Don't Ask Don't Tell

Chapter 1: I won't tell

  Wouldn't most people kill for a secret double life? One where excitement was more than that bitch Susan from accounting stealing your fucking lunch again, even though it was clearly labelled?
That's what Suga thought about as he slunk through the dirty downtown Daegu streets. As cliche as it was, by day Suga was a star student. The straight-A, straightlaced student council president, the younger students admired him and the older students envied him. By night though...
Suga didn't want to think about it. He knew his parents would be utterly devastated if they knew where he left to every single night. Disappointed. Angry. To them, of course, he wasn't Suga. He was Yoongi. And he knew that one person recognizing him would send his life crashing to the ground.
Suga pulled the collar of his jacket up higher as he crossed the street. Like that would be enough to hide behind. Suga sighed. He walked brusquely into the metro station. Only line two was operating this late. He only needed line two. Suga thought that his prepaid metro card was possibly the best investment he had ever made. That card was definitely getting its money's worth. It was nice not to have to fork over the 1200 won for train fare every single night.
Suga stood on the train in silence. Since Daegu was a city of people stacked on top of each other, Suga had to shove his way inside. Just once, he wished that he could walk into an empty train car so he wouldn't feel like a million pairs of eyes were watching his every move. Would these businessmen, in their grey and black suits - shiny from too many pressings - and their gold Rolexes remember him, a barely-teenager in ripped jeans, threadbare white shirt, and a denim jacket? D-Town was an industrial powerhouse, at least it was until outsourcing to China and India became more popular. They'd probably seen lots of kids who looked just like he did. Lots of people around here were broke. He watched a couple glancing his way, and then he realized it was because he was shaking. He watched his hands twitch. Great, now they probably thought he was on drugs. He always shook before he had to go into work.
Suga hated referring to it as "work". It legitimized it too much. He winced as he heard his mother's voice echo in his head. "You're such a good kid, Yoongi. Not like those other kids, out doing god knows what illegal trash all the time."
No, mom, Suga thought. What I'm doing is much worse.
Suga couldn't complain too much, though. Working straight night shifts and making at minimum 49936 won per night was a lot more than what he would get if he worked an actual, legal job. He momentarily thought about how, if he was working a legal job, he wouldn't have to deduct cash to pay off a nearby shop owner to say that he worked there. At least Heechul went along with it, if only for the money.
Working straight nights was a bonus too. It wasn't like he could work during the day since school and all. And afternoons were out of the question since he had to look after Jihoon when school let out. Going to work at nine was his best option. He needed the money, which outweighed anything else.
God. It always came down to living costs and savings and expenses. It made Suga want to tear his hair out half the time.
His parents had no idea where he worked. Of course, they didn't. Why would they? He was paying Heechul to keep that information under his hat. Heechul told his parents that he was working for him, at the shitty little grocery store he owned. It barely got any traffic, but his parents didn't question how Heechul was paying him 49936 per night, on top of minimum wage. Being the club's top earner brought in a lot of cash, but also meant he worried about being found out constantly.
Suga hated having to pay Heechul off. It was an expense he could barely afford anymore. It was cutting into the savings for Jihoon's university fund. He thought about Jihoon, God, he would be so disappointed in Suga if he knew where the money for his university fund was coming from. The last thing Suga wanted to do was disappoint Jihoon. Naturally, Jihoon was the person he was most concerned for. Not only would his job coming to the forefront indelibly stain his reputation, but it would stain Jihoon's, too.
A thick wind of roiling shame blew through Suga.
Naturally, Daegu was much too conservative to have any actual, legal strip clubs. Suga wasn't even sure Korea, in general, had any legal strip clubs. Of course, the mafia saw a money-making opportunity. Daegu had enough old, abandoned warehouses away from the bustling city, so having an underground strip club right out in the open was a lot easier than it used to be. The only hurdle was that being a stripper was about equal to spitting in your mother's eye in terms of familial disrespect, especially for men, so there weren't very many people willing to work there. Unless they were desperate.
