There was something about the dressing rooms that eased him, the girl's talk and laughter, the feeling of being surrounded by his own people. Though lately there was no place in the speakeasy where he felt entirely safe, not when even his own people were suspect, when the murders could have just as easily been inside jobs, someone trying to cut his feet out from under him. Leon moved restlessly past rows of women working industriously at their hair and faces before the lit mirrors, responding to greetings and flirtations with little more than curt nods. His girls knew a mood of his when they saw one. Most of them were fairly subdued themselves, too heartbroken over the death of the emcee to try and draw him out of his own blackness.
He paused outside of Aya's door. Not every entertainer had a dressing room of her own, but this one did. It was easy to see why, when men paid top dollar to get close to the Oriental exotic, to watch her perform her whirling sword dance, to have the privilege of sitting in a dark corner with her for a night, pouring her drinks, hanging on to every word. There had been offers of unbelievable sums to have more of her than a conversation; Leon had turned them down. He might have considered them at one point, if she were open to it, but he wasn't running a cathouse. He hadn't tried to ask her either, not after learning her secret.
"She" wasn't a she at all; there was a man under the costumes and cosmetics, a painfully attractive man with pale skin and narrow hips, delicate in every way, except when there was a sword in his hand. Leon should have kicked him into the street the moment he'd figured it out. Instead he'd kept silent, let him go on out of some obscure wish to protect him. And to protect his profits; it would be hard to let go of such a valuable commodity. But there would be no whoring him. He knew what had happened in a club across town, a man dressed like a broad dragged into an alley by ten mobsters, beaten to death. They all sinned every day, every vice imaginable perpetuated within these walls, but that kind of deviance could not be tolerated. Must be punished.
He found himself knocking on Aya's door, waiting for the low reply. He went inside and closed the door behind him, taking in the sight of the man done up like a scarlet flower, kimono sleeves draping from his arms with the sorrow of falling tears. That sleek sword of his was thrust into his sash and Leon found himself wondering, looking at him and picturing how easy it would be for that deathly sharp blade to open a young girl's throat. The murders had him suspecting everyone. His gut twisted with confusion and anger and lust as he looked at the enigma before him, silent.
When the door opened without a reply to his call he knew it had to be Leon. Rivalries in the speakeasy between the girls went without mention, they crested and fell out with the days of the week but Aya kept himself carefully from them if he could help it. At first there was resentment though it edged off into dull tolerance as he refused to change his stance. Aya was a frosty one. She kept to herself, though when a few girls ran themselves into a tough spot she was surprisingly tender with advice and the first to share her tips. Some girls took offense to that, others didn’t. Aya kept gentle tabs on the ones who did, just in case anything might happen to them before the murderer was caught.
He found it strange…
The longer he kept up the lie the more it felt like it was becoming something of a truth, like he was losing a grip on who he really was. There was a subtle power to being dressed as he did. Men said things to women that they wouldn’t to other men, confiding secrets, laying forth desires. He rejected all of them but that only seemed to draw them in to him more. They wanted the flame that he kept hidden behind all the ice and any hint of getting closer to that made them fall over themselves to help him. But he had to be careful. So far so good.
Aya regarded Leon through the mirror, deliberately going to pick up one of the many tubes of lipstick from his vanity and paint it on his lips with only half his attention focused on the task. The color? Red. Just like everything else. Screaming scarlet, shimmering blood. There was something in his boss’s eyes that reminded him of the looks the men he entertained gave him and he wondered when it edged its way in there. There was something else too…
“Something on your mind, boss?” He set the lipstick with a purse of his lips and recapped the tube before turning in his chair to face the brooding shadow that’d come into his room.
Leon looked him over, brooding. Everything about him was colored blood red: hair, kimono, lipstick, even fingernails. It was easy to imagine this waifish man cast as the angel of death who seemed to haunt his club as of late, but appearances were, after all, deceiving. There were any number of reasons he could have come here to pretend to be a woman in Leon's speak, but the stories of the entertainers really weren't so unique, when stripped down to bare essentials; to a girl, every one of them had come here to escape something. A husband, a baby. Poverty or abuse. Some past sin, some irreconcilable guilt. He wondered what Aya's was. The man dressed like a woman; why shouldn't he have the past of a woman, too?
He wondered what Aya would do if he went to him and clenched fingers in the red strands of his hair and held his head still while he covered his mouth. If he would welcome it or recoil from it. Maybe he would have wondered why he himself wasn't recoiling from the thought, repulsed by wanting another man, if it had been the first time. It wasn't and he had accepted that piece of himself long ago. It didn't matter, skin was skin. And money bought anything, men as well as women.
