To Ruin a Rich Boy

The gallery smells like expensive varnish and desperation. A hundred champagne flutes clink against the dull hum of old money trying to look interesting under high white lights. My boots squeak against the polished concrete, my reflection twitching in sculptures that look like they cost more than my entire collection. I hate the way they stare through me and pretend it’s curiosity, like I’m the garnish on a plate they will never eat.

My suit is cut sharp enough to hurt someone. Black silk with a blood-red lining I only flash when I’m bored. Chest bare under the blazer, tattoos cutting up the center like a roadmap I dare them to follow with their eyes. A chain hangs low across my waist. My hair is shaved on one side, the other side long and slicked back. A man in a dove-gray jacket blinks at my septum ring like it’s offensive. I grin and take his champagne.

“Networking,” my assistant had said, pushing this invite into my palm like a dare. Network with who? These people buy ugly art and call it an investment. They buy designers, too. I sip, and the bubbles bite my tongue. I let them.

A laugh cracks across the room like a car alarm. My head turns before I decide to look. He’s a lighthouse of the worst kind—blonde, blue-eyed, blazer the color of trust fund, teeth too white to be real. The brother. At his side, like a shadow someone forgot to turn off, is the only person in here who feels alive.

I clock him in three seconds. Head-to-toe black that isn’t trying to impress anyone. Black denim jacket, black band tee, black jeans ripped at the knees. Combat boots with scuffs that are earned. Eyeliner winged so sharp it could cut my throat if he glanced too fast. Hair black like fresh ink, falling into his eyes, which are darker than the room deserves. He’s not posing; he’s enduring. His mouth is set like a locked door. He looks bored enough to burn the place down.

The blonde brother keeps performing loudly for a small circle that feeds off him. He throws his head back, that empty laugh, says something about the “vibe” being “so raw” in a way that makes my skin crawl. The shadow beside him—Athan, I’ll learn later—doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t participate. He exists. He stares at a painting like it has personally wronged him. He picks at the corner of a sketchbook tucked under his arm with rings that match the metal in his ears. I follow the line of his throat, the pale slash of skin under the collar. Someone should paint that neck. Someone should put teeth on it.

A curator I’ve met twice flits by with a hand on my forearm. She says my name like it’s a commodity, says their donors love what I’m doing, asks about the fall line. I give her the line I always do—leaner silhouettes, harsher fabric, the color of a bruise. She nods enthusiastically like I’ve mentioned God. My eyes slide past her shoulder, back to the black figure trying to shrink himself next to the blonde noise machine.

If I had to be here—and apparently I do—I’m grateful for a target. He notices me. I know he does because he tenses almost imperceptibly when my gaze lands on him. He doesn’t look over. He looks down, jaw clenching. A ringed thumb rubs over the spine of that sketchbook like it’s the only thing keeping him tethered. I walk closer without meaning to.

The blonde one is telling a woman in pearls that he told the gallerist to “lean in” on curation, that the city needs “edgy” work. He says “edgy” like it’s a word he learned this morning. Athan’s eyes lift and skate across the room like a flat stone hitting water. When they meet mine, it’s a blink, a hit, a refusal. He looks away first. The refusal turns into heat in my mouth.

I circle the space like a wolf in a tux. The art is a sea of white and muted bruises—perfect for people who like to pretend they feel. I’m supposed to shake hands, compliment brushstrokes, flirt carefully with money. Instead, I track that black silhouette like a song I can’t place. Every time his brother’s voice spikes, Athan’s shoulders flinch, and then go still. He’s practiced at being invisible. It makes me itch.

A small cluster forms around me when my name moves across the room like perfume. Younger creatives, two men with soft hands, a woman from a glossy magazine who tries to slot a pronoun into small talk like it’s a party trick. I give them what they want: the sharp tongue, the easy insult delivered like a gift. They laugh. I’m good at giving people what they think they want. But my eyes go back to the boy in black, pulled like tide.

He finally breaks away from the circle around his brother, stepping half a foot to the side. The air around him changes. It’s ridiculous how I can smell clove smoke in a place where no one is allowed to breathe wrong. He slips the sketchbook fully under his arm like a secret. The brother glances at him and puts a hand on his shoulder without looking. Possessive. Dismissive. It lands too hard for casual. Athan doesn’t shrug it off. He goes still under it like he’s learned stillness is safer.

My hand tightens around the stem of my stolen champagne. I let my gaze crawl deliberately up his boots, the frayed laces, the scuffed leather, the pale slice of ankle when he shifts, the tight line of denim over his thigh. He shifts again, and the hem of his tee rides up just enough to show a sliver of skin at his waist, a bruise or ink peeking. The heat in my mouth drops to my stomach.

I angle closer, just enough to catch the ending of the brother’s sentence: “—you know how these people are. It’s all optics. Chill.” He grins, squeezes Athan’s shoulder, returns to preening. The muscle at Athan’s jaw jumps. He drags a thumbnail over the paper inside the sketchbook without opening it. The sound is nothing. It feels loud.

A collector stops me to talk about a gown he saw last winter, the one with the hand-laced bodice that made a woman look like a dangerous confession. He wants to buy the story behind it. I let him think I have one to sell. Over his shoulder, a black shape exhales like he’s drowning in white noise.

I am out of place here. I’m supposed to be. But I’ve never been more clear about why I came. Not for the checks or the champagne. For the boy who looks like a bruise in a room of bleached bone. For the way my body knows a kindred darkness on sight. I let my eyes find his again, only this time I don’t look away. I let him feel it. I watch his pupils flex, the tiny swallow he tries to hide, the way his fingers go still on the edge of his secret.

He looks away. His brother laughs. A server glides past with a fresh tray. I set my empty flute down and step forward.

