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The music is almost insufferable, but it's a sound Michael is more obliged to suffer than the sound of people chatting each other up, or the sound of them touching.
Michael is anything but a fan of clubbing, or bar-hopping, or any of the noisy places Lorenzo likes to spend his time outside the stage they share—or so Lorenzo likes to preach.
Michael is only here because it's the only place he can be, dressed as he is, dancing in the middle of a dance floor like he’s in the eighties to an overplayed ABBA song he somehow hasn't grown sick of.
It feels as if he's dancing in a ballroom when the song begins to fade out of his grasp and Michael continues to dance with his eyes closed, the hair of his wig getting in the way as he dances like Madonna, turning here and there to dance backwards as if he’s walking a reversed catwalk.
No one else matters but himself. As it has always been—for the most part, anyway.
He continues to dance, and as Michael continues to dance, everyone around him continues to back up a centimetre as his footprint on the dance floor expands, their eyes travelling over every brushstroke that paints him. Michael looks like a renaissance among the trashed people of the night.
As everyone dances in backward steps away from Michael, he continues to sway and move like a butterfly carrying vines and gardens of flowers on its wings, the fluffy flutter sleeves of his outfit dancing with him. They’re mesh like black mist and crowned with dark fur, flowers sprouting from the fur like it is grass; all different shapes, colours and sizes.
The sleeves act as curtains as Michael’s arms move fluidly around him, the window of his chest partially covered by a black bikini top in the shape of Vergina suns, some of its limbs missing and the remaining appearing more rounded.
As Michael continues to move like water through air, as if he were made up of a single oxygen molecule and two hydrogen molecules, it looks as if the flowers on his sleeves are reaching out to the suns on his chest, their hands outstretched to photosynthesize. The warm colours painted around his eyes, which are covered with a sheet of stars, and the gloss on his lips shine, as nature tends to do.
On the bottom, Michael wears a short mesh skirt that matches the flutter sleeves on his arms, and under the skirt are dark suede leather bottoms that look like several lily pads strung together, just like a fairy’s outfit. His feet are shod with dark stool heels, the straps wrapped around his ankles shaped like leaves, little white butterflies sprouting like poppies along the straps, glimmering.
Michael’s tattoo is not visible, because he’s not stupid enough to go to a club cross-dressed with his tattoo showing, so he’s covered it with concealer because he wanted to wear something more liberating tonight, and not cover himself up like last time. Tonight is his night and nobody else matters.
The music is but a blot of sound in the distance, like the headlights of an approaching vehicle in the countryside, the sound of engines and wheels blurred to Michael’s ears as he continues to dance in his own bubbled world.
There are so many people forming a circle around Michael that he doesn’t notice, nor does he notice a pair of familiar eyes watching him from the club’s balcony. There are several eyes drawing Michael’s movements in their memories in the form of a kineograph to be flipped through later. Michael is like The Horse in Motion, except human.
As Michael continues to dance, someone advances. And as someone advances, Michael continues to dance, his body chain that’s freckled with stars his only music.
“Hey.” A gravelly voice says, but Michael is on cloud nine multiplied by nine, and the voice goes unheard.
A few moments of tranquillity before Michael feels the cloud he was on evaporate beneath his feet, causing him to fall back down to reality, the presence of someone in front of him causing Michael to open his eyes, his eyelids narrowing in annoyance and sensitivity at the sudden transition to flashing lights.
“Hello, gorgeous,” the person in front of him says, a reflective smile spread across their face. “You’ve got everyone on the dance floor backing away from you like you’re an open flame, OK?” They laugh, and the familiar bass makes Michael’s stomach turn like a spit.
Fuck. What the fuck is Don Lorenzo doing here—of all the clubs, and pubs, and raves he could be—he’s here. What shit-stained fortune on Michael’s end.
