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Hal had lost Carol in the throng of bedazzled billionaires around forty-five minutes ago, and since then, he’d been largely adrift in a sea of diamanté women and balding men who cared more about their investment portfolios than actual people.
Against his will, he’d been introduced to a man named Gerald. Or possibly Albert. Some high-brow monkey-suit name you’d say with raised eyebrows and an accent, because that was the only way to speak when you were born with a silver spoon jammed up your ass. Gerald-Albert had shaken his hand then wiped it on his kerchief, as if Hal’s poverty were contagious.
All the talk of hedge funds went over Hal’s head, or whatever it was that rich folk talked about when they weren’t busy sneering at the Help. When Carol was swept away earlier by a man in an all-white suit, she’d thrown him a look over her shoulder that clearly told him he was bound by blood to behave this evening. Which honestly was a sucky thing for her to want, despite how reasonable it was. How could she put Hal in a room full of sweaty-necked investors and not expect him to try and trick one into putting everything into the ticker labelled BUTT?
Instead, his one permitted move was to nod politely and answer questions when asked – mostly about how wonderful Ferris was doing now that Carol had officially inherited the company. Oh yes, sir, Ms. Ferris sure is swell. The planes still go nyoom when you pull on the throttle – that’s the stick in the middle.
No fun allowed. Hal, in the hopes of catching the Coast City Sharks game, made his escape the second Gerald-Albert-or-maybe-Avery turned to scoff at a comment made by some dome-headed guy from Metropolis. He relieved a passing server of an entire tray of canapés and snuck off into the night.
Or into the nearest closet, which wasn’t a closet at all. That was the thing about these rich schmucks. They built rooms that had no declared purpose, just space for the sake of space. Maybe it was a prestige thing? The more rooms you had, the higher you were on the blue-blood hierarchy. The big boss of the one percent probably had a whole-ass labyrinth where he rinsed out the proletarians to get fat and wealthy off the back of their labour.
The point was, if it wasn’t clear, Hal wasn’t a fan of places like this.
That had been ten minutes ago. Currently, he had his feet up on a fancy little ottoman, his phone clinging to the last dregs of Wi-Fi (Sharks were down by three, goddamnit), and he’d placed the canapés on a side table so small that its existence was pointless. Somewhere along the way he’d acquired three glasses of sparkling wine (he’d accosted another server on his way here) and was now bunking down for the long haul.
It wasn’t how he’d have chosen to spend his annual leave from the base. The original itinerary had been pretty simple: he’d hit the gym in the morning and continue his quest to surreptitiously figure out if that one personal trainer liked men, then in the afternoon he’d had plans to warm a stool in his local sports bar so he could get unreasonably angry at his team in the company of other unreasonably angry people. After that, his plans involved street meat and crashing on Jack’s couch with the entire Die Hard collection. His brother was in the Bahamas for another week, he’d needed a housesitter, and those old DVDs weren’t going to watch themselves.
Then Carol called and reminded him he owed her, and there went all his plans for the weekend.
He looked good, at least. Carol had the suit tailored, which meant it actually fit him instead of doing what suits usually did to his board shoulders (they’d give up, it was sad). He looked, according to Carol's assessment in the car's visor mirror, presentable.
This whole event was mostly so bigwigs like Carol could network, and he hoped it was going well for her. Whatever she was doing with Ferris Aircraft – taking over from her dad, consolidating something maybe? The details had gone slightly blurry somewhere between ‘Sure, I'll come’ and actually being here. Whatever it was, she clearly wanted it badly, and Carol wanting something badly usually meant it happened.
He was shoving a fistful of fancy mystery quiches in his mouth when the door to his closet opened.
“Occupied!” he called, like he was in a toilet stall. Which probably told him a lot about his social instincts under pressure. It came out as a muffled ‘O-u-ied’ because his stupid mouth was full and he was actively trying to hide the canapé tray under the armchair.
“Oh,” a deep voice said from the door. “I didn't realise this room was taken.”
Hal looked up.
And hot damn.
He’d never been the gooey marshmallow type of guy to see someone and then later insist the whole world melted away. Very dramatic, very rom-com. The colours swirl, the music does that twinkly plink-plink shit, and the camera zooms in on the pinpoint to the Byronic hero who just pulled himself from the river and was now open-shirt and dripping. Great for Austen novels, less realistic for Hal, who was still kneeling on the floor with a mouthful of quiche.
