#kht

Someone catches him around the scruff of his neck, a man with blond hair and shades. “This isn’t the place for little kids,” he smirks, eyebrow rising. “Go on, scat.”

Tsuna struggles against his grip. He is not going to scat. He knows that word – it’s what all those strange housewives use when they want to chase away cats on the street. Tsuna is not a cat (although, thinking about it, being a cat wouldn’t be half bad) and hence that word is insulting.

Another set of hands grip him around his waist, softer and gentler, bringing him away from the shady man. Tsuna furrows his brows at the man, and looks up to see a woman with shades. It’s like she’s the twin shade sister of the man. The shades gang. He isn’t sure if this turnabout is much better.

“Don’t be so mean to the little dear,” she coos, lips smothered in bright red and nails covered in glitters and sparkles. Tsuna doesn’t know if she is more dangerous than the man. He suspects, but he can’t be sure. Those nails can probably kill a man.

“He’s a kid. He should be home by now.”

“But look at him,” she pouts, looking at the man. “I want to keep him, if only for a little while.” Tsuna doesn’t really understand this turn of events, but he turns his own puppy eyes on the man, so as to achieve his goal of attaining at least one plush chair. Tsuna can probably drown in the chair. It looks like heaven.

The man swallows, Tsuna thinks hah! The woman laughs and suffocates Tsuna against her cleavage, before sweeping in through the doors. She makes a beeline for the stage, which is not where Tsuna wants to go, because the chairs are right there and are getting further and further away which is not good for his immature heart that desires them the way his mother desires chocolate on a bad day. Which is to say, a lot.

He struggles. He loses. Tsuna cries a bit in his mind.

The lady introduces him to more ladies, all clad in pretty dresses and fancy nails with bright lips, and they collectively coo over him. Tsuna wilts a bit, trying to source for an emergency exit (this is an emergency), and doesn’t find one. There are no plush chairs here, but there are strange amounts of poles and whips and Tsuna thinks that those ring chain thing resembles the handcuffs that he sees the policemen carry.

It takes Tsuna a while before his mind registers that he might be in a bar.

2.

Tsuna is very flexible, or so he thinks. He pales in comparison to the other ladies, and he silently mourns the death of his ego backstage.

Some strange feeling pulls him back to the bar, and he’s visited long enough for the man with blond hair and shades to recognize him as a regular (is that a bad thing?) and the ladies to all see him as a permanent fixture. They are pole dancers, simple as that, and sometimes they use a whip that cracks and makes Tsuna throw his hands over his ears.

He’s tried it, tried to crack the whip, and he ended up tying himself up and toppling over. The crack sound was not achieved, and the main thing he achieved was him making a fool out of himself.

Tsuna wants to learn the whip, however. It looks cool. Tsuna wants very few things in life, and what he wants, he usually gets (courtesy of his mother), and hence he employs his famous puppy eyes on the ladies who melt over him.

He secures lessons on the whip, and just for the heck of it, the ladies throw in some pole lessons as well as makeup lessons.

Tsuna knows that he looks feminine, even at his age, and makeup doesn’t help his case, neither does the very pretty wig.

His first attempt at stilettos results in a sprained ankle and a broken heel, even though the heel wasn’t very high in the first place.

But the ladies tell him that he’s actually doing a good job, and Tsuna revels in being able to actually crack the whip. He shows off to his mother at home, going around and cracking the whip at every little thing.

“Wow!” His mother exclaims. “My Tsu-kun is growing up!”

Tsuna smiles and tries to catch his alarm clock with his whip. It falls on the ground and breaks, and Tsuna decides that that outcome isn’t that bad after all. Now it won’t irritatingly ring in the morning.

His mother buys him a new one.

Tsuna silently despairs. He wants to be nocturnal, like the ladies at the bar. All of them work at night only.

3.

When Tsuna is eleven, the school gives him a career sheet.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE IN THE FUTURE, it asks him in big letters.

DANCER, he replies, in equally big letters and what is hopefully nice handwriting, with what the ladies have forced into him. They are very intense when it comes to etiquette. He even knows how to fold a cravat, though that was, admittedly, mainly for costume purposes.

Some of his classmates laugh at him, but Tsuna actually has a very bright future ahead of him as a dancer at Rising Wave. He’s gone on stage to perform before, once or twice, just for fun, and he didn’t realize just how much money he could earn.

He shakes his head when the biggest bully in class, Kikuchi, sniggers at his career option. Kikuchi’s father actually brings a lot of money to the bar, and throws all of it at the pole dancers. He always leaves very inebriated and very delusional. Tsuna has the last laugh, when his career option is the very thing Kikuchi’s dad pays big money to see, and Kikuchi will probably end up as a janitor.

4.

The neon lights flash, heavy music starts playing, hands clap, and money is thrown haphazardly at the stage before Tsuna even steps onto it.

He wears a dress, hair wet and flowing down his back (as much as half-wet hair can flow), eight inch stilettos clacking on the platform, and his whip is in his hand.

People whistle at him, and he flashes a smile at them. Most of them (if not all) don’t realize that he’s not a girl. They also don’t realize that he’s a minor. Tsuna has private laughs with the ladies backstage at this.

Tsuna is crazily proud of his whip, and the crowd is crazily entranced by it, so it works out.

Money is further thrown on the stage, and Tsuna winks at a couple of men who try to get too close when he goes to pick up the money. Liam – the blond man with shades – is good at security, he ensures that no one gets into touching proximity with Tsuna. Mainly because Tsuna is fifteen years old.

Tsuna seems short, but with his stilettos and whip, he seems larger than life.