I know where beauty lives

[Angel Miguel Albares]

As soon as the bouncer let him in, Angel slunk to his usual seat at the back of the room. Half-hidden in shadows he slipped around people--mostly half-drunk women, half-hugging the walls in a bid not to be seen. When he got to his table, he sat with his back to the wall and slipped a hand into the messenger bag resting on his thigh.

After rummaging through it a couple of times he peered inside, brushed aside a bus ticket from Portland and then cursed softly under his breath. No pencil. Usually he had one in there along with a sketchpad, headphones and his meds--the essentials. Shit. Maybe he took it out and forgot it, or he plain never packed one.

With a sigh he sank back in his chair, disappointed in himself. He thought tonight he could get a better sketch of some of the dancers but without a pencil he couldn't do much. The show was ending up on stage. Lights came on, music died down. The announcer said the name of the next stripper and Angel sat up a bit straighter, craning his head over some tall woman blocking his line of sight. This table was empty for a reason--it offered a shitty view of the strippers but it was the least noticeable as well.

Maybe tonight wasn't a total wash-out... if Logan was dancing. Not that Logan knew who he was or anything but he knew who Logan was and that was the important thing. Angel slipped his dark hoodie up over his head when he noticed some women eyeing him. He sank down in his seat, waiting for the last stripper to exit the stage and for some of the women to clear out. A bunch of them swarmed the bar in search of drinks and Angel sat up taller again when the lights dimmed and new music came on.

In terms of sheer enjoyability, it was... The music was not enjoyable. There was too much bass and it was too loud, there was no real rhythm to it except for the pounding drum beat. Yet he felt his pulse quickening when that familiar, tall, handsome figure stepped onto the stage.

[Julio de la Rosa]

The music roared into a new song and Julio finished off his bottle of mineral water before crushing the plastic bottle and tossing it into the recycling receptacle nearby. Moving around the bar, he winked at the bartender. Meanwhile, Logan was making his way out onto the stage, moving his perfect body in perfect time with the throbbing bass of the music. Julio smiled to himself as he bumped fists with one of the other strippers--Jace.

Women closed around the stage as Logan got down to the music, pulling off piece of clothing after piece of clothing until he was wearing nothing but his g-string. Money was both tossed onto the stage and stuffed into his g-string as he gyrated in time to the music and grinned away at his fans.

Julio stood on the sidelines in the bar area, clapping for his friend as the women cheered and whistled. While he did, he noticed that one of the usually unoccupied tables had an occupant tonight, although it was somebody that seemed to want to hide themselves, since they were wearing a hood over their head.

"Should I ask if they want a private dance?" asked Shane as he noticed where Julio was looking. Julio shrugged good-naturedly, then watched as Shane approached the loner with a definite pep in his step. Troublemaker.

[Angel Miguel Albares]

Here was the problem with being Angel Miguel Albares: he was Angel Miguel Albares, son of Juan Javier Albares. In political circles his father was a well-known figure, easily recognizable as one of Spain's top diplomats. He was photographed everywhere he went, followed by reporters and camera crews, working hard to establish relations between Spain and the United States.

Angel was no stranger to publicity--and to staying out of it. His father was more than happy to never mention him, never speak of him, navigating around and past the subject of family with practiced ease. When Angel was smaller and obedient, a golden-haired little cherub toted around in cute outfits by his mother, he was allowed to be seen.

Once he grew older... Once he came out as gay, he was deemed unfit to be seen in public with either of his parents. They had a reputation to maintain; there were consequences to having a son like him so they distanced themselves from him. And it hurt, he wouldn't lie; it cut him down to the marrow.

But as with all things, he internalized. Swallowed the hurt. He 'fucked off,' as they colorfully put it here and went off to do his own thing in anonymity. It didn't matter if he dyed his hair green or got a couple of piercings or tattoos. Didn't matter if he dressed in black, embraced punk fashion. As long as he was half-way across the country where he couldn't be photographed with his parents, he could do whatever he wanted--they didn't know about him here in the States, but especially not in a dinky town like Hazleton, Oregon.

And yet, he still didn't feel at ease here. He still hid himself, his face, with the hood pulled down over his eyes on the off-chance that someone might recognize him, even as his eyes were riveted on Logan. That was, until someone came up and flippantly pulled the hood down, exposing him to the strobing multi-colored lights. Angel jerked up suddenly but wasn't fast enough to save the hood. Some guy--another stripper--was grinning down at him.

