Chapter Text
No one really asks how Ryo got to know Vincent. Even if they did ask, he wouldn’t know what to tell them because he didn’t even get to know the guy. It only occurred to him that they had completely skipped that stage the day after, when Ryo was no longer heavily intoxicated.
And yet, Ryo had never planned for any of it to happen the way it did. If anything, his evening might have gone the way he wanted it to, were it not for his sheer bad luck and the universe’s tendency to spit anything and everything sour back at him like a tennis ball. How was it his fault if the world had a knack for making him suffer? There wasn't a clear reason either, because as far as Ryo was concerned, the worst thing he'd ever done was be just a tiny little bit sarcastic.
Meeting Vincent had, at first, left a very bitter taste in his mouth for several reasons.
Number one: he had not invited him. Actually, Ryo didn’t quite have the right to say something as presumptuous as that, because he wasn’t hosting the party. He was merely one of the attendees, which meant that he didn’t have nearly as much sway as Ryo liked to think he had. While he had been the first person invited, that didn’t make him any different from, say for example, Tala or Zhao Yu, because Mateo liked all his friends just the same.
Then again, at least he knew them. Well, enough to let them drag his half-inebriated form out into the parking lot and stuff him into the backseat of their car.
He did not know Vincent, nor was he comfortable with letting him drag his half-inebriated form out into the parking lot and stuff him into the backseat of his car. He voiced his opinions as such.
That was his second reason.
When he saw a sleek, black Mercedes-Benz in the parking lot, Ryo didn’t question it at first. The way it rolled up right next to Mateo’s car, a Mini Cooper Tala had dubbed as being ‘brat green’, could have easily been a coincidence. By the time he had raised an eyebrow, it was already far too late. Vincent had charmed his way into Tala’s heart, and Zhao Yu—much like the birthday celebrant himself—seemed to already be acquainted with the taller man. Ryo’s vote was outnumbered three to one, and he was begrudgingly forced to accept the last minute newcomer.
None of this was supposed to happen. He was supposed to show up, half-heartedly act as moral support while Mateo broke a few vocal cords, and then leave after a couple of drinks.
Ask Ryo, and that was how his evening would have gone. Which, unfortunately for him, was not how it actually went.
Ask Vincent, however, and he wouldn’t be able to answer, mostly because he was far too busy chuckling at Ryo’s drunken shenanigans. The only thing that stayed the same between the two of them was that neither had known the other.
At least, not by looks.
Mateo spoke a lot. More than he should have, really, and Vincent knew just enough about Ryo from word of mouth alone; enough to form a mental picture that was only confirmed when he met the man in real life. Mateo talked and Vincent listened, his ears too keen to skim over little bits and pieces about Ryo's life. All of which were far too sensitive for a complete and total stranger to know. Heck, Ryo hadn't even wanted Mateo to know half (read: any of) those things himself. But Mateo being, well, Mateo, and Ryo's luck being worse than a bull in a china shop, the odds had never been in his favour to begin with.
The funny thing about being friends with Mateo was that none of them seemed to click. Under normal circumstances, they shouldn’t even get along, let alone be friends. Tala was a member of the local university’s track-and-field team. When she wasn't goofing around with Mateo, her days were spent powering through gruelling training sessions and waking up with way too few hours of sleep. Zhao Yu was a reticent and reclusive gamer guy. As far as the stories were concerned, Mateo had only warmed up to him because he’d been his next-door-neighbour when they were kids. Ryo worked part-time at the local convenience store; meeting Mateo had been a complete coincidence.
And Vincent?
God, don’t even get Ryo started on Vincent. He didn’t know how Mateo had met him, but he assumed that—just like the rest of them—it was through unconventional means. Which meant that Vincent himself was equally as unusual and strange… and in the most infuriating way possible.
Just like Mateo, he lit up rooms with his shining presence; commanding attention like it were natural for the flow of the room to gravitate toward him. He made the action seem easy. Flawless. But Ryo knew better than to fall for such a sweet, honeyed trap.
Vincent was far too good to be true, authentic, or genuine.
There was a very fine, very small difference between Mateo and Vincent. Where Mateo’s charm and bright energy was easygoing and lax, natural in ways conventional conversation should never be, Ryo couldn’t help but think that Vincent’s smile was practiced—as though he’d stitched it to his face, scared that it would fall off otherwise.
