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Ricky is running for his life, sort of, but the thing he hates most about it is that it proves that Kevin was right: you can’t just walk around the usual clubs and assume that everyone who looks at you twice is, you know, looking. Or that they are not, in fact, a pack of very straight guys, Jesus Christ what the fuck is wrong with you you sick fuck.
Note to self, Ricky thinks, dodging past a very minimally clothed waiter with a giant tray of empty glasses, straight guys won’t be flattered if you propose them a fivesome. Be more discreet. Avoid straight assholes. Their loss, really.
He glances back and above his shoulders and, yep, they’re still chasing him. They’re pretty clingy for a bunch of not interested manly bros, honestly; Ricky bites back a smile and realizes he’s bored of all this running in circles — not in a cosmic, what am I doing with my life metaphorical sort of way, mind you, of course not. He’s bored with the literal circles he’s literally running in.
The club is not that big and he’s been around this corner three times already, so it’s only a matter of time before someone from the staff realizes what’s going on, and Ricky really likes this place, it’s slutty and yet somewhat classy and very clean, and they make the best Black Russians in town. He doesn’t want to get banned from here too.
There’s a man in a tailored suit walking away from the bar, he’s folding over his arm a coat that manages to look very expensive even in the dim lights of the club; Ricky quickly makes a beeline for him and glues himself to his side.
“Please just walk with me, yeah?” he says, with a bright smile and pleading eyes. The man looks surprised, but not outraged, and he blinks a little too fast like he’s trying to make sure he’s not seeing things. Ricky tugs at his arm and the man indulges him without further ado, so they walk, but he does throw a quick, curious glance behind their back.
“I see,” is all he says, a tiny smile playing at the corners of his mouth, which is this slightly-swollen, pink line lost in, like, a lot of beard, and as they quietly walk out of the club, Ricky takes in some things about his impromptu knight in pressed armour.
He’s tall, maybe three fingers taller than Ricky, and okay, his face is nothing special, definitely not something you’d see on the cover of a magazine, but he has big, bright eyes that looked very black in the club and now, under the white neons of the parking lot, Ricky realizes are actually some shade of warm hazel brown. The rest of him, hair and beard and eyebrows and lashes — shit, his lashes which are almost as long as Ricky’s own, though not even nearly as meticulously curved, — is black, abudantly black, and trimmed and neat.
He doesn’t wear his coat because it’s not that cold outside, and Ricky asks, “Are you a lawyer?”
The man huffs out some sort of amused half-breath and half-laughter.
“Yes, I am,” he says. “Do you want to press charges against your friends in there?”
Ricky realizes he’s still clinging onto his arm and lets go of it, giggling to try and hide the fact that, for whatever insane reason, he’s blushing a little.
“I don’t. Besides, I have a lawyer already.”
“What do you need a lawyer for?”
“Oh, I also like to live dangerously,” Ricky says. That earns him a pointed look which, Ricky is extremely embarrassed to admit, makes him shiver. “That’s a quote.”
“You can’t possibly know that,” the man mumbles, quietly, like he’s weighing the odds. Ricky laughs.
“There’s a thing called the Internet, you know?”
“The Inter-what? That sounds awful. Oh, nothing’s too low for Doctor Evil, is it?” the man says, mockingly shocked. He even puts a hand on his chest for emphasis and when they get to his car, which is silver-y and sports-y and definitely looks expensive, Ricky is almost sad to let him go. He almost wants to take him on a date.
“Nice ride,” he says instead, kicking the ground a little. Mr. Bearded Lawyer Who Likes Austin Powers unlocks the doors and shrugs.
“I know,” he says, to which Ricky laughs, again. “Speaking of which, do you have a car?”
“Oh, I’ll, uhm, I’ll get back in and find someone to go home with, don’t worry,” Ricky tells him, and he doesn’t say that maybe, just maybe, he won’t find a ride, because apparently he’s out of luck tonight, but what the hell, he’ll call Kevs if he’s really desperate.
Mr. Bearded Lawyer Who Also Has An Adorable Tiny Smile looks thoughtful for a moment, his hand already on the handle, and then says, “I think you should get in.”
Ricky feels the grin splitting his face before he’s even thinking about it.