The server’s tray is a parade of bubbles and tiny salted shells. Bryce plucks one without looking, the same hand still heavy on Athan’s shoulder. His voice swells, designed to be overheard. “I swear, if I have to shake hands with one more diversity initiative in designer shoes tonight—” He bites into the oyster and laughs, eyes flicking toward a Black artist across the room in a striped suit, then back to his circle. “It’s like…do they come with the grants? Is there a bundle deal?”

The air splits. The pearls woman tenses, lips pinched. One of the soft-handed men does a soft, nervous chuckle. Athan’s fingers freeze on the sketchbook, then curl, white at the knuckles.

I set my glass on the server’s passing tray without breaking stride. “You paid extra for the bundle,” I say, stepping into Bryce’s light like I belong there and watching his gaze snap to mine with that bland, entitled surprise. “Did they charge by the slur or the square footage of your ignorance?”

His smile stalls, then restarts, tight. “Excuse me?”

“No, I heard you the first time,” I say, tilting my head toward the artist he targeted, who is very clearly pretending not to hear, jaw working. “We all did. It was very…raw of you.” I give his word back to him, polished sharp. “But hearing you speak like that in here is like watching a man take a dump in the middle of the white cube and call it performance.”

There’s a small, delighted gasp from someone behind me. Bryce’s grip on Athan’s shoulder increases—Athan doesn’t move, but his body goes rigid, breath stuck high in his chest.

Bryce tries another tack. “You must be…Heiylo, right? The trans—”

“Designer,” I cut in, smiling. “Who taught you to say my name? The PR intern you scare when you loom over her desk?” I plant a heel on the conversation and grind it. “If you want to talk about optics, we can. But say your racism with your chest next time, not like a coward hiding behind canapés.”

The pearls woman suddenly discovers her phone. Soft Hands 1 starts nodding too fast. Across the room, the gallerist has noticed, her polite alarm dialed in but not deployed yet.

Bryce laughs again, pitched defensively. “Wow. Okay. Relax. It was a joke.”

“The kind that curdles in your mouth,” I say. “And drips on your shoes.” My eyes flick down to his loafers. Glossy, brown, safe. “Here’s a new joke: every time you open your mouth like that, a donor closes a checkbook. It’s adorable you think you run the room.”

Athan’s throat moves. He’s watching me through the fringe of his hair, face unreadable, an electric crack hiding under ice. The rings on his fingers dig into the sketchbook’s spine.

Bryce leans in, the smell of expensive cologne and stale money. “You don’t know who you’re talking to,” he says, too low for the circle but not for me. He pats Athan’s shoulder like a reminder: his property, his audience. “We’ve been supporting this space since you were DIY-ing holes in shirts.”

I keep my voice bright and public. “And you still haven’t learned how to be a decent human. Imagine spending that much money and buying no taste.”

A snort comes from somewhere on the edge of the group. The Black artist across the room finally looks directly at me, then at Athan, then back, something hard easing by a degree.

Bryce shifts, affronted. “Wow. The moral police in a harness. Cute.”

“Thank you,” I say. “And here I thought your blazer said ‘probation officer for the bland.’ Look.” I gesture to the art around us, the too-clean, too-cold mise-en-scène. “This room is already hostile enough without you turning the vibe into a country club toilet. Keep your jokes in your group chat where you all pretend it’s 1952.”

The gallerist finally inserts herself, a soft, practiced hand on Bryce’s elbow. “Everything all right here?”

“Totally,” I say, eyes still on him. “We were just talking about how some people confuse nepotism with personality.”

Bryce’s jaw flares. He glances around to see who’s watching. Enough people. He pulls his hand off Athan’s shoulder with a brittle briskness, as if he’s the one deciding to deescalate. His grin is too bright. “We’ll take our checkbooks elsewhere, then,” he says, performative, but he doesn’t move. He needs the room to love him.

I step closer by a fraction, voice softened to cut cleaner. “Don’t threaten us with a good time.”

Athan’s eyes flick to mine. The flicker is quick, a shutter opening and slamming shut—something like relief, like hunger, like warning. His mouth doesn’t move. His shoulders are still iron. The tendon in his neck stands out like a seam.

Bryce tries one last grasp at control. He angles his body to block me and pitches his tone to Athan without looking at him. “Let’s go, yeah? This place is a circus.”

Athan’s fingers twitch over the notebook, then lock. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t move. He is a statue of defiance disguised as compliance. I let the silent acknowledgement between us be nothing more than a spark buried in coal.

I turn away from Bryce as if bored, and address the room, the gallerist, the pearls woman, anyone who needs the cue. “Apologies,” I say lightly. “I get allergic rashes around hate.” I smooth my lapel, letting my chain glint. “They tend to clear up once the source leaves.”

A laugh breaks, softer and more honest. Bryce’s ears go red. He steps back, straightens his blazer, and levels a smile that doesn’t fit his face. “Enjoy your evening,” he tosses, brittle, and cuts through the group, dragging the air with him. He doesn’t touch Athan this time. He doesn’t even look.

Athan’s gaze trails after him for half a breath, then snaps back to the floor. He inhales, small and sharp, like he’s bracing for a blow that didn’t land. When his eyes lift to mine again, it’s through the cracking shell of something I can’t read. Maybe thanks. Maybe hate. Maybe both. He tenses like a wire pulled tight, then turns his body toward the balcony door as if the glass might save him.

I let him go. I watch the black shape cut through white light, a shadow escaping a spotlight. The room exhales around me, chatter filling the vacuum. My heart thuds steady. The taste of him sits under my tongue like iron. The artist in stripes nods once as he passes me, a private pact made with a glance.

I pick up a fresh flute, let the bubbles bite again, and pretend I didn’t just rearrange the room. But my eyes are already tracking the thin line of Athan’s spine as he slips outside, the set of his shoulders pulling the night tight around him.

