DANCE FOR ME

- Chapter One -

Lights flashed down on a bleach-white concrete sidewalk, a laser show of gold and crimson zig-zagging over the walkway that led to a large leather-looking red door to Gryffindor Tower. The air was predictably dry, and the sky was darkening to a deep even violet overhead the grey, ten-story stucco building that had been built to look like a castle, not a cloud in sight. Cars raced by on the main road the new construction was set back from, a large velvet red awning covering the valet drop-off.

Sirius Black pushed himself up out of the black leather racing seat he'd been sitting in for the last hour, the six-foot-two tall twenty-two year old ducking lazily around the vertical cherry red Lamborghini door to step onto the curb.

He adjusted the collar to his black button down, the top two buttons undone, and then casually stuffed his hands into the pockets of his charcoal-colored dress pants, grey eyes cool as he waited for his friend. "I can't believe we agreed to do this."

"Sirius, what is wrong with you, this is going to be great! Our first job out of school, and it's a huge one!" James Potter laughed excitedly as he tossed his keys to the waiting valet, a tall blonde man, dressed in a tuxedo. "Don't scratch it, I'm friends with the boss," he said before patting the roof of his car affectionately as he made his way around, slinging his arm up around his best friend of seventeen years as he joined him.

Sirius shook his head, letting his friend drag him down the sidewalk and into the dancing light show. "I'm not the boss, James," he said, arching one pitch-black brow up towards matching fringe. "My dad owns all these. I don't even know what he expects from us. How am I supposed to help with a strip bar when I-"

"It's business," James said, cutting him off with a shrug. "We just need to figure out how to push Black Corp. even more into the black," he said with a sharkish grin.

Sirius rolled his eyes, his jaw clenching when his friend smacked him a few times on the cheek a little too roughly. "You sound too much like a businessman," he muttered.

"I can't believe our luck, this is opening night, they'll be pulling out all the stops," James said, clearly ignoring him, "I've only ever been to Ravenclaw and Slytherin, and Ravenclaw just feels a little creepy with its no alcohol rule." Sirius shot him an arched look, and James laughed, jostling him a little. "Don't worry, we'll find you some nice cock after we finish up here, I promise."

Sirius let out a begrudging laugh as they stopped at the heavily padded crimson door, a brass snarling lion face at its center, dub-step music thumped on the other side. He hadn't researched his father's new place yet, but to be honest he hadn't gone to business school at Harvard with the intent to help run his father's strip bars. The bastard just seemed to have a way of getting him to do whatever he wanted, always had. Plus he and James really needed the start-up money if they were going to start their own business, unless they wanted to dip into their own personal funds.

He let out a heavy breath. It was a means to an end. He turned to his grinning friend. "Fuck you, Potter, I don't need your help with that, no one turns me down," he said, eliciting a barking laugh from James, and he pushed open the heavy door.

"Out of my way!" was shouted in a tight hallway of a room lined with lockers on either side, in the back of Gryffindor Tower. "You too Lupin!"

Remus Lupin turned and backed up against his locker, rolling his eyes as Frank Longbottom made his way through with a stack of oversized boxes, still in his street clothes. "What are you doing with those, Frank? Aren't you going on in ten?"

Frank stopped, breathing heavily but with a huge grin. "Yeah, well someone has to move this shit. The UPS guy left them out in the main room."

Remus crossed his arms and quirked his own grin. "You mean the UPS guy who was giving you a blow job in the bathroom earlier? Maybe you shouldn't distract the delivery men."

Frank let out an easy laugh, and he started forward again, dancers backing up and out of his way, shooting him looks of varying degrees of irritation as he made his way for the opening area at the end that was decorated more comfortably with couches and tables with lit-up mirrors mounted on the walls over them. "Don't be such a hater, Remus!"

Remus huffed a laugh as he turned back to open his locker. He ran a hand through short sandy locks, letting out a quiet groan, as he eyed his outfit for opening night, wishing he was back at Ravenclaw. He was definitely going to attract the weirdos with it, and the alcohol would only make them worse. He reminded himself though that now he would get to work every night instead of just once a week, which would increase his income ridiculously. He pulled his black fitted NIN shirt up over his head and off in one fluid motion, dropping it into his open duffle bag on the floor with renewed determination, and then stepped out of red gym shorts. He leaned forward to grab his top—

"Remus, there you are," was said sharply, causing the six-foot-one sandy blond to bump the back of his head on the top of his locker as he jerked out quickly.

"Lily," he hissed, rubbing his smarting head as he shot his red-headed friend an exasperated look, "you know you're not supposed to be back here! What do you want?"

Lily Evans crossed her arms in response, shooting him an openly expectant look. Remus's own expression slowly turned stubborn. The red-head lifted perfectly arched brows, and blinked slowly, once. Remus pressed his lips together firmly. Lily huffed. "Oh come on, Remus, tell me how it went!"

Remus began to pull on his shirt, doing up the buttons deftly, and then he turned to grab his pants, but a freshly manicured hand grabbed his arm.

"Please Remus, you owe me. I set you two up," the girl wheedled.

Remus sighed and stood back up, standing in only his boxers and work shirt, some others around him though more undressed. He lifted a hand to rub at his temples. "Lily..."

"Just sum it up in one word. And I'll leave you alone until after work."

Remus looked to his friend, meeting green doe-eyed orbs and a jutting lower lip. "Fine," he said and then tilted his head in a slight side-to-side motion as he thought. "Beneficial."

"Remus!"