"Hey fella. You here for a good time?" The man winked, and then eased into the seat next to him with all the fluid grace of a dancer. "I can show you one of our private VIP rooms, if you want."

Angel sat for a moment silently staring at him. Part of him responded eagerly to the idea of a lap dance in private--and possibly more, if he knew anything about strip clubs--but most of him was stuck in the trap of still being Juan Javier Albares' son. "No. Thank you," he mumbled in the thick accent that people had come to associate as being 'foreign' and quickly got to his feet. The hood was jammed back on over his head and he hurriedly walked away.

"What'd I say?" the man called out behind him, either to Angel or to somebody else--he couldn't tell.

[Julio de la Rosa]

And Shane the Troublemaker struck again. Normally, he was all kinds of charming, but some people found his brusque manner to be too much. Somebody sitting in that spot probably didn't want attention on him, least of all, attention from one of the dancers privately. Or, conversely, maybe he did but Shane wasn't the one.

Curiously, Julio looked up at the stage. He'd come to see Logan, probably. Since he didn't even see Shane coming, he was probably fixated on the stage. Poor thing. Logan was straight as an arrow. At least, he only ever had girlfriends from what Julio knew; he wasn't that close to Logan. Kinda hard to be, honestly, with the divide in communication. But Julio was getting a lot better at understanding English and Logan was... terrible with sign language. He tried but... he was terrible at it.

Jace was the one who called back to Shane that he must have scared him away with his B.O. There was a playful swat, a playful dodge, and the two teased one another while Julio shook his head and rolled his eyes good-naturedly. He said goodbye to the pair and they each clapped him on a shoulder and said goodbye back.

Threading his way through to the back, he used the alley way door to head outside into the cool night air. He cocked his head curiously at the sound of several footsteps moving from behind the alley and just caught the tail end of a group rounding out of the alley and toward the street.

[Angel Miguel Albares]

Angel barely heard the response—he was already well on the way out, spooked by being caught staring at the handsome, nearly naked man on stage. It wasn't unheard of for men to visit this strip club but he felt prickled by pangs of conscience; in the back of his mind he kept hearing his father's somber voice drilling the message into his head that he must never draw undue attention to himself. He must never be caught doing anything to bring scandal to their family. That was worst than death, apparently. Or happiness.

Outside, he stumbled quickly away from the main entrance and slid his headphones on so that the music could sooth his jangled nerves. His shoes scuffled noisily as he walked into an alley, taking a shortcut to the bus stop that would take him out of town and back to Portland. Angel hadn't gotten more than a couple of steps in, though, when a group of three men melted out from the shadows. One of them was grinning as he asked for a light, wiggling a thin cigarette at him. The other two flanked him.

Angel looked at them while nervously licking his lips. "I-I don't have," he began, only to be jostled roughly by the man to his right. "I'm s-sorry, I don't—"

"Aww c'mon now buddy. I'm askin' you real nice for a light and here you are, bein' all rude." The leader's grin widened. "Well maybe you got somethin' else... in that little bag of yours, huh?" He reached out and tried to open the messenger bag, to which Angel quickly jerked it away and hugged it protectively to his chest. His sketchbook was inside—the one filled with sketches of beautiful people. Beautiful men. Like Logan.

A hard hand shoved him again, sending him stumbling. The bag was stripped from him after somebody tripped him and its contents came spilling out—his keys, phone, the tube of small pills, the sketchbook. Angel silently scrambled to pick up the sketchbook but someone kicked him hard in the stomach and winded him. He knew he should have shouted and made a commotion or something but in the moment he froze. His throat closed up and he... he just froze. It didn't seem like this was a thing that could happen, much less happen to him, and yet...

"What are you? Some kinda queer?" The leader's voice was filled with disgust as he shook the sketchbook at Angel. There was something ugly in his gaze, as Angel looked dumbly up at him, too scared to say anything. "Look at this fuckin' fag." He tore off a page and crumpled it, then threw it hard at Angel. "We ain't got room in this town for faggots like you." Wincing as the paper ball struck him, Angel shrank away from him. The other two laughed nastily and all three of them closed in on him.

It really didn't seem like something that could happen to him. And yet it was happening. Fists, feet, angry eyes and vicious homophobic slurs kept raining down on him. Eventually he stopped feeling the individual strikes because all of him hurt. He took the beating in silence because his voice had deserted him and when he stopped twitching or responding, they turned to his bag, looting everything of value from it. Angel moaned softly when something struck him in the side of the face—his sketchbook had been thrown onto him, half the pages ripped and littering the ground around him.