“Huh,” Michael starts, his eyes seeming to look around the almost empty circle he’s found himself in the middle of, when in actuality he is looking for the nearest exit. Fucking shit. “I didn’t notice.”
Lorenzo looks to the same side as Michael, “I could tell.” He says, a teasing smile sewn between his words. Michael is familiar enough with Lorenzo’s voice that he knows automatically when he’s smiling as he speaks. Fucking Cheshire.
With a sigh under his breath at the lack of an exit in sight, Michael turns his attention to Lorenzo, who stands bent before him like a protractor with the way his chest is puffed out. Is that a… flirting tactic? Or is he trying to intimidate? It makes Michael purse his lips inwards for a moment.
As always, Lorenzo is primarily clad in black attire, and by sight alone, Michael can tell that he’s wearing his favourite leather jacket. It’s a jacket that Michael sees Lorenzo wearing twenty-four seven, its seams coloured due to the reassembly of wear and tear. Lorenzo is good with his hands; you learn a thing or two on the streets.
Michael’s eyes land on the skull wallet chain resting against Lorenzo’s chicken thigh, the club’s lighting reflecting off the jewellery like sunlight refracted through a window, forming a rainbow on the wall.
“I like the hair, it’s nice.” Lorenzo compliments, a closed smile on his face as he gently sways to the music around them, while Michael remains still, his arms straight beside him.
Michael’s hair in compliment, which is a wig, has a similar ombré pattern to his real hair underneath. Instead, the edges of the wig are dyed light pink, with the shade increased in other areas, while the base is more of an icy blond. It’s pinned back in an intricate bun, golden leaves holding it in place like an embrace, the jewellery reflecting any light it touches.
“Yes, I know.” Michael hums, his eyes darting around to see if an exit has opened before landing back on Lorenzo. “I put it together myself.”
Lorenzo whistles low, “Dah, Impressive.” He comments, and then adds with a smile, “It almost looks real.”
Suddenly, Michael has the urge to kick him with all the force he can muster, right in the abdomen, because he knows Lorenzo’s stomach is shrunken. It’s a more effective weak point than his nuts.
“Ha, ha.” Michael laughs sarcastically, and Lorenzo stumbles backwards and sideways with a laugh, his teeth autumn and spring with coloured reflections, the teeth of the mouths covering Lorenzo replicating.
He’s wearing a Rolling Stones shirt, which Michael doubts Lorenzo even recognizes, the mouths repeated in a three by three square. Michael bets fifty thousand that Lorenzo saw the mouth imagery and grabbed the shirt without a second look.
Lost in betting and imaginary gambling, Michael sees Lorenzo’s actual mouth move, but he hears none of the words. The song has changed to something louder, coming from all sides and from underneath Michael, like an earthquake, taking hold of his feet and sending vibrations through him, all the way to his skull.
He makes a face to say he didn’t hear Lorenzo, who leans down so his mouth is closer to Michael’s ear, and says something Michael can’t quite catch. The only words he does catch are “I” and “body”. Michael doesn’t say anything in response, because he couldn’t hear what Lorenzo said, so he mouths around nothing to avoid a cycle of back and forth repetition.
They remain in close proximity as the empty bowl of a circle Michael was in begins to fill, the feeling of body heat bouncing against his own and the combination of intense sound and light causing Michael to consider how worthwhile it would be to commit suicide and change the trajectory of the lives of everyone in the vicinity.
But Don Lorenzo is here, and Michael can’t really break his own neck or get down on all fours, screaming.
“You like the Rolling Stones?” Michael asks, nodding his head in the direction of Lorenzo’s shirt.
“Oh, dah?” Lorenzo holds his shirt between his fingers in presentation, like a child showing their parents their new scribbled drawing, “I just like the mouth imagery. I didn’t even know it was a band shirt.” Lorenzo laughs heartily, the edges of his face crinkling and his cheeks hollowing further. Predictable. An easy fifty thousand for Michael. “Is this the part where you ask me to name their songs?”
