We Are Bulletproof

Angel kept looking nervously outside, out at the darkness. Being alone... being alone in the dark, that was his worst nightmare. He couldn't even sleep in the dark, keeping a little night light on at all times while the radio or TV babbled on in the background to keep him company. It wasn't the silence that bothered him but... his imagine would invariably take over if he didn't have anything on.

He would hear things and he'd get twitchy, anxious.

So being out there in this pitch black darkness in a town he didn't feel familiar with, after being beaten up savagely... That wasn't a situation he wanted to put himself in. On the other hand, he was also skittish with strangers so it was kind of a toss-up between the lesser of two evils. Maybe a large part of him skewed towards staying with Julio, though, especially as Julio had been keeping a respectful distance and had made no untoward overtures towards him.

"...I'm sorry... I didn't mean to accuse you of... of anything."

He looked at the scar for a long time, as though he could tell its origins from staring at it at length. There was no way of knowing that Julio was telling the truth... but there was also no way of knowing that he was lying. Angel's grasp on the bag loosened and he forced himself to relax a little bit. Even though he wanted to know what happened to Julio, it seemed inappropriate to ask. But somebody handsome, tall, tough like Julio didn't seem different in the ways that Angel was different. His different was an attractive kind of different, the kind that drew people to him.

"What... kind of movies do you want to watch?"

It probably wasn't good that even a little pressure to his shoulders made his knees buckle. Angel sat back down on the couch; a small crease appeared between his brows as he frowned. Was Julio trying to take him hostage here? Did he know who Angel was or something? Why did he insist on Angel staying?

Normal people would have thought that he was simply being nice. Normal people would have been glad for a place to stay for the night, to be taken care of by someone who had no visible ulterior motives. But Angel wasn't normal and he'd had some pretty traumatic experiences in the past that didn't lend themselves well to interacting with strangers in situations like these.

He read the text on the glowing screen with another frown, and then looked outside. It was really dark out there. Small towns weren't equipped with the sorts of lights that big cities were, so out here when it got dark... it got dark. The thought of going out there with those violent creeps outside made something in him shrivel.

"...you don't have to do this." He hugged his bag tight to his chest, gazing at the edge of the coffee table. "You don't even know me."

For half a second, Angel let the hand linger on his arm. A simple human touch, the warmth of a hand through the cloth of his sleeve, felt nice. It was something he needed in the moment. He'd had a rough night. He wasn't able to sketch anyone at the club; he couldn't watch all of Logan's show because someone spooked him. When he went outside, he was ambushed and beaten to within an inch of his life.

Right now, everything hurt. His body, his heart, his soul. Everything throbbed and ached and he was so tired that he could have passed out again. If he blinked too long, he might have slumped over. So having someone touch him gently, it meant a lot in that moment and Angel's guarded expression relaxed briefly into something a lot more honest and vulnerable.

But then it came back up when Julio's hand pulled away so that he could type on his phone. Angel shook his head again as he struggled to stand. "No... no thank you. I'll be fine. There's a bus stop outside... I live in Portland, so... it's fine." Julio couldn't escort him all the way out there—no point in him leaving his apartment when he'd just got home.

It was kind of weird being treated like this. Angel was sure Julio wanted some kind of payment in return for his kindness; it seemed like that was just the way that life was. It was the way life worked. Everything was... transactional.

He started to reach for his messenger bag, laying in a little heap by the side of the couch. No point checking for money in there; he heard those guys bragging about how much money they got out of his wallet earlier. Angel didn't think it was a lot but apparently those guys thought it was. Then again, most people didn't carry a couple hundred on them.

Money was never in short supply for Angel and truthfully he didn't spend much of it on anything other than that lavish apartment—and only then because his father wanted to invest in some real estate out here. He just happened to live there. It wasn't his to own. Although he didn't pay rent, he was responsible for not trashing it which... wasn't hard since he had no friends to speak of.

He peered at the phone; one of his eyes was puffy. "I'm okay." It was nice of Julio to offer but he wouldn't sleep a wink if he had to spend a night in a stranger's place. Angel was guarded for a very good reason. He brought the bag up into his lap and then hugged it almost like a shield. "I'm okay," he repeated, softly whispering. "I can get home on my own."

No needles.

He didn't fully relax until the packet had been set aside, and the butterfly bandage applied under his eye. It was taut and felt uncomfortable but it was better than having a needle inches from his eyeballs. Angel's gaze didn't lift up while Julio was leaned in close, but once he eased back, it hiked up to his face and to his handsome smile.

There wasn't much motivation in Angel to smile back at him, even if he found Julio's smile almost dazzling, but he nodded once slowly. "Thank you." The hood, though, was staying on. Angel was quick enough to catch it this time—unlike back at the club—and he shook his head stubbornly.

"I'm fine. Thank you." He didn't speak above a whisper. "I can—I just need some bus money to get home. I'll pay you back."

Was he a stripper? Or—dancer? Angel knew some of them didn't like being referred to as strippers, finding the term derogative. He didn't speak to them or anything to find out, it was just stuff he heard when they spoke near him. A lot of them didn't notice him when he wedged himself into that corner table, blending in with his dark clothes and usually with a hood over his head to hide the hair.

Vaguely he noted Julio's apologetic expression but all he did was shrug lightly in response. It had to hurt if it was going to be disinfected, there was nothing worth whining or cringing about. Angel did wince a few more times, unable to stop his body's natural response to the sharp stinging sensations, but he didn't say anything more. Julio couldn't respond to him anyway, could he? All of the signing went right over his head and in the end there wasn't much to say.

Thanks. Sorry for the trouble.

Eventually the wipes were put away and still silently, watchfully, Angel sat on the couch, barely moving. He eased back a little, still wary, as Julio returned from the bathroom but he had only gone to get a washcloth. Angel dropped his gaze as soon as his face was taken and turned and fought hard against the urge to pull away.

"What?" The... eye? Under his eye? He reached up a shaking hand to touch it and instinctively winced again when his fingers encountered a cut. "No. No needle. Please." Angel physically pushed away from the sight of it, curling into himself. He yanked nervously at the edge of his sleeve so that it fell far down over his hands and hugged himself. No needles. There were enough needles in his life that he didn't need to be prodded here, too.

He didn't... didn't really want to know how bad it was. There was blood, there was dirt and grime, bits of garbage stuck to the wounds. If he didn't die from getting kicked in the head, he was probably going to die from infection. Angel swallowed hard. It was nice of Julio to let him be, to help him sit up, but a large part of him still wanted to head for the door. He didn't do well in strangers' apartments, when it was just himself and the other person. He didn't feel safe.

But there was no other choice, because he was beat up to hell and back and the last thing he wanted to do now was run. Where would he run to? The bus stop with no money? To buy a ticket with the cash he didn't have? His own apartment in Portland was about four times larger and ten times more opulent than this, but the problem was it was in Portland.

"What?" He watched the signing, completely clueless. Julio repeated it but he had no idea what that meant so he only nodded and gave consent to whatever he wanted to do. "Nnng..." Angel winced as the wipe slid against his cheek, stinging him sharply. He grabbed the faded couch cushion and grit his teeth hard—but he didn't make a sound. Just like he didn't make a sound back in the alley when those guys beat the shit out of him.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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..."

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.

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.

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.