The balcony door sighs shut behind me, muffling the room’s fake-laugh soundtrack. The night tastes like rain that never arrived, city heat pressed low. He’s there at the edge, hunched into himself, the skyline carving a jagged crown behind his head. The cherry of his clove glows, burns, dies, returns. The scratch of pencil on rough paper rides the back of his breath.

I don’t announce myself. I take the spare spot along the rail, not close enough to spook, not far enough to be mistaken for passing. The wind lifts the fringe from his eyes for a heartbeat. He doesn’t look at me.

“Strong choice,” I say, nodding to the cigarette. “Cloves. Like pretending to cough perfume.”

He exhales through his nose, smoke curving away. “Helps the room smell less like money and hairspray.”

“So we do agree on something.” My mouth wants to be sharp; I sand it down. “You okay?”

His pencil moves like he’s carving a wound into the paper. “Do you ever get tired of being a savior in leather?”

It’s a good hit. Short, clean. I let it land. “I get tired of idiots with microphones. Your brother’s voice is a public health hazard.”

He smirks at the city. “You don’t know him.”

“I know that type. He thinks volume is a personality. And he thinks standing next to him means co-signing.”

Silence clinks between us. His boot taps once, a staccato on concrete, then stops like he punished himself for it. He thumbs dust off the page. I catch a flash of lines: a hard jaw, a soft mouth, an eye like a smudge. It could be anyone. It could be him.

“You draw,” I say.

“Observant,” he mutters. He brings the cigarette to his lips, the tip painting his mouth a deeper red. “What do you want?”

“Air. Another human who hates this as much as I do.” I tilt my head toward the room. “They’re going to spend forty minutes saying ‘interesting’ like it’s orgasmic.”

He finally looks at me, sideways, through lashes that cast bars across his gaze. Up close, the eyeliner is imperfect, thumb-smudged where he rubbed his eye. The small bruise at his hip flashes when he shifts again. My focus slips and claws back.

“You like being looked at,” he says flatly. “Seems like your natural habitat.”

“I like choosing who looks,” I say. “And why.”

He snorts. “Congratulations on your brand.”

“And you,” I say, nodding toward the black on black on black, the nails bitten down, the rings that look like weapons. “Congratulations on your armor.”

He turns, the move small but edged. “You think that was me needing help back there?”

“I think you didn’t need him talking about people like that. I think you hate it and you let it happen.” I don’t flinch from his scowl. “I think I couldn’t not say something.”

He stares at me like he’s cataloging, cross-referencing me with every noise he’s heard about me. He sucks clove-sugar between his teeth and chews at it like punishment. “You really believe you’re some kind of corrective?”

“No,” I say. “I’m a bad habit with good timing.”

For a second, something that looks like a laugh almost breaches. Then he shakes it off, shuts the notebook with a soft slap, the elastic band snapping around it with practiced violence.

“Look,” he says, low, the words picked clean. “I get that you have a thing where you roll into rooms and make them bow. And I’m sure it works on donors and interns and people who think your chains are rebellious.” He lets his gaze rake me, not admiring, assessing. “On me? Not so much.”

“Not trying to make you bow,” I say. “Trying to see if you’re a person under all that.”

He flicks ash into the dark. The wind takes it. “I am exactly as much of a person as my brother says I am. Which is to say: his.” He leans on the rail, the bones of his wrist sharp where his sleeve slides back. “So take your lecture about optics and your savior complex and go sell it to people who pay you for your mouth.”

His tone is arctic, precise. The insult lands clean and hard, and he holds my eyes while it does. There’s a tiny tremor in his left eyelid that betrays tension, or caffeine, or both. He wants me to see indifference. He is daring me to flinch.

I don’t. “You can mouth off all you want,” I say, even. “But if you parrot his lines, I’m going to assume you mean them.”

He smiles, not kind. “Parrot this, then: you look like a costume for a personality. The harness, the metal, the curated outrage. It reads try-hard.” His gaze flicks to my boots, my chain, back up. “Next time you want to make a point, do it without using me as a prop. We don’t know each other. And I don’t need you.”

The cigarette burns down to the filter. He drops it, crushes it under his boot with a twist that is too deliberate to be careless. He tucks the notebook under his arm, every move economical, careful, like motion is a language he doesn’t share freely.

“Message received,” I say. My throat tastes like clove and bite. I consider offering my name like a peace; I decide he would spit on it. “Enjoy the circus.”

He gives me a long, up-and-down look, as if to freeze me in memory for later disdain. His mouth slices into something that might be disgust, might be defense. “Try not to trip on your own ego on the way back in,” he says, deadpan, and turns toward the door.

He reaches for the handle, pauses with his palm pressed to the glass like he needs its cold. Without looking back, he adds, almost as an afterthought, “And next time someone comes for my family, don’t expect me to play audience.”

The door opens. The sound spills. He slips into it, swallowing himself back into white light and fake laughs, a black line erased in an instant.

I stay with the night, the imprint of him vibrating on the air. The smoke stings my eyes. I blink and it clears, leaving the taste of refusal and clove. I let the city drill into me, then push the door open to follow the sound of money and performative smiles, his words tucked under my tongue like a cut I can’t stop worrying.

I make one slow lap through the gallery, perform the requisite nods, feel my patience thin into a wire. I’ve done my work here; the donors are warmed, the curator knows my name, the pearl women whisper and pretend not to. I aim for the door, already anticipating the relief of air without perfume.

Bryce peels off a conversation like a salesman spotting a mark. He steps into my path, shoulder squaring into mine with that frat-boy choreography meant to claim space. He is all teeth and aftershave and entitlement heat.

“You,” he says, low enough to pretend civility. “We’re not done.”