Michael gives Lorenzo a wry look, “I don’t know a single song.”
“Then we’re one in the same. OK?”
“Please,” Michael blows a laugh, the music and chatter dispersing the sound like a gust of wind does a pile of leaves. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.” He says, turning to make his way off the dance floor. If Michael can’t find an exit in the middle, he’s just going to have to search the edges. Off with Lorenzo.
There are so many people, and the fall back to reality catches up with Michael as his skin crawls at the feeling of dirt covering him. There is no dirt, but there are people, and the feeling grows stronger the more shoulders and small bodies Michael bumps into.
Michael Kaiser fucking hates clubbing. He hates clubbing more than he hates the gold teeth lining Lorenzo’s gums, and that’s something.
Clubbing reminds Michael of his mother, which is ironic since clubs are the one place he goes dressed up as a woman, deliberately avoiding black and dark wigs as a whole, even if they look the best. He doesn’t need to see two of her in reflections.
The return to reality hits like a freight train. All Michael likes to do in clubs is dance for a while, maybe play around with a person or two and then leave, but the mirage has faded and now he’s crashing. It feels like his mother is breathing down his neck, watching him from between the shoulders of each barricade of bodies. He has to get out.
“I can’t help but notice,” Lorenzo speaks from behind him, his voice surrounded by the sound of music and people, and Michael rolls his eyes to himself at the following, “you’ve got some strong legs there.” He comments in a knowing way, as if suggesting something. Michael’s stomach shrinks a centimetre.
"Thank you." Michael says without turning around, "I'm a professional dancer."
He accelerates his haste, moving through people and barricades to lose Lorenzo. There’s no way he would bother stalking some random girl. Michael knows that’s not how Lorenzo works. In fact, he’s too shy to even approach strangers he finds pretty—he always mutters about it at banquets and other events—which begs the question of why he has approached Michael.
Whatever. Michael needs to get the fuck out of here.
It’s not even Lorenzo he’s trying to get away from. Michael is trying to get away from all the noise and lights and people that are turning the layers of him into filth. He’s trying to get away from the feeling of knuckles dragging against the multiples of him. He’s trying to get away from the entities of him crashing into each other and creating more.
"I bet you have amazing foot control." Lorenzo says, and Michael can hear the smile in his voice. He keeps moving, only to be stopped abruptly by Lorenzo blocking his path, Michael’s eyes catching a brief glimpse of the rhinestones on the back of his jacket, its teeth glinting. Once again, another open mouth.
“Do crowds scare you?” Lorenzo’s tone has changed, softer, his teeth glinting the light of a lighthouse, a building structured to show the way. “I know a secluded place, if you want to come. OK?”
What-fucking-ever. Michael gestures for Lorenzo to start walking, and he does. It doesn’t matter if Michael is following the lion into its den. It’s better than the open savannah.
The voices are beginning to grow distant now, nothing but the roar of a storm in the background, not because they’ve made it far from the drunken crowds, but because Michael is flexing his ears to create the sound of a storm. With a storm comes water, and with water comes cleansing. Michael needs a fucking bath.
Up the stairs to the club’s second floor. Michael hadn’t even noticed that this place had layers. He might have to visit it again, just for the similarity.
What Michael dislikes most about clubs is the feeling of being in a labyrinth, the constant twisting and turning you have to do just to avoid collision with a corner, or a wall. But Lorenzo is like a lighthouse, the waves of people splitting to make way for him as he steps through the second floor of the club, Michael following close behind.
How ironic. Usually, it’s the other way around, but the world goes round and round. It’s probably the platform boots Lorenzo is wearing, so thick and pronounced that every step he takes breaks the barrier of all the sound sounding around them. It’s admirable. Almost heroic, even.
