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The bar looks exactly how TK would have imagined, if he were asked to envision a honky-tonk in Texas. It’s old and a little run-down, the wooden floor scuffed and worn from years of cowboy boots kicking on it. There’s a mirror behind the bar and waitresses with rounded trays and tiny denim shorts. Daisy Dukes, his brain helpfully supplies. The music is appropriately heavy with fiddles and southern drawl. Men that mill about around them are literally in plaid shirts and cowboy hats, and TK had sort of thought that was just a stereotype. It’s nothing like the bars he used to frequent in Manhattan. For one thing, nobody is shirtless or erect in their leather pants or grinding on a twink so far out of his mind on ecstasy that TK wonders at what point it becomes criminal negligence that no one is calling for an ambulance.
It’s not bad, necessarily. It’s just different, and he’s not the biggest fan of change at the moment, even though he’s drowning in it.
“No phones at the table,” his dad pronounces, coming over to their group with pitchers of beer that he pours into the glasses of everyone except TK. “Here’s to … to the future of the 126. And the memory of the old.”
“Cheers,” Marjan says, lifting her glass.
“Hear, hear,” Paul adds.
Glasses clink as they bump into each other, and beer sloshes out onto the tabletop, and TK presses his lips together and floats on the periphery of it all – not unincluded, but not involved either.
To just him, Owen asks, “How you doing?”
His voice is soft and understanding and it makes TK’s skin crawl. “I’m okay,” he answers.
“Really?” Owen pushes. “Do I need to be worried about you?”
TK rolls his eyes. Maybe it isn’t wrong, for that question to be asked, but it still irks him. “No. I’m drinking mineral water.”
He holds his own glass up unnecessarily, to make a point. The clear liquid should really be obvious, unless his dad is somehow dumb enough to think a bartender would have served TK an entire eight-ounce glass of gin or vodka and he was just sitting here sipping it straight even though they taste like gasoline without anything mixed in.
“How’d your AA meeting go today?”
“Apparently they’re way hipper in Austin than in New York,” TK tells him. He doesn’t elaborate; doesn’t explain that he’d come right out immediately with the fact that he’s gay and expected push-back – or perhaps had done it on purpose with the intention of eliciting push-back – only to find that no one in that circle of flimsy chairs and burnt coffee and palpable sadness had even blinked.
Owen nods and doesn’t respond. TK wonders sometimes if he’s conditioned his parents out of responding to certain things, because he's always snapped at them when they do.
“I actually really liked it,” TK continues. It feels a little bit pathetic, but he makes himself add, “Thanks for bringing us down here. I really like the crew, and I like that I get to start something new with you.”
His dad’s expression is unreadable, and TK feels himself smirking in an attempt to turn a serious moment back into a joke. He should probably stop saying things like that. Soft things; real things. It never seems to turn out well for him.
“I think we’re gonna be just oh-kay,” he quips. He takes a sip of water through the straw in his glass.
“Look, TK …”
He frowns and looks over at his father, finding his face crumpled into a frown. “Dad?”
“I just love you,” Owen says.
It isn’t what he was going to say. TK isn’t the best at reading people – clearly – but he’s not stupid, and he can tell that much. He can also tell this isn’t the moment to push it. He tilts his head down, resting it for a moment on his dad’s shoulder in place of telling him other things that might be difficult to say.
The man on the stage announces into the microphone that it’s time for some good ol’ Texas line dancing, and the pretty paramedic captain comes over in a flowery dress and asks Owen to dance. TK grins as Owen turns her down and she goads him into agreeing anyway. It’s about time, he thinks, that someone made his father do something he doesn’t want to do. It’s about fucking time.
He can’t keep the smile off of his face as he watches his dad in the middle of the crowd, holding his own amongst people who do this every weekend. It should be embarrassing, to watch his father dancing like a proper cowboy when neither of them have stepped a foot out of Manhattan in decades, but TK is feeling generous tonight and he finds it endearing instead.
TK senses a presence to his left and he looks over, and standing beside him in an impossibly tight forest-green t-shirt is the police officer from the car accident earlier that evening.
“Hey,” the man says.