Behind him, Athan is a long shadow, black on black, arms crossed, eyes flat. He’s close enough to feel, not close enough to touch. His jaw is set; his mouth is a line. He’s there and not there, a sentinel that refuses to be named.

I let my gaze travel from Bryce’s too-bright eyes to the vein that twitches in his temple. “Actually,” I say, soft, “I am.”

Bryce’s laugh is clipped. “You think you can talk to me like that in front of my contacts? In front of my brother?” He jerks his head in Athan’s direction without looking. “You embarrassed us.”

I tip my head. “No. I embarrassed you. He was a bystander.”

Athan’s lashes flicker once, the only movement. He doesn’t step in. He doesn’t step back. He is a black hole that light skates around.

Bryce leans in, breath heavy with scotch. “People like you,” he says, pressing his smile into an insult, “don’t get invited to rooms like this to run your mouth. You’re here to dress the pictures. You want to be the main event? Get your own gallery.”

“I did,” I say. “It had better art.”

His mouth tightens. He glances around, checks who’s watching, recalibrates to a version of polite that’s all poison and gloss. “Here’s what’s going to happen.” He lifts his hand, counts on fingers like he’s instructing an intern. “You’re going to apologize for earlier. To me and to my brother. You’re going to keep whatever activist performance you think you’re staging to spaces where it plays. And you’re going to remember whose city this actually is.”

“My calendar must have eaten the meeting invitation,” I say, light. “I don’t do briefs from men whose favorite word is ‘optics.’”

“My favorite word is consequence,” he says, with a smile that flashes decorous. “You work here. You sell here. The people who cut checks—talk to me.” He finally angles his head, acknowledges Athan with a flick of his chin like checking that his prop is still in place. “Don’t you, little brother?”

Athan’s jaw works once. He keeps his eyes on the floor between us, hands dug into his elbows like if he lets them go they’ll do something unforgivable. “You done?” he asks Bryce, voice quiet, sanded to dullness. It’s the only line he offers, and it’s placed like a barrier no one plans to honor.

Bryce pretends not to hear him. He keeps his smile pinned to me. “You think a chain and a sharp tongue make you untouchable,” he murmurs. “But I’ve watched people like you burn out. Fast. Loud. Forgettable.”

I let the silence sit. I meet his eyes until he has to look away and then back. “You really want me to apologize?” I angle my shoulder just enough that the onlookers’ line of sight shifts, seeing him crowding me and his silent shadow behind. “For telling you to keep your racism quieter? Your mistake wasn’t the volume. It was thinking the room agreed.”

His facade cracks a millimeter. He inhales like he’s about to spit. Athan shifts, a flinch he kills midway. The sight of him flinching for someone else’s temper strikes something cold in me.

Bryce takes a step closer, trying to force me to give ground. I don’t. We’re close enough now that Athan could touch both of us if he wanted, and he doesn’t move. He is purgatory with eyeliner.

“Be smart,” Bryce says. “Walk this back. Say you misread a joke. It’s nothing.” He bares his teeth. “Or make it something. And see how fast doors shut.”

I smile without warmth. “I build doors,” I say. “And I like them with locks I choose.”

Athan inhales, small, a noise that sounds like a swallowed word. Bryce doesn’t turn to him. He doesn’t need to. He counts on the dynamic doing his work: Athan’s silence as validation, his presence as proof of the hierarchy. It’s so practiced it makes my teeth ache.

“I get it,” I say to Bryce, sliding the blade in without lifting my tone. “You need to win. Here’s your win: you get to keep your contacts. You get to walk out with your brother behind you like furniture.” I let my eyes flick over Athan, slow. His cheek hollows as he grinds his teeth. “I won’t ruin your night. I’m going home.”

Bryce reels like he expected another round. He schools it quick. “That’s wise,” he says.

“It’s bored,” I correct. I step to the side, forcing him either to block me again or let me pass. He freezes for a fraction, realizing that repeating the move will make him look like a child. He angles his body to allow a narrow gap. His hand twitches like he wants to touch my arm and thinks better.

As I slip through, I stop just long enough to tilt my head toward Athan without looking away from Bryce. “Take care,” I say softly, to the shadow. It lands between us, ambiguous. Bryce’s lips flatten.

Athan’s lashes flick down and up. Something like a tremor passes his mouth. He says nothing. He stands taller by a hair, as if bracing.

“Don’t talk to him,” Bryce snaps, finally turning on his axis to face the one who’s been behind him all night. It’s a reflex, ugly and automatic.

I look at Athan then, full. His eyes meet mine for a heartbeat. They are large, dark, ringed in black, and full of a hundred unsent messages. There’s anger in them, yes, but also a cornered animal caution, and something else, a flare of want or curiosity he looks like he wants to amputate.

I give him the smallest nod, my chain catching the light. His throat works. He stares at the floor again, like he can erase the moment by looking away.

I turn toward the door. The gallerist calls my name; I wave without stopping. Heads swivel. I feel Bryce’s stare running knives into my back. I feel Athan’s presence trailing behind my ribcage like a ghost finger. It irritates me, the way he will not move, the way he still chose that side in front of everyone. It intrigues me more. His hostility is stagecraft; I’ve seen enough performers to know when a script is being recited.

At the threshold, the city breathes at me again. I inhale clean air that smells like taxis and wet concrete. Behind me, Bryce’s voice rises, then is tamped down; someone shushes, someone laughs. I don’t look back. I don’t need the image to know what it is: a brother smiling too hard at donors, a shadow keeping pace precisely half a step behind.

On the sidewalk, I let my jaw unclench. My phone buzzes with three messages from a model about fittings. I pocket it. I picture the tendon in Athan’s neck, the way his fingers dug into his elbows when Bryce spoke for him. I picture that tremor in his mouth when I said take care. The irritation hums under my skin like a low-grade fever. The intrigue settles deeper, like a hook I’m pretending not to feel.

