Chapter Text
“What are we doing here?”
Stiles had to give it to his friends: they actually managed to surprise him. Not even Scott (who normally had the world’s worst “I know a secret” poker face of anyone Stiles had ever met) had let anything slip. For the last five years the birthday tradition had always been for them to take Stiles out to a hokey theme restaurant (last year it’d been the one with the pizza and the guy in a rat costume and all the little kids looking at them like they were crazy for losing at whack-a-mole) and then descend on someone’s living room--usually Scott’s, but sometimes Jackson’s or Danny’s--with horror movies and popcorn. It wasn’t precisely exotic, but it was fun, and it was time spent with most of his buddies in one sitting. Most, because starting last year Lydia and Allison had been less willing to tag along with the guys. It might have had something to do with the fact that Scott had rented "Hallo-weenie" instead of "Halloween" that one time, and porn hadn't been up their alley. Oops.
“This isn’t Chuck-E-Cheese,” Stiles said, his wide, dark eyes reflecting every possible shade of garish, flashing neon from the signs outside. One of those signs was totally a pair of hypnotically-pink boobs that flickered on and off. “This so isn’t Chuck-E-Cheese.”
It was, indeed, so not Chuck-E-Cheese.
Danny nudged him through the door and into the dark, overheated space, music pounding from speakers on the walls--and when Danny nudged, it was like being headbutted by an ox. You just sort of had to go with the momentum if you didn’t want to be flattened. Scott was at his side, laughing at his expression, and Jackson was speaking to a woman who was wearing nothing more than shorts that looked more like underwear and a big smile.
“We got you something special for your big one-eight,” Scott said, and clapped a hand over Stiles’ mouth when he started to protest. “Yup, our little boy’s finally turning 18. Right?” He did that thing with his eyebrows, and Stiles groaned internally. Nothing ever ended well when Scott did the eyebrows!
“Yeah,” he managed when another stripper showed up at his elbow, handing off a big bunch of obnoxiously-colored balloons. Stiles was pretty sure his face matched the neon pink one. “Eighteen. Finally legal. Yup. Totally legal. Nothing illegal about me being here.”
Alright, so he was actually turning 17, but clearly the guys had somehow worked things out with a fake ID or something because they weren’t carded, and they had a reservation, and Stiles thought that if his father ever got wind of this he’d be skinned alive and grounded for like a month solid. Or two. Or forced to file all his paperwork at the precinct, which would be even worse because the sheriff was always at least five weeks behind.
Luckily, the—strippers? dancers? entertainers? Stiles wasn’t sure what the politically correct term was supposed to be, and his brain was taking the concept and running loops around it—were less interested in interrogating him and more interested in getting their party settled. Despite the fact that it was the middle of the week, the club was nearly full, though it was (intentionally) difficult to make out faces in the dark. They were led around past the bar where Stiles got a glance at a grumpy-looking man doling out drinks and apparently bad-mouthing a customer to his face, then past all the stages where women in various costumes (or lack thereof) were dancing, and towards a back section--
“Hey, but--!”
Wasn’t the whole point of going to a strip club, like, getting to watch the strippers? They were totally not watching the strippers. The strippers were back there.
“We have something special for you,” Danny said, his dimples practically quadrupling in depth and whoa, that was trouble if Stiles ever saw it. First Scott’s eyebrows, now Danny’s dimples? He might as well call his dad and confess ahead of time. Before he could ask or dig his heels in, though, Stiles found himself getting shoved into a private room by Scott and Jackson, but not before the balloons went in with him and someone snuck one of those cone-shaped cardboard birthday hats on his head at a less-than-flattering angle.
“Geez, guys, come on--!”
