Chapter Text
your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built up against it.
-Rumi
Shaolin didn’t know how long it had been since he’d run. The building he had found for that night was so cold he might as well have stayed outside. He found a room where the windows weren’t blown out and huddled against the wall.
It had been long enough that the bruises had started to fade but not long enough that his ribs had stopped hurting. One of them had to be broken or bruised but he didn’t know what to do about that. It had been long enough that breathing was easier. Long enough that he had stopped crying about it.
He had managed to chip off most of the nail polish though. Now he could only see the blue around his cuticles. The first night he had picked them enough that his fingers bled. There were intents in his nails now that would take ages to grow back. But he didn’t care.
The blood stains were still on his sleeves. It made people look away when he begged. No one wanted to help and he had nowhere to go. He saved up enough to eat today but he was still hungry, the gnawing feeling in his stomach had become permanent. His head wasn’t clear enough to think. The world shifting in and out of focus, most days all he wanted was to sleep but he had to keep going.
Carmen would want him to keep going. He missed his foster sister something awful. Missed how she had held his hands and painted each nail so carefully. The memory was warm and safe. There was something playing on the radio and she was singing along. Her voice wasn’t good but she sang so confidently anyway. Shao wanted to be just like her. She was sixteen and the bravest person Shao had ever met. She always put herself in between him and their foster father. She knew how to use her voice and that was something Shao wanted to learn. She knew how to talk in a way that made people listen.
And she was so beautiful. In the last few years they’d lived together he had watched her apply her makeup every morning. It reminded him of painting. Shao had been fascinated by how she mixed the colors to make something incredible. On the days that their foster father was out late, she would let him try on her lipstick or color with her eyeshadow, sometimes on paper and sometimes on his arms. Carmen never laughed. Shao knew most people would have laughed and called him names. Which was why he never not in a million years would wear any of it outside her bedroom.
Still, there was one thing he had never tried. Carmen painted her nails often. Sometimes switching out the colors once a day because she could never settle on one.
She was gonna paint his nails and then they were going to remove it. She even had the shit to remove it right next to them. It had been half an hour maybe since she’d applied it. Carmen had nothing but compliments. Shao had just decided that he liked it when their foster father came home early. Shao had almost run when they heard him stomp down the hallway. Even Carmen got scared when they heard him trip, curse and stand back up again. He had been drinking again and that never ended well.
Carmen couldn’t stand in between them at that time. She tried because she always did but it wasn’t enough. Carmen managed to pull him off Shao and told him to run. So Shao ran and ran until he didn’t recognize the part of New York he had ended up in. Shao considered going back when the sun started to set. But he didn’t know the way back anymore. Besides his foster father would kill him. So Shao stayed on the streets jumping from one abandoned building to the next, absolutely terrified out of his mind.
-
Annie had her hands on his shoulders when she led him into the warehouse for the first time. It had been a few days since she picked him off the streets, half dead and parking cars for dimes. She’d given him somewhere to sleep and she’d given him a job offer. He was going to run drugs for her and eventually start to sell himself. Shao was glad to be off the streets but the way her nails dug into his shoulders made him want to run again. The way she looked at him made his skin crawl and he had no idea what she’d do to him. He was scared he had just run from one nightmare into another.
-
“You take this,” she said as she handed him an envelope. Shao opened it and there was a gold necklace with an S-shaped pendant and a wad of assorted cash. He looked back up at his mother and frowned. He had wanted that necklace for months but it wasn’t his birthday or a holiday.
“Where you going?”
“Just out for a couple hours. Just to make sure we got enough for the rent. I’ll be back before you wake up.”
She leaned over and kissed his forehead. As she pulled away Shao tried to remember what she looked like. He remembered her words, the way her hands shook, and the lines across her forehead but he couldn’t put all those pieces together anymore. In his dreams, she was always in shadow. He remembered the red dress, the one covered in sequins that reached just to her knees. He remembered how she would give up wearing heels and just walk home barefoot most nights. He would linger by the bathroom door as she cleaned her feet. He never knew where she went, just that he was always relieved to see her home. Even if it was 5 am and even if he could tell she was trying to not cry.
He couldn’t remember her voice. She had the most beautiful singing voice but he couldn’t remember it. Out of all of her, he wished he remembered her voice.
“Mama no don’t go-”
But she didn’t listen and Shao couldn’t stop her. The dirt swirled down the drain. Her lipstick was smudged in an angry red line across her cheek. Still, she smiled. Still the door closed and still, he couldn’t-
Seconds later he heard a car rush down the road outside, a scream loud enough that he flinched, and all of a sudden he was on the sidewalk and his mother was on the road. The car rushed off and Shao’s body wouldn’t listen to him. He was too late.
