The flyer was still on the kitchen counter when Grayson woke. He stood in the doorway, rubbing a hand over his jaw as he stared at it. The bold, gold lettering seemed to catch the thin strip of sunlight sneaking past the blinds: Elysium.
Hiring: Experienced Bar Staff. Competitive pay + tips. Apply in person.
Up close, the card wasn't like the cheap leaflets he'd seen posted up in pub windows. It was thick, matte, heavy. The gold lettering wasn't printed, it was pressed, leaving indented letters he could feel with a thumb. No. Money had touched this. Money had approved it.
Holly padded in barefoot, hair damp, wearing another one of his t-shirts that hung off one shoulder and skimmed the curve of her thigh. She made straight for the kettle and shook it with a practised rattle. "You're staring at that like it owes you an apology."
"Maybe it does." Grayson said.
She pulled two mismatched mugs from the cupboard. "You thinking of going?"
He rolled the corner of the flyer against his knuckle. "Thinking."
"Elysium's not like the places you've worked at before." She measured coffee into the mugs, not looking at him but very much looking at him. "That club eats people who don't know what they're walking into."
"I'm good with a shaker," he said. "And I know how to keep my mouth shut."
She flicked him a look over her shoulder, half teasing, half worried. "They probably want you in a bow tie."
"I'm not auditioning to be a dancer."
"That's your loss." She slid him a mug. "You'd make a fortune."
He took a sip and winced, the coffee strong, hot and necessary. The bruise beneath his ribs pulsed dully with every breath, a physical reminder that his actions from two nights ago hadn't evaporated with the rain. "Rent won't pay itself."
"You mean we won't." She leaned on the counter, tucking one foot behind her calf. "You could try Halcyon on Brogan Street. Or the King's Arms. The old guy there likes soft-spoken bartenders who don't question his music choices."
"I'm not soft-spoken."
"That's why he'd like you." She smiled, small and crooked, then let it fade. "You sure you're okay?"
He glanced at the window. Pale light pressed against the glass like the day was thinking about showing up and changing its mind. "Fine."
"You don't look fine."
"I wasn't hired for my looks." He set the mug down. "I'll go. See what it is."
She reached and smoothed a curl at his temple like she'd done a hundred times and never mentioned. "If they make you wear a bow tie, take a picture."
"Absolutely not."
She laughed, soft. The sound snagged on something in his chest and pulled. He stepped back before it could pull anything else.
On the way out, he paused, fingers brushing the flyer on the counter. "Back later," he said.
Holly's voice floated from her room. "If they offer you a collar, say it's not your size."
He shook his head and left before she could see him smile.
********************
By the time Grayson reached Elysium, Briarwick had shed its shabby skin and put on polished stone and polished men who moved like they were late to expensive problems.
Elysium didn't shout; it never had to. The façade of black glass swallowed the city's reflections whole, while gold lettering declared its name in stark simplicity: ELYSIUM. No flourish. No ornament. As if any other word would have been redundant. Two doormen stood at the entrance, statues in tailored suits, hands clasped neatly in front of them. They didn't posture, didn't even glance around. They didn't need to.
The taller one's eyes slid over Grayson: boots, jeans, black shirt buttoned to the throat. "Business?"
"Bar position." He kept his voice easy, eyes level.
The doorman considered him a beat, more like a scanner than a man. He tipped his chin. The other opened the door.
Sound hit first. Not loud, exactly—thick. Bass that lived in your ribs before you noticed it in your ears. Warm air braided with perfume sharp as citrus and sweet as sugar, with whiskey below it and sweat deep beneath. Low lights framed the room like a stage set: a crescent bar glowing amber; the mirrored backbar sparkling with bottle glass and gold; tables draped in shadow; a runway that led to a stage where a dancer curled around a chrome pole like she'd been born with it for a spine.
The staff moved like they'd been choreographed. Not pretty, not theatrical but efficient. Shakers in one hand, bottles in the other, tin-on-tin thunks and the faint hiss of soda guns, garnishes pinched between fingers and placed just so. No wasted motion. No chatter.
A man at the far end of the bar polished a coupe glass with a linen cloth that had never seen a washing powder commercial in its life.
Grayson's pulse changed pace to match the room. He didn't smile. He didn't pretend he belonged. He let the place introduce itself.
A man approached in a fitted black suit, close-cropped hair, tie perfect. Early thirties, eyes like a weighing scale. He extended a hand. "Jax."
"Grayson Hale." His grip matched—firm, clean.
"Résumé?"