Through half-swollen eyes, he watched their feet moving away from him towards the mouth of the alley. Angel was in total shock; he didn't know how to process what just happened so he laid there, prone and still like he was playing dead in case they came back.

[Julio de la Rosa]

Counting out the money he'd made, Julio smiled. Good, it was more than enough for dinner tonight. Plus, once he added it to his collection at Greenwood, he would have enough collected for rent, which was coming up soon. Tucking the money away into the back pocket of his form-fitting jeans, he watched the moon for a moment. It was starting to just get chilly out and he was out here in little more than a tank top and a flannel shirt.

But he felt good. Stripping had a certain reputation but they weren't actually selling sex. They were totally above board here at this establishment. Although what they did afterward, that was up to the individual. What Julio loved about it was the dancing, the movement, the music, the athleticism. It was a good workout, although that didn't stop him from working out and keeping fit.

Ever since he watched his mother wither away, he couldn't help it; he did everything in his power to stay healthy. Body and mind. Soul.

Heading toward the street, he found that a group of rowdy guys were coming around the corner... Seemed like the same ones from before. Narrowing his eyes and lowering his brows, Julio dogged them as they came upon him and they didn't give him any trouble. But he did hear them gloating as they passed by, pushing and shoving each other, about some fag they beat. Julio's lip twitched at the word.

He turned around but there was nothing he could say to them, so he watched them walk off for a few seconds before frowning in thought. They beat somebody up. Around here? Probably one of their customers! Julio ran the rest of the way to the street, coming out to darkness. Nothing. Nobody. He skirted past the curve of businesses behind the strip club and through to the next alleyway.

At first, he saw nothing. Just the usual janky old alleyway. But then he realized that what looked like strewn garbage was somebody's things and a body. With a nasty jolt, Julio hurried over. The body remained unmoving, even upon his footsteps. The person was out cold or... dead. Julio could see all kinds of things littered across the ground from a flattened bag nearby. A bunch of half ripped papers skittered in the wind. There was a notebook on the person's face.

Holding his breath as if that would help somehow, Julio crouched down and reached for the book, pulling it away with one hand, while the other moved to check for a pulse.

[Angel Miguel Albares]

Were they coming back? Angel heard footsteps. He didn't know how much time elapsed between the group leaving and them returning, whether it was minutes or hours or days. At some point he passed out from the pain, then came back to consciousness with a few low groans, only to drift back into darkness.

The footsteps woke him again. Somebody was coming. Angel stilled, swallowing the breath that threatened to explode out of his lungs. He closed his eyes and tensed up; the footsteps came closer. One side of his head throbbed mercilessly and he felt congealed blood all over his face, which burned like the surface of the sun from being kicked and stepped on and ground into the hard concrete. His body was a mass of pain, too, and each breath felt like a knife in his lungs.

When someone touched him, he finally let out the breath in a fearful, sharp exhale that shattered the silence of the alleyway. The torn book was lifted from his face and a warm hand touched his wrist, which he jerked away like a scared animal. Angel tried to get away but could only fight weakly against this new threat.

"Please... don't..." he said weakly in his native Spanish, not up for translating into English. "Don't... hurt me..."

[Julio de la Rosa]

Oh! Julio paused. The person was alive. There was a sharp and painful inhalation. The wrist he tried to catch a pulse on immediately moved away, like a skittish alley cat. It's okay, he wanted to say, to quell the fear he heard in the young man's voice. But he couldn't. All he could do was grasp onto a shoulder and an arm and try to keep the man from moving too much.

It looked like this was it. The person those nasty sons of bitches beat half to death. Julio could feel his hands balling up, wanting to... But no. He couldn't hunt them down and try to fight them. This was more important.

As nicely and gently as he could, he tried to help the man up and to keep him from thrashing against him in a panic. Greenwood was nearby and he could take him there to help him if he needed it. But what if he needed to go to the ER? An ambulance? Julio worriedly tried to get a look at his eyes, to make eye contact and to see if he was concussed.

[Angel Miguel Albares]

For a little while he fought against this new menace but really, Angel wasn't much of a fighter. He wasn't much of a lover, either—hence pathetically hiding in the back of a strip club, miles away from the stage where the action was. Angel wasn't much of anything despite the bright hair and the clothes. They were ways of standing out in an indifferent world. They were cries for attention from indifferent parents.

