warnings; smoking, swearing, ual references, strippers (or is that also a ual reference idk orz) and yea uh bad stuff 

The amber glow of the cigarette’s end is stark against the black of the night.

Luhan leans back and exhales slowly, watching as puffs of grey wisp from his lips and spiral into the cold air, dissolving into nothingness.

It is another one of those nights, the hard ones where he wants nothing more than to flee back to the safety of his house, hide in the bathtub away from the judging gazes and scrub away at his skin until the traces of dirt are gone. Of course, scraping at his skin will do nothing but irritate him when the impurity is embedded inside him, further than skin and flesh.

He takes another slow drag, savouring the acrid burn as the smoke crawls down his throat, before finally tossing the stub to the ground and burying it into the ground with a sharp heeled boot.

Yongguk calls for him again from the bar. He’s angry, swearing and threatening to fire him if he doesn’t get his inside this instant.

The thought makes Luhan laugh, because the XO Nightclub is nothing without him; he brings in more than half the customers and both Yongguk and himself very damn well know it.

His throat aches. He lets out a small, scratchy cough behind a curled fist and straightens in time to flash a coy smirk to the latest visitors, a group of middle aged men that stare at his bare legs hungrily, eyes clouded with lust.

Yongguk waits for him at the counter with crossed arms and his mouth set in a thin line.

“They were expecting your solo three minutes ago.” He rumbles in his typical baritone. Luhan blows a kiss to him, not bothering to answer as he sashays to the stage in that way that he is so used to.

Same old, same old. When the curtains are closed, he sighs ever so softly, bending over to adjust his thigh highs so that a small strip of skin peeks out below the leather of his shorts. sells, they all know that much. When he’s done he turns to flash a quick thumbs up to Chanyeol, who has been patiently awaiting his signal. With that, the velvet curtains are drawn back and the dim lights fall onto him again, the neon strobes contrasting harshly with his pale skin and giving him a tone that is somewhere on the line between silver and sickly.

He hasn’t even touched the pole yet and the crowd is jeering, throwing green bills that flutter around at his feet. Of course, it is easy to entertain an audience when they are half-drunk and their heads are fogged with lust. Luhan turns over his shoulder to shoot them an intense stare before stalking over to the silver rod, wrapping a leg around it smoothly. The routine is the same, every day, but the crowd falls for it every time.

Luhan wonders, as he slides down the length of metal into a split, how many of these men that are grovelling at his feet right now have wives waiting for them at home. He wonders if those rings that reflect in the silvery yellow light mean nothing to the -hungry businessmen below. It’s disgusting, he thinks to himself as he drops low enough to let one of them tuck a couple of hundreds into his belt before darting out of their reach again with a plastic smirk. It’s pathetic how little they regard marriage, commitment, when others could only dream of it.

But he’s in no position to speak of commitment when the only thing he’s physically comfortable with is a stripper pole and his only source of sanity is the bottom of a shot glass.

After all, sells.

He sits silently, nursing his margarita with half-closed eyes. In another realm, Luhan dreams of pretty houses with picket fences, of sitting down to a warm meal and company, of having someone to hold him close and love him. Love is distant, a mere concept to someone who hasn’t had the chance to experience it for as long as Luhan.

The men he sleeps with promise him a happy life, assuring him that they will treasure him forever if he stays, treat him like a princess. But drunken words are nothing but drunken words, and when morning comes he’s left lying in a cold bed with a stranger, forced to face the reality that the man he has just slept with has a wife waiting for h