And no, it definitely wasn’t just Ryo’s fight-or-flight instinct. No, it definitely wasn’t just because Ryo found him strikingly handsome, and this was his body’s only way to cope with the sudden attraction. Absolutely not.
May God himself strike Ryo down if he was wrong.
He needed to pull himself together, which very evidently, he'd failed to do by the end of the night.
The only thing that tied them together was their affinity to the Angeleno, and even then, it was the kind of awkward commitment that made the air stuffy and suffocating whenever Mateo happened to leave the room. Zhao Yu immediately turned to his phone, staring at the screen as though it were a snack rather than a piece of refurbished glass and metal. Tala started doing warmup stretches on the floor, like she'd rather be on the field than stuck here with Mateo's messy, ragtag bunch of losers. Ryo fiddled with his butterfly comb as if his hair wasn't already perfect. And Vincent, Ryo found, just couldn’t stop staring.
That wouldn’t have been a problem by itself. On occasion, Ryo was found guilty of the habit himself; when the view was pretty, when the work was boring, and when the conversation ran circles around him. He stared not to analyze, but simply because there was nothing better to do.
Unfortunately, the same could not be said of Vincent.
It was the fact that Vincent was staring directly at him that was the problem. And being the shameless European bastard he was, Vincent made zero effort to hide it. This was only accentuated to a horribly gratifying degree, because Ryo didn't even know if he was checking him out or sizing him up. Other than the fact that he was French and ridiculously good looking, Ryo didn't know the first thing about him. And then on top of that, it only got worse, because everyone else in the room seemed to pick up on the not-so-subtle glances Vincent kept tossing at his feet.
Tala noticed. Zhao Yu noticed. But Mateo noticed the loudest of all.
He came back from getting drinks from the bar downstairs, pushing the door open with the sole of his sneakers. Under the strobe lights, Mateo's bright eyes flashed with mischief. Ryo looked up from where he’d been staring at the floor—a hopeless attempt at ignoring the stare burning into the side of his head. When he saw Mateo grinning at him like a fool, he rolled his eyes. “What?” Ryo sighed, arching his shoulders. The deafening crack echoed through the enclosed space.
Mateo did not answer him. Huh. Figures. Smug asshole.
Sprawled on the couch opposite Ryo, Tala dangled the mic between her fingers, whistling lowly. “How did you manage to carry all those bottles up here?”
With a casual shrug, Mateo unceremoniously dumped them onto the table. The glass clinked loudly against the hard wood. Tala immediately reached for one and took a sip, sighing in relish. Slinking down next to her, Mateo swung his arm over the back of the couch. He let his fingers brush the top of Zhao Yu’s shoulder. The latter did not flinch away from his touch. “There’s more bottles here than mics.” Zhao Yu noted simply.
“Yeah, well… That’s ‘cause Miks knows only one of you can actually sing.” Mateo noted. His smile turned wry as he cast Ryo a knowing glance. He shot one back, albeit much less forgiving and its message clear. Shut the fuck up. But alas, the damage was already done, and Ryo was left to wallow in his own self-pity. The couch shifted ever so slightly underneath Vincent’s weight as he moved, placing a hand underneath his chin and regarding Ryo with newfound fervour in his eyes.
That couldn't possibly mean anything good.
Ryo felt his cheeks warm. Attention was nothing new. That came as a package deal with ‘agreeing’ to be friends with Mateo. Ryo never remembered ever doing such a thing, but their friendship was easy like that. Hair as bright as his personality, it was hard to recall a time where he hadn’t known the eccentric man.
But no. Ryo felt his cheeks warm specifically because there was no need to give Vincent another reason to stare at him. One was already enough. And even then, Ryo didn’t know why Mateo’s other friend seemed to be taking so much as a single ounce of interest in him anyway.
Maybe he thought Ryo’s eyebrow slit looked stupid. Maybe he thought Ryo’s clothing sense reminded him of a charity case. Maybe he thought Ryo's scowl was worth poking fun at, worth the risk of getting his hand bitten off and his head chewed at. Not that it mattered, but his brain supplied him with plenty of unhelpful suggestions, each one more unsavoury than the last.
If you asked Ryo, he was still a little irritated by their seating arrangements. No matter how much Mateo weakly argued that they were ‘unofficial’ and that Ryo shouldn’t ‘take them personally’, it didn't change the fact that he was wholeheartedly annoyed by it. And would remain so until either Hell froze over or Vincent stopped being irritating as fuck.