A car splashes through a gutter. A couple stumbles by, laughing too loud. I start walking, chain heavy and sure on my chest, the taste of clove still caught between my teeth, his silence tucked into my mouth like a secret I didn’t consent to keep—and already know I will.

The ask is a warehouse with a decaying crown of windows and a landlord who thinks “industrial patina” equals three extra zeros. I smile, nod, photograph the rust. It’s not right. Too posed. Too curated in its mess.

I cut south, following a vein of streets where the graffiti isn’t a backdrop, it’s a map. The air is heat and oil and yesterday’s rain still caught in potholes. A neon sign flickers ahead, red and stubborn: needleNerve Records. The glass is warped, the stickers layered ten deep, band logos and anarchist A’s and a sun-faded “no cops, no karens.”

I step in and the bell above the door gives up a tired ring. The room is narrow, bins of vinyl making alleys, the carpet threadbare and honest. It smells like cardboard, incense, and old speakers. A fan churns nothing from the ceiling, the blades furry with dust.

“Give me a second,” a voice says, turned away, and a low track buzzes through old wiring—something with screaming guitars and a drum line like a sprint. I know the sound before I know the back of him: black tee clinging to shoulder blades, jeans hanging off narrow hips, a chain catching the light at his belt loop. Combat boots planted wide. A black hoodie tied around his waist. The curve of his neck where his hair is shaved a little too short under the dyed mess.

Athan.

He looks like the last time unpeeled itself and left him untouched by it. He’s got a pad on the counter, pen tucked behind his ear, a Sharpie biting his thumb. His eyeliner is smudged like sleep or sweat did it, not careful. His mouth is soft, unguarded in the second before he looks up.

Then he sees me.

Everything tightens. The softness retracts like a limb under cold water. He drags the pen from behind his ear slow, plants it on the pad like I’ve interrupted surgery. He drags his gaze down my outfit and back up, deliberately. Today it’s high waist trousers, white tank, leather harness that hugs my sternum like punctuation. Silver chain. Lip gloss that dares.

“You lost?” he asks. The words are deadpan. A flick of his eyes to my boots, to the scuffed floor, to the racks. “Or slumming for a mood board?”

I let the door swing shut behind me. The bell wheezes again. “Location scouting,” I say. “But thanks for the warm welcome.”

He tips his head, fake thoughtful. “No problem. We have a strict no-influencer policy, but I can make an exception if you promise not to photograph our bathroom graffiti and call it ‘raw.’”

His voice in this room is different. Less blade, more gravel. He fits here. It pisses me off a little, how good he looks when he’s not trying.

I move down a bin, flip a record to read the tag. Handwritten, cramped, prices barely there, little hearts next to the bands someone clearly loves. “You write these?”

“Sometimes.” He leans his elbows on the counter. His fingers are ink-smeared. There’s a nick on his knuckle. He watches me with that bored animosity, a cat daring you to touch it.

“You have good handwriting,” I say, mostly to see what he does.

He snorts. “That the part you understand? Letters? Figures.”

“Don’t get too excited,” I say. “I’m fluent in sound, too. And space.”

His eyes flick to the harness, then away. “Yeah. I can tell you’re fluent in space. All that empty negative space in your personality.”

I feel the smile curl slow. “Wow. You practice that one in the mirror?”

He almost smiles—almost—the side of his mouth betraying him for a second before he crushes it. He taps the pad with the Sharpie. “Can I help you with anything, or are you just here to remind the room your shoes cost more than our rent?”

“Both.” I set my camera bag on a stack of zines that say ‘free,’ then lift it again when he glares. “Relax. I’m not going to rearrange your sacred altar. Who curates this? It’s chaos. Two inches of doom, then bubblegum pop from 2003, then a crate that’s just blank sleeves with question marks.”

“That’s our mystery bin,” he says. “You take a chance on the unknown. It’s called taste. You wouldn’t get it.”

“Oh, baby,” I say, too gentle to be kind, “I built careers on gambling on the unknown. This layout’s not rebellious. It’s lazy.”

He straightens. “We like people to talk to us. You know, ask questions. Discover. Not just consume.”

“So leave paths,” I say, walking the narrow aisle, letting my shoulder graze a tower of CDs just to watch him wince. “Don’t make the room do all the work for your aesthetic of disdain.”

“You’re in a record store,” he says. “Not a concept hotel.”

I turn. “I’ve been in both. The hotel had better lighting.”

He laughs once, short, unwilling. It makes something twist low in me, annoying and sharp. I look at him fully, at how his nails are black and chipped, how his ear has three piercings, one healing red. The counter has a lip balm and a chipped mug and a tiny plastic skull. It’s domestic in a way that makes my chest ache.

A customer pushes in, bell clattering, the air shifting. Athan’s shoulders go down half an inch, the performance shifting to retail polite. He nods at the guy, answers a question about a reissue, rings him up with fingers that are quick and sure. He doesn’t look at me while he’s being useful. He doesn’t need to. I’m looking enough for both of us.

When the door sighs shut again, the room recalibrates. He flips the pad closed and slides it under the counter like I might steal it. “So. Location scouting,” he says, flat. “You dissatisfied with your usual white cube?”

I let my gaze run over the walls, the flyers stapled in constellations, the dim corners where dust glows. “I’m looking for texture,” I say. “And for people who don’t pretend to like me.”

“Congratulations,” he says. “You found one.” He taps the counter. “You can take pictures if you buy something. Two birds.”

I take that as permission because I would have anyway. I lift the camera. He straightens like I pointed a weapon. I angle to the corner, frame the light through the stickered glass, the way the dust hangs. The shutter is soft, a heartbeat. He listens to it even as he pretends not to.

