☯ — all found out ✗
jan 22nd
( tw: mentions of prostitution and related themes )
seungwoo doesn’t always hate his job. if he did, he probably wouldn’t still be doing it-- well, maybe. sometimes it’s just lonely women who spend most of their time with him lamenting over their lives and how lonely they are. they’re the times that almost make him feel like he’s worth more than his body-- almost convince him he’s doing something good here, and that part of this is his company, and not just how good he is in bed.
then there are the times they reduce him to nothing, and they don’t let him forget it. they tell him so, and seungwoo takes it. it’s the grotto’s policy that their prostitutes don’t have to do anything they aren’t okay with, but seungwoo might like them better. they’ve trained him to. someone has to accept the clients no one else wants, and for as often as seungwoo cracks everywhere, this is somewhere he doesn’t. he endures, and sometimes like this, he convinces himself he’s useful, if only because he keeps some of the worst of them away from everyone else. with as much as he wanted to die, it’s better to be a martyr.
it feels a little different now, because back after his self-imposed (wooseok imposed, mainly) bedrest, or what have you. he’s a little more aware of the dangers, and a little more conscious of how he sets himself up to be demeaned here (and more aware of how little he cares.) in the end, it’s good to be back, if only because he missed everyone. well, not everyone, but weijun and yuyan, at least, and they’re all that really matters to him at the grotto.
he spits his mouthwash out into the sink, a nightly ritual after his shift to rinse away all of the grit and grime of the hours prior. he makes his way to the front of the grotto, and then stops dead in his tracks when he sees him.
he thinks his eyes are deceiving him. for a moment, he wonders if someone drugged him somehow, and if he’s just bound to think of wooseok whenever he’s being poisoned, but no. he blinks once, twice, three times, and there wooseok still stands, and he’s looking right at him.
well, at least he didn’t catch him taking his clothes off, which is a bonus, though stripping is far from the worst thing he does here. that much, he could own up to with only the slightest amount of peculiar and uncharacteristic shame. the rest is another story, but he rests in the fact that if wooseok didn’t already know he was a prostitute, being here won’t necessarily tip him off. it’s an unassuming enough establishment, at least as much as a club could be.
“hey,” he greets him, and he feels a little out of breath, and a little nervous. “what are you doing here?” he hopes it doesn’t sound accusatory.
☯ —— @miwooseok













