a/n by the way I should mention that if you are not comfortable with the use of an alias/alter-ego name you should probably unsub :^) 

[also there are important notes at the end so please read ending notes ok ty]

“Well, first of all, do I go in as Zitao, or?” Zitao asks as the application sheet loads on the screen of his laptop. “Zitao is a masculine name and I’m pretty sure people aren’t stupid.”

“Oh, , you’re right,” his best friend says. “Well, we could give you a fake name. That’s what aliases are for.”

“I’m really bad with names so you’re going to have to come up with it, Han,” Zitao tells him, and his best friend rolls his eyes and shakes his head as he turns his attention back to the computer with a thoughtful expression on his face. Zitao wonders distantly why he hadn’t thought before of the fact that it would be much too easy for his employers to trace him and expose him with the name Zitao since everyone that has ever met him has known him as Zitao. Unfortunately, his mother never had any other children for Zitao to steal the names of.

“What about Yingtao?” Luhan asks him, and Zitao’s brows furrow. “Like, you know, the word cherry. Like how your name means peach.”

“Is that a feminine name?”

“It can be. Cherries are pretty feminine.”

“We’re ualizing fruit now?”

“Listen,” Luhan laughs and raises a hand as he signals for the boy to calm himself. “I think we should stick with something relatively close to your name because sibling names can sometimes work like that, and this way if somebody calls you Tao, people won’t get confused and lose their minds. Gosh, I have the best ideas.”

“Well,” Zitao grabs him by the arm as his friend begins to type in the kid’s email and house address. It’s great and all that Luhan was so generous to help him because truthfully, it’s petrifying applying for a new job. It feels as though all of his previous experience went flying out of the window the second he pressed apply. “Say I do go by Yingtao. What - what about my résumé?” 

Though, he can tell that his friend doesn’t quite understand his question, or perhaps why he is asking it, judging by the confused glance he shoots him. “We write down everywhere you’ve previously worked, and we print it out and bring it to the interview along with your degree?”

“No, I mean - ” he sighs, wishing he could portray what he was feeling better, “what about my… gender and name and stuff?”

Ah. “We lie.”

Well, yeah, he got that. He thought that was obvious. “No, I mean, how do we lie? They’ll no doubt want my birth certificate and my social security number for taxes and stuff, and my birth certificate says I’m male and also says my name is Zitao.”

Oh, that’s what he means. Luhan doesn’t have very much experience in forgery - just a little bit from a few months ago when he helped a friend land a job in brassiere crafting which required previous professional tailoring experience. His friend hadn’t been a seamster for very long, but was in fashion school and did have taught experience. However, he’s not sure he ever forged more than a regular résumé - and definitely not a birth certificate, at that. “I could try to forge it,” he says, and Zitao rolls his eyes. 

“If I wake up one day and you’re behind bars, don’t be surprised when I won't bail you out.”

He laughs, “Don’t worry, I’d take a bullet for you, kid. This is all for you and your mother’s wellbeing.”

“Okay, well, say we do forge it. What then? These guys are professionals, won’t they, like - know?”

“Not if you’re good enough at the forgery. The worse you are at it, obviously the less real it’s going to look. I have a little bit of previous experience, but not much, so I might have to work on this all night for you.”

“Uh, you need sleep. I don’t think so.”

“Tao,” he laughs. “I’m fine, trust me. This is how it’ll play out, alright? We forge your birth certificate. Yay. Perfect. Your social, obviously there’s nothing I can do about that but they don’t really use that to look at your gender or your name. After that, we send the application online, and we hope and pray for the best. Then after that, we can start getting your hairy waxed.”

“Okay, but what if - ” he stills, frowning. “Wait, what?”

“Nothing!”

“Wait, no!”

Luhan’s grabbing the phone before Zitao can catch him, a literal -eating grin plastered across his lips. “Why? What’s wrong? What if you like having smooth legs?”

“I’ll be a hairy woman, then! I don’t want to be waxed!”

“Trust me, it’ll be fine. I’ll call a salon, they’re professionals, they’ll know what to do.”

