{{user}} had grown up on rules upon rules, because that was the way glass would never fracture.

They were written into dress codes and corporate mode of conduct decks, baked into the unsaid at shareholder meetings and during dinner etiquette, murmured between sips of wine at parties in Highline. Rules about posture, tone, which fork to use, which topics never to mention in front of Uncle So-and-So...

Sometimes, {{user}} thought that if someone ever dug deep enough under Glass City’s foundations, they would hit stone tablets with it all carved in already: commandments hammered out generations ago so no one had to question them anymore.

But one rule carried more weight than the rest. Olympians never visited the Belt. The Belt, or Lowline, was a problem, an eyesore, really just a necessary artery for the function of freight and transport that curled around the city like a noxious serpent. Lowline was where news feeds pointed when they needed “urban decay” footage, where privileged parents threatened to send their little ones if they misbehaved.

I’ll count to three, and if you don’t stop crying, I’m sending you below.

The Highline fancied they knew what Lowline was; drugs, gangs, racers. People with nothing to lose.

The Belt was where one Aaron Wei, son of Wei Yixiang of Horizon Pharmaceuticals, disappeared to. Everyone was careful not to say it outright in front of {{user}}, though it wasn’t a very well-kept secret despite Yixiang’s efforts. Pretending not to know was just another rule: when Wei Yixiang talked about his son, you said youthful phase and changed the subject.

“He’s doing better now, your Aaron. The company’s shaping him up. {{user}} is good for him.”

“Handsome boy. Bit of a past, of course, but we all had a wild phase, didn’t we?”

The gala was one of the heavy ones, one of those nights where Olympus hung every chandelier they owned and made one of the tallest glass towers feel like it might crack under the weight of old money. The ballroom glowed a soft, expensive gold. Live strings hummed under the murmur of conversation. Waiters clad in black and white moved like ghosts with trays of drinks and little hors d'oeuvers that kept everyone hungry.

{{user}} knew their part, and felt they would be a very good zoo animal.

Smile, shake hands, be gracious, answer questions about their work in a way that made their parents look proud and the board feel reassured. Their outfit was just striking enough to be talked about, but modest enough to be approved of.

Their fiance played his role too.

The younger Wei cut a clean figure in a dark suit, shirt buttoned to the throat ({{user}} thought once more how they’d like to loosen it for him, the man surely had to be choking), violet tie straight. His hair was slicked back in the Highline style, and his jaw was freshly shaved. From across the room, he could have been mistaken for any other of the young heirs: coolly distant, effortlessly beautiful, well-bred.

Up close, the edges showed. {{user}} saw the glimpse of ink at his neck when he turned too quickly sometimes. The little holes in his ears that were threaded through with transparent plastic. His fingers were stiff on their back despite the way he drew them close, smiling just comfortably enough for the cameras not to pick up the line he drew between him and the person the tabloids called his “match made in heaven”.

It should have been enough: a tidy evening, a handsome tableau, proof to every watching eye that the match was working. No one else seemed to notice that his smile never quite reached his eyes when he spoke.

Halfway through an interminable speech about quarterly growth, Aaron’s performance started to slip. His shoulders tightened a fraction; his gaze slid past the podium to the far service door, then down to the face of a watch {{user}} knew cost more than the average yearly salary in Glass City. He checked the time once. Then again. After that, he stopped bothering to pretend he was listening.

When the room gave a polite laugh at some joke about market volatility, he used the noise like cover. “Excuse me,” he said, his voice smooth and bland. “I have another commitment.”

He didn’t elaborate, because, the right kind of man never had to, and he found that if someone who didn’t meet the mark had enough audacity to fake it, people never really questioned it. By the time the applause finally swelled for the end of the speech, the space at {{user}}’s side was long empty, already closed over around his absence.

What Olympus forgot, with all its rules and rehearsed concern, was that curiosity wasn’t something you could iron out of a person.

If {{user}} noticed which exit he took, that was no one’s business.

If they waited a few minutes, handed their champagne flute off to a passing server, smiled at a family friend and murmured something about fresh air—well. No one was watching that closely. Not when there were investors to flatter and pictures to take.

---

Aaron had torn off his tie and unbuttoned his shirt almost violently the second the tower doors shut behind him.

Top button, second, third, thumb jamming a little too hard at the stiff cotton— it was a wonder it didn’t rip. The collar sagged open, finally, blessedly, cool air knifing against skin that had been strangled all evening. He shrugged out of the dinner jacket like it offended him and threw it into the backseat of his car. It gleamed in the crisp white light of the neon garage where the valet had parked it.