Her body was mangled, twisted in ways that made him feel sick and her blood ran down the road, way too much blood and Shao screamed-
Shao startled awake and sat up too fast. His head ached as he tried to slow down his breathing. His mind was clouded with her, always remembering the wrong details. Shao didn’t trust his memory of her most of the time.
He was shaking minutes later when Annie shifted in her sleep next to him. He looked over. Going from one nightmare to the next he thought, as he forced himself to lay back down to rest. He knew he wouldn’t get to sleep again but he couldn’t leave until she did.
He never saw his mother's body on the road. Never heard the car and never could have gotten there fast enough to yell at her to move. The next morning he was woken up by a neighbor, a few hours later he was in an office where they debated what to do with him. He had no family anywhere close so they placed him in temporary foster care. They never found out who killed her. The judge ruled it an accident and closed the case.
Shao wished he could remember her voice. She was supposed to be famous, everyone should have known her voice. But not even her son could remember it.
-
There was something different about this club. Shao knew that before he’d even left because Annie had laughed when she told him the address. She didn’t say anything else but Shao knew she found the idea of sending him there hilarious, which had to mean it was dangerous. Still, he had been pushing drugs for a few years now. He knew how to negotiate, how to seem braver than he actually was and most importantly he knew how to not waste Annie’s money. He knew perfectly well how that would go over. So he steeled himself and followed the directions given to him.
“I’m here for the delivery,” he told the man who was lingering outside the club. Shao assumed he was a guard and was right when he just grumbled, pointing to the alleyway next to the club’s doors.
Shao found a spot near the side door to wait. He fumbled with the straps on the bag as he waited. The alleyway was mostly blank but there were a few tags lingering around the doors. Shao didn’t recognize most of the names but one stuck out. It was written in bright blue block letters and said, Thor. There were a few lightning bolts around the name. He smiled. It wasn’t half bad really and must be pretty recent given how bright it still was. Shao was tempted to throw up his own name a bit further down on the wall. He could almost see it and was just reaching for his bag when the door swung open.
Shao jumped back to avoid getting hit by the door and looked up.
The club owner and DJ Carlo Pakoussa had just walked out in heels. He would have been taller than Shao without them so now he just towered over him in a way that made Shao very, very nervous. Shao struggled to look him in the eye and decided that it was the height that made him keep looking down, to where his shirt was unbuttoned almost to his jeans.
“Hey, Shao right?”
“Yeah.” He managed to reply a few seconds too late.
Pakoussa smiled. “Yeah, Annie sent you. You got the goods?”
He nodded and handed over a paper bag that was inside of his backpack. Shao had double checked all of it before he left and he knew all of it was there but he was still tempted to take it back and check again. He really didn’t want to disappoint. And then kicked himself for thinking that.
“It’s all there,” he blurted out.” I checked before I left.”
“Nah don’t worry I trust you.” Pakoussa reached into his pocket and counted out some bills. He handed them over and Shao almost forgot to count them himself.
“Looks good.”
“Alright baby have a good night yeah?”
Shao nodded a little too fast and Pakoussa left letting the door swing closed behind him. Fuck what the hell was that? What kind of alternate universe did that man walk out of where he could just wear heels and make Shao forget his own damn name?
Yeah, this place might be dangerous, Shao thought as he was walking away. He got back to Les Inferno and wandered inside to give Annie her money.
“I’m sure you broke some hearts down at that little faggot club huh?” Annie laughed. God. He hated her laugh so much. He set the cash down in front of her and tried to figure out something to say.
“What where’d you send him?” Cadillac asked from where he was slumped in a booth. Annie shot him another grin before replying.
“Pakoussa’s new club. They gonna make me so much money and I thought sending Shao might be a good idea. He’s cute enough for them.”
Cadillac snorted.
“Nah Annie just selling.”
“Hmm well I’m gonna need you back there every couple of weeks. Next time will be a bigger shipment.”
“Alright.”
-
Shao couldn’t decide if he liked going down to that club or not. Annie’s abuse before and after every visit was enough to make him hate it but Pakoussa was always so nice to him. He didn’t seem to care that Shao would forget how to speak around him sometimes. Granted Pakoussa seemed to get that a lot. After a few trips, Shao noticed that seemingly every person he met around that club had a crush on Pakoussa. Not that he had a crush on him or anything. He was just very observant of all the people who were tripping over themselves around him.
“You know honey you’d be welcome inside the club anytime.”
“What..no I ain’t I’m just here-”
“Yeah, I know. But what I know is that every time I’ve seen you, you’ve been looking at that door.” He pointed back at the side door. Since Shao had started selling there the tags had spread out across the club’s wall. Thor’s tag had been joined by a bunch more but his still stuck out the most, even as the blue faded into the brick. “ And that’s nothing to be ashamed of. You think about it and come by when we’re open, they’ll let you up no question.”