It takes TK just a second to recognize him; he’d been in a uniform and black hat hours ago in the rain and TK hadn’t gotten a very close look at anything other than his eyes but they’re familiar anyway. They’re such a deep brown; almost endless pools of espresso especially in the low light of the bar, and they’re framed by thick, dark eyelashes.
“Hey,” TK answers. He tries to be nonchalant. He’s never really sure that he accomplishes that. He gets a better look at him, than he did earlier, and God is he handsome. His nose is perfect, his lips are kissable, his hair looks thick and curly and it’s all very, very bad. TK had promised himself he was swearing off these types of feelings. He thought coming to Texas of all places would make that easy, but then an AA group filled with people in denim and dusty boots hadn’t blinked when he’d said he was gay hoping just a little bit for it to be provocative, and now a cop with pretty eyes is looking at him.
TK looks away, and then feels his face break into a smile as he watches Marjan out on the floor, shimming and moving as best she can along with the crowd she’s immersed in. TK is sure he wouldn’t be any better at this. He would be much, much worse, in all likelihood. Marjan at least seems charmingly confident in her ignorance. TK bets he would be entirely embarrassed by it.
“Do you wanna dance?”
TK turns his head again. He looks in surprise at this man; this gorgeous man whose name he doesn’t even know, whose sexuality he doesn’t know either but seems perhaps just a little bit clearer in this moment than it did five minutes ago, even if TK is entirely taken aback by the revelation. And who he should probably turn down. Definitely, actually. TK should definitely turn him down and walk away and never see him again. He is worse than handsome, he’s devastating. He looks like he should be sculpted in marble and analyzed by historians. The kind of face and body that could be life-ruining, and TK could and should and does know better. Especially after everything he’s just been through.
Because he apparently is some kind of masochist, TK readily replies, “Yeah.”
The man leads him onto the floor, into the throng of moving bodies. TK follows and does his best to mimic everyone else. He tries to shimmy when they shimmy, to spin when they spin; always just a second behind and to the apparent delight of his new friend, if the way the cop grins at him is any indication. It’s nothing like the kind of dancing he’s used to. Mostly because no one else is touching him; no one is holding him or grinding on him or using him for their own pleasure as a prelude to something else, something that will happen quick and dirty and leave TK wondering if such a brief moment of validation was worth the way it makes him feel afterwards when they leave him alone and sticky in a dirty club bathroom.
TK knows none of the choreography, and he’s constantly a step or two or three behind everyone else, but the cop just smiles at him. It doesn’t seem mocking. Something fierce and likely dangerous licks to life in TK’s gut.
“Wanna get some air?” he says, loudly to be heard over the dorky music.
The cop licks his lips, considers for a moment, but then he nods. TK doesn’t know the layout of this place so he gestures around vaguely and the cop catches his meaning and heads toward an exit so that TK can follow him. The alley behind the bar is dark but surprisingly clean. TK doesn’t spot a single rat or a single used needle or a single pile of drunken vomit. He supposes that’s a good thing, although it makes him feel out of place.
“I – ” the cop begins.
TK doesn’t let him finish. Fuck it, he thinks. He’s never been known for his sound decisions. That’s clearer now than it’s ever been. How ‘bout moving in together, first, his dad had pointed out. It had pissed TK off at the time, and pisses him off even more to realize he was right. Alex probably never loved him at all. TK asked him to move in, months ago, and Alex had winced and shifted awkwardly in his chair and mumbled some excuse about liking to have his own space – an excuse TK had lapped up like a hungry cat and absorbed and accepted as a perfectly valid reason. Had not taken as a glaring neon sign that Alex didn’t really love him back, like he very obviously should have. So, so desperate just to be loved. By anyone, just for the sake of having it. Of being able to wear that like a badge; to tell people who looked down their noses at him that someone loves me, so therefore he must be worth something. Turns out he isn’t. So; fuck it.
He pushes the cop into the bricks of the building, wrapping hands around the back of his warm neck and pressing their lips together. He tastes like mint. Must’ve chewed some gum or a Tic-Tac before coming over to ask TK to dance, and TK resolutely sets that information down and doesn’t pick it up again because if he has to think about there being intention in the way this man approached him, he might have to stop kissing him. And he really, really doesn’t want to stop kissing him.
