Disclaimer: Don't own!

Chapter One

Alex ducked into the dark alley as a police car screamed past him. He wasn't currently doing anything suspicious, but it was better safe than sorry these days.

When he was sure the cop was gone, he walked back out on the street and continued on his way. It was so late it was nearly early, and the chill of the incoming winter was biting at his fingers until he tucked them into his pockets. Luckily, though the sky was heavy with clouds, it wasn't raining.

His hand brushed across the bundle in his pocket, and he bit back a smile. He had made enough in one night to cover his share of the rent on his flat, when only three months ago he had been hard pressed to find enough money to eat.

"Screw hello, you had me at sex! Don't need-" A voice in his pocket started to croon, and Alex snorted, fishing his phone out of his pocket.

"Vix. I see you changed my ringtone again." He chided into the speaker, though the amusement in his voice bellied the reproach.

"Oh, you know me Benny, I just can't help myself!" The tinny female voice on the other end of the line practically shouted, and Alex grimaced and held the receiver away from his face. Obviously his roommate had been in one bottle or another. Victoria, better known by her stage name Vixen, was a very loud and happy drunk.

Shaking his head, he replied, "You at home then?" He already knew the answer to that question.

"Ah… Benny, do you think you could make yourself scarce? Pretty please? Just for a few hours?" His roommate asked sweetly, and he could hear the sound of a male voice in the background.

He sighed into the microphone. "Vicky, you know we talked about bringing people home with us. I just came off my shift. I would really like to sleep, ya know?"

"If you get a hotel room, I'll pay you back later! It was just the most convenient place for both of us and-"

"Fine. Fine. But I'll be home in…" He checked his watch, which sent an eerie green glow over his face, "Shit, it's already three? I'll be home in six hours. I have an early shift at the pub. So either have him out by then, or have him quiet."

"Thank you so much, Benny! You know you're the best roommate ever and I-" Rolling his eyes, Alex hung up the phone, knowing that Vicky probably wouldn't even notice.

His exasperated expression turned quickly into a scowl, though. He and Vix had talked about bringing johns to the flat. It was supposed to be a personal space for them, but of course, Vix was an impulsive woman. It's what made her such a popular entertainer, as her set was never the same thing twice.

Kicking a stone by his foot, Alex turned away from the path he had been taking. He was seriously tired, but he hated hotels. Their anonymous rooms always reminded him starkly of the days where he would take up someone else's name and life, just to- His scowl deepened, and he shrugged off that line of thought. He did not like to remember that sort of thing.

And god if he wasn't some psychiatrist's dream? Trauma, repression, anger… They would probably say that how he was living now was an obvious conclusion to what had happened to him.

Really, Alex didn't think that he had taken up his current profession because he had issues. It had been convenient, really, not to mention it paid well. During the day he worked the bar at a local pub, serving food and advice in spades. At night, well…

The heavy beat of the music he had left behind filled his mind, and he grinned. It might have been coincidence, the right day and time sort of thing, but he felt that this was what he needed to be doing for now. The sweat and the sounds, the feeling of going around the pole so fast he was nearly flying… And that was why he couldn't stay mad a Vicky for long. If it weren't for her, he would still be living on the streets.

Lost in his thoughts, Alex didn't notice the man staggering towards him.

He was too busy thinking about the day he had met Vicky.

It had been a busy day at Grand Central, and he had settled himself on a bench, using a discarded newspaper to hide his face while his eyes roamed the surging crowds. He never hit marks that couldn't spare the money, and with his training it was always easy to pick out someone who was well off. He zeroed in on a well-dressed man who seemed to have stepped into something disgusting, going by the look on his face. With a sigh, Alex set aside his paper and dove into the crowd after the man. He didn't like pickpocketing, but he didn't have any way to get a real job here in New York City.

Ducking and weaving through the people, he made sure to keep out of sight of his mark. He had already spotted the bulge in the man's pocket that betrayed where he kept his wallet, and zeroed in. But then the man did something strange. He split off from the rest of the people, heading down a corridor that seemed to be under construction. The alarms in Alex's head went off, and he could not help following the man for an entirely different reason after that.

The man made his way through the corridor to a discreet alcove that hid the bathrooms. There, he met a woman, whose smile turned brittle upon seeing him. Her hair was a fiery red hair reminded Alex painfully of Jack, but he shook off the thought and focused on the situation, hidden in the shadow cast by a tier.

Though the woman seemed happy to see the man, Alex read her body language. She was leaning away from him, her arms crossed, her eyes darting off to the sides every once in a while. She was defensive, and getting nervous. The man was getting angry, and gesturing violently.

The woman shook her head vehemently, and took a step back, and the man stepped forward with his hand in the air, poised to hit her.

Alex chose that moment to strike, glad that the man's back was to him. The woman saw him dart from the shadows, but she didn't have time to do more than inhale sharply before the man was on his knees with an arm twisted behind his back.

"I don't like people who hit women." Alex hissed in the prone man's ear. "Now, I don't know what's going on here, but you're going to walk away nice and slowly, or I'm going to break your arm." The man nodded quickly, and Alex allowed him to stagger to his feet. The teen grinned viciously when the man turned to hit him, just as he had expected, and gleefully took the man down with a kick to his sternum that knocked his breath out of him. The woman watched all of this silently, her eyes wide with surprise, but with a small grin curving her lips.