Michael is not even following Lorenzo’s stature at this point, just the sound of his footsteps, or the light he seems to be casting ahead of him, so akin to the light of a beacon. He has to say, Lorenzo is walking quite normally tonight—no swaying or weird last second twisting. It’s the straightest he’s ever seen Lorenzo walk. It’s almost eerie to see Lorenzo walking without his typical toddler gait, like finding out a child’s year of birth.
Another fucking floor. At this point, Michael should just jump off the nearest parapet and hope.
As if Lorenzo can hear Michael’s thoughts, he turns his head slightly to glance over his shoulder, his eyes lilac and lavender and violet all at once. Michael concludes that if Lorenzo were ever to turn into a Katze, he’d be a black one, like an endless abyss; a type of chasm Michael is familiar with, just as he is familiar with Lorenzo.
“We’re almost there, OK?”
Super. Michael rolls his eyes, and he swears Lorenzo is smiling at the rolling from his peripheral vision. Whatever.
Sooner than later, or more later than sooner, they reach a window far back in the club, a hallway stretching out on either side, looping back into the club. The noise is background now, far enough in the distance that Michael can finally relax the muscles in his ears.
“A fucking window, seriously?” Michael gives Lorenzo a sharp look of annoyance, who simply smiles.
“Wait and see, dolcezza.”
The familiar nickname makes Michael do a double-take. Not physically, of course, as that will arouse suspicion, but his internal organs feel as if they’ve just halted after driving one hundred in a school zone.
The sudden lack of acceleration makes Michael’s chest tick like a warm car engine after it’s been switched off, and the world around him feels like it’s in a fisheye lens. There’s no way Lorenzo uses his nickname on other people. Who the fuck does he think Michael is?
Too busy thinking about how Lorenzo is practically cheating on him, with himself—only it’s not himself, because Michael is dressed as someone else—he almost shouts every cuss word in the world when Lorenzo opens the window and jumps out of it without warning.
Michael throws the thinking to the side as he scrambles to check on the dead body of Lorenzo, sticking his head out of the open window, only to catch sight of a very much alive Don Lorenzo looking up at him, who’s hunched over with laughter.
Michael exhales heavily through his nose like a bull, his mind tap-dancing along the line of leaving Lorenzo, or sticking around. He almost does leave, until he realises that leaving would mean going back to the club, which would mean returning to his mother’s watching.
Lorenzo inhales his laughter to compose himself, a few squeaks leaving him, just like Snuffy’s typical laugh. Talk about parallels, it makes Michael want to puke visceral glitter.
When Lorenzo has almost composed himself, nothing left of his previous joy but a closed smile, he outstretches his hand towards Michael. Lorenzo isn’t too far down, close to a floor or so, standing on a small sloping roof. Secluded place, all right.
“Do you trust me?” Lorenzo says, the lights of the surrounding city blinking around him like eyes, every window watching Michael decide.
There’s not much to decide when there’s a fire burning hot behind you, and an open window to freedom in front of you. Michael puts his hand in Lorenzo’s, who doesn’t miss the opportunity to take ahold of it.
“Who the fuck do you think you are, Aladdin?” Michael quips, his heeled feet stumbling slightly as he lands on the sloping roof, but Lorenzo steadies him just as quickly.
“I’m whoever you want me to be.”
Michael gives a pity huff of a laugh, “How original.”
Now they’re on a sloping roof, with a fall down or a rise up, but Michael has no intention of climbing through the window, so there’s only a fall down.
Lorenzo walks to the side, his hand still wrapped around Michael’s, tugging at the limb to get Michael’s attention. Once obtained, he nods his head to the side he’s facing.
“Follow.”
“More following?”
Lorenzo throws his head back in a single, loud laugh, “Not much, I promise. OK?”
Lorenzo leads the way across the sloping roof and off to the side, his steps small and careful so as to match up with Michael’s. Michael should just take the heels off, but then his feet would get dirty, so he doesn’t. There are so many things blinking around them. Streetlights, windows, stars—even the moon through the passing clouds.