“Are you asking me out, Mr. Hotshot Lawyer With The Cool Car?”
“I’m asking you in,” Mr. HLWTCC Who Apparently Is Also A Smartass points out, and he’s looking at something over and behind Ricky’s left shoulder. “Your friends got our tail.”
“Oh, shit,” Ricky says, and the next thing he knows, he’s squeezing in the passenger’s seat and scrambling to get the seatbelt on. He can hear his mother screaming inside his head about strangers and candies and how we do not get into their van, never ever ever ever, but he doesn’t want to add a broken nose and cracked ribs to the shitty night, bruises are bad for business, so. “Oh, hey, I’m Ricky, by the way.”
“Juan Carlos,” Blackbeard says, and Ricky thinks, yeah, that suits you about right, kudos to your parents for the choice and I’ll call you Juanki. “And I’d really like to know why those guys were so pissed at you, by the way.”
Ricky huffs as they pull out of the parking space and into the street; the engine is quiet as a whisper, which is weird for a sports car, and Juan Carlos drives smoothly and not even close to too fast. He glances at Ricky, expecting an answer.
“Look, okay, I might have been a bit straightforward hitting on them, but at least I am not the straight asshole who goes to gay clubs to hit on the lesbians.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Juan Carlos admits, and then, blinking fast again and with a much more serious face, “I counted four of them.”
Ricky’s cheeks are burning up. Again.
“Yeah.”
“You made a pass at four guys. At the same time,” Juan Carlos says, dry as the desert. Ricky squirms in his seat and tries to laugh about it.
“In retrospect, that might not have been the smartest thing I’ve ever done.” It’s not the most stupid, either.
“No, no, I actually think that was pretty clever,” Juan Carlos says, giving a very serious nod. “It’s a sweet, poetic way to go, a bar fight over an orgy. A pity it didn’t work, but you got yourself in a car with a stranger, so I guess you still have pretty good chances to get yourself killed tonight. No reason to lose hope, seriously.”
Ricky laughs, open and whole-heartedly; he tips his head back against the headrest and looks at Juan Carlos, who’s very focused on the road ahead, from under his lashes.
“You know, you’re funny,” Ricky says, his lips still curling up in a smile. Juan Carlos mumbles something unintelligible, and after that he stops talking entirely.
Ricky giggles, starts poking at the many many shiny buttons on the car’s dashboard until Juan Carlos has to actually bat his hand away.
“Where are we going?” he asks, rather gruffly, but his face is kinda red and it’s pretty fucking endearing. He takes a left, just because.
Ricky shrugs. “Sagrada Familia? I know a great ice cream parlour there.”
Juan Carlos nods and they fall back into a weird silence — comfortable on Ricky’s side, but also, it seems, slightly teasing, at least judging from the way Juan Carlos’ fingers are squeezing the wheel.
Ricky smiles. Awkwardness is his favourite playground.
“So,” he says, stretching in his seat a tiny bit, locked in place as he is by the seatbelt, and scratching his hip. Juan Carlos doesn’t look his way, but his eyes flick to the side for a second. “You should probably know that I’m a sex worker. You know, since you’re a lawyer and all.”
Juan Carlos doesn’t brake dramatically, which is a reaction that Ricky was half-hoping for — it’s always so much fun when they do that. He doesn’t even turn around, he doesn’t even make a sound, and Ricky pouts.
“Sex worker as in, whore. High end, of course,” presses Ricky, licking his lips. “Boy toy, escort, occasionally stripper.”
They come by a red street light on Gracia and finally, finally, finally Juan Carlos turns his way, his brow slightly furrowed and his hands still glued to the steering wheel. Ricky looks at his long, slender fingers and he can picture exactly what they would look like on his darker skin.
“You’re not kidding,” Juan Carlos says. Ricky beams at him.
“Nope.”
Juan Carlos barks out a quick laugh. “Shit. Well, at least now the fivesome makes sense.”
Ricky chuckles and, on a whim, reaches out to poke Juan Carlos’ cheek with a finger. “Sooooo,” he says, drawing out the vowel into a smirk. “You do this often then? Pick up rent boys, and just drive into the night?”
He makes a grandiose gesture pointing at the straight, wide avenue uncurling in black stained with yellow lights in front of the car, and Juan Carlos snorts, half amused.