Once the man had been taken care of, Alex glanced at her. "Are you okay ma'am?"

"Thanks to you, I am. I should have known better than to meet him here but oh… he was so handsome…" She sighed and shook her head. "I may never learn my lesson." She said mournfully. Holding out a slender hand, she introduced herself, "My name is Victoria."

"Ben." Alex replied, picking a name at random as he took the offered hand. He made her giggle by bending over to kiss it rather than shake it like she had been expecting. "Sounds like you need a keeper." Alex replied jokingly, but the light in her eyes told him that was exactly what she had been hoping he'd say.

Two days later she had introduced him to the owner of a club that featured male entertainers. He was apparently a close friend of Vicky's, because he hired Alex nearly instantly, waving off the fact that the teen did not have proper id. Alex half thought that the owner, Dylan, had only hired him in order to get Vicky to stop talking because she had spent most of the 'interview' gushing about how Alex, or 'Benny', had saved her life, and how he was just the cutest thing, and how he had an accent.

That night he started training as a male stripper, and found his niche. At least, for now.

Grunting, Alex was torn from his thoughts by someone bumping harshly into his shoulder. His nose wrinkled in disgust when he felt something wet soak through his shirt. It was likely that this guy had puked on himself, and now it was on him. Great, just great.

He was not prepared when the man didn't seem interested in continuing on his way, and instead slumped on to Alex. Just what his night needed, a drunkard. He jostled the man, and then noticed how oddly… still he was. He pulled away enough to look at the guy. Wide blank eyes stared back at him, and the teen dropped him quickly, cursing.

He looked down at his shirt, and realized that what he thought was puke was actually blood. He peeled the garment away from his skin with a moue of disgust. He tried to feel some sort of sorrow for the guy who had literally just died on him, but this was New York City, the cess pit of the US. It was highly likely that the dead man had been a part of some drug deal gone bad. It wouldn't be the first guy like that Alex came across, though most of them were already dead and shoved into dark alleys by the time he stumbled across them.

Taking out his phone, he took a deep breath and dialed. Cursed. Redialed. He had momentarily forgotten that he was in the states and that their emergency number was not'999'.

"911, what's your emergency?" A rather bored sounding female voice asked.

Alex knocked his voice up an octave, erased his accent, and infused it with the slightest bit of panic. "Hello? I was just walking down-" He glanced up at the street signs momentarily, and then continued, "West 20th Street, when I nearly tripped over this guy that was lying in the alley! At first I thought he was drunk or something, but oh my God, there's blood! And he's not breathing! Oh my God!" He panted into the receiver, before hanging up. The operator would dispatch someone, and the guy would be found in short order. Hopefully before the sun rose, because there was a school not too far from where he and the dead man were, and wouldn't that be something to explain to your kid?

Glancing one last time at the man, Alex grimaced then walked quickly away. Already sirens were wailing in the distance… then again, they always were in New York.

Instead of going to a hotel, or even back to the flat despite Vicky's pleas, he headed towards the bar where he worked during the day. He didn't need the money from a second job, but he had to find a way to spend the time he wasn't sleeping, and he had never been good at being idle. So he begged a favor from Dylan, who convinced a guy he knew to hire the teen under the same circumstances; no paper trail, all cash. Between the two jobs, he had quite a stash of money hidden away in the bottom of his laundry hamper, under his dirty clothes. At this point, he could probably afford an apartment by himself, but Vicky needed a roommate, if only to keep her clients in line.

The people who worked in Dylan's clubs weren't forced to do anything, but they did have the option of taking clients to bed, as long as the club got a small cut of the profit. Vicky, who worked in the sister store of the one where she got Alex his job, took a lot of joy out of leading a few men on a merry chase that ended up in bed, and then she would get bored of them and find new ones. So of course the old ones tended to be 'unhappy' about that. Alex made sure that they didn't stick around.

He didn't bring clients to bed as a rule, though one or two had tempted him.

He went to use his key to open the back door to the bar, which had closed only half an hour before, but found it already unlocked. Frowning, he shouldered his way in and scanned the area. The bar was untouched, as was the cash register. But from the back he could hear the sound of running water. Someone was using the employee shower. The other guy opening with him, a new kid called Daniel, wouldn't have come so early, and the girls who closed, twins named Alyssa and Miranda, did not like to stick around.

It could have been one of the bouncers, but Alex's jangling instincts told him it wasn't. Crouching lower to the ground, he crept around the back of the bar and into the employee area. Walking slowly and cautiously, he grabbed the knife that someone had left behind. It was a butter knife, but something was better than nothing.

He walked into the shower room.

I was rereading Alex Rider, then some fanfictions... and thought I'd try my hand at the Alex is a stripper story line. I'm gonna put up a poll as to who you think that should be in that shower. I will for sure be continuing to write this one, at least for a while, and it will be slash (if I don't get bored of this story first...). If you can't tell, I really don't know the first thing about New York City, but Google helped a bit!

Lionna