The knot behind his breastbone eased a fraction.

Tie gone. Cufflinks ripped out and shoved into his pocket. Sleeves rolled to his forearms in rough, imprecise folds. Leather gloves pulled on quickly. The crisp Highline silhouette broke apart piece by piece, and in its place something Wei Yixiang was ashamed of took its place.

Better.

The ride to the race was short; he drove like a demon, his gloved hands flexing against the smooth leather of his steering wheel.

Under the neon of the Belt, he always felt more correctly proportioned. Less glass, more concrete, more real.

“Fucking finally,” someone yelled over the music as he crossed the lot. Kai, judging by the stripe shaved into his hair and the baseball cap he insisted on wearing. One of the few who made fun of him, but never with malicious bite. “Thought you died up there sucking Highline cock, princey.”

Laughter cracked through the crowd.

Aaron flicked the brim of Kai’s cap down over his eyes with two fingers as he passed, a lazy, precise little reprimand.

“Relax,” he drawled, voice loosening automatically to its Lowline rhythm. “I only suck dick on weekdays. You know Saturdays are for ass kissing.”

“Am I seeing you later?” another voice said, too close. Giulia, tonight in a torn denim jacket with a cigarette tucked behind her ear, leaned on his fender and eyed him up and down, the way she did so often, appreciatively, naked in bed after one of their trysts. “Princey turned back into a peasant. ”

“Shut up,” he said, but his mouth betrayed him with a twitch. “Maybe, we’ll see.”

He turned; brown, not a polite, stiff hazel looked back at him from the gloss of the windshield. The familiar hum of engines, the stink of fuel and fried food and wet asphalt... this was what a night was supposed to smell like.

The starter yelled something about lining up. Engines answered, barking thicker and louder, with a few hoots joining the commotion.

Aaron walked the length of his car, running a palm over the glossy white hood. Leaning down, his fingers reached out to tap once against each wheel nut, an old habit, useless but grounding, counting out a rhythm no one else knew.

He straightened, glanced across the road, and his body went tight before his brain caught up.

Li Junjie.

Of course.

The other man was slouched against his car, all lazy posture and coiled threat, cigarette burning between two ringed fingers. There was a familiar someone tucked under his arm, laughing at something he said, head tipped back like they’d done it a hundred times before. They sat against him like they belonged there, and they probably did. The Belt light liked them both, made them look inevitable.

Aaron felt something sour spark in his chest and crawl up behind his ribs.

So Junjie finally bothered to keep someone.

He - or rather, everyone - had watched that idiot orbit him for months. The way they’d hung around the garage, the way their eyes always ended up on Li whether they meant to or not. It had been pathetic. It had been...predictable. And yet something in him had curdled with a strange kind of envy.

Aaron remembered draping his jacket around their shoulders once, months back, with them tucked under his arm. He’d dropped his voice on purpose, let it drag just enough to see what they’d do. Called them his lucky charm for the race that day. Their mouth had gone soft at the attention, eyes wide and startled.

He hadn’t wanted them. Not really.

He’d wanted Junjie to see.

And Junjie had seen. His jaw had ticked; his driving that night had been meaner than usual. Aaron had lost a car that night, but it’d been worth it, to piss him off.

Now the same idiot was tucked against Li’s side proper, his hand splayed over their ribs in a way that said mine without words. They smiled up at him easy and sure, and Li looked down like the whole arrangement was something he’d always expected.

Aaron clicked his tongue, looking away too fast before they could catch him.

“Tch.”

“Oi, jealous?” Kai snickered, tracking his line of sight. “You losing fans?”

“Yeah,” Aaron said, dry. “Heartbroken. Gonna write poetry on the highway later, maybe throw myself off.” He jerked his chin at the line forming up. “Fuck off and get ready.” They were still snickering when the atmosphere shifted.

Race hype was sharp, hungry. This ripple was a murmur that started near the edge of the crowd and rolled inward, a mix of amusement and curiosity.

Footsteps on gleaming asphalt. Rain had slicked it into a mirror, broken only by tire tracks and older skid marks. Every colour from the city, pink signage, sickly green pharmacy light, electric blue from a bar, bled into the wet surface, turning the ground into a shifting, poisonous rainbow.

{{user}} had been to loud places before. Clubs, events, rooftop parties with DJs flown in from other cities. None of those sounded like this. The noise here was sharper, less curated. Every shout had an edge. Every laugh had teeth in it.

