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Sergio isn’t quite sure who he’s going to wind up killing tonight, but if he has to sit through one more fifteen-minute fucking disaster of a date, it might as well be himself.
“— and, like, who does that?” The girl — ROSE, her nametag reads in cloyingly feminine curlicue cursive, hearts and stars and fucking scented-marker unicorns scribbled around the edges — is crying, literally fucking crying, real goddamn tears, as she sips from a comically enormous glass of Chardonnay and needlessly recounts the details of her most recent breakup. “Like, who dumps the love of their life over brunch ? Brunch is sacred, Samuel, brunch is, like — brunch is a Sex and the City staple, you don’t just desecrate it like that, right? Right?”
Sergio grunts. “Sergio.”
“What?”
“My name is not Samuel, it’s Sergio, and for what it’s worth, I would have personally dumped you in a fucking river, not over poached eggs and grapefruit juice.”
Rose’s mouth falls open, her cheeks turning a furiously indignant shade of pink, and Sergio sighs, internally, because he’s definitely going to get kicked out now. Before she can scream at him, though — or maybe just hurl her wine glass at his head — the obnoxious little bronze bell in the middle of the bar starts to ring.
“Alright, gang, time’s up!” Antoine Greizmann, the relentlessly cheerful architect of this hellacious fucking torture chamber masquerading as a speed dating event, claps his hands. He looks way too young to be doing this. “Come on, come on, if y'all play your cards right — ha, ha, get it, because y'all have score cards for y’all’s dates — tonight never has to end!”
Sergio grimaces, shoves his chair back, and takes an impolitely long swig of his whiskey, casting one last glare in Rose’s direction as he stalks to his next table.
“Well, well, well, aren’t you a big boy,” the guy says, like he’s ad-libbing for one of those cheap, trash-ass fucking pornos that you can just tell paid its actors in sex toys and gas money. “You look like you could bench press me, dude, and hell yeah that’s a fucking compliment.”
Sergio tightens his grip on his whiskey. “Okay.”
“Like, what’s your gym routine like?” the guy — GERARD, his name tag reads in uniquely terrible chicken scratch — continues, like Sergio hadn’t even spoken. He has a backwards Barcelona hat on and teeth that are way too big for his fucking mouth. Too white. Too shiny. “You go twice a day? You must just, like, hammer down the protein, man. Just crush it.”
Sergio wonders if it’s possible to fake a family emergency to get out of this. Probably not, since that fucking lunatic with the clipboard, Griezmann, has to sign off on Sergio’s attendance, but — maybe an injury? Maybe he could just go back and let Rose blind him with shitty white wine?
“— like, man, man, you’ve got that whole angry focused scowl-frown thing down,” Gerard is saying, sounding bizarrely appreciative, before he lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, looking vaguely like he’s fighting the urge to wink. “You top?”
Instead of deigning to answer, Sergio exhales, tilts his head back, and stares up at the ceiling, at the pretentious fucking twinkling flower-shaped fairy lights wrapped around the vintage cedar beams.
“Yeah, you top,” Gerard says, nodding sagely. “And, like, just between you and me, I got tested before coming here, like, on the way, like, right before coming here, because — god, condoms, you know? Who needs them?”
Sergio stares harder at the ceiling, his vision beginning to blur a little.
“I mean, obviously, you need them with girls, they have that whole…” Gerard flaps his wrist. “ Pregnancy trap, with the babies and the, the monogamy, and the child support, and — whatever, but dudes — like, I’m not even totally sure I actually like dudes, like, sexually, but —”
Sergio clenches and unclenches his fist, right on top of the table, right next to the tacky electric mood-lighting candlestick, flexing his fingers one by one.
“Anyway, good talk, bro, I’m gonna —” Gerard mimes drawing a checkmark with an invisible clicking pen, sound effects and all, as he climbs to his feet, adjusts the crotch of his jeans, and saunters off to his next date. Victim. Whatever.
Sergio wants to set the entire fucking building on fire.
He’d warn the bar staff, maybe — they seem hard-working, and it’s not technically their fault that this place has been overrun with the most insultingly offensive fucking dregs of humanity that Griezmann, that motherfucking con artist dipshit, could scrounge up with a Craiglist ad and what Sergio can only assume is a generous student discount — but he thinks he might lock Gerard in the bathroom before lighting the match.