“No!” He tries again, hands shaking. “No salon. No.”

The blonde frowns, his grip on the phone slackening. Has he upset him? That hadn’t been his intention at all, but he had assumed that having perfectly smooth legs would give Zitao a confidence boost, considering he had been too shy to even go outside in the skirt because of his legs. He’d thought Zitao would have liked it. “Would you rather me do it? I can make a sugar-based wax, and plus I don’t really want you to hurt yourself. I don’t think melted skin is exactly a fashion-forward look.”

The statement helps cool Zitao’s nerves just a bit, the tremble in his hands stilling as his breathing slows. Stupid ing anxiety. “What do you mean sugar wax?”

“You know, sugar and lemon juice. Boil it, and it becomes waxy and sticky. It also hurts less.”

“How do you know that?”

Cough. “I waxed my once.”

“On second thought, I’ll just stop asking questions. Thanks.”

He watches as Luhan walks him through the steps of making said wax, as he eyeballs a hefty amount of sugar to pour into a pot, and lets Zitao pour in the lemon juice. Just enough to make it wet, he says, and Zitao doesn’t even want to think about how many innuendos his friend has made today. The mixture soon begins to boil, and Zitao’s hands shake nearly enough to drop the wooden spoon on the floor. “Why am I agreeing to this?” He asks aloud in the middle of stirring, and his best friend has the audacity to smirk at him. “This doesn’t seem exactly fair.”

“It’s not supposed to be fair. It’s supposed to help you because life isn’t always fair. And trust me, I wish I could make it fairer for you, Tao, but I’m trying to make it more possible to keep you out of trouble, here.”

He sighs, “At this point, I should’ve picked the work. Maybe at least then I wouldn’t have to sacrifice my pride so much.”

Luhan doesn’t answer him this time, and he watches as his best friend removes the pot from the stove and lets the wax cool briefly, the bubbles minimizing and settling down. “Now, you obviously don’t want to put this on you immediately,” he explains as he brings the pot over to the dining table and instructs Zitao to sit. “We’re not trying to burn you, here. And the hair always grows back but it grows back after… let’s see, with your hair type… I’d say maybe a month? Two months?”

He blanches, “Two months? You mean I’ll have to do this again?”

“Tao.”

“Sorry.”

The blonde gives the wax a few moments to cool as he stirs it occasionally, and Zitao watches as the stirring becomes gradually slower and slower, as if it’s taking more strength to do so as time wears on. Then, his best friend reaches out a palm and says, “Give me your arm. I’ll start there.”

Zitao’s heart immediately goes from zero to a hundred, rabbiting behind his ribcage as he lays his wrist in his best friend’s grasp, and as Luhan pulls up his sleeve as if preparing to give him a vaccination. 

“Now,” the blonde says as he dips the spoon back into the pot and brings it up, long strings of sticky, viscous wax dripping from the ladle, and he begins to spread just a bit of it on the boy’s forearm. It’s still quite warm, and Zitao hisses instinctively. “I’d recommend staying as still as possible and closing your eyes. The first time always hurts.”

Then - with no preamp, no warning, no time to adjust to the quickly hardening wax - his best friend yanks, and Zitao’s screams of pain reward them with angry knocks from their neighbors on adjacent walls.

He’s sore when it’s over, face chilled over with wet tears and skin angry and warm and red, all down his legs and his arms and even his chest. When Luhan had given him the option of doing his groin and armpits himself, he’d cried and begged not to, and being too kind-hearted to continue inflicting pain on his best friend, Luhan had agreed and warned him that he would then have to shave those areas on a day to day basis. Not entirely ready to give up his masculine hairiness, Zitao is depressed. 

“How do you feel?” Luhan asks him gently, almost therapeutically as if psychiatrically. Through the blur of tears, Zitao can make out the expression of remorse and well-deserved worry. 

Truthfully, he’s cold. He’d never thought that removing that much body hair would make you cold; Zitao had always thought that body hair would have no bearing on internal temperatures because humans aren’t like bears where they’re covered inches thick in fur. “Cold,” he mumbles, shivering in his seat. Has his apartment always been this chilly? “Also weirdly warm.”