"Get up," he said quietly, ignoring the question. "Turn around. Let me see you." Maybe if he stared long enough and hard enough he would learn all of his secrets. The first revelation had come to him that way. It had been something about the tilt of Aya's jaw, the sharpness in his eyes as he'd whirled in the midst of one of his sword dances. It had been like a veil being stripped from his gaze, like Aya's clothes had fallen away to reveal what was beneath.
Not like he could tell his boss to go chase himself.
Aya gave Leon a sideways look before glancing back to the mirror, reaching up to touch the plain, black choker set tight around his neck. It hid the telling bob of his Adam’s apple and with how hard Leon was looking at him he figured the little check was worth the play at personal vanity. When he stood he did so with the same graceful ease that he used when he slid around the speak’s floor, half on the arm of the patron for the moment. It was different from the flow when he performed, that was sharper. Wildness tempered with the hard slam of discipline. His father had taught him how to use the sword. They did drills down the alleys behind their flat when he was a child.
He didn’t dwell on what his father might think to see him now, like this.
As he stood and stepped out of the way of his chair he smoothed his dress. The straight cut of the frock fell without hint to any curves beneath but to his luck that was the current trend of fashion and no one questioned the lack of hips or breasts. People didn’t just go out of their way to find what they weren’t looking for, half the reason his illusion held up as well as it did. The fact that he never lifted the hem of his dresses farther than where they fell at upper-calf kept the other bit safe.
He turned for Leon, a slow revolution showing off the red of his dress and the black blocks which hemmed the bottom of his dress, his sleeves and the folded over halves of the collar. Once finished he stood facing Leon again, the bared part of his forearm resting on the hilt of his sword jutting from the tied black sash holding the front of his dress closed. Aya tilted his chin up under Leon’s scrutinizing gaze, “Keen enough?”
He saw how easily Leon swept over the raids. It would be easy, so very easy, for this man to dust dried up blood under the rug as well.
His pulse went faster when Aya stood. He could feel it, the pounding of his blood as the man made a slow circle for him in his woman's guise, showing off the waifish thin body that so many people simply took as feminine without a second thought. He was such a beauty, so unbelievably fucking gorgeous and it was no wonder he was popular; there were nights when Leon sat on the balcony, in his place where he liked to smoke and drink and listen to the music and the flirting and the conversation all around him, watching Aya on some undeserving man's arm. He had thought before of calling him up to the balcony and seating him in his lap, making him straddle him, stroking him beneath his clothes. Caressing his cock in his hand and making anyone who watched think it was a woman's body he was touching under there.
Since the murders, especially the latest one, everyone had become a suspicion. This man had real skill with that sword in his sash, not just stagecraft. And still he wanted him, murderer or no, wanted him up on that balcony where he could tell the man without words that he knew his secrets.
He didn't answer Aya's question. Instead he reached behind him and locked the door to the dressing room.
The man stood in the middle of the room and he could have pulled the sword on him at any moment but still Leon came forward to catch him in his hands. He kept taking steps forward, a slow approach that forced the man back until he was pressed against his dressing table, their faces close together. "Who are you?" he murmured and there was something in his voice that was low and more caressing that he'd meant it to be. A hand slid down his ribs to his thigh, clenching through the fabric of the dress, drawing it up as though he wanted to twine it around his waist. Hands didn't venture into forbidden territory, not yet, but he looked him in the face for a moment and then he said, "If I wanted to get on my knees right now and put your cock in my mouth, would you let me?"
He paused outside of Aya's door. Not every entertainer had a dressing room of her own, but this one did. It was easy to see why, when men paid top dollar to get close to the Oriental exotic, to watch her perform her whirling sword dance, to have the privilege of sitting in a dark corner with her for a night, pouring her drinks, hanging on to every word. There had been offers of unbelievable sums to have more of her than a conversation; Leon had turned them down. He might have considered them at one point, if she were open to it, but he wasn't running a cathouse. He hadn't tried to ask her either, not after learning her secret.
"She" wasn't a she at all; there was a man under the costumes and cosmetics, a painfully attractive man with pale skin and narrow hips, delicate in every way, except when there was a sword in his hand. Leon should have kicked him into the street the moment he'd figured it out. Instead he'd kept silent, let him go on out of some obscure wish to protect him. And to protect his profits; it would be hard to let go of such a valuable commodity. But there would be no whoring him. He knew what had happened in a club across town, a man dressed like a broad dragged into an alley by ten mobsters, beaten to death. They all sinned every day, every vice imaginable perpetuated within these walls, but that kind of deviance could not be tolerated. Must be punished.