No, the door was slammed closed, and that had to be Danny leaning against it because, nope, not budging. Stiles let his forehead hit the door in defeat, then turned around to survey the room. It was barely big enough to turn around in and featured an oversized pleather armchair that took up nearly all the space. There were racy photos all over the walls, though there were so many balloons up against the low ceiling that some of them were obstructed. There was also a plaque on the wall with what appeared to be proper lap-dancing etiquette.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Stiles said, but his mouth started to form into a lazy grin. They were getting him a lap dance. His friends were getting him a lap dance. His very first. Maybe he’d been too hasty in presuming this was all going to crash and burn. He had the best friends in the whole damn world!
“This is the best birthday ever,” Stiles announced to nobody in particular, then plunked himself bonelessly down in the chair. Maybe they’d even get him a redhead, because his unrequited crush on Lydia was as strong as ever. But hey, a brunette would be cool. Or a blonde. Or just about anyone; he was 17, he wasn’t precisely picky.
It only took a few minutes for him to start to fidget, though. He read and re-read the plaque on the wall, though he was sure he would remember to not proposition the stripper, grab her, or verbally abuse her. Jesus, what sort of people did the women have to deal with? The whole concept was making him more nervous by the minute. His attention skidded to an angry-sounding argument from what seemed to be right in front of his door--some guy arguing with a woman, but he couldn’t make out the words. Stripper drama. Not cool. But it did seem like the woman had the upper hand, even if all he could make out was the increasingly-resigned masculine voice and the almost gloating female one. Hopefully it had nothing to do with him, though. Or his lack of ID. Nope, couldn’t be him, he was cool, he was totally just faking his age and potentially breaking the law or something. His dad was going to kill him. His life was over.
The argument abruptly ended before Stiles could decide if seppuku was appropriate before his dad got his hands on him, and then the door to the room slammed open. A man that Stiles recognized as the bartender (the really grumpy bartender) filled up the entire doorway with his big, muscular, angry (did he mention angry?) shoulders, his expression like something on a serial killer (who had maybe once been a fashion model).
The dude took a step into the room, and Stiles was sure he could see the veins sticking out at the side of his neck from barely-repressed murderous rage. The bartender even clenched his (big, angry, it was a theme) hands into fists and growled.
“Holy shit,” Stiles squeaked, trying to climb up the back of the armchair. He was cornered. He was going to die. He was going to die in a tiny room in the back of a strip joint in a birthday hat, surrounded by balloons and stripper pictures and the last shreds of his dignity. Why was this his life?
“Are you Stiles?” the bartender snapped, his voice like gravel and thunder and dude, Stiles was so not a poet, but it was all deep and sexy and so, so angry that words just weren’t going to be happening. He managed to squawk out something that sounded like an apologetic ‘yeah’, but mostly he was trying to figure out if his death would come faster by just trying to dive past the guy and out into the corridor. Maybe then he’d slam his head into the wall and he could die of cranial bleeding rather than slowly being choked or beaten to death or whatever it was that murderous bartenders preferred to do to underaged guys at stripper clubs.
“I’m too young to die,” he cried out when the man slammed the door closed behind him. “I don’t know what I did but I’m so, so totally sorry. Really, very sorry. Please don’t kill me!”
That, at least, appeared to give the other man some pause, just long enough for Stiles to wonder if that was his 5-o’clock shadow or if he shaved his stubble to that level of rugged-yet-genteel perfection. The bartender’s dark eyebrows lifted slightly, like he was genuinely perplexed that Stiles might think he was about to meet his maker (which was going to be totally awkward with him being an atheist and all, and shit, he should have had a backup plan for all that), but dipped back down before Stiles could foster any false hope that he’d ever make it out of here alive.
“Sit down and shut up,” the bartender grunted, shoving away a low-floating balloon, and started to peel off his tank top. Stiles figured that if those abs—cut and sleek and totally impossible, like, what did the guy have, 2% body fat?—were the last thing he ever saw, maybe that wasn’t so bad. "Your friends hired me." His eyebrows spelled imminent death. The words took a beat or two to sink through his adrenaline-addled brain. And that was when Stiles realized the horrifying truth: his friends had booked a serial killer to be his stripper.