Both of which, very clearly, were never going to happen. Ryo was an atheist anyway.
He understood Mateo sitting next to Zhao Yu. Sure. They’d been friends since, what, pre-school? Their bond was probably stronger than the chemical reactions between most molecules, though Zhao Yu did very little to enforce that fact; only when he knew no-one was looking.
But leaving him with the new guy? Ryo’s personality was a red-hot cocktail of every single unwanted trait in the work industry: sarcastic, egotistical, and his personal favourite, stubborn to a fault. So whoever’s decision that had been, it was obviously an intentional one, and while part of Ryo was childishly, inherently curious, logic demanded that he keep his head level and not poke it into places that it shouldn't be. With a scowl, Ryo leant forward in his seat. His fingers grasped one of the bottles and pulled it free from the pack, feeling the wet frigidity tingle underneath his nails. All the while, Vincent watched him like a hawk.
Ryo's left eye twitched.
Actually, scratch that, he was more than just a little irritated at the seating arrangements. He was very irritated at them.
For a moment, they all just sat like that. Silence—perfect, golden, untouchable. Unless, of course, you were Ryo, and in that case, the silence was faulty, tarnished, and quite definitely within reach of Vincent's perfectly manicured nails.
“So…” Tala was the first to break the moment. Thank God, if there be one. Ryo would rather it be anyone but Vincent. The strobe lights lit up her neon blue hair, dancing colours across her tanned skin and brown eyes. “Who’s gonna sing first?”
Mateo was quick to volunteer. Or, well, he practically threw himself at the mic in Tala’s hand, grabbing it with the speed and clumsy grace of a kid high on sugar. He then loudly proclaimed that he was going to sing one song, and then promptly spend the rest of the night pigging out on beer, cocktails, and cheap shots while the rest of them tried to get out of singing themselves.
While Mateo was a firm believer of democracy, that vein of thought went straight out of the window when it came to planning his birthday celebration. And then all of a sudden, no one’s opinion mattered but his own, because Mateo was quite obviously the type of person to egg others into doing something. Then the day after, he’d lord it over you when you so much as vaguely alluded to enjoying that ‘something’. Not in the boastful, smug kind of way. In the goofy, friendly kind of way. It was worse, because each and every time Ryo went to one of his cute little birthday parties, he seemed genuinely happy to hear that he'd enjoyed his time.
He couldn't be mad at that ‘something’.
Even if that ‘something’ happened to be dancing along to the lyrics of a Sabrina Carpenter song. But to be fair, Mateo hadn’t exactly planned for Ryo to get drunk; because admittedly, that was his own fault.
And Vincent’s too, actually.
…
On second thought, it was mostly Vincent’s fault. Though if anyone asked the other man, he would simply say that Ryo was just particularly susceptible to taunting. His threshold for such things was tantalizingly low. So low, in fact, that everyone in the room happened to capitalize on it.
No sooner than Mateo had picked up the mic with all the theatrics of a drama kid, Vincent shuffled closer. Ryo had no time to prepare before the Frenchman was next to him. He already had been, but this? This was far too close for comfort. Instinctively, Ryo matched the taller man’s movement; putting more distance between them instead of closing it, but Vincent was persistent. Just another personality trait he shared with Mateo: his endless, if not tiring, bursts of insistence.
It didn't help that he smiled while he riled Ryo up. In no time, he crowded him up against the edge of the couch, and there was nowhere else to run but stand up. And like Hell was Ryo going to prove that something as small and insignificant as proximity affected him. That was exactly what Vincent wanted. It was pathetic, but a small surge of pride rushed through him at the thought of deducing the other man's intentions.
He wanted, no, he needed a reaction. Just like the rest of them did.
“You don’t seem the kind to drink beer.” Vincent hummed, nonchalant. His voice held that deep, steady cadence of a man who wore confidence like a second skin.
Ryo didn’t immediately grace him with a response. And even when he did, it wasn’t anything past a mindless grunt as he took a long swig of his drink. Beer wasn’t particularly strong, and that meant Ryo could easily drink several bottles of it without getting severely intoxicated. It was why Mateo tended to be considerate and order beer for the rest of them while he attempted to hold his own against Miks’ latest concoctions. They’d spin a bottle and decide who took the keys to Mateo’s ‘brat green’ Mini Cooper because he could barely stand on his own two feet afterwards, let alone sit still at the wheel or drive.