He found himself knocking on Aya's door, waiting for the low reply. He went inside and closed the door behind him, taking in the sight of the man done up like a scarlet flower, kimono sleeves draping from his arms with the sorrow of falling tears. That sleek sword of his was thrust into his sash and Leon found himself wondering, looking at him and picturing how easy it would be for that deathly sharp blade to open a young girl's throat. The murders had him suspecting everyone. His gut twisted with confusion and anger and lust as he looked at the enigma before him, silent.
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He found it strange…
The longer he kept up the lie the more it felt like it was becoming something of a truth, like he was losing a grip on who he really was. There was a subtle power to being dressed as he did. Men said things to women that they wouldn’t to other men, confiding secrets, laying forth desires. He rejected all of them but that only seemed to draw them in to him more. They wanted the flame that he kept hidden behind all the ice and any hint of getting closer to that made them fall over themselves to help him. But he had to be careful. So far so good.
Aya regarded Leon through the mirror, deliberately going to pick up one of the many tubes of lipstick from his vanity and paint it on his lips with only half his attention focused on the task. The color? Red. Just like everything else. Screaming scarlet, shimmering blood. There was something in his boss’s eyes that reminded him of the looks the men he entertained gave him and he wondered when it edged its way in there. There was something else too…
“Something on your mind, boss?” He set the lipstick with a purse of his lips and recapped the tube before turning in his chair to face the brooding shadow that’d come into his room.
Reply
He wondered what Aya would do if he went to him and clenched fingers in the red strands of his hair and held his head still while he covered his mouth. If he would welcome it or recoil from it. Maybe he would have wondered why he himself wasn't recoiling from the thought, repulsed by wanting another man, if it had been the first time. It wasn't and he had accepted that piece of himself long ago. It didn't matter, skin was skin. And money bought anything, men as well as women.
"Get up," he said quietly, ignoring the question. "Turn around. Let me see you." Maybe if he stared long enough and hard enough he would learn all of his secrets. The first revelation had come to him that way. It had been something about the tilt of Aya's jaw, the sharpness in his eyes as he'd whirled in the midst of one of his sword dances. It had been like a veil being stripped from his gaze, like Aya's clothes had fallen away to reveal what was beneath.
Reply
Aya gave Leon a sideways look before glancing back to the mirror, reaching up to touch the plain, black choker set tight around his neck. It hid the telling bob of his Adam’s apple and with how hard Leon was looking at him he figured the little check was worth the play at personal vanity. When he stood he did so with the same graceful ease that he used when he slid around the speak’s floor, half on the arm of the patron for the moment. It was different from the flow when he performed, that was sharper. Wildness tempered with the hard slam of discipline. His father had taught him how to use the sword. They did drills down the alleys behind their flat when he was a child.
He didn’t dwell on what his father might think to see him now, like this.
As he stood and stepped out of the way of his chair he smoothed his dress. The straight cut of the frock fell without hint to any curves beneath but to his luck that was the current trend of fashion and no one questioned the lack of hips or breasts. People didn’t just go out of their way to find what they weren’t looking for, half the reason his illusion held up as well as it did. The fact that he never lifted the hem of his dresses farther than where they fell at upper-calf kept the other bit safe.
He turned for Leon, a slow revolution showing off the red of his dress and the black blocks which hemmed the bottom of his dress, his sleeves and the folded over halves of the collar. Once finished he stood facing Leon again, the bared part of his forearm resting on the hilt of his sword jutting from the tied black sash holding the front of his dress closed. Aya tilted his chin up under Leon’s scrutinizing gaze, “Keen enough?”
He saw how easily Leon swept over the raids. It would be easy, so very easy, for this man to dust dried up blood under the rug as well.
Reply
Since the murders, especially the latest one, everyone had become a suspicion. This man had real skill with that sword in his sash, not just stagecraft. And still he wanted him, murderer or no, wanted him up on that balcony where he could tell the man without words that he knew his secrets.
He didn't answer Aya's question. Instead he reached behind him and locked the door to the dressing room.
The man stood in the middle of the room and he could have pulled the sword on him at any moment but still Leon came forward to catch him in his hands. He kept taking steps forward, a slow approach that forced the man back until he was pressed against his dressing table, their faces close together. "Who are you?" he murmured and there was something in his voice that was low and more caressing that he'd meant it to be. A hand slid down his ribs to his thigh, clenching through the fabric of the dress, drawing it up as though he wanted to twine it around his waist. Hands didn't venture into forbidden territory, not yet, but he looked him in the face for a moment and then he said, "If I wanted to get on my knees right now and put your cock in my mouth, would you let me?"
Reply
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