Even when the other guys beat the shit out of him, he laid there and took it like a pussy—their words. Pussy, fag, fairy, queer. If he thought Americans were more progressive about gay people, he was sadly mistaken, especially in a small and quaint town like Hazleton. To his face, they were polite here but in the shadows... Well.

The breath ran ragged in his burning lungs as he struggled for a few more seconds, before he recognized the guy holding him down. It was somebody from the club; earlier Angel passed him after he'd been exposed. He didn't notice the man at the time, being so embarrassed and eager to escape, but unconsciously he noted his face in passing.

"I... saw you... earlier...?" he asked half-incoherently as the fight drained out of him. Slowly and painfully he let himself be eased onto his feet but leaned heavily against the other man. Angel understood that he wanted to help. Right? He didn't say anything but his hands were gentle and his movements were slow, careful.

[Julio de la Rosa]

Yes! Yes, they did see each other in the nightclub. Julio nodded and smiled. It was a small smile, mostly to encourage the man to trust him and not to try staggering off on his own in his current state. Hard to tell in the darkness, but it seemed like the poor guy had taken quite the beating. His face was a mess and as he got to his feet, Julio tried to detect if anything had been broken during the beating.

Still hard to tell. The man leaned against him quite heavily but that could have been loss of blood. There seemed to be a lot of it. With a steady arm around the man's waist, Julio indicated the items strewn across the alleyway with a questioning tilt of the head. Seeing a stack of pallets from one of the businesses, Julio helped the young man over to sit down, then put his hands up and then gestured to the items. He was going to pick them up.

There was good reason for that; amongst the items, were keys and a wallet. Julio scooped them up and put them into the bag as quickly as he could but tried to take care not to bend the papers he could find too much. They were already damaged pretty badly. The last item he picked up was the notebook, which turned out to be a sketchbook. In the dim light of the streetlamp, he could see that the image half torn out of the page was an image of Logan, mostly naked. The picture revealed behind it was Logan's face, expression fierce, hair in one eye. There was a smattering of the man's blood covering part of the face, where the sketch book had been on the man's face.

Julio didn't say anything about what he saw. He just slid the book into the bag and slung it over his shoulder before he moved to the young man and helped him back up. Sliding an arm around his waist, he let him lean on him as much as he needed to. He made the sign for Greenwood, but he didn't think the man would know what it meant, so he pointed in the direction of the apartments, which weren't far.

[Angel Miguel Albares]

He... wasn't much of a talker, it seemed. Not much of a talker at all. Angel tried to understand what he meant when he swept a hand across the area but he was so tired and hurt and on the verge of passing out. Not the best time to try and decipher what a stranger wanted to convey with gestures instead of words. It didn't even occur to him that the man might be unable to speak; he merely, almost abstractedly, wondered why he wasn't speaking.

Didn't matter though. All of his things were on the ground, carelessly scattered. Pages of drawings were torn, crumpled, ripped. He would never get them back. And the notebook was smeared in blood and dirt, laying behind him as he was helped onto some pallets. Angel half-collapsed onto them but luckily there was a wall behind him for him to rest on.

In the dim, ghoulish light of the alleyway, he studied the stranger who was trying to help him. His brain still wasn't working at 100% capacity so he watched as though in a dream, or as if he was viewing a movie, feeling oddly disconnected to the moment. It was like an out-of-body experience... if his whole body didn't remind him with every throb of pain that he was, oh, very much still present.

If the stranger saw anything questionable in the sketchbook, he made no mention of it. And Angel was too beat up to feel any kind of embarrassment. Bemused, he sat there until the man came back for him and tried to get him to go... somewhere with him. Sign language? It was kind of hard to miss sign language—except Angel didn't know how to read it. But he knew what it looked like and finally it clicked that the man was mute. Deliriously he nodded once the way was pointed out to him and he dragged his tired old body towards the apartments.

Really... this man could have been some creep looking to take advantage of him. It wasn't like Angel was blind to the dangers that lurked around here. But he was in no fit state to fight back and any resistance had been kicked out of him. So he let himself be taken to a humble set of apartments and he let himself be half-dragged in through the lobby doors. Loosely he curled a fist around the man's shirt as he felt himself beginning to slide side-ways as they waited for the elevator to get back to the ground floor.