“It’s the burn,” his best friend says, as he carries the pot of hardened wax to the sink and runs the tap. “Put some lotion on it, it’ll help your pores heal.”

And Zitao does as instructed, squirting some of the white lotion provided onto his palms, before smoothing it over the tender, aching skin. Is this really what girls have to go through to be pretty? This doesn’t seem like a very fair trade.

“Do you like it, though?” He asks in tandem, and Zitao gives him a pressed look. “I’ll take that as a no.”

“Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this,” Zitao says as his fingers run over a tender spot behind his knee, muscles twitching in response to the pain, “but I don’t normally prefer to wax my legs if I can help it. So, no, I don’t really like it.”

“Alright, sheesh, you don’t have to be a party pooper,” Luhan continues. “Anyway, it’s pretty late, and I’d recommend you put on some conforming clothes to sleep in, like pants and a long-sleeve that don’t have much movement. You might hurt yourself tossing and turning. It’s like a sunburn, kind of. And besides, we can’t have you dying on us. We promised we wouldn’t kill ourselves unless it was together, so you’re not allowed to go until I do.”

“I hate you,” Zitao mutters under his breath, and he pouts and massages in the leftover lotion on his palms into the skin on his chest. “Like, a in’ lot.”

“I love you too, kid.”

“Trays are stacked on their sides in the left bin. We organize plates by size, so large plates are stacked upwards on the shelf and small plates are stacked upward next to them. Drinking cups are arranged in rows on the middle shelf, tall in the back and short in the front, all placed upside-down for stability’s sake. Bowls are stacked in the right bin on the bottom shelf, and utensils are in the under-shelf drawer.”

He bows, eyes trained on the many vast rows of cutlery in the commissary. “Are they washed by hand or by machine?”

“Both - we leave it up to you to decide which you would prefer. The machine can hold around fifty plates and ten bowls at any one time, so often times both are utilized for speedy production.”

Ah, that’s understandable. Can’t have already-sick patients ingesting unsterilized germs from other already-sick patients. “How long does the washer run per cycle?”

“Approximately sixty minutes.”

She steps carefully over to the washer, heels clicking on the linoleum, and pulls the lip of the door back to reveal the racking shelves, empty and pristine and white. “The machine does not have a dry setting, so dishes are to be hand-dried fresh from the racks, and are recommended to be placed on a towel-covered parquet to catch additional drippage.”

“Thank you, miss.”

“If you need me, just shout. I will be in the commissary.”

The door closes behind her and he returns his gaze to the amassed pile of soiled dishes in the basin, and grabs a fresh sponge from underneath the cabinet and a rag and gets to work. We cannot promise you much, but we can offer you a minimum wage per hour and you are welcome to work as long as you feel the desire to and stop when you see fit. Zitao, ever the one to struggle with monetary values, was not one to turn down a payment offer, no matter how small. He would take anything he could get his hands on at this point - even the littlest bit would have an effect on his mother’s bills. 

Still - dishwashing could perhaps be considered less than ideal, as Zitao gets a whiff of old, soggy broccoli and gags violently as he hides his face in his elbow. Don’t they know that broccoli is good for you?

It had been three days - hold on, let him think; if today is Thursday, and they applied together on Sunday evening, then - no, four days since applying, and Zitao had been on edge all week. Each and every night when he hops in the shower before bed, he’s met with his regularly-scheduled Emotional Breakdown with his old friend Anxiety as she reads him her favorite book Panic Attacks: The Destroyer of Worlds. Zitao last left off on chapter four, and finally sick of being alone with his own thoughts, Zitao reached out to the hospital with desperation in his voice as he applied as a volunteer for anything and everything they could offer him. Although very regular hospital activities, Zitao’s only two options were washing dishes or cleaning bedpans. 

He’d phoned Luhan during his first attack on Monday evening and had successfully managed to be coaxed back down to earth as his throat muscles had finally slackened and he could finally breathe once more thanks to Luhan’s patience. What he had thought was a one-time occurrence ended up being nightly, and he had been too self-piteous to ask his best friend for help during every single one. 