Shao nodded. Pakoussa grinned, clapped him on the shoulder before saying goodbye and disappearing back into the club. On the train ride back Shao picked pink glitter off his jacket and tried not to think about anything. He quickly wrote his name in red marker across the train seat, trying to clear his mind a little. He wondered if there were more tags inside the club, how many names he would know and how many he would discover. More and more names had started appearing lately on the subway cars and in back alleyways. What kind of art could someone make there? He shouldn’t care, he knew that but no one needed to know that he was thinking about it.
Shao almost missed his stop cause he was too deep in thought. As he walked up the subway stairs he passed by an older Rumi piece. Rumi rarely painted on bricks these days. Shao was more likely to catch one of his pieces on the side of a subway car. This one was older and faded but his usual colors were there, electric yellow on a blue background he wrote ‘seek for love/break down the barriers’. Easier said than done Rumi. he thought as he climbed the rest of the stairs.
Love wasn’t real. Everyone always wanted something and you couldn’t love someone you were using. Besides anyone he thought had loved him ended up dead or he ended up having to leave them. His mother might have loved him but he barely remembered it. Carmen told him that she loved him so much that he couldn’t exactly deny that. She was more family to him than his mother was. She would want him to believe in love. She would want him to take a chance and go to that club. But Carmen’s not here and Shao can’t afford to wreck his reputation. He had worked to build up Shaolin Fantastic as a mysterious, death-defying, lady-killing romantic and he couldn’t just throw that away. To survive he needed to be someone who wouldn’t even think about going there.
So Shao only went back when Annie told him too. He kept his face neutral whenever she mentioned it and eventually she got bored of teasing him about it. Cadillac never did but Shao really hadn’t expected anything more from him.
-
Shao found The Get Down and the world felt bigger all of a sudden. Shao watched the Grandmaster from the sidelines and wanted more than anything to be just like him. He wanted to move the crowd in the same way he did. He wanted to speak and make people listen. The music was intoxicating and he couldn’t stop sneaking off to the shows.
It could some courage that he didn’t think he had to finally talk to him. The grandmaster wanted him to prove himself. Shao did everything he wanted even if it felt like he was being used most of the time. Still, he had to prove himself so he would do every mundane task that the grandmaster set in front of him.
-
It had been a few weeks since the last delivery but by this point, Shao knew the drill. He knew to keep his voice neutral, to throw up a mask and try to make it seem like he hadn’t been thinking of Pakoussa’s offer every second of the day.
But today the man guarding the front entrance waved him down. It was the same man as the last time but Shao had never asked his name.
“Pakoussa’s setting up for this big event inside. He told me he can’t take a minute to come outside so he wants you to meet him up there.”
“Uh, where exactly?”
He shrugged. “I haven’t been up there in a while and with an event this big he’s gonna be running around all day. Just ask whoever closest when you get up the elevator.”
He nodded. He wanted to protest because he was almost certain that this was all a set up to get him inside the club. Still, it was an excuse to go inside and he wasn’t going to turn it down. At least if anyone saw him go in, he’d have a reason.
“Alright, thanks, man.”
The guard waved him inside and Shao walked over to the elevator. So far it looked like any other dingy club he had been in before.
As the doors opened Shao took a deep breath, he had a job to do so this couldn’t scare him away. It was overwhelming even when they were just setting up. Shao watched as people set up a stage in the center of this massive room while others hung streamers from the ceiling.
Everything seemed to be coated in glitter and Shao was not looking forward to going back to Les Inferno just to have Annie pick glitter off him. But there really was no way to avoid it as he walked over to the DJ booth.
“Ah, there you are.” Pakoussa shooed off the group of kids presumably so they could go help set up. But as they were walking away, this white boy looked back at him. He had pink glitter splashed across his cheeks, making him look like he was constantly blushing. Shao looked away. He focused on the deal and tried his best to push the price up more this time. Shao tended to sell cheaper here and he refused to think about why. Still every time he looked up he kept making eye contact with that white boy across the room. Shao realized that he was supposed to be helping set up the bar but was definitely not doing that. Pakoussa looked over his shoulder and smirked.
“Thor baby why don’t you come introduce yourself instead of just making eyes across the dance floor huh?”
Shao wanted to jump out the nearest window. Thor walked over, ignoring the teasing he was getting from the bartender. Unfortunately, Shao had no idea where the nearest window was so he settled for not making eye contact instead.
“Hi, I’m Thor.”
“Shao.”
“Wait? Shaolin Fantastic?”
“The one and only.”Shao tried to not feel anything when Thor’s eyes lit up. “Wait? Thor? You’re a writer too?” Thor nodded and looked very overwhelmed. Oh was he blushing under all that glitter? “ Your work’s amazing man.”
“Thanks!”
