Whatever it takes

{don't let him in}

Lance started his afternoon with a sequence of phone calls to businesses who had job postings in the newspaper. When the boredom of the never-ending job hunt became too tiresome for him to continue, he sighed and flicked through the notebook he kept on him full of bored doodles and reminder notes. He spotted Shiro's number written on the corner of one page—it was flipped open on his mattress, just as Shiro promised.

Wait a bit longer, he told himself, convincing himself that despite his current thirst levels, he had to prove to Shiro that he had some self-restraint.

He drummed his pencil on the countertop with a sigh. His pencil started tapping to an all-too-familiar beat that his sister managed to stick to the front of his mind at all times.

Lance's shoulders started swaying until the lyrics started mumbling in the back of his throat. It transitioned to quiet vocals, testing the acoustics of the apartment before he reassured himself that this was his place. He didn't have to worry about Julian in the room next door yelling about the volume. Lance flicked the song open on his phone and belted it out on the speakers.

"Talkin' in my sleep at night makin' myself crazy...! " Lance sang, hands in the air as he twisted in his barstool, kicking his feet out, and lunging off the chair singing, "Wrote it down and read it out, hopin' it would save me—! "

By the time Lance was strutting across the apartment, abandoning any and all responsibilities that came with owning his own place and searching for a job, Shiro was probably back at his own place, tossing his keys on the countertop, and waiting impatiently for the call that Lance withheld with a loud, vibrant, "One—don't pick up the phone, you know he's only callin' 'cause he's drunk and alone— "

When Shiro's phone did ring, though, it was a well-known number already listed in his contacts. Upon answering it, he had to listen over the sound of music playing in the background, and his boss saying, "Throk's sick and never came in for the afternoon shift. Do you think you could help clean up before you're on?"

Shiro sighed and pushed back his worry about their unreliable coworker. He knew Lotor wouldn't keep them around much longer if they kept up like this. "Yeah. Yeah, I can come in. Now?"

"That'd be nice. I've been cleaning the place myself, but that's kind of a handful. I'd ask the dancers but—you can probably hear that they're rehearsing."

"I'll be there in half an hour. I have some things to take care of first," Shiro confessed, and after hanging up with Lotor, he combed a hand through his subtly greasy hair. Spending the night out without a care was starting to show on his uncleansed skin, so he started a shower, a playlist, and stepped out of his clothes from the day before in favor of standing under the showerhead.

Shiro wasn't much of a singer, so he simply mumbled the lyrics under his breath in the echo of his bathroom as it misted over with steam. "Two, don't let him in, you have to kick him out again..."

On the other end of the call, Lotor shut off his phone, tipping his hips back against one of the tables on the floor of the club he owned. He was more or less used to having to take care of the less... glamorous parts of the club, but at the end of the night, he figured having to clean toilets and scrub the floors was worth it. However, watching his dancers sure beat having to lower all the chairs from the tables after mopping.

He clasped two hands over the top of the mop so he could rest his cheek against his knuckles and watch the light on the stage illuminate the synchronized kick of the dancers' legs, arching long and slow before the beat picked up again. Dua Lipa tended to be... a favorite among the workers at the club, so Lotor was all too familiar with their routines to New Rules.