Grayson passed it over. Jax didn't glance at it immediately. He looked at Grayson instead, just long enough to let silence lean. Then he walked, and Grayson followed, past men in watches that bought cars and women who laughed with their heads tipped back just far enough to show off diamonds.
They cut along the edge of the main floor to a corridor where the bass softened into a heartbeat on the other side of the wall. Jax opened a door. Inside: a room that pretended to be an office and succeeded—black leather chairs, a glass desk that held only a laptop, a decanter of amber liquor and two heavy-bottomed tumblers.
Jax sat. He gestured. Grayson took the chair opposite and put his palms flat on his thighs, casual without the performance of it. Jax finally looked at the résumé.
"Impressive résumé," Jax said, flipping through the sheet of paper like it was a formality. "Couple years in Manhattan? Who'd you learn under?"
Grayson named a man who'd insisted on stirring Negronis exactly thirty-six turns clockwise and taught him that ice mattered more than most men's pride.
Jax nodded, almost imperceptible. "You know our menu?"
"Haven't seen it." Grayson kept his voice level. "But I can taste and build as needed."
"House martini specs?" Jax asked.
"Depends whose house." Grayson let the corner of his mouth move. "If it's mine: two and a half gin, half dry vermouth, lemon expression. If it's theirs, I ask if they want it clean or dirty and how dirty. Stirred unless they're trying to pick a fight."
A flicker.
Jax set the résumé down. "We do a barrel-aged Boulevardier that's finicky. Rye, Campari, sweet vermouth. We cut it with a house bitter and temper with a pipette of saline."
"Saline's smart," Grayson said. "Ropes the edges in."
"You mind being told exactly how things are done?"
"I mind being told by people who don't know why they're telling me." He met Jax's eyes. "Do you know why?"
The briefest pause. "Yes."
"Then I don't mind."
Jax nodded once and reached into a drawer. He set a black tie on the desk like it was a test. "We hire rarely. We fire faster. We expect discretion and exactness. We don't do drunk staff, late staff, or staff who make friends with patrons. You're on the floor; you're part of the room's spine. You crack, the whole place feels it." He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. "You start tonight."
"What time?"
"Eight. Black shirt, that tie, black trousers. Hair off your face. No jewellery except a watch if you have one. If you don't, don't start. We're not a catwalk."
Grayson stood, sliding the tie off the desk and folding it once. "Anything else I should know?"
Jax considered, then stood too. "Yes."
Silence.
"We don't do questions about things that aren't your job."
Grayson smiled, not because anything was funny. "Good thing I'm here for the bar."
Jax's mouth twitched—his version of graciousness—and he opened the door. On the way back to the main floor, the room's heat pressed back into Grayson's skin.
Jax paused at the edge of the bar. "We'll start you on service station, far left." He said. "You won't face guests. You'll build tickets for the floor staff. Don't try to do tricks. Don't improvise syrups. If you don't recognise a ticket, you ask me."
Grayson's gaze tracked the bar's left bank. The service station was all speed rails and cold wells, the ugly work that kept the pretty work alive. "Got it."
"Good." Jax looked past him, over his shoulder, the way a man checks a mirror he trusts. "Eight."
Grayson started to turn, and that's when he felt it—before he saw it, a pressure along the skin of his neck, like a new weather system had rolled in just for him.
He looked up.
The second-floor balcony cut a sharp line above the floor, its edge lit only enough to outline the geometry of it. A figure stood back from the rail in the dark, framed by the faintest halo of amber spill. Black shirt. Broad shoulders. The suggestion of a scar slashed pale through one eyebrow and vanishing into shadow. He couldn't see the ink; he didn't need to feel it to know it was there—something black and coiled against a throat that didn't bow to anybody.
Pale eyes caught the light for half a heartbeat. Not a blink. Not even a full turn of the head. Just a glance that landed and held. It wasn't curious. It wasn't impressed. It was… measuring.
Grayson's breath stuttered, minor but noticeable to himself. The room seemed to go softer around the edges, not quiet, but further away. He didn't smile. He didn't nod. He did the thing he was best at—he looked back like he'd never looked away.
The figure didn't move. And then he did. A step into deeper shadow. Gone.
"You good?" Jax asked, clipped, like he was used to people drifting.
Grayson tore his gaze down. "Yeah."
"See you at eight."
"See you," Grayson said, but the word felt like a mismatch for the air in his lungs.
*****************
Outside, the sky had slipped into that uncertain hour when lights looked brighter than they should. He stood in front of Elysium and let the street move around him—taxis edging up to the curb, cigarette smoke drifting from a group of men in navy suits, drizzle starting to speckle the pavement.