Suga was the definition of desperate. With his mom between shitty minimum wage jobs, his father unable to work, and his brother not being old enough to work, responsibility weighed on him like a ton of bricks.
The train lurched, which halted Suga's line of thought. They had stopped at another station. Suga did a cursory glance around the car, seeing the same men in the same suits. Suits, Suga was tired of seeing suits. The only thing the customers wore were pressed suits. Everyone around him wore suits. His father used to go into work in an expensive, tailored black suit every single day.
The train lurched again, and this time Suga bumped into a man in a white dress shirt so starched and ironed it could cut someone.
"Watch it." He snapped.
"Sorry," Suga said, dropping his gaze right to the floor. He did see the man wiping off the sleeve of his shirt like Suga was made of dirt. Surprisingly, he was used to that kind of treatment. Everyone at the club, all the bouncers and mafia members, treated him the same way. Like he was filthy fucking scum. A few of the mafia guys had even called him that. Suga remembered the first time it happened when he first started working there. He had just served drinks then, but that didn't stop the man at the table from looking him up and down, sneering, and calling him filthy fucking scum. That's rich coming from the kind of people running a club where they employed fifteen-year-olds as strippers. Sure, Suga was fifteen and writhing on polished countertops to make a living, but they gave him money for that and ended up taking a cut of it anyway.
Suga realized he had just tried to justify being a fifteen-year-old stripper in his brain.
The train lurched to a halt again, and this time Suga got off. He hated having to take a train trip and a fifteen-minute walk to get to the warehouse. The air was bitingly cold. Winter was about to begin, and Suga knew the walk to the warehouse was only going to get colder. Suga tried to think as to why he had worn the much thinner jacket instead of the warmer one. Then he remembered. Because if he got home late, he wanted Jihoon to be warm in case they didn't get a chance to switch off.
You'd better appreciate this, Suga thought.
After all, if it wasn't for Jihoon, Suga wouldn't have to work this shitty job. If his parents could get their shit together, he definitely wouldn't have to work. But he couldn't fault his dad for being injured and his mom not being able to find work. He wished he had the money to fix whatever the hell was wrong with his father. Nobody would tell him aside from "it's an injury, don't worry about it." Suga tried not to worry about it. Didn't work out that way, though.
The club entrance was swarmed with people. The employee entrance was dotted with people smoking before their shift started. Suga didn't really talk to many of them, but he knew their names. There was Reita, with his face half-covered. Suga wasn't entirely sure why Reita never seemed to show his whole face, but he didn't question it. He was standing beside Ruki. Ruki looked serious, with a thin nose and even thinner patience. His long black hair blew lazily in the breeze. Ruki was the club's second-highest earner, and Suga could see why. He was attractive, but he had the personality of a razor blade: sharp and overly dangerous. Suga had a natural charm, the kind of charm that made him a 4.5 GPA student and the president of the student council seemed to work wonders with the drunken fucktanks that came into the club every night. Maybe that was why Suga was the top earner.
Despite one-upping him, Ruki didn't seem to care about Suga. He was glad. Ruki looked like the kind of person Suga didn't want to piss off. He knew Reita liked him, but Suga didn't really get why. Reita just seemed to be a nice person, since he seemed to favour Suga as well. He got free water after dances, so being friends with the bartender had its perks. Reita did sometimes work a security detail too, which was even better. When Reita was on security, nobody could touch Suga if he didn't want them to.
Of course, Reita was also attached to Ruki at the hip. Suga wasn't sure if they were just friends, but he didn't question it.
"Careful tonight." Ruki started, blowing a cloud of smoke above Suga's head.
"Word on the street is the cops have a mole in here, scouting the place. Supposedly, they're tanking the place tonight." Reita continued, taking the cigarette from Ruki's hand.
"Aren't the cops always eyeing this place?" Suga asked.