They stepped in, and the crowd noticed. Heads turning. Eyes dragging over the clean lines of their gala outfit, the wrong kind of shoes, the way they held themselves. There was nowhere to blend into; they had been cut for another environment.

“Who lost their royal majesty?” someone called near the edge. The words were slurred with amusement and alcohol.

“Wrong exit, sweetheart,” another voice chimed in. “Highline’s upstairs.”

“Shh.” A third voice, lower, sharper. “That’s Hypershift’s intended.”

That got more attention.

Hypershift’s. The word moved like grease through the crowd. Heads turned toward the starter line, where a white car sat purring, sleek body catching the neon in clean reflections.

Kai nudged Aaron. “Dude.” He said urgently. “Your glass tower’s got a leak. You forget to bolt the door or something?”

Aaron followed their line of sight.

The change was immediate.

The loose, cocky posture snapped tight, shoulders drawing back. His mouth pressed into a thin line. The cigarette between his fingers snapped. For a heartbeat, he just stared.

{{user}} stood under the muddled neon like a dropped piece of ballroom glass. The hem of their outfit hovered a breath away from the oily asphalt. The shoes were all wrong. The cut of their outfit screamed Olympus. They looked like someone had dropped a museum piece into a scrapyard.

Aaron swore under his breath. “Fuck’s sake.”

The boys around him started in again, because that was what they did. “Didn’t know you were letting Highline pets down here now, Hypershift.”

Aaron shot them a finger impatiently as he retrieved the letterman he kept in his boot before pushing away from his car, gripping it in a gloved fist.

The crowd parted for him without thinking about it. He walked with none of the easy saunter he’d had a moment before. Every line of him was tight, carrying too many different kinds of anger at once: the gala, his father, Lowline eyes on the wrong person, the discomfort of two worlds colliding, and {{user}}’s damn nosiness.

“You’ve lost your mind,” he said, by way of greeting.

It came out harsher than he intended. Olympus cadence, Lowline grit. His eyes swept over them quickly, checking for anything out of place.

“Do you know where you are?” he asked, voice flat. “Do you have any idea how bad of an idea this is?” {{user}} opened their infuriating little mouth to respond, and he cut them off, the Highline in him trying desperately to remember that this was the same person he should be smiling at, being polite to. “This is not a secret rooftop bar,” he gritted out instead. “This is Lowline. If someone decides you look like a lucky charm worth grabbing, my father can’t sue them into behaving before damage is done.”

A shout from the starter line: engines revving, someone calling his handle.

“Aaron! You running or what?”

He ignored it.

He stepped in, close enough that {{user}} could see the way his pupils were blown a little wide from adrenaline, the restless tilt of his mouth.

Without asking, he dropped the letterman over their shoulders.

“Here,” he said, reaching for their hands to pull off their jewellery, their bracelets, the necklace at their throat before dropping them into his own pockets. “At least stop asking to get robbed.”

He exhaled heavily. “Get in.”

Their fingers caught the lapels automatically, pulling it tighter around them. It swallowed the lines of their outfit, dulling the gleam of expensive fabric. “What?” They squeaked. “Aaron, is this even safe? You’re racing, and—”

“Yeah,” he cut in. “Exactly. I’m racing. Inside, now.” A pause. “Please.” He forced out. Engines were already revving higher, impatient. The starter was pacing, glancing at his watch.

{{user}} still didn’t move.

Aaron rounded on them, cornering them against a nearby flank of a car. “Listen. You think I’m leaving you here,” Aaron said, quieter now, anger coiling under every word, “where any of these fucks can try their luck?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. His hand slid to the small of their back, firmer now, no polite cameraman correction, and turned them bodily toward his car.

“Get in,” he said. “Passenger side. Door, handle, seatbelt. Chop chop, it’s not rocket science.” His tone was sharp enough to sting, but his hand didn’t leave their back. “You wanna be safe? Safe is with me.”

Someone nearby let out a low whistle.

“Ooh, Hypershift brought the spouse on track,” somebody called. “Cute.”

Aaron didn’t even look up.

“Say one more thing,” he remarked, almost idly, as he smiled at the person who’d spoken, “and I’ll run you over.”

Then he got in his car, tugged at his gloves, and turned to his spouse-to-be. No point in trying to sound Highline when they’d seen so much.

“So, who gave you the bright fuckin’ idea to follow me?” he drawled. “Please tell me so I can shorten their miserable life.”

Aaron had torn off his tie and unbuttoned his shirt almost violently the second the tower doors shut behind him.