Trays in the bin to the right - no, to the left. Plates stacked on the shelf. 

Aside from being wrought with the ever-blinding fear that he’s going to get a knock on his door from the police telling him he’s being arrested for forging legal documents and impersonating someone who doesn’t exist, Zitao also has to deal with the constant worry that something with his application process is going to go wrong and he’s going to be turned away without even a first glance, that his efforts for a better job are going to come up short because maybe they’re already full, maybe he doesn’t have enough experience, or maybe his photography isn’t impressive enough. Worse - what if he doesn’t look convincing enough?

He thinks about what might happen should the job for some reason go south. He obviously would still need the money, since his mother’s cancer isn’t just going to disappear with a wish on a star and a cross of his fingers. He might have to end up delving into ion and letting strangers do with his body as they wish in order for him to afford the hospital’s prices. He doesn’t even have any idea what a good work wage is, but he has a feeling he might have to price himself very highly and even that feels too expensive. Maybe it’s because he is not an overtly ual person, but paying a ridiculous amount of money just to have with someone sounds insane. 

And even then - what if that isn’t enough, either?

Weighing his options, although absolutely crazy and something no normal person would think to do, this job really is Zitao’s only hope. 

He grabs a tall stack of heavy, wide plates with both hands and groans to himself as he lifts them onto the shelf, and winces when they clatter loudly into their spot. Panic runs through him white-hot as he thinks for a split-second that they’ll break the shelf and fall and shatter all over the ground - but they stay put. The wooden shelving does not creak, and the plates do not clack and creak anymore. 

Which is why when his phone begins to double-buzz in his back pocket, he’s not sure his heart can take many more surprises in the same day, as he fishes it out and sighs when he reads the caller identity.

“Han, I’m at the hospital. What do you need?”

There’s a bit of shuffling on the other end, almost as if Luhan is adjusting his position or is messing with plastic bags or something. “News!” His best friend says on the other line. “I’ve got news!”

He sighs. “We both know my mom is still just as sick, so don’t get me excited like this.”

“No, it’s not that! You’ve got an interview first thing tomorrow morning!”

A glass falls from his hand and shatters on the linoleum, loud and crackling and shrill. No way.

“...Tomorrow?”

“Han, I really don’t think I can do this.”

Zitao stands - long, dark hair curled and primped into an elegant bun on the back of his head and sinuous waves down his back, a crisp, sleek white blouse buttoned up to his throat and his waist cinched in with a soft tweed pencil skirt in a pretty mulberry, practically towering over his best friend in little black heels with gold accentuation to match the belt atop the skirt’s rim - his hands in Luhan’s grasp, his throat feeling as though he were being strangled.

“Shh,” his best friend coos, entirely underdressed and short stood before Zitao’s extravagant elegance. “You can, I know you can. You can do it.”

“No, I can’t, I really can’t - ” he says with a pitched wheeze, eyes watering and hands shaking, and if he continues to stand, Zitao isn’t entirely sure his knees are going to be able to hold him. 

“Tao, you can. Okay?” Luhan reaches forward this time and places both palms on his best friend’s cheeks. “Deep breaths, come on. Breathe with me. In. Out.”

He breathes in tandem, counts three in, counts three out, and repeat. Focus on me, focus on breathing. Don’t think about the colors, don’t think about the air - think about me. 

“You can do it, Tao,” Luhan coaxes in a soft voice, and Zitao takes a shuddery breath inward that feels like cannonballs to lungs, a war of rich ages against ribs and troops of millions marching up the chords of his throat. “That’s it. Just look at me. Breathe.”

“What,” Zitao manages, voice garbled and strained, and Luhan’s thumb rubs over his wrist in slow motions, “what if they know when they see me? What if - what if I’m - too tall, or - too muscular, or too wide?”

“You’re not, it’s okay. You’ll be perfectly fine.”

“My - my Adam’s apple! What if they see it? I - I need a scarf, a tie, anything!”

