2. Phoenix
PHOENIX
“Man, it’s nice to have a tame Friday night for a change,” Malachi said, bumping shoulders with me in the shadows to the left of the stage where we had the perfect vantage point to spot trouble before it broke out in this part of the strip club.
The moment the words left his mouth, I longed to kick-start a brawl of my own, with him as the unlucky recipient of a right hook with enough force behind it that he’d be eating through a straw for at least a week.
“Fucker…” I snarled.
He slapped a hand over his face the moment he realized what he’d done. It was too late though; those words, uttered with an hour and some change left before closing time, ensured that something would pop off before the night was through.
Son of a bitch.
“Shit, Phoenix…” Malachi began.
“I hate you so hard right now,” I informed him as the two dancers working opposite sides of the walkway began to converge on a party of rowdy patrons waving fives in the air.
Like a train wreck unfolding in slow motion, one of the dancers, Dream, slid to his knees a little too close to the other dancer, Landon, his shoulder connecting with Landon’s leg as Landon launched into a spin.
Landon crumpled like a house of cards in a stiff wind, tumbling off the edge of the walkway between the tables to land near a chair on the floor, while Dream continued his routine with energetic hip thrusts, long hair whipping in every which direction as he did his best to portray a metal singer.
Needless to say, the men started sliding fives in Dream’s G-string and offering them to him for Dream to pluck from their fingers with his teeth.
Dream crawled down the catwalk between them, letting them shove bills where they wanted, a few wandering fingers caressing his skin but never lingering long enough to draw me over with a stern warning.
It was the flash of purple glittery G-string and the bits of down and rumpled feathers Landon left in his wake that prompted me to move, Malachi beside me, prepared to shoulder our way through the crowd like bulldozers if need be.
I locked my hand around Landon’s ankle before he could climb all the way up onto the walkway, with Malachi catching his other ankle a moment later, Landon’s slight form offering little resistance when we dragged him down.
Malachi threw Landon over his shoulder and headed for the back, laughter, and the chance to taunt Landon, making the crowd slower to step out of the way for us this time.
Irritating bastards.
If Landon hadn’t already been fighting mad before, those folks adding insult to injury just had him more riled up by the time we got to the back.
“What did you have to grab me for?” Landon snarled, whirling at Malachi and aiming a kick to his shin that Malachi deftly avoided since we all knew what a prissy little diva Landon could be.
Unfortunately, he had the claws to back it up, too, which meant one, if not both of us were going to have to stick around back here until he settled down and left, or there was going to be a reckoning with Dream that I wasn’t sure the tiny twink would survive.
Not when Landon was already pissed that the new darling of the club had taken over the finale spot that used to be his, in addition to cutting into his tips tonight.
“Because you were the one about to start a back-alley brawl in the middle of a performance,” Malachi pointed out.
“Not to mention, closer,” Phoenix added, knowing he was about to further ruffle already bedraggled feathers with that statement, but if Landon wanted to have words with a fellow dancer, then he’d worked there long enough to know the rules.
You saved that shit for behind the scenes, preferably in the alley or parking lot behind the club after the patrons had taken off at the end of the night.
Nothing pissed his uncle off worse than YouTube videos cropping up of his dancers brawling. Not because he felt that it painted a poor image of the club, but because thousands of viewers were treated to a free show.
In truth, I agreed with him there. I just wished he’d agreed with me when I’d protested the hiring of Big Jim to work the door, because that was when shit had started going sideways around here, at least in my opinion.
The influx of yuppies and entitled pricks was way beyond anything we’d ever had to deal with before.
“He had it coming!” Landon snapped. “Did you see what he pulled on me up there?”
“To be fair, I don’t think Dream bumping you was intentional, unlike what you were fixing to do,” Phoenix explained. “He just picked a piss-poor position on the walkway to execute that gliding backbend.”
“You don’t have to believe me, but I know that son of a bitch did it intentionally, even if he didn’t mean for me to fall off the walkway!” Landon hissed.
“Speaking of which,” Malachi began, “that was quite a tumble you took. Are you alright?”
“Aside from a sore ass and some busted feathers, thanks to you carrying me like a caveman, you brute! I’m perfectly fine and madder than a wet hen with an empty coffee mug,” Landon spluttered. “You just wait until I get my hands on that bastard.”
