Run away but we’re running in circles

[Angel Miguel Albares]

No to a drink, no to having a seat. Julio seemed confused, but understandably so since... he didn't know why Angel brought him here and admittedly, ordering a stripper by phone was a skeevy, sketchy thing to do. It was kind of disgusting, to be honest. Like—seriously—ordering a pizza. But a man. A whole human being.

Angel read the text slowly and then it dawned on him how terrible this looked. Did Julio think he was brought here to strip? Was that why he seemed so... tense? There was so much strain in his body language; he was clearly not comfortable. Part of Angel wondered what made him—Angel—so weird to strip for when Julio put on shows for strangers every day but probably... he didn't expect to be paid so much.

And with so much money on the line, things got weird. Like maybe if Angel wanted him to do more than dance...

"Wait." He motioned—wait—and then turned abruptly towards the master bedroom. The painting was there propped up against the wall, carefully wrapped so as not to chip the paint or rip the canvas. Angel returned with it in his arms; he hugged it like a shield again, feeling nervous about the whole painting thing. It was such a personal painting; he didn't want to be found lacking. He wanted to do Julio's mother justice because he could easily see how much Julio still loved and missed her.

"This. I—well I finished it, so I called..." He trailed off awkwardly and turned the painting around to show Julio. "This. Is why I called you here."

[Julio de la Rosa]

There was nothing else left to do except wait. Julio looked around surreptitiously while Angel left him standing there, feeling like a fool. Why did he do this? Why was Julio so disappointed? Probably because he thought Angel was different. Swallowing hard, he turned away from the hallway and eyed the windows, which were huge and looked out over downtown.

He only looked back when Angel came back with what looked like... a canvas. Julio raised a brow in question. The painting of his mother? Was that what it was? Julio relaxed--slightly--and watched while Angel turned it so that Julio could get a look at it.

It was
definitely his mother. It was his mother, probably the way she was in her dreams, how she envisioned herself, rather than the increasingly disabled, sick woman that ended up virtually chained to her bed for the rest of her life.

Despite himself, Julio could feel emotion welling up at the vision of his mother as he would have wanted to be viewed. Julio had no idea how Angel managed to capture something so accurate and true with just a one time conversation and a photograph but... there it was. Swallowing hard again, Julio nodded and signed It's beautiful, even though he was aware that Angel might not understand it. They were the only words he had right now.

Stepping closer, he took in a breath, then slowly let it out before he turned his gaze down to his phone, typing quickly. "Why didn't you just text me? I waited. And then you called me in this way. I don't know what you want from me."

[Angel Miguel Albares]

"You like it?" Angel didn't know what Julio was trying to sign but he understood bright eyes and that expression. He saw the tiny tremble of his lips too and he felt Julio's emotion and all of those were encouraging signs. Despite himself, he began to feel pleased with his work and with the fact that his painting had touched Julio. But he still had to ask because he was unsure of himself and doubt kept creeping over him, at every opportunity.

He painted her as he would have wanted to be painted, in his glory rather than at his lowest point. He wanted to capture his own yearning for freedom in her too, the way she effortlessly soared through the air, graceful and beautiful in all the ways he had never been viewed. Angel felt so ugly inside some days; it made it easier to look for and recognize beauty because nearly everything was beautiful compared to him.

"Oh... I'm sorry. I wanted to text you. A lot. But you didn't text me either so I thought maybe..." His shoulders lifted and fell. Just like last time, words flowed out unbidden but he owed Julio an explanation anyway. He didn't want Julio to misunderstand his intentions. "I didn't think you'd come... if I asked you to."

He pressed the painting into Julio's hands with a small smile, an uncertain and shy one. "I don't want anything from you. But if you don't mind... maybe you could stay and just... keep me company for a while?"

[Julio de la Rosa]

Of course he liked it. He nodded for emphasis. Yes. He liked it. He loved it. How did he even express how somehow Angel magically captured his mother as she would have wanted to be remembered? That was how she must look now, in heaven, as an angel herself. He wanted to believe. He had to believe.

Ah. Julio looked down at his own phone as he thought about the many times he hadn't texted Angel despite wanting to do so. Kinda... funny. A little sad, too. He half smiled. A misunderstanding on both ends? His brow furrowed and he frowned slightly as he looked up. What? Why... would Angel think he wouldn't come if he asked him to?

Why? he signed, a moment before Angel was pressing the painting into Julio's hands. His gaze remained on Angel, though. Hard to believe that he would go through the trouble of paying so much money just to contact him! Should it not be the other way around? Shouldn't Julio be paying for this painting that he seemed to just... hand over to him?