"No," Remus said and wrapped his fingers around the girl's slender wrist, guiding her out of the changing room and over to the overflow area to the right of the stage at Gryffindor Tower. He glanced around, noting a handyman working on the pulley system that worked the twenty-foot curtains a few feet away, and he ignored the sudden anxiety in his chest.

"Listen Lily..." he said, dreading what the girl's response would be to his truthful response. "I'm not really in a good place right now for dating, and so—"

"What!" the girl hissed, and when Remus's head shot around the area, checking for people, she softened her voice to almost a whisper. "You've been saying that for six months now though, and Amos is a nice guy. When are you going to start seeing guys again?"

Remus thought for only a second. "Whenever I'm no longer a stripper."

"But-"

"No. No I appreciate you setting me up with Amos. I really do, we had fun. But like you said, he's a nice guy, Lily, he doesn't need me to mess his life up. Now just please give it a rest for a while."

The red-head shook her head. "Fine. I don't agree with you, but I'll leave it. For now."

"Thank you," Remus said with feeling, and then music started up, and he placed a kiss on the girl's nose when she still looked unhappy, earning him a begrudging smile. "I gotta go now, I'm after Frank, we'll hang out after," he promised, and walked off before his best friend since middle school could change her mind.

He felt his fingers begin to tingle as he made his way back into the locker room, anticipation and apprehension both shooting through him and tightening his chest as he grabbed out his pants and the piece of material that some considered an undergarment, and he dropped his boxers. Frank walked by him decked out in a police officer suit, blacked-out sunglasses hiding his eyes as he smirked. "Good luck tonight, Remus, you're going to need it."

Remus huffed a laugh as he pulled up his slacks. "Tell me about it." And then he grabbed for the last piece of his outfit, a striped tie.

"Right this way, Mr. Black, Mr. Potter," the hostess for the night, a tall blonde in a fitted black sequin dress and dangerously high heels said as she guided the two business men down the long hallway just inside. They walked on the other side of a red rope that contained the long line at Gryffindor Tower, the patrons a decent mixture of women and men.

The tall blonde, who'd introduced herself as Gabrielle, turned as she stopped by a door with a card lock and no window, the main double-door entrance still yards ahead and flashed them a wide smile. "Your room," she said and swiped a card she'd drawn discreetly from somewhere. The lock's red light turned a bright green with a sounding click, and she turned the knob, pushing it open for them and stepping back to hold it as they entered.

"Thank you Gabby, this is great." James nodded enthusiastically as he entered the room that was big enough it held a private bar on the wall shared with the hallway that could seat four, two oversized leather couches sat on the other two walls facing each other, and the wall facing the door was missing as it looked down onto an empty stage, four overstuffed chairs angled towards the obvious point of interest.

The blonde smiled, the expression more tight at the nickname. "Of course. Will you be requiring a bartender tonight, Mr. Black?"

Sirius grinned as he walked over to the banister, the floor sunken the couple feet before it, so one could see from the chairs placed further back. He peered down and into the large room that almost felt like an opera house by its design. He shook his head. It was no wonder his father was worried about his return on the place; it must have cost a small fortune to build.

He watched as the crowd below that had been previously congregated in clusters by one of the three bars began to drift out and towards tables and other forms of seating, the closest being a single c-shaped row of chairs that cradled a rounded outcrop of the stage that had a tall golden-lacquered fireman's post on it that reached all the way to the ceiling almost four stories above. "No, thank you, Gabrielle. We won't be needing this room either," he said smoothly. He turned back around as James dropped down onto one of the couches with a shocked look.

"What the hell!" James shouted not for the first time as he walked beside Sirius with effort towards the main bar in the high-ceilinged room, the two men making their way against the general flow of traffic now that the second dancer was about to come on. "Why did you give up our VIP room?! And we missed the first performance too!"

"We need to get a feel for the place if we want to offer suggestions for improvement, James," Sirius said as he stopped to wait behind a small group of giggling women, who appeared to be already thoroughly drunk and around their age, one wearing a cheap bridal veil. A bachelorette party it looked. He frowned and glanced around the darkening club, lights above dimming and turning a dark red to match the theme of the place, noticing that there appeared to be slightly more women than men. One of the girls turned around and winked at him before swiveling back to whisper in her friend's ear, who glanced over her shoulder and shot him a shy smile.

"Whatever," his friend grumbled by his side, drawing his attention back, "but we're getting up close then."

Just then the background music overhead stopped.

The girls in front of them squealed, giving up on their order and rushing past to get closer to the stage. Sirius turned to watch the elevated piece of flooring light up as red and white flood lights poured down, chasing each other around on dark wooden planks. And a cheer rose from the crowd as the rest of the room dimmed even more when they started to speed up, and it was noticeably high-pitched.

"What do you want, Sirius?"

Sirius waved his hand dismissively at his friend as a single white light landed in the dead center of still closed curtains, and a cold glass was shoved in his hand as the song Party Girls by Ludacris began to dance out of the speakers, filling the entire room. And heavy red drapes finally began to lift slowly—

I came to party like tonight will never end.

Let's party again; let's party again.

Long, leanly built legs clad in tailored black dress slacks slowly made themselves known—

Yeah, I came to party like tonight will never end.

Let's party again; let's party again.

Even higher, and a lean torso in a crisp white button down was revealed with a crimson and gold striped tie—

Let's party again.

Then finally, the most innocent-looking face Sirius could have ever imagined framed by short, neat sandy hair appeared. Pitch-black brows lifted.

"Holy shit, that's a dude," James groaned.

Then the beat picked up, and the sandy blond dressed in what looked like a boy's prep school uniform began... to dance.