On occasion, they didn't even bother with the bottle, and just let Miks take him home. Sure, they were good friends with Mateo, but that didn't mean they were going to fight every single one of his drunken battles for him. If they saw an opportunity to avoid the battlefield, then it was an opportunity wholly worth taking.
Ryo still vividly remembered the stench of vomit from that one time he took one for the team and let Mateo hurl over his shoes.
His brand new shoes which he'd been saving his entire monthly paycheck to buy.
Vincent watched him drink, regarding him silently. And once again, Ryo dutifully ignored him, instead focusing his attention on the way Mateo swayed along with the beat of the song.
If Miks were here, he’d be having a field day.
“You don’t drink anything… stronger?” Vincent poked, and it took every last ounce of Ryo’s fast-fading sanity to refrain from taking his bottle and sending it careening into the side of the European’s head. Maybe he’d tone down the power behind the swing, but he certainly wouldn’t feel sorry if the blow hurt. Sure, Mateo might give him a flaming earful after, but god, would the scolding be well worth it.
“Are you trying to piss me off?” Ryo lowered the bottle, staring over the rim with narrowed eyes.
“I don’t know,” Vincent crossed one leg over the other, a sly smile flashing across his sharp features. A vein in Ryo’s temple twitched. A tic formed under his left eye. “is it working?”
“No.” He replied quickly. Too quickly.
Now Ryo already knew that Vincent was handsome. He had the proportions of a supermodel at barely nineteen—that was a guess, the guy had to be younger than him, right?—and sharp, elegant facial features to match. His brown hair was slicked back as though he had somewhere important to be, only further accentuated by his high cheekbones and long eyelashes. His eyes were the perfect shade of amber, and his jaw?
Acute.
Cheesy as it was to say, his jaw could probably cut diamonds.
So when his smile deepened into a knowing smirk, Vincent should have been condemned on the spot. His lips curved up thinly, eliciting a contented sound. It was almost lost to the way Mateo belted out the last lyric of the song. Strange. No matter how loud Mateo’s laughter afterwards jingled like bells, or Zhao Yu’s quiet, thoughtful smile, or Tala’s raucous whoops and hollers, the rest of the world's noise seemed to filter out into static. Volume and frequency melted together into a warped, jumbled mess. The universe slimmed down into just the two of them: him and Vincent.
He shouldn’t have heard the way he scoffed, disbelieving—a noise that was equal parts pleased and smug. Derisive.
He shouldn’t have. And yet, Ryo did.
“Fuck you.” He took another displeased swig. The amber liquid went further and further down the neck of the bottle with each loud, audible gulp. Amber, Ryo hazily thought. Just like Vincent's eyes.
Fuck.
“Oh my,” Chuckling, Vincent splayed a large hand over the broad expanse of his chest, “I didn’t know you were so… forward.” He made an exaggerated motion.
Slapping a hand down onto his thigh, Ryo let slip a frustrated noise.
“Shut up. I’m trying to—”
“Trying to do... what, exactly?” The leather creaked under the new distribution of Vincent’s weight. He leant forwards on his palms, and Ryo swallowed when his eyes were naturally drawn down. His heart’s pounding echoed, mocking, like a punch to his gut—as though Vincent himself had leapt forward and hit him. A velvety laugh reverberated inside Ryo’s ear, “Tune out my voice? Listen to Zhao Yu’s instead?”
Something clicked in Ryo's jaw. It did not sound healthy.
“Whatever it is, you’re doing a spectacular job of it, mon ami.” The sarcasm left a bitter taste in Ryo’s mouth. It wasn’t the beer he was tasting anymore, but the tart flavour of Vincent’s cutting remarks. He didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at all.
“Thanks, asshole.” Another long, slow drag.
“You’re welcome.” purred Vincent.
“Who wears a suit to a karaoke bar, anyway?” Ryo wrinkled his nose. “What, have you got your nose stuck so far into a book you can’t stop thinking about your finances?” Setting his first bottle aside on the floor, Ryo was already reaching out for his next when Vincent caught his wrist with his hand.
“Chéri,” Vincent tilted his head to one side, “maybe you should sort out your own problems before you start pointing out others’, non?”
Ryo froze. Problems? He definitely had plenty of them. Crippling debt? Check. And intrinsic need to doomscroll before bed? Yep. Several unsubmitted assignments? Gosh, he was starting to sound just like every other university student. But fuck, he was smarter than that. Vincent wasn't talking about any of those. “Like what?”