A few hundred tiny steps later, Lorenzo jumps to the side onto a flatter, and more accessible roof, his hand still wrapped around Michael’s, guiding him to safety. As soon as Michael steps onto the safe zone, he lets go of Lorenzo’s hand and walks past him.
It is a secluded spot, as Lorenzo promised, though from where Michael stands, he can still hear the bass of the music thumping through the walls. He moves to the farthest edge of the roof—facing west, given the position of the moon—but the music is still audible. It’ll have to do.
“Here.” Lorenzo says, breaking the silence between them. Michael turns his attention away from the ghastly moon, his eyes following Lorenzo’s pointed hands that gesture to his jacket, laid out on the roof next to where he’s sitting. “You can sit, if you’d like. Wouldn’t want to ruin the pretty outfit, OK?”
The action makes Michael raise an eyebrow. To think that Lorenzo would go through the trouble of dirtying his favourite jacket, all so that a girl would not have to dirty her own clothes… It almost makes the character Michael is playing as fall for him.
“Thank you.” Michael says as he sits down, and then adds. “Your outfit is boring.”
There’s a beat of a laugh in the back of Lorenzo’s throat, coming from somewhere behind his Adam’s apple, given the depth of the sound.
And then it falls silent, save for the music Michael can feel pulsing through the roof beneath him and can hear trickling into his ears. It doesn’t take long before it becomes background noise, no longer registering in Michael’s head as the sound of space sparkling takes over.
Michael’s eyes are on the horizon, while Lorenzo’s eyes are on Michael, or the background of Michael, or the foreground. He’s a photograph against the canvas of life.
“Do you have a name?”
Michael spares Lorenzo a moment’s glance, his gaze landing on Lorenzo’s smiling eyes before he shifts his gaze forward.
“Take me out to dinner first.”
“OK!” Lorenzo says enthusiastically, drawing a laugh from Michael before he quickly composes himself, his tongue poking the inside of his cheek.
“That’ll never happen.”
“Boo.” Lorenzo sulks, and Michael bites his lip, his shoulders shaking slightly with entrapped sound.
There’s a fact about the moon that Michael recently learnt from some stupid lecture Noel gave him. Something, something, about how the moon is tidally locked and that is why its face looks the same every night.
The moon is a natural satellite, Michael knows as much, which orbits the Earth, its face tidally locked—staring, and staring, and staring, never bothering to look anywhere else but the Earth.
If Michael were to celestialize his and Lorenzo’s relationship, he would be Earth, and Lorenzo would be the moon. Or more accurately, his moon, for the moon exists for the Earth and nothing else. Without the Earth’s gravity holding it in place, and locking its face, it would otherwise drift through space before hitting something. It is because of Earth’s gravity that the moon is something today.
If it weren’t for the Earth, the moon would be some drifting dwarf planet, or instead an asteroid. It is because of the Earth that the moon has somewhere to be, and something to look at, its eyes locked on the world.
Lorenzo is much like a natural satellite—which is only natural, since he is the moon—his eyes always fixed on Michael, even now. His gaze hasn’t moved since Michael sat down. Even though Michael is looking westward, his eyes on the dark horizon, the light of the actual moon shining beyond his vision, he can feel Lorenzo’s rapt attention on him. Or not him, but the girl.
It’s the exact same stare that Lorenzo gives him every time they play against each other, except that Lorenzo’s hands are on him along with his eyes. It’s the exact same stare that Lorenzo gives at banquets, and events, and in locker rooms. It pisses Michael off.
Frustrated, Michael turns his attention to Lorenzo, his eyes landing on his Rolling Stones shirt, no longer partially covered by the leather flaps of a jacket. The teeth of the mouths seem to be smiling at Michael, in mockery or knowledge—or maybe both—Michael can’t tell.
With a huff, Michael asks, “What are you looking at?”
