Chapter Text
Adam had had a night. His coat was soaked through, his hair was plastered to his face, and, for the first time in his life, he felt cold. He needed to get some hot caffeine into his system, and he needed it now. He trudged into the first sketchy all-night diner he could find.
“Hi there!” The woman behind the counter was jarringly loud and chirpy. “What can I getcha, hon?”
“A coffee, please. Black.” He made a sporting attempt at a smile.
“That’ll be one-fifty.” The woman smiled back at him, and he dug his hand into his jacket pocket. Had his wallet fallen out on the way over?
“Shit. Shitshitshit.”
The woman looked at him, concerned. “Everything okay, honey?
He waved her off. “I- just- hang on.” His eyes darted across the room, then settled on someone waving at him. A young man, mid-twenties, blond, almost suspiciously well-put-together. He stood up.
“Could you just put it on my tab, Rosie?”
The woman smiled, an earnestness breaking through her expression that it had previously lacked. “Sure.”
The man smiled at Adam. “You can sit with me, if you like. No pressure.”
*
Adam was seated in a booth across from the man, his legs pulled up against his chest like an adult in a child’s desk. He took another moment to study the man, who was making rapid-fire small talk. He was shorter than Adam- but then everyone was shorter than Adam. He had soft dirty-blond hair and a face that straddled the line between pretty and handsome. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing modestly toned forearms, the type that Adam had come to associate with the men on the covers of women’s magazines with recipes inside. But there was something about him- maybe the crookedness of his smile, or the faint asymmetry of his hands when he clasped them together, or the way he scanned Adam’s face as though instinctively gauging his reactions- that was in equal parts attractive and repulsive. He was like a handsome stranger drawn from memory, a second attempt at a sculpture, a-
“A person made out of other people,” Adam muttered.
The man paused. “Huh?”
“Nothing. What were you saying?”
“I-” the man considered for a moment. “I don’t remember. I never introduced myself, anyway, did I?”
Adam considered. “No.”
He shot Adam that same crooked grin. “Rocky. Nice to meet you.”
Adam tentatively extended his hand. “Adam.”
“Cool.” Rocky scanned Adam’s coat, the way his hair stuck to his face, the obvious discomfort of his stance, and smiled a little more softly. “Say, Adam, do you have somewhere to stay the night?”
***
Adam knew that it was inadvisable for him to stay in one place for long. He knew this, and yet he allowed him to be led by the arm through a dingy apartment complex by an unflaggingly enthusiastic stranger.
“-and then the cops came. Apparently somebody thought that I was stuck up there. Or that I was trying to rob them. Careful of that doorway, it’s low and if you hit it wrong the door closes on you.” He hip-checked the door open. “That usually doesn’t work. Probably not good, but it’s not like my landlord would do anything about it if I told him. I’ll mess with it later.”
Adam took a moment to examine the room. It was dark, with the only light coming from underneath a door at the far side. There was a poster taped to the wall, and there was a couch with several blankets thrown haphazardly over the back. If he had to come up with a place where he would be most likely to be murdered, this would be it.
“Oh, sorry.” Rocky reached behind Adam and flicked the lightswitch.
The room looked significantly less horrifying with the lights on. For one, there was a cat asleep on the couch, and that made things instantly more reassuring. For another, there was no rusty metal or discarded medical instruments left out in the open, and, honestly, that was a marked improvement over many of the places he had spent his nights recently.
“Oh yeah.” Rocky glanced over at him. “Are you allergic to cats? I could put Tripod in the kitchen or something-”
“Why is your cat named Tripod?”
He picked up the cat and held it aloft. “Three legs!”
Adam nodded. The cat did, in fact, have three legs. “Fair enough.”
“Anyway, you can put your things anywhere you like- it’s not like you can make this place any more bad to look at.”
“Ah, fair enough.” Adam draped his coat loosely over the couch. “So, I’m guessing I’ll be sleeping out here?”
Rocky glanced around uncomfortably. “I-” he pressed his lips together. “-I didn’t really think that far ahead. You can have the bed, if you want it.”
“No. It’s your bed, you should get to sleep in it.”
Rocky glanced at the floor, then back up at Adam. “Now, I don’t know if this is a weird thing to suggest or not, but we could maybe just share the bed? It’s big enough for both of us.”
“Sure. Done.”
The next morning Adam would scold himself for being so gullible- what was he thinking, sleeping so close to a stranger? It was nice, though, to be in a soft bed, to share a space with a warm body, to allow himself to feel safe for once in his life- and he had woken up that morning, hadn’t he? And there were two cups of coffee on the table- Rocky had clearly been paying attention in the cafe the previous night, because one was made exactly how Adam liked it- and for the first time in years, he remembered how it felt to trust somebody.