“Tao, stop,” he presses again, gripping tighter on the boy’s wrists as Zitao begins to cry softly. “Come on, Tao, your makeup is too pretty to cry in. Plus, it’s not waterproof. Come on, breathe. You look fine, okay? You don’t look too dude-ish, and I can’t see your Adam’s apple from here. Okay? Be lucky you don’t have a big one.”

Shakily, he takes one of his hands back and lays it on the base of his neck, and lets out a trembling sigh. Come on, Zitao, you can do this. You’ve come this far already. He tries his very hardest to convince his inner voice that everything is okay, that he will be okay, but there’s a frigidity low in his gut that tells him otherwise. “They’ll know,” he whispers, eyes trained on the ground and lips trembling. “They’ll know I’m not a girl. They’ll know.”

“That’s why you have to sell them, Tao,” his best friend sighs and lets the boy’s hands slip through his fingers as he takes a half-step back. “Look, look at me, okay? Okay. Now, first, we have to work on raising your voice ‘cause the higher it is, the more convincing you’ll be, okay?”

Zitao blinks, blurry eyes beginning to clear. “What do you mean raising my voice?”

“Just,” his best friend’s lips twist in thought. “Try tightening your larynx a little bit, and try sweetening up your voice if you can. Make it as sugary as possible.”

A raised eyebrow. “Like this?”

Luhan shakes his head; Zitao’s voice hadn’t raised at all that time, merely sounding more strained than before. “No, not quite. It’s like… okay, not to get not-safe-for-work, but it’s like if you were to whimper and it’s like how that makes your voice smaller and more high-pitched if that makes sense. Do you know what I mean?”

“Well, if you’re not referring to me going around making noises twenty-four-seven, then yeah, I’m pretty sure I catch your drift,” Zitao reaches up with a knuckle to gently dab at his under-eyes, carefully wiping away his tears as gingerly as he can as to not smudge the makeup. “So, like this?”

His larynx constricts and raises, voice shrilling out in the back of his throat, and Luhan nods and gives him a grin. “Yes, just like that. See? You’re more convincing already. Alright, next, remember that your name isn’t Zitao, got it? What’s your name?”

A sigh. “Yingtao.”

“Exactly. You’re Yingtao now, okay? And you cannot forget it. Don’t blow your own cover by being stupid, alright?”

“I know, I know. I’m Yingtao now, I know.”

“What’s your name?”

“Huang Yingtao.”

“Sorry, what was that? I couldn’t really hear you, you need to speak up.”

“Don’t make me kick your ,” Zitao laughs through the tears in his eyes, and his best friend smiles from ear to ear as his cheeks shine and he reaches out to squeeze Zitao’s shoulder. 

“Make me proud, kid,” Luhan says with a second gentle squeeze. “Okay?”

Zitao nods, much calmer and warm-chested and thankful that Luhan always knows exactly what to do to get him out of his episodes. Yingtao, he thinks to himself. Huang Yingtao. He’s got a feeling the name will grow on him with time, and maybe he will grow to find it pretty, even. That is - until a noise down the hallway startles him and he watches as a woman with sleek, tied-back hair steps out of a set of glass doors. 

“Huang Yingtao?” She asks, and Zitao’s stomach drops.

“She’s coming!” Luhan calls out to the lady, and Zitao - suddenly queasy and literally seconds away from vomiting all over his brand-new clothes - begins to shake once again. “No no, calm down. Breathe.”

“I can’t,” Zitao repeats, plummeting back to square one. “I can’t, I - ”

“Tao,” he whispers quickly. “We don’t have time, okay? Trust me, you can do it. Okay? I know you. You’ve got fight in you, and you’ve got balls. Literally. You know you can do this.”

“I - ” he starts anxiously, looking around. He knows he can’t dawdle like this, because not only is he unaware of whether or not his boss even has patience for mental illnesses in the workforce, but it’s more than likely considered unprofessional to make his boss have to wait for him to show up for an interview. “Okay.”