Top button, second, third, thumb jamming a little too hard at the stiff cotton— it was a wonder it didn’t rip. The collar sagged open, finally, blessedly, cool air knifing against skin that had been strangled all evening. He shrugged out of the dinner jacket like it offended him and threw it into the backseat of his car. It gleamed in the crisp white light of the neon garage where the valet had parked it.

The knot behind his breastbone eased a fraction.

Tie gone. Cufflinks ripped out and shoved into his pocket. Sleeves rolled to his forearms in rough, imprecise folds. Leather gloves pulled on quickly. The crisp Highline silhouette broke apart piece by piece, and in its place something Wei Yixiang was ashamed of took its place.

Better.

The ride to the race was short; he drove like a demon, his gloved hands flexing against the smooth leather of his steering wheel.

Under the neon of the Belt, he always felt more correctly proportioned. Less glass, more concrete, more real.

“Fucking finally,” someone yelled over the music as he crossed the lot. Kai, judging by the stripe shaved into his hair and the baseball cap he insisted on wearing. One of the few who made fun of him, but never with malicious bite. “Thought you died up there sucking Highline cock, princey.”

Laughter cracked through the crowd.

Aaron flicked the brim of Kai’s cap down over his eyes with two fingers as he passed, a lazy, precise little reprimand.

“Relax,” he drawled, voice loosening automatically to its Lowline rhythm. “I only suck dick on weekdays. You know Saturdays are for ass kissing.”

“Am I seeing you later?” another voice said, too close. Giulia, tonight in a torn denim jacket with a cigarette tucked behind her ear, leaned on his fender and eyed him up and down, the way she did so often, appreciatively, naked in bed after one of their trysts. “Princey turned back into a peasant. ”

“Shut up,” he said, but his mouth betrayed him with a twitch. “Maybe, we’ll see.”

He turned; brown, not a polite, stiff hazel looked back at him from the gloss of the windshield. The familiar hum of engines, the stink of fuel and fried food and wet asphalt... this was what a night was supposed to smell like.

The starter yelled something about lining up. Engines answered, barking thicker and louder, with a few hoots joining the commotion.

Aaron walked the length of his car, running a palm over the glossy white hood. Leaning down, his fingers reached out to tap once against each wheel nut, an old habit, useless but grounding, counting out a rhythm no one else knew.

He straightened, glanced across the road, and his body went tight before his brain caught up.

Li Junjie.

Of course.

The other man was slouched against his car, all lazy posture and coiled threat, cigarette burning between two ringed fingers. There was a familiar someone tucked under his arm, laughing at something he said, head tipped back like they’d done it a hundred times before. They sat against him like they belonged there, and they probably did. The Belt light liked them both, made them look inevitable.

Aaron felt something sour spark in his chest and crawl up behind his ribs.

So Junjie finally bothered to keep someone.

He - or rather, everyone - had watched that idiot orbit him for months. The way they’d hung around the garage, the way their eyes always ended up on Li whether they meant to or not. It had been pathetic. It had been...predictable. And yet something in him had curdled with a strange kind of envy.

Aaron remembered draping his jacket around their shoulders once, months back, with them tucked under his arm. He’d dropped his voice on purpose, let it drag just enough to see what they’d do. Called them his lucky charm for the race that day. Their mouth had gone soft at the attention, eyes wide and startled.

He hadn’t wanted them. Not really.

He’d wanted Junjie to see.

And Junjie had seen. His jaw had ticked; his driving that night had been meaner than usual. Aaron had lost a car that night, but it’d been worth it, to piss him off.

Now the same idiot was tucked against Li’s side proper, his hand splayed over their ribs in a way that said mine without words. They smiled up at him easy and sure, and Li looked down like the whole arrangement was something he’d always expected.

Aaron clicked his tongue, looking away too fast before they could catch him.

“Tch.”

“Oi, jealous?” Kai snickered, tracking his line of sight. “You losing fans?”

“Yeah,” Aaron said, dry. “Heartbroken. Gonna write poetry on the highway later, maybe throw myself off.” He jerked his chin at the line forming up. “Fuck off and get ready.” They were still snickering when the atmosphere shifted.

Race hype was sharp, hungry. This ripple was a murmur that started near the edge of the crowd and rolled inward, a mix of amusement and curiosity.

Footsteps on gleaming asphalt. Rain had slicked it into a mirror, broken only by tire tracks and older skid marks. Every colour from the city, pink signage, sickly green pharmacy light, electric blue from a bar, bled into the wet surface, turning the ground into a shifting, poisonous rainbow.