Shao looked over to Pakoussa and found he looked way too pleased with this. He counted out some bills and handed them over to Shao. Shao started counting and was very aware of the silent conversation happening around him but he couldn’t translate it. The cash was more than they had agreed to but Shao wasn’t going to complain. It would be one less thing for Annie to tease him about. He handed over the bag to Pakoussa who doesn’t bother to check it.
“Now Shao, why don’t you grab a drink on your way out? It’s on me. Thor knows where the bar is.”
Shao should say no. He has to get back within an hour or it’ll be trouble but instead he said, “sure not gonna turn down free drinks.”
Thor didn’t say much until they were sat down at the bar with drinks in front of them.
“So uh you come here often?”
Shao barked out a laugh. “That’s the line you going with?”
Thor huffed but then grinned. “It’s a good question I haven’t seen you around here before.”
“Nah I don’t...I don’t come around here I just sell drugs here sometimes.”
“Hmm, I practically live here at this point.”
Shao had about a million questions instead he took a sip of his beer. He realized that Thor was wearing these huge gold hoop earrings and one of them was tangled in his hair. He resisted the urge to untangle it.
Thor started talking about art. How he had been following Shao’s work for ages and how amazing he thinks it all is. And Shao doesn’t know what to do with that many compliments. He also doesn’t know what to do when he realized that Thor has been shifting closer to him. Now their knees touched under the side of the bar and he was resting his hand on the table.
Did he want to hold his hand? What the fuck is he supposed to do here? Shao couldn’t figure out if he wanted to hold his hand or not. If there was anywhere on the planet where he could hold a random white boy’s hand then here was that place but he couldn’t move the last few inches…Thor reached out to him and took his hand. Shao didn’t pull away and they just kept talking. It didn’t feel real. The preparations for tonight kept happening around them but it was just background noise. Any second he was gonna wake up. Or someone was gonna notice them and-
“Can I kiss you?” Shao’s heart started beating so fast he couldn’t hear his own thoughts. Still, he managed to nod, not trusting himself to speak. Thor leaned in, drawing his hand to the back of his neck pulling him in closer. It wasn’t Shao’s first kiss not by a long shot but this was different. Thor kissed him slowly and held him so carefully that Shao knew he could say no. That just made him want to kiss him more. Thor pulled away and Shao wanted to pull him back right away.
Instead, he carefully untangled the earring from his hair and Thor actually giggled. Shao might try to be some tough guy but his heart melted. For a minute he didn’t think of someone seeing, of someone knowing this secret he’d held onto for so long.
“Wanna get out of here?”
Shao would do a lot of justifying afterward. Late at night trying to force Thor out of thoughts he would say he was too drunk to think. Even though he knew that they both left barely touched drinks on the bar. He would blame Thor for talking him into it. Call him names for kissing someone he just met. But Shao had kissed so many nameless girls that it really didn’t compare.
Besides it was the first time that Shao had kissed someone that he had actually wanted to kiss. Thor had pulled him into a room that had to exist just for this purpose which would make him feel dirty if he was anywhere else. Here he pulled Thor down onto the mattress and kissed him like he had nowhere else to be. Thor had kissed down his neck and Shao noticed that even in here the walls were covered with tags. Shao would look for Thor’s name if he wasn’t so busy getting his hands tangled in his hair. The world had narrowed down to Thor’s weight on him and he never wanted to move.
But then Thor heard the records hit the turntables outside and Shao realized that he must have been here for hours. Annie was going to have a field day when he got back. So he said he had to leave and he did. Thor had walked him out and didn’t let go of his hand until they reached the elevator.
“When can I see you again?”
Shao hadn’t known how to answer that so he shrugged.
“Sometime soon,” he replied. Thor’s smile broke his heart. He kissed him goodbye and walked away before he could make any other bad decisions. He picked glitter off his face and out of his hair on the way home. He felt a mixture of guilt and happiness. He couldn’t do that again. He couldn’t go back there.
Later after he handed Annie the cash, she leaned over and brushed glitter off his shoulders.
“Break any more hearts?” Her grin was cruel and the laugh that followed sent Shao back into a spiral of self-loathing. As if he ever left it.
“Nah Annie just selling. Pakoussa was nowhere to be found for ages. Had to wait.”
She nodded. She looked like she didn’t believe a word he said.
-
Annie didn’t send him back. A week passed and then another. Shao didn’t know if she knew somehow or if she had just found someone else to sell there. But still, as it stretched to a month Shao accepted that he was never going back.
He couldn’t stop himself from dreaming though. He had never been more scared of talking in his sleep.
Shao didn’t know if he preferred this to the nightmares.
-
It was some sort of irony that Grandmaster had him looking for a Pakoussa remix. Still, Shao did not let his thoughts betray him. The rumors had followed him the last few months but after he got this record after he was a DJ he wouldn’t have to think about it. It would give them something else to talk about.
So Shao took the record from some motherfucker and ran. He should have known when he looked down on him from that building that he was absolutely screwed.