“You can do it,” Luhan forces a tight-lipped little grin. “Okay?”

Zitao nods, and takes a deep breath as he tries to will the knot in his gut to loosen. 

“Don’t show them that you’re nervous,” Luhan whispers before he leaves. “It’ll make you seem more inexperienced. You got this, kid.”

His best friend returns to the waiting chairs at the mouth of the hallway and retrieves Zitao’s portfolio to hand it to him, and Zitao bows in thanks.

When he turns back around, pressing the heavy portfolio to his chest to both structure himself and hide from the lady’s eyes, still stood outside the glass doors with her foot propped up against one to keep it open, he takes a cautious step forward. This is a stupid idea, a horrible, no-good, terrible idea, so why is he still doing it? 

 The lady, proper and prim and more than likely a secretary or something of the like, bows as he passes by her and gives him a thin-lipped smile that reflects in her eyes, and he sincerely hopes that everyone in this establishment also has hearts as gentle as she.

When he enters, he’s shocked to see that it’s not exactly an office but not quite a presentational room, either, somewhere in the middle with blank projection screens on each adjacent wall and an elegant table-desk hybrid in the middle towards the back wall, at which sit three people that Zitao assumes are the ones interviewing him. Carefully, shakily, he steps forward and when the glass door behind him closes with a shuddery click, he grips the portfolio with both hands and bows deeply.

Should he introduce himself? No, don’t they already know his name? Isn’t that how the secretary called for him - or was it on her clipboard? Do they need to be told his name again? Surely they’ve seen his application, and surely they probably have a list of applicants to interview today, right?

The room is silent enough to hear a pin drop, and Zitao watches as the table of people - a lady on the right, and two men next to her in the middle and left seats, the one in the middle more broad-shouldered and sharp-looking, the one on the left smaller and perhaps shorter than Zitao himself - analyze him for a few seconds by scanning him up and down with their eyes, and Zitao makes a mental note that there doesn’t seem to be any trace of pity or pride or shock at his appearance, so maybe he is starting to be more convincing. He hopes. 

The lady on the right is the first one to speak by saying, “Huang Yingtao, correct?” and Zitao watches as the man on the left adjusts his spectacles atop his nose. 

“Yes,” he says in his higher voice, larynx tight. 

“Welcome, Yingtao. Is that your portfolio?”

“Oh, yes,” he chips quickly and steps forward to hand it to her. Up close, Zitao can feel the scrutiny of their intense stares on him which only makes him more self-conscious - especially from the man in the middle. Broad-shouldered, perfectly coiffed, and scary. “Inside of it is also my Associate’s Degree in Photography and my legal documentation. I put it in there for organization,  if… that’s okay.”

“It’s perfect,” the lady says in a warm voice, the slightest smile gracing her lips. “We always love having employees who are punctual and clean. Yingtao, my name is Im Jinah, the Chief Financial Officer, or more commonly, the Treasurer. I am the overseer of employee surcharges and payrolls. This,” she says as she points to the man in the left seat, who raises his hand in a little wave, “is Mr. Zhang Yixing, the President’s Secretary.”

“Hello, Yingtao,” Mr. Zhang says as he extends a hand, and Zitao nervously takes it to shake. 

“And this our company president, Mr. Kris Wu.”

The lady gestures to the man sat in the middle, and Zitao’s chest begins to tingle. Kris Wu. Isn’t that the same name he and Luhan had seen on those clothes in that one store?

“Mr. Wu is the creator and overseer for his brand here, KW,” she explains, and Zitao realizes then that albeit the fact that his theory had been true, Mr. Wu hadn’t been the slightest bit courteous to him by offering a handshake or even a warm hello. “Mr. Wu is your boss, and also will have every right to demote, promote, or fire you in any circumstance no matter the severity or protest. Do you understand, Yingtao?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Hey, that’s a strong grip you’ve got there,” Mr. Zhang tells him suddenly with a funnily crooked smile on his face. “Do you do any sports?”

He blinks; what? “Oh, I, uh… I took martial arts as a child, and I did gymnastics for a little while in secondar