“What do you even shoot?” he asks, forced casual.

“Bodies. Clothes. The space between them.”

“Of course you do.” He drags his thumb across his lower lip, smearing his liner a fraction more. “Figures.” He pushes off the counter, disappears down an aisle, and I follow him without meaning to, my eyes tripping over the scuffed heels of his boots, the worn leather, the way his ankle flexes inside it when he turns. He taps his foot once, an impatient, unconscious rhythm that resonates in my throat.

He stops at a listening station that’s just a beat-up turntable and a pair of headphones wrapped in electrical tape. He slides a record out with reverence I can feel from a foot away. He knows I’m still behind him. He likes it and hates it.

“You want texture?” he says, not looking at me. “Try something that isn’t engineered for runway struts. You all want punk you can steam press.”

“You think I want safety?” I rest my hip on the end of the bin, letting the harness creak. “I want coherence. This—” I flick a finger at a handwritten divider card that says ‘noise-ish? idk’—“isn’t a philosophy. It’s an excuse.”

He puts the record on, drops the needle like he’s setting down a blade. Feedback swells, a wall of it, then the riff tears through. He hands me the headphones, doesn’t say please. I don’t take them. I let the sound hit my skin instead, a scrape I know in my bones.

“Cute,” I say. “You play me a band that learned one chord and a grievance.”

He smiles like a wolf. “Grievances are the point,” he says. “That’s where honesty lives.”

“Honesty lives in craft,” I say. “Anybody can scream. Not everyone can say something while they do it.” I pick up another divider. “You could make this place a map. Right now it’s a dare.”

“It is a dare.” He lifts the headphones back to his own ears, listens for a beat too long, then drops them to his neck. “People who belong here don’t need a map.”

“Or maybe you don’t want new people to belong,” I say. “You like being a gatekeeper because it makes up for the fact that your brother holds the keys everywhere else.”

He turns fast. It hits. He bares his teeth without meaning to. “Don’t talk about him.”

“You brought him into the room,” I say, calm. “When you acted like this place excuses being a coward anywhere else.”

He steps in, crowding my space. He’s shorter, but his anger adds inches. “You think your harness and your gloss make you brave? You’re dressed like an aesthetic mood board. You perform shock for applause. You don’t know what it is to mean it.”

“I mean it,” I say. “Every time I pay my people on time. Every time I hire a kid who’s never been allowed to be weird and make them feel like they’re enough. You worship purity. It’s just another kind of vanity.”

He snorts. “You sell purity with better lighting.”

I lean closer. “I sell possibility. You sell scarcity. That makes you a cop with a better playlist.”

His mouth goes slack for a second, incredulous, then he laughs, sharp. “You’re unbelievable.”

“You’re hiding,” I say, softer. “Behind the sarcasm. Behind this place. Behind a myth about ‘real.’”

“And you’re buying your way out of real,” he throws back. “You think throwing money at a scene means you’re part of it. You’re a tourist with a budget.”

“That line is tired,” I say. “Try a new one.”

He looks me up and down again, slower, taking in the cut of the pants, the edges of my ink, the silver at my throat. “Fine,” he says. “You look ridiculous. That harness is cosplay. You don’t sweat in it. You don’t bleed in it. You take it off for a photoshoot and hang it on a rack and call it ‘edgy.’”

“I sweat in it,” I say, deadpan. “Just not for you.”

Color rises under his eyeliner, a flush he hates. “God, you’re insufferable.”

“And you’re predictable.” I tap a stack of local band demos, stapled zine covers. “You think suffering is a credential.”

He drags a hand through his hair. It sticks up in spikes that make him look even younger, even meaner. “You know what your work does? It scrubs the dirt off things until rich kids can touch them without feeling contaminated.”

“And you know what yours does?” I counter. “It guards the dirt like a dragon, so no one sees the gold under it. You keep your world small so you can feel big inside it.”

He opens his mouth, shuts it. The track on the turntable thrashes itself toward silence. The needle clicks into the center with a soft, insistent tick. His foot starts tapping again, hard now, heel beating the floor. The sound goes straight through me.

“You’re in my store,” he says finally, the edge gone dark. “If you don’t like the way it’s laid out, leave.”

“If you didn’t want me here,” I say, “you wouldn’t be arguing. You’d be ignoring me. You like this. The friction. It’s more honest than the quiet you do for your family.”

He looks like he might shove me. I want him to. I want to shove back. Instead, he turns to the wall of flyers and rips down one that’s half falling, pinning it back straight like control is possible if paper lies flat. “You think you can just walk in and—”

“And tell you I see you?” I say. “Yes.”

Silence. The fan licks the air uselessly. He swallows. His jaw jumps. “You don’t know me,” he says, but it’s less certain. “You don’t know anything about what I love.”

“Then tell me,” I say. “Don’t hide behind a ‘mystery bin.’ Put a sign on something. Put your name on what you stand for.”

He stares at me like I’m daring him to step into a street with no crosswalk. “Fine,” he says, and reaches under the counter. He slaps a record down between us, the sleeve soft at the corners from use. A band I actually respect. A deep cut. He meets my eyes, defiant. “Start here.”

“Now we’re talking,” I say. I pick it up, weigh it like a trust he didn’t mean to hand me. “And after I buy it, I’m going to move your listening station to the front where people can actually see it.”

“Touch my layout and I’ll break your fingers,” he says, but it’s halfway to a smile he fights down like a bad habit. He snatches the record back to ring it up, the old drawer slamming open with a bruise of a sound.

The bell over the door jangles. We both flinch, glancing toward it like we’ve been caught doing something intimate. A shadow falls across the threshold, large and wrong. The air shifts colder in an instant. Athan’s shoulders climb back to his ears in a heartbeat, anger swapping out for that tight, brittle posture I recognize from the gallery.