“God,” Sergio’s newest date mutters, collapsing into his seat and scrubbing a hand over the stubble on his jaw. He seems frazzled, with messy long hair, but not in a stylish way, and deep-set dark eyes a little wild around the edges. He’s drinking water, bottled water, and has a fading green-purple bruise on one cheek. “This is such a nightmare. No offence! I don't — I mean, I don’t know if you’re a nightmare yet, but.” He winces. “Sorry. I'm — sorry.”
Sergio raises an eyebrow. “You met the crier?”
The guy — LUKA, his name tag reads in simple, perfectly legible block letters — looks momentarily spooked. “The one whose boyfriend broke up with her after he found her secret Pinterest with all the wedding boards?”
“Yeah. I don’t really know her, but I think I hate her.”
Luka hums. “I really relate to that comment.”
Sergio scrunches his nose up. “What?”
“I don't — I don’t know, that was just one of the, the conversational phrases thingys I had to memorise before coming here.” Luka pauses. “My team — my football team, I play in a rec league, it’s, I mean, not to exaggerate, but it’s about as close to professional as you can get without an agent — anyway, they all forced me to do this, you know, said if I didn’t find someone to settle down with I’d be alone forever, it was — like, come on. Dramatic, much?”
Sergio shrugs. “My therapist ordered me to socialise with strangers.”
“Why?”
Sergio hesitates, mostly because he doubts he’s supposed to admit that he used to punch people for a living. “I beat up a guy at a dog park,” he eventually says, taking a slow, measured sip of his whiskey. “His fucking — his untrained embarrassment of a French Mastiff tried to murder my Jack Russell, like, in cold fucking blood, and I guess — I don’t know. I guess, like, that isn’t a normal reaction. To confrontation. Or whatever.”
I grew up in the kind of boxing gym that doesn’t pay its taxes and has cops on the payroll, Sergio doesn’t add, because he’s a fucking adult, with some fucking self-control, and it’s no one’s fucking business, least of all some tiny-ass twink shithead named Luka. Even if Luka does happen to have a really nice mouth. And pretty hands. And long, elegant, capable-looking fingers.
“Huh,” Luka says, and then visibly perks up. “Hey, do you play football?”
“What.”
“Football. Soccer? But I don’t like calling it soccer because, you know. It’s weird,” Luka clarifies, bouncing his knee, “Anyways! We’re always looking for new guys for the team, and you're — you’re just — you’re athletic, you know? And a ton of the guys have dogs — the other guys, not me — not that I mind dogs! I love dogs! They’re excellent! And loyal! But their dogs, you know, are nice. Not… not French Mastiffs. Probably. I don’t actually — well. Either way.”
Sergio blinks at Luka, who’s biting his lower lip and peering up at Sergio from beneath ludicrously long lashes, and that's —
Jesus Christ, is he hitting on Sergio?
Is that what’s fucking happening here?
Sergio clears his throat, vaguely, morbidly curious if the sudden heat in his cheeks is outwardly translating to an actual fucking blush. “You, uh — there’s a lot of fighting in football, right?” he asks, trying out a wry little half-smile because he’s pretty sure that’s how people typically indicate they’re joking. He isn’t joking, not really, but it’s probably better to ease Luka into that side of his personality.
Interestingly, though, Luka just grins, blindingly, disarmingly bright, leaving Sergio feeling a little like he’s been hit by a fucking car. Or a sledgehammer. Something big and life-alteringly heavy.
“Yeah, yeah, there’s a lot of fighting, especially for defenders,” Luka says, before stopping, tapping his tongue against his teeth, and straightening his shoulders. “There’s, um, there’s a few decent games on right now, actually, if you wanted to check out a less…” he trails off, glancing pointedly at the fucking fairy lights, and then jerking his chin towards Griezmann. “A less awful bar, god, it’s like being stuck in my grandmother’s dining room with a bunch of psychopaths, where are we?”
Sergio feels his lips quirk upwards — all on their own, this time — and his chest kind of hitch on his next breath.
A real fucking smile.
Maybe.
Probably.