The man hums in surprise, but he doesn’t push TK away. His hands come up to wrap around TK’s hips, large and strong and deliberate in the way he holds them as TK slips his tongue into a warm, sweet mouth. He crowds into the man’s space, kissing him so hard it hurts a little bit, perhaps a challenge in it as much as pleasure. Daring him to push TK away, to say he doesn’t want it, to sneer at him that TK is pathetic and needy and deserves to be shoved to the pavement instead of held and kissed.
When he has to breathe, and when he feels himself getting hard in his jeans and begins to contemplate what if anything should be done about that, TK pulls back just enough to gasp for air and the man stops him before he can dive in for another scorching kiss. Knew it, TK thinks.
“I’m Carlos,” the man says.
TK blinks at him; takes in dark eyes turned even darker as his pupils are expanded in arousal. It’s dim in the alley but TK can still see it. He can see the flush on the man’s cheeks and the shine on his pretty lips left there by TK’s tongue.
“Hi, Carlos,” TK replies, trying the name out. He likes the way the syllables feel in his mouth. It suits this man. There’s nothing worse than meeting someone sexy and then finding out they have a distinctly un-sexy name that TK is going to have to fight through calling out while he’s getting fucked.
He goes in for another kiss but he’s stopped with a gentle but firm hand placed on his chest, over his heart. TK frowns as he moves his head backwards enough to see Carlos’s face. There’s a smile on it, and TK can’t read it. Can’t work out whether he’s being mocked or condescended to, and he doesn’t like that.
“You got a name?” Carlos asks.
“TK.”
“Tee Kay?” Carlos repeats, pronouncing it like they’re letters instead of a name.
“Yeah,” TK answers. He raises his eyebrows, daring this man to have a problem with that. Or to ask. TK never tells anyone what they stand for, and he certainly isn’t going to tell someone he met three hours ago and whose own name he’s only known for 45 seconds.
“Hi, TK,” Carlos says, with another smile, and it sounds more like a name this time. It sounds quite nice in his velvety voice, actually. TK is going to have to shake that off.
He leans in again to push their lips together, but Carlos controls it this time, and slows it down. His hand spreads out to flat on TK’s lower back and his other one slides up to cup TK’s jaw, thumb pressing into the corner of TK’s mouth. He angles TK’s head and kisses him deeper, gentler, unhurried. Like they have all the time in the world for Carlos to sweep his tongue languidly over the insides of TK’s cheeks. It makes his head spin, makes his skin prickle, makes his blood run thick and warm in his veins. It feels possessive and familiar, the way Carlos is holding him, like they’ve known each other forever. It leaves TK in the uncomfortable limbo of hovering between wanting to push this man away and wanting to dive in so much further.
Eventually Carlos stops kissing him. Their foreheads stay rested together, sharing moist air between them and the lingering tingle of their kiss on TK’s lips, and Carlos briefly strokes his cheek before he lets his hands fall away. TK instantly wants them back. They’re big and they’re warm and they felt so good on TK’s skin. The thought makes him want to ring himself out like a soaked t-shirt, to get all of these desires off of him.
“Can I give you my number?” Carlos asks softly.
“You don’t wanna fuck in a dirty alleyway, you mean?” TK asks. It’s a joke – or, at least, it should be. It was meant to be, but it doesn’t sound like one, as it passes his teeth.
Carlos chuckles anyway. His laugh is nice. “Not particularly, no.”
“But maybe somewhere else.”
It’s a moment before he responds. It hangs in between them, a massive unanswered question screeching like a car alarm before Carlos hedges, “Maybe.”
TK bites at the inside of his cheek until he tastes blood.
He takes his hands off of Carlos’s neck, peeling them back like ancient duct-tape, and steps backwards. He doesn’t look down to check the state of Carlos in his jeans, because TK certainly isn’t soft in his and if they aren’t gonna do anything about that, it stops being hot and quickly becomes highly embarrassing.
