared at him, raising his thick left eyebrow.
“Yeah.”
Oh.
“So your wife–”
“Ex wife.”
Anthony waved his free hand in a very Italian way, dismissing the clarification but reiterating the question, which made Henry shake his head.
“No, Lidia– Her name’s Lidia.” he clarified, as if it wasn’t already clear enough. “Lidia is not to blame for the failure of our marriage. No.” he shook his head, without elaborating further on this detail that Anthony noted somewhere, with a curiosity he would hardly forget. “I had other relationships before Lidia. And the Vegas environment is… One of a kind.”
The amount of personal information Henry was reeling off was even juicier than the cheeseburger. Other relationships? Las Vegas?
Who are you, Henry Husker?
But before he could delve further into this, the other spoke again.
“I was saying that I’m no one to give you advice on what to do, but working as an employee in your ex’s club doesn’t seem like the best thing in life.”
Anthony muttered a sarcastic sound, his mouth full, accompanied by a look that seemed to say ‘yeah, no shit ’, earning another vaguely exasperated sigh from Henry.
“You’re good.” Angel watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed, and he smirked languidly. “I bet Angel Dust could get a job anywhere.”
“Sure thing.” The blond commented, shoving the last bite of the burger into his mouth. “If you’re really from Vegas, you know how the showbiz works. You think someone would risk stepping on Valentino’s toes by hiring me?”
Husk mulled it over, leaning back in his chair with a frown.
He had probably answered himself.
“And working only as a dog sitter?”
“Not enough. Shit, do you really live in Manhattan or are you just pretending?”
“I live in Brooklyn.”
“Ok Mr. Wiseass, you lived in Manhattan, so you know how fucking expensive it is.”
Husk glanced unimpressed at the last fry that Anthony pointed at him, like an accusing finger.
“You must have some other interests besides rubbing yourself on poles and giving boners to those who watch you.”
“Mmmh like yours, babycakes?”
“Anthony.”
The latter sighed heavily, watching Henry’s expression become more serious than before.
He looked away again, fidgeting with the empty paper from the fries basket.
“... Photography.”
“What?”
“I studied photography for a while, in college. I never finished it, but–” he shrugged.
Here’s yet another story he never told anyone: the failure of his college career, which lasted just long enough to take a couple of exams and end up screwing the professor’s assistant in the faculty bathroom.
His father hadn’t liked that one bit.
Come to think about it, his troubles had all started from there.
Henry looked at him, interested.
“Nice.” an ordinary comment, perhaps, but in the man’s low, calm tone it sounded to Anthony like the greatest of compliments.
Not that he didn’t like his job, that wasn’t the problem. The problem was called ‘Valentino’ and until he could get away, his career as a sex worker would always be conditioned by him.
“You could combine it with the things you like: dogs and sex.”
Angel looked at Henry as if a third arm had grown out of his forehead and that arm was waving at him in a friendly way.
Which potential partner would not take advantage of such a speech to dissuade the other person from pursuing a certain type of career but would instead support him or her without prejudice?
The same one who apparently doesn’t get my sex jokes.
Anthony Scavo stared at Husk as something inside him moved, unstoppable: a sort of marble that began to slowly roll downwards, on an inclined plane. Something he hadn’t really fully realized, because if he had stopped to think about it he would have been terrified.
And screwed.
Instead, he smiled at him; slow, soft, sweet. A smile that implied a ‘thank you’, to which Henry responded by bowing his head slightly in a placid and amused nod.
“Maybe not both things at the same time.”
Angel burst out laughing, heartily, shaking his head and rubbing his cheek with his palm before propping his elbow on the table.
“You’re an idiot, whiskers.”
“So I’m told.”
The group of drunks had left their seats at the jukebox, staggering out of the diner as the last song selected came on – or maybe it was a random choice, who could say.
As the words of ‘Lonely Dancers’ echoed through the empty venue – save for a very bored waitress playing with her cell phone – and the yellow lights of Brooklyn confirmed that New York truly never sleeps, Henry stood up before Anthony’s eyes.
He stared at the outstretched hand, blinking a couple of times.
“Every first date must have a dance, right?”
The blond tilted his head slightly to his right shoulder, to stare at him flirtatiously.
“Who taught you how to court someone, Husky, the Fifties?”
“You danced for me, at the club,” he replied. “So now shut the fuck up and dance with me.”
Anthony didn’t know what else to say. He swallowed the ready answer in a sharp, smug smile, staring at that hand for another moment before taking it and rising to his feet.
He intertwined his long fingers with the man’s, taking a half step forward to press himself against him and rub his uninjured cheek against his forehead – given the height difference – for a languid and fond caress. His other hand rested on his back, and more than a dance it was a sort of hug.
He breathed in Henry’s scent: the same cologne he wore to work mixed with smoke, the leather of his jacket and something much more personal.
“Let’s see what you can do,” he murmured, with a hint of amusement, leaving him to lead the dance.
Husk gave a playful cocky snort, placing his hand on the small of the blond’s back – a gentleman, just like at the club – and began to sway completely randomly to the tune of a song that sang about forgetting the boy who didn’t love you, that everything would be okay, and that that night he would belong to the man who held him in his arms.
Even if it was just for one night, Anthony thought, please let this be real.