Sighing, he typed, "You don't have to pay money to spend time with me. I almost didn't come. I quit doing this a while ago. I only came because I thought it was you."

[Angel Miguel Albares]

Shrugging again, Angel looked off to a decorative twisted chrome piece sitting on an end table beside the couch. Why? He understood that one. Why did he think Julio wouldn't come? Because Portland was far. Because it cost money and time to move back and forth between Portland and Hazleton, time that Julio could spend with his friends, money he didn't have to spend. At least this way he was getting paid for his troubles.

Angel was just a stranger to him. Somebody he picked up off the street, actually. They had no attachment beyond what happened that night—Steven Seagull, making dinner together, spending a night just... being together. Being themselves. The evening started off rocky but Angel warmed to him and after he did, he enjoyed it so much that he thought about it for a week afterwards.

But what was a special evening for Angel—in both good and bad ways—might have just been another Wednesday or Thursday night for Julio.

"Oh." He had to read that again. "You... don't... do this?" Somewhat desperately he tried not to focus on the last part—the part where Julio came because he thought it was Angel. "Why?" He asked before he could rein it in.

[Julio de la Rosa]

Why? Shrug. That was his response? Shrug? Julio took in a deep breath, feeling somewhat impatient with the response. He didn't understand what Angel was doing but he was starting to feel played. Could he trust somebody that used money to get what they wanted? People like that were notorious for not seeing people like him as people at all.

His nostrils flared slightly as he took in another breath and let it out on a soft snort. What did the oh mean? Watching Angel read what he wrote, he couldn't tell what Angel was thinking. Was he disappointed to learn that he didn't normally do this (anymore)? His tone was hard to read. And his stilted words made it harder to read his tone, to decipher his intentions.

Taking the phone from Angel, he turned away from him as he walked over to one of the pristine white couches nearby and sat down.

"Bad experience. Wasn't worth the money." That was the short story. He set the phone down on the fancy coffee table for Angel. He only knew Angel for a night, so he wasn't getting into the details. But it had been a companionable, nice night together with him--with Angel, not the other thing. But Angel had left him in the morning without a goodbye and then it was radio silence until that job came through. Julio couldn't help it; he felt... used. And confused. The painting said something else. The lack of communication said another thing.

[Angel Miguel Albares]

It was a question in two parts, really—why Julio gave up private shows and, separately, why he came because of Angel. What did that mean? It meant... something, obviously. But things were all jumbled up and he could sense Julio's impatience and mounting displeasure. He felt it. He saw it in the way Julio's nostrils flared, the way he snorted, the way he pulled his phone back and went to seat himself onto the couch.

Somewhere between him being touched and happy about the painting and now, something had gone horribly wrong. Wires were crossed again; Angel was back in the dark about Julio's moody expressiveness. What did he say? What did he do? Did he offend Julio in any way? If so—when? How?

Slowly he walked over to check out the phone too and frowned at the message there. A bad experience at another private show? Did that explain why Julio was so cagey with him just now? Angel studied him silently for several long moments but still had no idea what went wrong for them.

"I'm sorry," he said slowly, choosing to remain standing. "If you're uncomfortable here, you don't have to stay. I didn't know about..." His hand swept across the table, down towards the phone with the stark and blunt explanation. Not much to go off of but he wasn't close enough to Julio to really be confided in like a friend. That thought made his chest pang. They weren't friends. Or they were only in Angel's mind, because he thought one nice evening together automatically made them friendly.

"I really didn't want anything... other than to give you the painting." Without realizing it, he shrank a little into himself and withdrew in a physical way. Again he felt small and dwarfed by his surroundings. "I'm sorry if I offended you. I just thought..." He moved back, a retreat to safer space. "It... I wanted to see you..." But all he was doing? Was wasting Julio's time.

[Julio de la Rosa]

No, he didn't expect Angel to know about the bad experience. Not even his colleagues knew about it. They just knew he'd given up private shows, despite how well they paid. At some point, he had decided that the money wasn't worth the degradation. Julio threaded his fingers together, elbows resting on his knees.

He looked up and saw Angel shrinking into himself and Julio turned his head away, one leg bouncing edgily up and down a couple of times. This was turning out to be a disaster. But he'd come all the way out here to make sure it was Angel. And it was. And he was already here but now it sounded like Angel might be regretting his decision.

Not helped, he was sure, by Julio.

Running a hand over his face, he let out a sigh and reached for his phone. For a second, he just sort of looked at it, at the words. They were a bit short, maybe snippy. Biting his lower lip for a moment, he glanced up at Angel and his gaze softened. It wasn't his intention to make Julio feel backed up in a corner. Apparently, he really meant it when he said he didn't have friends or people to talk to. He was just clumsy at it.