His heartbeat felt off, like it wasn't entirely his. It thudded with the same rhythm as the room he'd just left, as if some part of it was still lodged inside him.
He should have felt relief. A job meant rent. A job meant not having to choose which bill to ignore. Instead, the edges of his mouth tried to curl around an emotion he couldn't name and refused to try to.
He started walking. He took the long way back, not because he needed the air but because he needed to know whether the corner in the East Quarter still looked like any other corner.
It did. Of course it did. No tape. No questions. A teenage couple argued under a bus shelter, rain spitting tiny dots into the boy's hair. A pensioner with a tartan trolley wheeled past, determined to win a race no one else had entered. The gutter where blood had been was rinsed clean. It looked like it had always been clean. The lie of it felt personal.
His phone buzzed. A text from Holly—You alive?
He typed, For now.
Three dots. Wear the bow tie.
He sent her a photo of the black tie in his fist. She sent back a row of knife emojis and a heart.
He didn't smile this time.
******************
Holly had incense burning again when he pushed the apartment door open. The smell threaded through the hallway. She leaned out of her room. "Well?"
"Eight," he said.
She whooped, too loud for the building, then clapped a hand over her mouth and hissed "sorry" to the ceiling. She was in tights and a hoodie now, heavy eyeliner turning her blue eyes more dangerous than their colour suggested. "You look like someone just told you prison accepts walk-ins."
"It's… a place." He toed off his boots. "Not like the Anchor."
"Told you."
He didn't tell her about the balcony. He didn't tell her about the eyes. He didn't tell her how the room had crawled under his skin and set up residence. Instead, he asked, "You working tonight?"
"Seven. Maybe a late shift if Mindy flakes." She cocked her head. "You want me to iron that shirt so you don't look like you slept in it?"
"I did sleep in it."
She disappeared and came back with the board, slamming it open with more rhythmic violence than necessary. "Take it off."
He arched a brow.
"Don't be a prude," she said, but her laugh came out softer than the words.
He peeled the shirt away and tossed it. She shook it out, ran the iron smooth, steam billowing around her. He watched the lines disappear beneath the plate. Watched her not look at him and look anyway.
"Stand up straight," she said, like she had any authority.
He did. Her gaze flicked over his torso and away too fast to be an accident. "There. Now you look like you could tell someone how to drink and they'd thank you for the privilege."
"That's the job."
She handed the shirt back. He pulled it on, and the brush of fabric over skin felt like armour snapping into place. The tie waited on the back of a chair. He looped it, pulled, tightened.
"Jesus," she said, half to herself. "The women at that place don't stand a chance."
"They're not my problem."
"You say that like you mean it." Her mouth slanted. "Be careful, Gray."
"Always."
She stepped into him and wrapped him up in a quick, clean hug that smelled like her perfume and heat and home. He let it happen and let it go.
******************
He left just after seven-thirty. The city had decided on rain again—thin needles that pricked the back of his neck and sank into the seams of his jacket. Elysium's awning threw gold across the wet pavement, and the doormen let him pass without a word this time, which told him more than if they'd opened a red rope.
The bar staff he'd clocked earlier were mid-shift change. Jax was waiting at the service station, a clipboard in hand, tie still straight. "You're on wells one and two," he said. "Orders will load on the screen. Floor will call modifiers. You acknowledge with a nod and nothing else. You don't speak to guests unless a runner tells you to clarify. You spill, you wipe. You breathe, you do it on your own time."
Grayson didn't nod because he didn't need to. He slid into the gap between rails, rolled his shoulders once, scanned the bottles and tins, and knew where everything was within ten seconds. The room's heat wrapped around him; the bar's rhythm grabbed the back of his collar and dragged him along. Tickets chimed. He started to build.
Halfway through the first rush, he felt watched in a way that was different from the way guests watched bar staff everywhere—less is he good at his job? and more what does he do when pushed? He didn't look up. He didn't need to. Movement on the periphery—security's slow orbit, the way runners moved around him like he'd always been there, and somewhere above, the weight of a gaze that wasn't curious or impressed. Measuring again. Cataloguing.
He set a line of coupes like soldiers, flipped a shaker tin, cracked it, strained. The house Boulevardier waited in its barrel, dark as bad decisions. He pulled, cut with the dropper, stirred, strained, expressed, sent it away.
A runner with a glossy ponytail slid into his space. "Jax says you can handle bespoke orders."
"Depends on the order."
She smirked. "Table twelve. Off-menu. Wants something bitter, wants it mean."
"Doesn't everybody." He scanned the back-bar and reached for a bottle nobody ordered unless they'd been taught how—Fernet. He built low and dark, oak and char and a curl of orange oil. He didn't name it. He didn't need to. The runner took it and vanished into the room's mouth.