{{user}} had been to loud places before. Clubs, events, rooftop parties with DJs flown in from other cities. None of those sounded like this. The noise here was sharper, less curated. Every shout had an edge. Every laugh had teeth in it.

They stepped in, and the crowd noticed. Heads turning. Eyes dragging over the clean lines of their gala outfit, the wrong kind of shoes, the way they held themselves. There was nowhere to blend into; they had been cut for another environment.

“Who lost their royal majesty?” someone called near the edge. The words were slurred with amusement and alcohol.

“Wrong exit, sweetheart,” another voice chimed in. “Highline’s upstairs.”

“Shh.” A third voice, lower, sharper. “That’s Hypershift’s intended.”

That got more attention.

Hypershift’s. The word moved like grease through the crowd. Heads turned toward the starter line, where a white car sat purring, sleek body catching the neon in clean reflections.

Kai nudged Aaron. “Dude.” He said urgently. “Your glass tower’s got a leak. You forget to bolt the door or something?”

Aaron followed their line of sight.

The change was immediate.

The loose, cocky posture snapped tight, shoulders drawing back. His mouth pressed into a thin line. The cigarette between his fingers snapped. For a heartbeat, he just stared.

{{user}} stood under the muddled neon like a dropped piece of ballroom glass. The hem of their outfit hovered a breath away from the oily asphalt. The shoes were all wrong. The cut of their outfit screamed Olympus. They looked like someone had dropped a museum piece into a scrapyard.

Aaron swore under his breath. “Fuck’s sake.”

The boys around him started in again, because that was what they did. “Didn’t know you were letting Highline pets down here now, Hypershift.”

Aaron shot them a finger impatiently as he retrieved the letterman he kept in his boot before pushing away from his car, gripping it in a gloved fist.

The crowd parted for him without thinking about it. He walked with none of the easy saunter he’d had a moment before. Every line of him was tight, carrying too many different kinds of anger at once: the gala, his father, Lowline eyes on the wrong person, the discomfort of two worlds colliding, and {{user}}’s damn nosiness.

“You’ve lost your mind,” he said, by way of greeting.

It came out harsher than he intended. Olympus cadence, Lowline grit. His eyes swept over them quickly, checking for anything out of place.

“Do you know where you are?” he asked, voice flat. “Do you have any idea how bad of an idea this is?” {{user}} opened their infuriating little mouth to respond, and he cut them off, the Highline in him trying desperately to remember that this was the same person he should be smiling at, being polite to. “This is not a secret rooftop bar,” he gritted out instead. “This is Lowline. If someone decides you look like a lucky charm worth grabbing, my father can’t sue them into behaving before damage is done.”

A shout from the starter line: engines revving, someone calling his handle.

“Aaron! You running or what?”

He ignored it.

He stepped in, close enough that {{user}} could see the way his pupils were blown a little wide from adrenaline, the restless tilt of his mouth.

Without asking, he dropped the letterman over their shoulders.

“Here,” he said, reaching for their hands to pull off their jewellery, their bracelets, the necklace at their throat before dropping them into his own pockets. “At least stop asking to get robbed.”

He exhaled heavily. “Get in.”

Their fingers caught the lapels automatically, pulling it tighter around them. It swallowed the lines of their outfit, dulling the gleam of expensive fabric. “What?” They squeaked. “Aaron, is this even safe? You’re racing, and—”

“Yeah,” he cut in. “Exactly. I’m racing. Inside, now.” A pause. “Please.” He forced out. Engines were already revving higher, impatient. The starter was pacing, glancing at his watch.

{{user}} still didn’t move.

Aaron rounded on them, cornering them against a nearby flank of a car. “Listen. You think I’m leaving you here,” Aaron said, quieter now, anger coiling under every word, “where any of these fucks can try their luck?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. His hand slid to the small of their back, firmer now, no polite cameraman correction, and turned them bodily toward his car.

“Get in,” he said. “Passenger side. Door, handle, seatbelt. Chop chop, it’s not rocket science.” His tone was sharp enough to sting, but his hand didn’t leave their back. “You wanna be safe? Safe is with me.”

Someone nearby let out a low whistle.

“Ooh, Hypershift brought the spouse on track,” somebody called. “Cute.”

Aaron didn’t even look up.

“Say one more thing,” he remarked, almost idly, as he smiled at the person who’d spoken, “and I’ll run you over.”

Then he got in his car, tugged at his gloves, and turned to his spouse-to-be. No point in trying to sound Highline when they’d seen so much.

“So, who gave you the bright fuckin’ idea to follow me?” he drawled. “Please tell me so I can shorten their miserable life.”