He doesn’t need to turn for me to know who it is. He doesn’t need to say a thing. His foot stops tapping. His hands go still on the counter, the ink on his knuckles stark against skin gone pale. The silence between us tightens, humming, about to snap.

Bryce’s shadow blots out the doorframe, but it’s just some kid in a varsity jacket behind him, laughing too loud into his phone, oblivious. The kid squeezes around, bell clanging, and heads for the pop-punk bins. The wrongness lingers anyway, a phantom hand at the back of Athan’s neck.

I watch it ride him. His shoulders square into that practiced, polite readiness. The sarcastic mouth shuts. He pushes the record into a paper bag, slides it to me like we never snarled at each other, like none of it mattered.

The kid mumbles a question from the endcap. “You got the new Pressed Flowers vinyl? The pink one?”

Athan inhales, slow, muscles unsticking with visible effort. “They pushed the ship date,” he says, voice neutral. “Check back next week.” He turns, and the heel of his boot ticks the floor once. It’s small, but I feel it down my spine.

He bends to pull a milk crate from under the counter, and the laces on his left boot are frayed to white threads at the aglets, tied in a hard double knot. The leather is softened where it’s bent around his ankle so many times that it looks like a second skin. Scuffs draw crescents at the toes, gray and matte where they’ve hit concrete. There’s a crack near the eyelets, a thin, pale line that catches light. The tongue is split, the edge curling back where he’s grabbed it too rough. A faint ring of dirt traces the welt from rain dried fast and mean.

His foot taps again, once, twice, then goes still when he realizes it. But the echo keeps going for me. Something low and sharp blooms in my chest, unwanted and hot. I swallow and it doesn’t go away.

He leans his weight to the outside of his boot while he lifts the crate, and the leather creaks. It’s intimate like a body sighing. I imagine the sweat darkening the insides, the imprint of his toes, the place his heel has ground down the insole. I imagine those boots on my chest, on my face, the dry scrape and the weight pinning me exactly where he wants me. I imagine him bracing the toe under my jaw, tilting my head with nothing but a twitch. It’s stupid and immediate, and I hate that it’s happening here, under fluorescent lights, with a teenager humming along to a radio.

He crouches to shelve a stack, the denim of his jeans stretched at the knees, and his calf flexes under it, a thin line of tendon visible above the boot’s collar. The laces bite over his instep, a tidy lattice that I want to worry loose with my teeth. I want dirt under my tongue, the metal tang of the grommets, the sour-salt ghost of clove smoke soaked into leather. It hits me like an electrical low-voltage hum, constant.

He stands and the heel clicks again, impatient. He keeps his face blank for the kid, but his foot can’t lie. It tells on him, tapping when he’s irritated, stopping when he’s afraid, shifting when he’s about to say something he knows he shouldn’t. It’s a metronome of whatever’s underneath.

“Find everything?” he asks the kid, the script back in place.

“Yeah,” the kid says, dropping a record on the counter. “Uh, do you validate parking?”

Athan’s mouth twitches and the line of his foot stills. “We validate existence,” he says flatly, “not parking.” He rings him up anyway and scribbles something on the back of a crumpled flyer, sliding it over. “Show them that and tell them you cried.”

The kid laughs, charmed without knowing it. Athan flicks his gaze to me for half a second like he’s checking that I saw him be human. I did. My skin is too tight for it.

He moves to the end of the counter and kicks the cabinet shut with the side of his boot, a casual little violence. The mark it leaves on the wood is a new scuff on old dents. He goes to put the record on for the kid, and I follow because I don’t want to stand still with the feeling crawling over me.

He bends by the turntable and presses the cue, and the muscles in his forearm jump under a sleeve pushed up with no care. His ankle rolls in the boot, a circle so small it might be for him more than for balance. The boot kisses the floor, a whisper of rubber. I imagine that same foot on my sternum, pressing until my breath is a decision he makes. I imagine those toes shoving between my lips until the lace tips knock against my teeth. My hands twitch. I tuck my thumbs into my belt loops and hold, steadying myself on leather.

I’ve had attraction flare hot and vanish a hundred times, clean arcs of want I can aim. This isn’t clean. It’s messy and low and has nothing to do with his face or his mouth. It’s the boots that undo me, the lived-in hunger of them, the way they make him more real and more dangerous at once.

He straightens and looks at me. His eyes track down and catch where mine are stuck, a flicker of comprehension so quick I’d miss it if I didn’t live in the space between looks. His foot curls minutely inside the boot, like his toes are pressing against the leather. He notices me noticing and tests the pressure on me with a barely-there shift of weight.

He could exploit it, if he let himself. He could plant that heel on the edge of my shoe and hold me there. He could push the toe against my shin and ask me if I’d move. He doesn’t. He swallows instead, pushes his tongue against his cheek like he’s punishing himself for letting anything show.

The track starts. The kid sways, oblivious, and Athan’s boot starts its rhythm again. Tap. Tap. Pause. Tap. I count it because I can’t not. I can hear where his patience runs out. I can tell where the mask slips.

“Anything else?” he asks the kid without looking away from me now, not really. I shake my head at how ridiculous it is that an old pair of boots just rewired my brain.

The kid leaves, bags rustling, bell a little softer this time. The door clicks shut. The air settles. The quiet between us is crowded and new.

Athan drags his toe along a crack in the concrete like he’s tracing the fault line. “So,” he says, tone dropping, not mocking now, not anything I’ve heard on him yet. “You got what you came for?” His foot is still. I can feel my heartbeat in my mouth. I want to say yes and I want to say no and I want to drop to the floor and put my cheek to the laces until the tapping starts again.