"Almost a year ago, I was hired for a party. Turned out to be a group of friends. They drugged me to make me more compliant. Took turns. But they started humiliating me and I punched one of them. They drugged me with something else. Don't know what but I woke up in an alley with a bunch of money dumped on me. Swore off private work after that."

He paused. Then added, "It's not your fault. Besides... I came because I wanted to see you too."

Hesitantly, he read over what he'd written and held his breath even as he held the phone out to Angel, his eyes on him, waiting.

[Angel Miguel Albares]

This wouldn't be the first time Angel's lack of communication skills and general hesitance to speak his mind tried someone's patience. His mother, his father, his uncles all told him how undesirable a trait that was. How difficult it made their lives to have to stop and listen and decipher what he meant when everyone was so busy.

Honestly he didn't expect Julio to want to see him. It sounded like a foreign concept. No one especially wanted to see Angel and Angel got used to a certain amount of rejection. He just pulled his headphones on, slipped a hoodie over his face and sidled into the shadows. Or he found a nice, secluded corner to sit in and watch a show while nobody around him even noticed he was alive.

He might not be alive without Julio's intervention that night. Realizing that made him want to repay Julio somehow—with the painting, with the money. Angel didn't have to pay for three hours but he did, even though he only thought that Julio would stay for maybe ten, twenty minutes at most. And that was fine. It was an excuse to see him again, to offer him incentive to come here.

In the time it took Julio to type all of his explanation out, Angel thought that he was seriously pissed off. Maybe it was a whole diatribe about how he shouldn't assume things. About strippers being people too and if he didn't want anything he shouldn't waste time. People were busy. They didn't have time to spend holding his hand.

Angel almost didn't look when the phone was turned onto him but he did, and he felt, if possible, worse than before. They raped him. Julio. They did those terrible things to him because... they, too, were rich. Looking for a good time with a handsome man who took clothes off for a living. And Julio thought... Angel was like that? It was a repulsive thought, one that made him suddenly hug himself as the ringing came back. He cringed. "No—no I would never—"

Did he take his pills today? Earlier did he—he did. Yes, he took them when he had a light lunch. The pills were the only things keeping him sane these days so thank god he took them. This was. Just. It would pass. Angel swallowed and closed his eyes briefly but his hand extended out to touch the phone as if he was about to take it.

No... he reached out to touch Julio's fingertips with his fingertips, sliding lightly together. "I—" Angel's voice trembled. "I wouldn't do that to you."

[Julio de la Rosa]

In telling Angel what he told him, he was extending an olive branch. An overture of friendship. A story nobody else knew, except those who were involved. And they had probably forgotten all about it by now. But it would stay with Julio for the rest of his life. Kalvin, one of the other strippers who had been working longer than Julio, once said that he would have to get used to feeling like a piece of meat. Julio hadn't thought much of it at the time. But it rang true now.

No, no, no, he signed quickly with his free hand, expression distressed. I know. I know.

He didn't think Angel would do that to him. Drug him, humiliate him, nothing like that. He did wonder, at first, if Angel meant to make use of him. If this was his roundabout way to say he wanted to have sex without having to say it. But he had thrown that assumption far, far away. Nobody like Angel could even think that way. He could barely even touch or be touched. Even now, their fingertips just barely touched and Julio was sure if he made any kind of move, it would scare Angel away.

For a long moment, he let their fingertips stay that way and then he took in a breath and took back the phone to himself so he could type, "I know you wouldn't do that. I'm just hurt you went through my job to talk to me when you have my number. I don't need your money to spend time with you."

[Angel Miguel Albares]

It was fine. Julio was here now, sitting on his couch, and he was fine. His experience was harrowing and awful but look at him—he was so strong. He could talk about it without wanting to run head-first at the nearest wall. He could tell someone he barely knew without ending up curled in a corner, hugging himself and shivering out of his skin.

Julio trusted him. Angel got the message loud and clear and it helped to bring him back. The warmth of his fingers grounded him too, and he managed to take in a few deep breaths that calmed him enough for him to smile slightly and nod.

I'm sorry. He slowly sat beside Julio, not too close, not too far. "I didn't think about it that way. Like I'm... trying to buy you off. Portland's so far and asking you to come here without some kind of compensation felt wrong. Money's not really..."

Angel gestured to their opulent surroundings with an almost bitter smile. "I should have asked first," he said quietly. "I just didn't want you to say no." Kind of stupid now that he thought about it. Really selfish, too.