Wordlessly, he pulls his phone from the back pocket of his jeans. He shouldn’t. He knows that very well. He shouldn’t have done any of this. Self-destructive tendencies, his new therapist had pronounced, like it was supposed to be some kind of brilliant revelation. Yeah, no shit, TK had replied, and that had earned him a raised eyebrow and something probably unflattering scribbled hastily onto a notepad. Understatement of the fucking century, TK had thought, but hadn’t spoken it aloud.
He unlocks his phone with a press of his thumb and holds it out, and Carlos takes it from him. Their fingertips brush as he does, and TK chalks the way his stomach swoops up to something along the lines of temporary insanity. Or maybe it having been too long since he got himself laid. Alex was good with his hips, and the lack of it has left TK feeling hollow and itchy, even if TK is only now realizing it always felt a little more impersonal than it probably should have.
Carlos taps on the Contacts app and puts his information into TK’s phone. Reyes, TK notices, as he takes it back from him. He hadn’t known that either. It was probably stitched onto Carlos’s uniform, but he hadn’t noticed.
“Call me sometime,” Carlos says. It was implied, but it sits comfortably in TK’s gut that he said it anyway, just in case.
“Okay,” TK answers. He probably won’t.
Carlos ducks his head forward and kisses TK on the cheek. His lips leave a damp mark and TK can feel the cool night air against it as Carlos steps away from him and heads back toward the door.
“Wait,” TK says after him, cringing as Carlos turns back to him. It’s absolutely humiliating but he has to ask, because apparently he is a really terrible judge of character. Apparently he always has been, and just never knew it.
Carlos’s eyebrows lift in question. His shoulders back, his hands relaxed at his sides. Open, trusting, even. It makes TK feel slightly nauseous.
“You’re gay, right?” TK makes himself ask. “This isn’t just like … a crisis?”
Carlos lets a breath out quickly through his nose and there’s laughter in his dark eyes as he answers, “Yeah, I’m gay. You?”
TK huffs. “Obviously.”
“Good to know.” Carlos sends him one last smile and then he’s gone, broad shoulders disappearing through the back door and leaving TK alone in the alley.
He leans back against the bricks where Carlos had just been standing and scrubs his hands over his face. He should probably also go back inside – if he’s gone for too long his dad will start imagining finding TK on the cracked pavement with a needle in his arm, and TK supposes that isn’t unfair but it still feels heavy and oppressive in a way that makes him want to crawl out of his skin. Instead, he lets himself slide awkwardly down the wall until his ass hits the concrete. He stretches his legs out in front of him, crossing them at the ankles, and tips his head back. The stars are brighter, here, than they ever were in Manhattan. It’s still a big city, TK has still never seen the kind of wide-open sky that he theoretically knows would exist if he could ever manage to extract himself from city lights, but they’re brighter than TK has ever seen them.
He inhales slowly and lets it out just as slow. The air feels crisper here, too. TK lets it fill him, lets it clean out some of the smoke that’s left in his lungs. In the back pocket on his left side, he can feel his phone pressing in between his ass and the ground. He should delete Carlos’s number. He should do it right here and right now, while his head is still relatively clear. Because later, when TK gets bored or lonesome or starts to feel even more pathetically abandoned than he already does, he’s going to dial that number and he’s going to fuck both of them up. Carlos seems nice. He probably doesn’t deserve that, and TK’s going to do it to him anyway, unless he removes the temptation right now.
He digs his phone out of the pocket and stares at it. He can see thumbprints on the dark screen in the light from the streetlamp overhead. He wonders which of those are his and which belong to Carlos. He wakes the device with his forefinger. The Contacts app comes up right away, TK not having swiped out of it before he stowed his phone. He stares at Carlos Reyes and the accompanying phone number. He stares at it until his vision blurs and he can’t see it anymore. Then he presses the power button on the side of it and shoves the phone back into his pocket.
Self-destructive tendencies. He can’t wait to not tell his therapist about this, because it would only earn him another pointed look like she’s figured out something complicated and astounding when in reality, TK is the easiest, flimsiest, most transparent head-case in maybe the entire world.