The Broken Dancer

Faltering Walls

The room was thicker than usual tonight - thick with smoke, with the clink of glasses, with the heat of too many bodies pressed into velvet chairs and gilded corners. But more than that, it was thick with whispers.

Jimin felt them before he heard them. The way heads titled together, the sharp glances angled in his direction, the faint curl of laughter that wasn't quite amusement. He had grown up in this room, learned to survive under its scrutiny, but tonight the weight of it pressed differently. It wasn't just the usual hunger in their eyes. It was curiosity. Calculation. Suspicion.

He lowered his lashes, spine tall, every step measured as he moved across the stage - mask flawless, though inside his pulse stuttered.

The whispers slid between the smoke:

"Always him."

"Strange, isn't it? That the same man claims him every night."

"Perhaps he's in love with him." That one carried laughter, sharp as broken glass.

Another voice, dripping disdain: "Spoiled. Untouchable. No one else gets near him anymore."

Jimin's stomach twisted, though his face never faltered. Love. The word was a curse in this room, laughable, dangerous. He didn't dare let his eyes flick toward Yoongi where he sat in his usual place, shadowed but steady.

From his vantage point at the head of the room, Jimin's father forced out a booming laugh that seemed to settle the whispers, at least on the surface. He waved one ring-heavy hand as if brushing off the rumours.

"Business, ladies and gentlemen, nothing more. Some clients simply know their preferences. Consistency is profitable, after all."

But Jimin caught it - the split-second narrowing of his father's eyes, the curl of suspicion that no amount of laughter could disguise. His father wasn't dismissing the whispers. He was storing them. Calculating. And Jimin knew what that meant: he would test, sooner or later. Push. Probe. Find the truth.

Yoongi didn't have to raise his hand tonight, didn't need to outbid anyone. The deal had been struck, and the other buyers knew better than to waste their money challenging an arrangement backed by the house. Jimin's name was called, and the silence that followed was deafening.

No one spoke. No one lifted a finger. And that silence - what should have been relief - felt instead like a noose tightening.

Jimin's father's smirk was slight but sharp as the gavel cracked against the block. "Sold." The word hung in the air like smoke, sour with implication.

For Jimin, relief tangled instantly with dread. Silence wasn't safety. Silence was a room full of people waiting for someone to break.

Across the hall, Yoongi's expression was unreadable, but Jimin could see the tension in the set of his jaw, the way his shoulders held too stiffly. This was no victory, not really. It only underlined what they both already knew: the fragile bubble they had carved out upstairs was no longer invisible. The eyes were on them now, sharpened, suspicious.

The sanctuary held - for now. But Jimin felt the pressure of every stare like hands at his throat.

The walk through the corridors felt longer tonight. Every shadow seemed sharper, every echo louder, as though the whispers from downstairs had followed them, sliding between the walls. Jimin kept his eyes low, steps soundless against the carpet, but his pulse hammered in his ears.

Beside him, Yoongi moved with the same quiet precision as always, but Jimin could read the difference now. The set of his jaw was too tight, his shoulders pulled in as if carrying weight he couldn't put down. He didn't speak, not even when the stairwell creaked beneath them, and Jimin mirrored him instinctively - silence thick between them, both of them carrying the auction hall in their chests.