“Yes,” I say, because it’s the truest lie I can manage. “And no.”

He doesn’t get a chance to pry. The bell tears through the room like a blade. The draft that rides in is cold and chemical—aftershave, dry-cleaning, money. I know the shape before I turn. Broad shoulders in a pale blazer that doesn’t belong in this light. Polished loafers that squeak once and then go deadly quiet. Bryce.

Athan goes rigid in my peripheral vision like someone killed the switch. The jaw that was cutting retorts two minutes ago tightens, then smooths. His shoulders pull back. His hands flatten on the counter. The tapping dies like someone put a finger on a pulse.

“There you are,” Bryce says, smiling like a photo. His eyes skip over me like I’m a fixture—a mannequin, a caution sign—and land on Athan with a proprietary warmth that makes my stomach curdle. “We’re late.”

Athan’s mouth opens, then shuts. The sound he makes is a soft, automatic assent. “Right.” The word is lighter than anything he’s used on me. He reaches for something without looking: keys. The practiced choreography of obedience.

Bryce steps in, bringing the outside world’s shine with him, and it looks ugly against the shelves and scuffed floor. He takes in the store with a curled lip. “Smells like mildew,” he says, almost pleasant. His gaze flicks to my boots, up my legs, clocking threads, piercings, everything, then dismisses it. “We have a reservation, Athan.”

Athan nods. He doesn’t roll his eyes. He doesn’t throw a quip like he did at the kid. He tucks a stray strand of hair behind his ear with the same neatness Bryce’s tie has. He hits the register button and the drawer opens; he tucks money in, counts like he’ll be graded.

“We still on for seven thirty?” Bryce asks, but doesn’t wait. “Mother’s already seated. Don’t make me explain to her why you look like this.” He gestures loosely at Athan’s T-shirt, the ink on his fingers. The tone is light. The words bruise.

Athan’s hand pauses over the receipt paper. A beat. Then he tears the strip clean, changes out the till tape with quick, competent movements that suddenly look small. The muscle at his cheek jumps once and disappears. He does not meet my eyes.

“Give me two minutes,” he says. Polite. Bland. He moves around the counter and the boot that had me by the throat a minute ago is quiet, careful. He bumps his hip on the endcap and apologizes to the wood under his breath. The Athan from seconds ago—spiky, mean, electric—leaches out of him with each step toward Bryce like ink in water.

Bryce watches him. Approval is withheld and dangled all at once. “And wipe your hands. We’re not bringing grease to the table.”

Athan wipes his fingers on a rag that used to be black. He doesn’t look at what it leaves behind. He folds the rag, neat edges, puts it exactly where it belongs. He grabs his jacket from a hook, black denim faded to thundercloud, and shrugs into it like armor that no longer fits.

I hear myself say, “He was helping me.” It comes out flat. It’s a hand on a hot stove. I shouldn’t touch this. I do anyway.

Bryce turns fully at that, finally regarding me as a person. His smile tightens. “I’m sure he was.” He scans me like a hazard to be contained. “This is private. You can ring your… hobbyist purchases some other time.”

Athan flinches so fast it barely counts. He takes a step toward Bryce, then checks himself with a tiny settling of shoulders, a nod. “It’s fine,” he says to no one. He takes the paper bag with my record in it, folds the top, holds it out to me with careful fingers that don’t brush mine. “Here.”

I take it. Our skin doesn’t meet, and I still feel heat. He keeps his eyes down, lashes a blackout curtain. The toe of his boot hovers over the crack he was tracing earlier and doesn’t touch it.

“Now,” Bryce says, already turning, ownership practiced and bored. He touches Athan’s wrist with two fingers like he’s steering a child across a street. Athan goes. He doesn’t jerk away. He doesn’t make a scene. He moves with him, pliant, the hard lines of his body slackened into something that makes my throat close.

“Do you lock up?” I ask him, uselessly, and he nods, automatic, reaching to flip the deadbolt with that quiet competence that just made me want to ruin him. He doesn’t look at me. He looks at Bryce’s reflection in the window to see if he’s moving too slow.

“We’ll circle back to this.” Bryce glances at me as if we had a meeting on the books. “If there’s anything to circle back to.” The smile doesn’t reach his eyes. Inside it, there’s an old cruelty he thinks is discipline.

Athan swallows and it’s loud in the silence of tinny guitars and air that’s stopped moving. He tucks his chin, a nod I’ve seen on dogs who’ve learned not to bark. He slides past me, careful not to brush. The leather of his boot kisses the floor one last time, weight pulled in, all the edges tucked away.

The door opens. The bell cries. The cold follows them. Athan glances up once—not at me, but at the ceiling, like he’s checking the weather in a room he can’t control. Bryce’s hand settles at the back of his neck. Athan drops his gaze, steps through.

They leave a vacuum. The bag crackles in my hand. The record inside is heavier than it was. I stare at the place where his boot had been tapping. The crack in the concrete looks like a line someone drew to tell him where to stand.

I want to smash the bell, the register, Bryce’s smug, neat mouth. More than that, I want to get close enough to press my palm over the part of Athan that just went quiet and keep it beating hard. Not to save him. To see it, raw. To know what he looks like when he’s not for them.

The music keeps playing for no one. I tuck the bag under my arm and step into the doorway, watch the two of them cross the street. Athan’s shoulders are set in a shape that isn’t his. His hands are in his pockets so he won’t fidget. His boots are silent on the wet pavement.

Bryce says something. Athan nods. He doesn’t tap. He doesn’t laugh. He disappears into the metal mouth of a car that reflects nothing back.

I stand there until the exhaust thins. The bell dings again as the door closes behind me on an empty store. The air, finally, moves. It smells like dust, ink, and the afterimage of clove smoke clinging to old leather. I breathe it in and let it burn.