"Just be careful, kid. And don't be a smartass." Ruki said. Suga nodded.
"Will do."
Suga pushed open the door, a big, blue steel one with "keep out" signs plastered all over it. The only people who heeded those signs were the ones who didn't know what laid ahead.
Instantly, Suga was hit with the scent of a thousand different perfumes hitting him straight in the face. He wasn't sure why the strippers seemed to prefer perfume when a majority of them were male. That was another thing he didn't question. The fluorescent lights made his eyes ache. The club just had to have a neon-candy colour scheme, even in the back.
Suga blinked, and Sena, a new hire with scarily large eyes and an overly angular face, popped up beside him. All he knew about Sena was that he had just moved here from Japan and he looked like a living anime character.
"Hi. Know where Reita is?"
Suga jerked a thumb behind him at the door. Sena nodded a silent thank-you and seemed to float away, not touching the ground. Suga always thought he didn't quite cross over the Uncanny Valley, but the customers seemed to like him. Suga pushed his way through the locker room entrance, passing by Reila, a thin and bony 16-year old who'd run away when she was twelve, in a micro-mini, bustier, and go-go boots was shovelling coke up her nose as fast as she could dig her nail into the bag. Drugs were huge here, people who either didn't have much to lose or didn't give a flying fuck anymore could get them easily from the mafia members sitting around every entrance and exit. Suga didn't dare touch any of them. That was an expense he knew for a fact he couldn't afford. The scarcity of them made prices sky high.
He walked past the bathroom, where Jimin, another club favourite, was lining his eyes thickly with black kohl and gossiping with Rocky. A lot of the guys here could easily pass as a girl if they wanted to, but Rocky was the exception to that rule. He was young, too. Younger than Suga, as far as he'd checked.
"So then, I said," Jimin started, setting the angled brush in hand on the table. Yoongi tuned out, which wasn't difficult since Jimin wasn't very loud.
"But fucking Hoseok," Jimin bitched, being overdramatic for effect. Suga had been overhearing about whoever "fucking Hoseok" was for a while now.
"Fucking Hoseok," Rocky echoed. Whoever this guy was, Suga had to admit, he felt a little bit bad for him.
"This bastard says to me-"
That was when Suga really tuned out. Every other day with Jimin was about someone saying something and how he hated them. What a drama queen.
Suga popped open his locker and started the mechanical process of getting undressed. This part of the night was one of his least favourites. He always felt like a pig being prepped for slaughter.
The club was packed tonight, though. If he played his cards right, he could make a night's tips in an hour. Suga preferred to see it as a giant chess game. All strategy, no luck. He knew his boss was the queen, not the most valuable, but the most important. Anyone in a rank lower could take him out. The strippers were pawns, of course, expendable but also necessary. And, as he heard the click of dress shoes on the white vinyl flooring, the king had just arrived. The mafia boss, the don. Despite his young age, only twenty, he called the shots and dictated lives and deaths. He didn't show up very often, but when he did, rest assured something had gone incredibly wrong. Whoever had royally fucked up, Suga was just glad it wasn't him this time. He had beady snake eyes hidden behind those of a puppy. Everyone else called him Master Jeon in a way that sounded overly sexual, Suga just stayed out of his way. Jimin was a little too endeared with him, and Suga didn't want to know the reason why.
As Jeon ran his hand up Jimin's thigh, Suga thought he already knew. He suppressed an urge to shiver in disgust. Jeon Jungkook was the head of the mafia and had been since he was fifteen. Suga guessed that was the thing with being the heir to a mafia throne, you didn't have to wait too long for your turn at running it.
If he was here, then Reita and Ruki must have been right, this place had to be in danger. Jeon Jungkook didn't just show up to get handsy with the strippers, after all.
Suga was worried for sure now. If something was going on, it wasn't like the strippers would be informed about it. They were on the bottom rung. Suga was glad that he was a fast runner.