Jax materialised at his elbow a minute later. "What was that?"
"Fast mistake-proof amaro hit."
"Table twelve liked it." Jax didn't smile. "Don't improvise unless told to."
Grayson didn't look at him. "You told me."
Jax's pause said fine louder than his voice ever would. He moved on.
At some point, the music changed from a pulse to a slow-drag grind. Laughter spiked and broke like waves against moneyed cliffs. The stage swallowed dancers and released them, glitter catching in light like thrown stars. Grayson's shirt stuck to his back. He didn't notice until a lull let him breathe.
He took the breath, hands flat on the stainless, head tipped forward. A reflection ghosted in the bar mirror—his face, a lattice of bottles, and behind that, high and vague and wrong, the dark cut of a man on the balcony that didn't need light to be seen.
He didn't turn. He let the reflection do the work. The man didn't move. He didn't have to. The knowledge of him did the moving.
"Back on," Jax said, sliding a new stack of lemons into his palm.
Grayson cut. He squeezed. He salted a line of Collins glasses with the speed of a man who'd been paid to do it in cities that pretended not to have alleys.
By eleven, the room had reached that precise point where everything either collapsed or became invincible. Elysium didn't collapse. It tightened its grip and got richer. Security loomed and didn't loom, present and polite and very clear about what polite meant here.
A man in a red suit tried to tip him a hundred across the well. Grayson pushed it back with two fingers without looking at the bill. "Runner only."
The man opened his mouth.
"Runner only," Grayson repeated, not louder, not slower.
The runner arrived and relieved the man of both drink and bill without missing a beat.
Later, at the soda gun, she glanced at him while refilling a glass. "Haven't seen you before. What's your name?"
"Grayson."
She nodded. "I'm Tessa. Welcome to the circus."
"Appreciate it."
She smirked faintly, then was gone before he could say more.
He worked until his hands stopped needing orders. He worked until the ache in his ribs rebranded itself as background noise. He worked until the floor stopped being a room and became a creature with a spine and a temper that he could feel in his fingers.
At one a.m., Jax tapped his wrist with a pen. "Break. Ten minutes. Upstairs staff lounge. No drinks. No flirting with dancers. Don't wander."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Grayson said, already dreaming of nothing but air that didn't taste like citrus and sin.
The staff lounge was a long, narrow room with a sofa that had given up on life and a vending machine that had never met a fresh product. A couple of floor staff scrolled their phones. One dancer lay on her back on the carpet with her legs up the wall, ankles crossed, toes pointed, stretching muscles that had earned their pay. She didn't look at him; he didn't look at her. He sat on the arm of the sofa and let the silence land.
Through a slit of window, he could see a sliver of balcony. Not the main one—a side run that connected to nowhere obvious. A shadow moved along it. Not a person. A presence.
He checked his phone. Holly: How's the collar?
He sent a photo of himself. Her reply came fast: Hot. Don't get murdered.
Working on it, he typed.
When his ten minutes were up, he washed his hands, checked his tie, and went back to the heat.
He didn't see the man on the balcony again. He didn't need to. The knowledge of him had settled the way a bruise does—deep, dark, and waiting for pressure.
At two, the first cracks appeared in the guests, not the staff: slurred edges, glassy eyes, desperation masquerading as bravado. Grayson built the last round of something tall and citrus-bright and watched it leave with the runner like he was watching a piece of himself get on a plane without luggage.
When the last ticket died and the music slid from pulse to echo, Jax appeared in the service gap, clipboard tucked to his side.
"You didn't drown," he said.
"I've got lungs."
Jax scanned his face like it was a checklist. "Eight tomorrow. Same tie. Clean shirt. Don't be late."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
Jax almost smiled again. "We'll see."
Grayson stripped the well with the others, wiped down stainless, packed herbs into tubs, aligned the knives in a row that would have satisfied a sergeant.
His phone buzzed once. Holly again: Still alive?
Yeah.
Like it?
He typed, Ask me tomorrow.
He walked towards the exit. The night had a different temperature now, like something had moved through it and left the air changed. He wasn't sure if that something was Elysium or the man whose eyes had measured him from the dark. He wasn't sure it mattered.
What mattered was the way his hands still wanted to move, the way his pulse still wanted to match a bassline that wasn't playing anymore, and the way the city felt smaller and larger at the same time—like a room that someone else had just locked from the outside.
He didn't look up at the second-floor balcony.
He didn't have to.
Some cages you only recognise by the way the air tastes on the way out.