[Julio de la Rosa]

It wasn't easy getting the man to Greenwood but luckily, it wasn't a long walk from the strip club. But with every step, he swore he could feel the man growing weaker. By the time they stepped together into the lobby, he felt like he was losing him. With alarm, he grasped the young man as he began to slip out of consciousness.

A panicked look was thrown around the lobby but nobody was around to see the two of them at this time of night. Should he call for an ambulance? Ding. The elevator doors opened and Julio had to make a choice. Keep going to his place or call for help. Calling for help wasn't easy without a voice.

Practically holding the man up, he stepped into the elevator and cradled him against his chest as he pressed the button for the fifth floor, where he lived. But as the doors closed, he tried to get a better look at the wounds. So much blood and filth from the alleyway; the grime made it hard to see the actual wounds.

Ding.

The fifth floor. The doors opened and Julio was glad that his apartment was only two doors down. Propping the man against the wall and pressing himself against him to make sure he didn't slide to the floor, Julio fished out his keys and kept hold of the man as he unlocked the door.

Once inside, he immediately helped the man to the couch, lying him down. He made the sign for wait, then quickly ran off to the bathroom to get his first aid kit.

[Angel Miguel Albares]

Ding! In his crumpled up brain he was taken back to the one summer when they went on holiday in Italy, in a small and remote region way up in the mountains. There had been a tiny hotel there with an unmanned desk, and Angel—then aged eight—was permitted to press the service bell but one time.

Ding!

He felt them moving again, and then he was being wedged up against a wall. There was no other sensation quite like being wedged up against a wall—don't ask how he knew that—so he realized that they were at this man's apartment. After a moment and some fumbling he heard a door open and in his half-conscious haze, he was led inside and laid onto a couch. Dazedly he gazed up at his rescuer, again studying him.

The only thing his brain came up with was that he wanted to paint him.

Then the man was gone and Angel let his head drop sideways. He passed out again and merciful darkness claimed him. When he came to, something clattered nearby, like a tin box. He groaned softly and tried to ease away from the sound, opening his heavy, heavy eyelids to the face of the stranger again.

"Who...?" Angel asked weakly.

[Julio de la Rosa]

The old tin box he used for his first aid kit clanked down on the wheeled metal table beside Julio as he sat down on the edge of it. He found the table at a rummage sale; it was low enough to serve as a coffee table but it was industrial, made of dark brushed metal.

Everything in Julio's apartment was old, hand-me-down, thrift bought, secondhand. The old cuckoo clock on the wall that didn't work. The couch that had once been red but was now a faded pink color. Even the things he hung up on the wall, like a painting of a hummingbird he loved and found at a thrift store for just three dollars.

He didn't have a lot of money, despite stripping. The real money was made elsewhere and Julio had stopped doing that a couple of years back after... an incident he really didn't like to think about. It was okay, though. He made enough in dollar bills to keep this place over his head and go to the market for food. That was what really mattered.

And people.

They mattered, too.

People who were beaten up. Called faggot. Julio's expression softened as he watched the young man edging away, like he couldn't be sure that Julio was going to come for him, too. He showed the young man the contents of the tin box. Just bandages and ointments and gauze and medications.

But he was asking who he was. Julio bit his lower lip, then turned his gaze downward. Right. He pulled his phone from his pocket and typed in Spanish, "I'm Julio. I found you in the alley. Are you feeling okay or should I call an ambulance?"

[Angel Miguel Albares]

Details came into and out of focus behind the stranger, one moment clear as day and the next blurry and indistinct. He saw paintings—the artist's brain recognized that straight away. The frames were all mismatched and there was no central theme to the collection but they were colorful, pretty things.

And then there was the man himself. He looked intimidating, no word of a lie. That was probably why he didn't trust him and why he still wanted to run. Nothing about him said that he wanted to hurt Angel but then the tattoos on his hand, the hair style... Neither of those things fit with his gentle eyes though.

Again, things came into focus and other things went out of focus. The paintings went away; the first-aid kit was scrutinized. Oh. Yeah. Angel nodded slowly as he was shown the contents, still wary but less skittish. He didn't know why a stranger wanted to help him out—maybe he thought he would be paid or compensated later. Those guys took his money and whatever else they thought was valuable inside his bag but he could probably just make it up to the stranger later.

"Julio?" Achingly he tried to sit up, feeling like all of his bones were rattling around in their sockets. So Julio was mute, like he thought earlier. "No ambulance. Please." He didn't want the publicity, not even the chance of being recognized. "I'm Angel."