“Quit fuckin’ complaining,” the bastard in question snarked the moment he stepped foot backstage. “I wouldn’t have run into you if you hadn’t tried to cut me off.”
“How could I be cutting you off when that was my side of the walkway!” Landon snapped.
“If you learned how to share real estate up there, you wouldn’t have landed on your ass,” Dream razzed. “I had just as much right to dance in that space as you did, you jealous, bitter old bitch.”
In hindsight, what I should have done was escort Dream through the locker room doors and gotten him the fuck out of there; instead, I turned to make sure Malachi was capable of restraining Landon.
Malachi had him in a bear hug, Landon’s feet off the ground as Malachi swung him around, but not before Landon flung his giant blue hair dryer in Dream’s direction.
And promptly hit me in the face when I forgot to duck.
Howling, I clutched my nose, blood gushing between my fingers, my face throbbing from the impact of the heavy plastic and metal device.
I’d have probably hit the wall if a makeup chair hadn’t caught me, slowing my fall even as one of the legs cracked beneath my weight.
In the end, I landed on broken chair bits and glitter-dusted tile, the front of my t-shirt stained crimson and beginning to cling to my chest with how heavily my nose was bleeding.
I could feel the puffiness radiating up to my eyes and knew the swelling would make it difficult to see.
“Shit… Phoenix, I think he broke your nose,” Malachi remarked, hovering over me, reaching but not touching, and it was a good thing too since I was still tempted to clock him.
“You’re damn right he broke it! Thanks to you and the gods-be-damned curse you put on us the moment you started talking about what a nice, quiet night it had been so far,” I grumbled, my voice muffled with how badly my nose was already swollen.
“Dayum, you’re gonna need stitches too,” Dream said when I tried to lower my hand to see if the bleeding had slowed; it hadn’t. “That thing gashed you good.”
“Joy,” I grumbled, keeping one hand pressed to my face as I ripped the t-shirt off over my head since it was ruined anyway.
“I am so sorry,” Landon moaned.
He was standing off to the side, hands pressed to his mouth, wide-eyed and looking absolutely horrified by what he’d accidentally done to me.
It was an improvement from being inches away from committing a felony, so I’d take the victory where I could get it at this point, since there was no denying that my night was going to end with an ER visit.
“Want me to tell James we need an ambulance back here?” Dream asked. “He’s gonna be pissed as hell when he finds out what Landon did to you.”
“Asshole!” Landon snapped, and this time I did duck, just in case Landon got it in his head to throw something else at the infuriating blond with aqua and blue streaks in his hair and a devilish grin that, yeah, looked a hell of a lot like taunting.
“Just tell James that I’m ending my shift early to go get stitches,” I grumbled. “If he insists on knowing why I need them, tell him I tripped over a platform boot and hit my face on a vanity. He doesn’t need to know what really happened.”
“B-but…” Dream stammered.
I lowered the t-shirt enough to squint directly into his eyes and let him see how over this whole mess I already was.
“He doesn’t need to know,” I growled, leaving no room for interpretation.
I wanted him to see just how serious I was about what I’d said.
“If I find out you told him anything different, I’ll make sure you’re stuck in the seven o’clock slot every Wednesday until someone pisses me off worse. Got it?”
“Yeah, I, um… I won’t tell him,” Dream replied, face having paled in the wake of my threat. “But, umm, how are you gonna get to the hospital like that if you don’t want him to call an ambulance? I’m pretty sure your eyes are too swollen to ride your Harley.”
“You’re damned right about that,” Malachi concurred as he squeezed my shoulder. “Want me to call Rex?”
“No, I do not want, nor do I need you to call my big brother down here to drive me to the ER,” I snapped, feeling indignant as hell, even as it dawned on me that letting him call my brother was one of the few options I did have while the strip club was still open for business.
Shit.
Calling Rex should have been my go-to solution to this turn of events, since he was off tonight, which usually meant he’d be in his studio, smoking a bowl while he covered canvas with acrylics and cut headlines and images from the various magazines he read.
Only now it was a matter of pride for me to find somebody else to take me, because I was not dealing with this shittastic night and getting called baby brother on top of it.