“You’re not gonna believe me, but I don’t.”
Ricky grins. “You’re right, I don’t believe you, because you look a little too much at ease, you know.”
“Oh my God, shut up.”
Ricky shuts up. The rest of the trip is spent in a silence that is not weird at all anymore.
Ricky gets a brioche filled almost to the point of collapse with walnut, Snickers bar and watermelon ice cream, topped with a ribbon of whipped cream that’s bigger than his hand. Juan Carlos asks for a coffee-and-hazelnut cone, and Ricky rolls his eyes.
As they slip out of the shop, heading for the little park on the other side of the street, he asks, “Are you always this boring?”
“Only when I’m not kidnapping underage prostitutes,” says Juan Carlos, giving his ice cream a tentative lick, and Ricky is more than willing to pay his own weight in gold just to have him do that all day every day for the rest of his life.
He swallows around a dry lump in his throat, and bumps his hip against Juan Carlos’.
“Hey, I’m twenty-two,” he says, and then closes his mouth around a big chunk of whipped cream. Juan Carlos arches his eyebrows and Ricky smiles. “D’ya wan’ ta see mah ID?”
“Ew, please swallow,” Juan Carlos says, pushing his face away playfully, and Ricky laughs.
“That’s what they always say.”
“I’m going to pretend you never said that.”
Ricky giggles and bats his eyelashes up at him. “Please.”
“Shut up. Sit down.”
There’s a bench, and Ricky sits. Juan Carlos sits right next to him, and he’s warm in the night’s air that’s slowly turning chillier. Ricky bites into his brioche, ice cream pouring lazily into his mouth, and he must’ve made some sort of obscene noise, because Juan Carlos bumps their knees together and stubbornly looks away.
Ricky shifts closer to his side.
“Thanks for saving my ass earlier,” he says, because he still hadn’t, and that’s just impolite. Besides, Juan Carlos paid for the ice cream. “Those guys — okay, I was kinda reckless, but they were huge dicks.”
Juan Carlos snorts. “I’m not gonna make that pun.”
“You basically already have, you know.”
Juan Carlos hums dismissively around a mouthful of ice cream. Ricky stares a little. Maybe a lot. “You are insane, probably, I hope you realize that.”
“I dunno, I do have the world’s sweetest job ever — taking it up the ass for money, how good is that,” Ricky says. Juan Carlos groans like he’s in a lot of pain, and that makes Ricky smile. “Sometimes I also do the fucking. But mostly, I don’t. Not for work anyways.”
“You seem very, ah, unconcerned,” Juan Carlos says, after a beat, when he’s more or less regained some sort of dignity. “There’s a ton of laws against what you do.”
“A ton, eh? That’s scary accurate. And here I thought that legalese was hard.”
“Oh my God, shut up.”
“You said that already, you know,” Ricky laughs. “But it’s fine, I guess with a pretty face like that you can afford to not be interesting at all.”
Juan Carlos’ lips are almost shaking with the smile he’s biting back. “You’re speaking from experience, I’m sure.”
“Hey, I’m endlessly interesting,” Ricky protests, mocking outrage; then he’s grinning wide and bright and there’s ice cream running down his fingers and he doesn’t even notice. “And you just said I’m pretty.”
“That is hardly breaking news,” Juan Carlos mumbles, and he’s a sneaky bastard, isn’t he, because he’s already biting into his cone and he managed to get to that point, licking all that ice cream away, without Ricky noticing.
“Do you want another one?” Ricky asks, suddenly. “I’m buying.”
Juan Carlos huffs out a soundless laugh. “Your ice cream is all over your hand.”
Ricky takes a bite of the brioche, munches thoughtfully, and finally says, “Should I lick it clean?”
Juan Carlos stares, and stares, and then stares some more; Ricky grins and Juan Carlos doesn’t stop staring, so he offers, “Do you want to lick me clean?”
Juan Carlos makes a funny face, half a pout and half a scowl but he’s too amused to be properly somber; he points at something on the left and when Ricky looks, he sees a fountain. He rolls his eyes.
“Boooooring.”
Juan Carlos smiles. “Very much so.”
His eyes are bright and happy and suddenly, Ricky doesn’t agree with himself anymore.