[Julio de la Rosa]

Money really didn't seem to be an issue for Angel. That was the problem with people who grew up with money; they didn't really think about how much easier having it made things for them. But coming from a world of no money, with constant debt, living paycheck to paycheck and sometimes still not making ends meet, Julio knew a very different world.

He nodded, though, understanding now where Angel was coming from. His heart was in the right place. As Julio said--it wasn't Angel's fault that Julio took it hard at first glance. At least he acknowledged how it looked and that he should have asked. Julio looked over at Angel, not too close, not too far away. Somebody hurt him, too. Maybe physically. Maybe not. But Angel was nervous. Skittish. Scared. For some reason, that brought out Julio's gentle side.

Smiling, he reached out with a careful hand to touch Angel's cheek, again so that he would look at him. He lowered his hand, then signed, I wouldn't say no.

He had waited for that text like a fool. Constantly checking his phone, as if he might have missed a message. Angel had disappeared for some reason and Julio had no way of knowing what happened to him. Did he go to the hospital? He looked at the wounds, at the worst of the ones on his face. After a moment, he tilted his head and leaned slightly forward, gently touching the area under the wound where he had applied the butterfly bandage. He smiled.

Looks better, he signed.

[Angel Miguel Albares]

Angel tensed at that innocent touch to his cheek but somehow an unexpected brush of the fingers from Julio didn't set off all the alarm bells in his head. Just some—but not all. That was already a vast improvement over the way he acted around other people, though Julio didn't know it. He didn't know the extent of just how skittish and at times stand-offish Angel could be. One moment he was hot, the next he was cold; people didn't call him difficult for no reason.

He knew that now, that Julio wouldn't have said no. Angel smiled and nodded to show that he got it. Without being face-to-face with Julio he had no way of knowing if his offer would be accepted or rejected and it was fear that stayed his hand. He kept waiting for Julio to make the first move when he could easily have said something like thank you for the other night and gotten the ball rolling.

But with Julio smiling at him again and no longer twitchy and cagey and upset, Angel began to relax as well. The second time Julio touched his face he didn't even flinch; he saw it coming and sat calmly while Julio inspected the cut under his eye. Luckily it didn't need stitches and was healing nicely on its own. His hand was warm, though. Angel briefly allowed himself to close his eyes for a few seconds to enjoy his touch.

Yes. It doesn't hurt. He smiled with a bit more pride as he signed, having anticipated using that phrase once Julio got here. Someone as caring and gentle as Julio would, of course, want to know how he was doing. "Are you sure you don't want anything? We can get food delivered if you're hungry."

[Julio de la Rosa]

He smiled, because Angel was healing and because he signed back to him. It was funny to him that people began to understand him when he signed but they usually just talked back. He could hear perfectly fine. But it still felt a little more personal when somebody signed back.

No, he signed. Not hungry.

Mostly, he was just... still a little flabbergasted. This place. He couldn't stop looking at everything. It felt so strange that it was Angel's. So cold and colorless. Did he choose this? When he looked back at the painting, which he'd set gently against the table, he couldn't help thinking that the painting showed more than all of this... white. Pristine. It felt like a clinical place.

Where... he started to sign, then picked up his phone. Sometimes, it was just easier to write things out. But he had confidence in Angel. One day, he would know all the words. And he was already thinking of him in one days and some days. Curious.

"Where do you paint?"

Because surely that was the place that was most like Angel. More than this.

[Angel Miguel Albares]

A little distractedly Angel wondered if Julio ate before performances. It seemed like such a stupid thing to be curious about so he didn't ask, but he thought about Julio a lot lately. His routines, what his days were like, if he enjoyed his line of work. Some people did; not all the dancers at the club pasted fake smiles on their faces. Some of them seemed genuinely proud of their choreography and their athleticism.

It was so strange that he had never even seen Julio there before, but he assumed that the times he went didn't match up with Julio's schedule. Also he didn't go every day; he went when he felt especially lonely because there he could be with people but also not be noticed. Kind of weird, when there were parks and the whole downtown area was full of people, but those spaces were too open. It was too easy to get overwhelmed, feel lost.

As for where he painted... Almost sheepishly he pointed to the double glass doors leading out onto the balcony. "The pool." He painted poolside, yes. Cliche? Maybe. Maybe not. But the presence of water calmed him in a way that he couldn't accurately describe. Just being near water soothed his troubled soul, plus he had the advantage of being able to look out across the city. And if he made a mess, it was fine; the pool was cleaned professionally every week. He wouldn't have wanted to cover a white room in paint for the poor housekeeper to scrub.

"Do you want to see it?" He had an awning set up and everything for rainy days; it was an open air, mini studio of sorts.