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“Come on, smile a little Palmer, you look like you got something in your butt, and not the good kind.”
Damien Darhk laughs at his own joke, and Ray forces himself to smile. He hates this man, he's an entitled asshole, but he has to play it cool if he wants to make this deal.
They're at a strip club, Darhk insisted. Of course he did.
Ray hates it. He feels so out of place. He's much more comfortable in his lab, or at his company, or anywhere else really. Gosh, everyone is half-naked, he's pretty sure it's not sanitary.
When Darhk's attention, and consequently their respective partners', shifts from him to the stage where a petite brunette is starting her show, Ray gets up.
He can't leave yet, although he wants to, but he can get away from them for a while.
The bar is the obvious answer.
“Let me guess, bachelor party too?”
“Sorry?”
There's a guy sitting next to him and he looks bored out of his mind. He's maybe a tiny bit older than him, and he is breathtakingly beautiful. Short hair, blue eyes, smirk. Ray is smitten on the spot.
“You've been dragged here for a bachelor party?”
“Oh hm, no,” Ray answers, coming back to his senses at last. “Potential business partner who wanted to come here, I didn't really have a say in this, and I need the deal so...”
The stranger nods, it does not seem like he is going to talk more.
“I'm Ray,” he says, a bit desperate for the conversation to continue. One, he is bored, and two, the guy is handsome.
“Len.”
“So, bachelor party?”
“Yeah, I don't even know the kid that much, we just got a common friend.”
“You're not staying with them?”
“Well, I prefer the company here.”
Ray can feel himself blush. He opens and closes his mouth silently. Len chuckles lightly.
“Cat got your tongue, Raymond?”
“I, sorry, what.”
“Don't tell me people never hit on you, I wouldn't believe it.”
The thing is they do, but Ray has not been this flustered since high school. Maybe it's the place they're in, with all these people moving about practically nude, maybe it's the little alcohol he's had, or maybe it's the blue eyes devouring him, but he struggles to find his wit.
“Rarely happens by people as handsome as yourself.”
“Smooth, man!”
Raymond turns to see a man, younger, dark long hair and holding four bottle of beers. He's laughing, but it's not mean, it's playful, and Ray relaxes.
“Go away, Ramon,” Len says.
“Get him, tiger!” Ramon joyfully replies. He does not duck in time to avoid the peanut thrown by Len.
“Sorry about that.”
“No problem, I gotta go back to my colleagues anyway.”
“Doesn't sound like you want to.”
Ray sighs, “I really don't.”
“Then let's leave.”
“You're being preposterous, Mister Stranger!” Ray says but he's tempted. “We've only just met, and I'm in the middle of an important meeting.”
“Meeting you've escaped, Raymond.”
“Why are you calling me Raymond?”
“'Cause I like it. Does it bother you?”
It really does not. He never thought his name could sound like this. Len must see the answer on his face because his smirk gets a bit more mischievous.
“So what do you say? Want to run away from this dump?”
“What about your friends?” Ray asks, still unsure.
“Does it look like they're missing me?”
Len points to a group of ten people or so, they are all pretty different but they are all laughing together and talking loudly. None of them are looking at the show on stage, it is wonder why they even bothered to come down there.
“Well, they could be talking about how much they're missing you. I wouldn't want to keep them away from you.”
“Raymond,” Len's voice is softer, the smirk gone, and wow, okay, he's even more handsome without the bad boy aura. “I can take a rejection, just tell me if you don't want to.”
No, that's not it. I just, I usually don't, I mean. I'm kinda out of my depths here.”
He does not want to tell that since his divorce with Anna, he has not gone out much, and even before that he was always a romantic. Hook-ups have never been his thing, but he really wants to make an exception this time.
Ray takes one look at Darhk's table – they're obviously drunk by now and no one seems to have noticed his departure – and he makes up his mind.
“Okay, let's get away from here. Strip clubs have never been my thing anyway.”
Ray is not sure what to expect exactly, but them walking through the streets for hours is not that. They talk, mostly Ray at first but after a while Len opens up as well, they tell each other things they do not tell other people.
How did it happen? How did they start pouring their heart out to a stranger? How did a potential hook-up become the most meaningful date of their lives?
Neither of them can answer that, but by the end of the night, they don't feel like strangers anymore.
The sky is becoming lighter now. The city is soon going to buzz with life.
Ray is exhausted but he hasn't felt this alive in so long.
“I don't want the night to end,” he confesses.
“There could always be other nights.”
Len is not looking at him. He is trying to act cold, tough, protect himself. Ray knows, he feels like he's always known.
In a single night, he has learned all of Len's tricks. He knows his defense mechanisms, he knows how to read him.
How can he know all this? They've only just met. It feels like a lifetime.
In that instant, he knows there will be many other nights.
They share their first kiss as the sun rises.
It's a new day, it's a new start.
It's a new life.