Chapter Text
Race was sat on the bed, shirtless, Spot already up, dressing, and Race stood up, walking up to his boyfriend, wrapping his arms around him, kissed him on the cheek.
"Good morning, sleepyhead. You're gonna be late." Spot said, ruffling Race's already messy curls.
"It's not my fault my phone battery died at some point before my alarm was gonna go off." Race retorted, grinning.
Spot rolled his eyes, which made Race grin wider. "So ya keep sayin', but there is somethin' called phone chargers dude."
"Cord's too short for me to be able to do stuff on my phone, so I gotta unplug it." Race explained, Spot sat by his, admittedly, stupid idiot of a boyfriend.
"Ya never wake up from those damn alarms anyway, I do, and then I gotta wake ya." Spot gave Race a playful shove, which lead to Race dramatically flopping backwards on the bed. "I don't wanna adult today. Adulting is boring."
Spot had to laugh at that, and he did.
"Well, ya was the one wanting that job to begin with."
Race gave an eye roll of his own, and muttered something that sounded an awful lot like fuck you.
"Excuse me, what was that, sunshine boy?" Spot teased, hand on Race's shoulder, smug grin on his face.
"Fuck you. I only gotta do it until I land a role and then I'm gonna be an actor."
Spot grinned, laid on top of Race, decided to tease more.
"Says the fella who wanted to spend his most recent paycheck on a tattoo. Of a duck."
Race looked offended, and Spot couldn't help but find it adorable.
"It is a goose! And it has a lightsaber. It's cool."
Spot burst out laughing at Race's expression, kissed him, right on the mouth.
"Sorry, Blondie, but that tattoo is lame. You never even made it through the first Star Wars movie. You fell asleep five minutes in."
Race pouted, pushed Spot off, snatched a shirt from the pile on the classic chair with unfolded, clean, laundry that neither of them had bothered to put away, just kept taking clothes from it until it was gone. Rinse and repeat. At first, it had pissed Spot off, but he had learned to embrace it. Race was messy on a good day, and there was no changing it.
"Go on now, them coffee cravin' folks of Manhattan need ya." Spot said, as Race, with some reluctance got up, pulling his shirt on, grabbing his jacket, searching for his phone, which was in his hand.
"Where's my phone?"
Spot pointed, handing Race a charger, and a sharpie, before gently pushing him out the door.
Work was uneventful, the orders coming in, a latte here, ice tea there, slow as ever, it bored Race out of his mind, fiddling with the sharpie, cap on it, then he determinedly pulled it off, rolled up his sleeve, cursing the broken AC to the high heavens, or worse, while wiping the sweat from his forehead with a napkin.
Come by, I'm bored. He texted, in between customers.
Can do, Blondie. Spot me a latte, will ya?
The door opened, Race's shift almost over, and the person, a busy looking woman in her fifties, took one look at Race behind the counter. "You should ice that." She said it casually, like Race was supposed to know what she meant.
"Uh... ice what?"
The woman raised an eyebrow, tilted her head. "That eye you got going on. It'll go black for sure."
What black eye? Race thought.
"Excuse me for a sec." He didn't wait for an answer, walked back to the employee bathroom, studied his face in the mirror. Sure enough, there it was, his left eye was going black, the bruise spreading rapidly.
He grabbed his phone, glad he had charged it, calling Spot's number, and Spot picked up instantly.
"What the hell did you do?" Race's voice was angry, even to his own ears, sharp and snapping. "Spot Conlon, you promised. You promised that that would stop. That you wouldn't go fightin' people." It was a mix of disappointment and worry, worry that Spot could be arrested for it, or have picked a fight with the wrong person. He felt his heart race, fingers grabbing the phone so tightly his knuckles turned white. He was certain he'd break the phone with how tightly he held it. Seconds felt like hours before Spot finally spoke up.
"I didn't do anythin'! This ain't like last time, Race. What did you do?" Spot sounded serious, arrived at the coffee shop not five minutes later.
"Excuse us for a second. I'm gonna talk to my boyfriend." Spot dragged Race outside, shift over, by minutes.
"What the fuck, Spot?!" Race yelled, remembering all too well the countless times Spot had gotten a broken rib, a broken nose, black eyes more times than Race even cared to count at that point. It wasn't that this was new, but Spot had had the day off, meaning he'd spend it on their couch, a thrifted thing, that neither of them actually liked, stylewise, but it was comfy, and that mattered.
"You were supposed to be home! Instead you go out fighting someone over God knows what!" Spot grabbed Race's arms, tightly.
"I was, I was watching TV, and then, when I was gonna leave, there it was!"
Race took a moment to process that, his anger fading ever so slightly.
"You don't remember last time, last time when I got a call, saying you were in a fight, unconscious and they weren't sure just how bad it was. I thought I'd lose you before I really got to know you!" Race's voice broke, the whole thing not being one that Race liked to bring up.
"Hey. Nothin' like that happened tonight, Racer. Look at me." Race shifted his weight, anxiously fidgetting with his sleeve, the way he did so often without realizing it, chewing on his lip, another habit that hinted at his anxiety. "Race. I'm fine, look at me." If Race had been sitting down, Spot would have grabbed his chin, made him look him in the eyes, reminded him to breathe with him.
Spot wrapped his arms around Race, tightly pulling him in for a hug he clearly needed. Race's heart pounded, Spot could feel it, but waited it all out, knowing that Race needed hugs or a weighted blanket to calm down.
"Wait, if I didn't get a black eye, and you didn't, who did?" Race mumbled, after a few minutes.
The realization hit them both at the same time.
"There gotta be a third person."