As soon as Michael turned around, Lorenzo’s eyes automatically locked with Michael’s, because he’s the moon, and Michael is the Earth. They are tidally locked to each other.
“You.” Lorenzo replies simply, his response faster than the BPM of the current song playing in the club, which buzzes through the roof and turns Michael’s skin into pins and needles.
Believe it or not, Michael has been to therapy—self-therapy, but therapy nonetheless—and has acquired coping mechanisms on how to cool down his burning annoyance, or to reel in his frustration, or daydream his homicidal urges away.
One coping mechanism in particular involves Lorenzo’s Adam’s apple. He’s got into the habit of staring at it whenever he’s annoyed—because usually it’s Lorenzo’s singing that brings up the feeling—imagining needles sticking into it, but now there’s a heart in the way of his imagination.
It’s a world’s wonder how Michael hadn’t noticed it before, but Lorenzo is wearing a choker with an anatomical heart glowing glass red where his Adam’s apple would otherwise be in full view. Come to think of it, red must be the only colour Lorenzo ever bothers to wear. How grotesque.
It doesn’t make sense why Michael is so annoyed that Lorenzo is paying so much attention to this girl he’s crossdressing as. Lorenzo is talking to him, and giving him attention, but he also isn’t in the slightest.
It’s not him that Lorenzo sees. It’s some girl whose name he doesn’t know, but does know is a professional dancer, and that’s why she has such well-defined legs, and that she has never heard a Rolling Stones song in her life.
Michael doesn’t understand why his stomach feels like a knife block, each edge dipped in a different kind of poisonous hurt, or a toolbox filled with weapons shaped in the face of the muse of tragedy.
He can feel the eyeshadow around his eyes burning like he imagines a sunrise would, the warm colours melting into fire on Michael’s skin. Every square centimetre of flesh feels like it’s on fire. Nothing about the glam make-up he has put together feels as cold as the word ‘glam’. Everything is on fire, even the gloss on his lips, the cool river evaporated as the bubbling of Phlegethon itself rises on Michael’s lips.
“You’re a nuisance.” Michael says, the words coming out as a hiss and a huff intertwined, as if he’s out of breath. It feels as if there are several push pins stabbed along his respiratory system, as if something more solid than air is flowing through it, and is instead breathing him than he is breathing it.
No snarky response, no golden teeth on display. Just Lorenzo’s eyes glued to Michael, his eyes smiling with every secret in the universe, the birth of every star and then death unfolding in his very irises. They say space is just black, black, and more black—but Michael believes the darkness is a shade of purple.
As if this were a game, Lorenzo decides to lean in at that moment, his face oh so close to Michael’s—to the stranger’s—and it feels like Michael’s heart is going into tachycardia. For a moment, Michael thinks Lorenzo is going to kiss him, and for a fleeting moment more fleeting than a fleet, he considers letting him, his head moving like a cricket jumping forward once.
But then Lorenzo distances the distance, his eyes shining with mirth, or pride, or some other emotion that Michael doesn’t care about, just as he doesn’t care about Lorenzo, whose teeth look almost obsidian in the night. They’re like the sea and the sky, reflecting whatever colour is above them.
“You want to know something?” Lorenzo asks, the abyssal smile still on his face, his eyes reflecting space and every spinning body in it, even though he is only looking at Michael.
Michael sighs out of his nose and turns his head away from Lorenzo’s face, which feels like looking into a fire pit up close and personal, the flames licking.
“What?”
Lorenzo leans in again, this time his mouth closer to Michael’s ear than anything else, just like on the dance floor. Michael can feel his breath teasing, intentionally remaining silent for a moment as Michael anticipates.
There’s a small laugh, so small that Michael barely registers the sound as a laugh, even though Lorenzo’s gold mine of a mouth is right at the door of his ear. Michael can hear his smile, the gold of his molars glittering and sparkling; razzing.
"You look pretty dressed as a girl, Michel."