“You’re only on your second bottle.” Vincent pointed out bluntly. “Quite the slow drinker, aren’t you?”
There it was at work: Vincent’s strange magnetism. His voice carried a shocking, hefty gravity, and Ryo vaguely wondered whether that was simply a by-product of the unfair attractiveness of Vincent’s proportions. Volume and noise seemed to return all at once—the heavy thud of bass underneath his feet, the slight slur of voices, the music drilling into his ears. Blinking, Ryo took one good, slow look around the room, eyes narrowing. He wasn’t sure how many songs had passed. Two or three, maybe. That was a safe bet. While he could tell when the music shifted, Ryo promptly lost count of how many bottles were already scattered at the foot of the opposing couch. Granted there were three of them, but still.
Perhaps if Ryo wasn't so grounded in that harrowing reality, he might've pointed out that Vincent hadn't drunk anything at all. And therefore, he was in no position to be telling Ryo what to do.
He couldn’t help but feel the tiniest bit worried when several of those bottles weren’t even standing upright, as though they'd either been kicked over or used as impromptu bowling pins. Predictably, Zhao Yu was the only one left still sitting, and even then, his feet were far from being idle, his posture a long cry from being uptight. A distinct flush had climbed up his cheeks where he was sitting, legs bent out across the cushions and feet tapping out a steady rhythm. His hoodie had been discarded in favour of exposing his slim forearms. In its place, his long, candlestick fingers were curled loosely around the neck of another bottle of beer.
Typical Zhao Yu behavior, really. Fucking lightweight.
Ryo could only stare at his other two friends, his horror just barely restrained behind his steely exterior. Tala was leant against the far corner, mouthing each and every lyric to the song. If she was singing along, either she was too quiet or the music was turned up too loud. She looked drowsy, but she wasn't drunk, for her eyes retained their usual clarity. Though from where Ryo was sitting, awkwardly angling his head like a protractor, it looked like the wall was the only reason she still remained standing. For someone who was normally fast, and highly reflexive to everything thrown her way, it was a disarming sight to see.
There was no way that she was drunk. She was just… eager. It took more than just the ten or so beers to get her to see shapes and colours instead of people and faces.
When Ryo said that back to himself in his head, it sounded a lot worse than he thought.
It wasn’t as though Ryo hadn’t seen her this way before, but for everything to happen so fast, as though time had its lenses blurred, was nothing short of freaky.
Mateo, on the other hand, had his energy multiplied tenfold. His earlier promise to watch the chaos unfold and mediate as a spectator had been thrown out of the window in favour of singing. His ugly, bright green sweater was off, replaced by a hideous purple sleeveless vest. Well, ‘hideous’ in Ryo's eyes. The colour seemed to complement Mateo’s already bizarre dress sense. A thin sheen of sweat coated his exposed arms, the slick shining underneath the harsh, flickering lights. The vast expanse of ink crawling up his bare skin seemed to move and shift along with the pulsing beat of the song.
A song Ryo didn’t explicitly know, but he vaguely recalled hearing once before.
Well. So much for beer being the ‘easiest option’. Maybe the alcohol just didn't mingle well with Mateo's already quirky personality.
Leaning back against the couch, Vincent raised an eyebrow at him, the motion almost expectant in nature.
And then, something in Ryo just… snapped. At that moment, he didn’t quite know what it was. He just knew it was like a string inside him had been pulled taut, and Vincent held the scissors.
Later, Ryo would very vividly find a name for this sensational, one-of-a-kind experience: peer pressure.
With a wordless grunt and one last, withering gaze at Vincent, Ryo got up from the couch and sauntered over to the door, kicking it open with more force than necessary. The poor thing whined in protest against its hinges. Just as he made to walk out of the doorway, Vincent spoke up again, and Ryo made the fatal mistake of staying to hear him out.
“Where are you going?” The words jabbed at him, a taunt wrapped within the silken sheets of Vincent's mildly infatuating voice. Only mildly.
“Where do you think?”
“To get yourself some liquid courage, correct?” Even when his tone tilted like that, Vincent's question sounded more like a statement, like fact, like he already knew what Ryo planned to do before his foot even hit the first stair. Of course he did. It was his fault Ryo was leaving in the first place—and he wasn't planning on coming back empty-handed.
At least, not in the metaphorical sense.
Ryo snorted, brushing a hand up against the doorframe. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“I’m going to prove you wrong.”