The guy in the door was, alas, not open-shirted and dripping. He was wearing a dark suit that made Hal’s tailored one feel like something he'd found in a lost and found box, and at some point in the evening he’d ditched his bow-tie and unfastened his top button. Seemed a little early for the rich-boy stiffs to drop the Perfect Person Persona, so that was a promising development in something Hal was ready to dive headfirst in.
Hal Jordan had a type, and that type usually included sharp features, angry eyebrows and dark hair. Check, check and check again. Mr. Tall, Dark and Fuckable looked old Hollywood in the way he carried himself, with swept back black hair that was tousled just enough to be sexy over scruffy.
And oh shit, were those blue eyes Hal was locking gayly with right now? Pale, very almost grey, but definitely blue. Goddamn, thank you Jesus, this beautiful bastard really was every fantasy thirteen year old Hal had tried to repress back when he was desperately trying to trick himself that it was just women he liked.
Those blue-blue eyes were locked to Hal in a way that made his little bisexual antenna stand up on end and start whispering ‘men? men? he like men?’ in his ear.
“It’s not.” Hal said, wiping crumbs from his mouth. He was very aware that he was still couched. “Taken. It’s not taken.”
The guy arched a thick brow up. He flicked his gaze towards the scatter of wine glasses, then to the mass of quiches that were just about visible by Hal’s knee. “Is that…an entire tray of canapés?”
“No. Maybe. Yes.” Hal straightened up and brought the tray with him, because there was no version of this destined meet-cute where he’d leave those mini French tarts on the floor. “You want one?”
It was kind of lame how quickly Hal’s slutty little heart started thumping when the guy’s face shifted a little. Just a small difference, just the corners of his eyes lifting and maybe a twitch around his lips, but it broke across his features like a crack in ice.
You made that happen, his monkey brain whispered reverently to himself.
“How long have you been hiding here to need so many supplies?” Mr. Hot Guy asked. He didn’t take a canapé. His loss.
“Professionally, or from when I found the quiches?”
“Either.”
“Ten minutes, give or take,” Hal replied with a shrug. He placed the tray back down on the tiny table, just to establish that the food wasn’t his entire personality right now, he offered his most roguish smile. “And is it really hiding if I’m just prioritising my health? Do you know what extended contact with the one percent does to a guy? It’s like a pressure change. You have decompress properly on the way out or something goes wrong. Some offence.”
“Some taken.” Tragically, the man began to take his leave. “Since you’ve got this room covered, I’ll leave you to it.”
“You really don’t have to go. Plenty of room for two. There's a whole armchair that definitely only sits one, but that’s just a matter of creative positioning.”
The guy smirked properly at that. “Creative positioning, hm?”
“I’m flexible.” Hal matched his grin with a suggestive one of his own. He was good at things like that. “You wouldn’t be trying to hide in my closet if you also didn’t want to prioritise your health.”
“Your closet?”
“Eh, I’ve been here ten minutes. It’s an established residency at this point.” He swept an arm back to gesture at the room behind him. “I got all the amenities. Let me give you a tour. This is my armchair – seats one, as mentioned, but I think if we cosy up we can make it work. This is my tray of canapés. Mostly quiche, unidentified filling. Some have green foam, which is weird, but I’m working with it and that’s working for me. These are my three wine glasses, slightly used.”
“And is that the Gotham Knights game on your phone?”
“It’s the Coast City Sharks game, thank you, and if you're about to tell me you're a Knights man I might need to revisit the armchair offer.”
Blue-blue eyes twinkled. “That’s a shame,” he said. “I could’ve made the armchair work.”
Well, well, well. Maybe coming to this dumb upper-cruster shindig was worth cramming himself into a suit after all. Hal relocated himself back to the armchair, casually leaving just enough room for the guy if he actually chose to make good on the implication. Just in case, he kept his feet off the ottoman. If Hot Guy wasn’t of the rainbow persuasion, or if he just didn’t want to get up close and personal with a stranger in a closet, then Hal figured he’d at least offer an alternative seat.
“I’m Harold,” he started. He said it with the raised brows and the accent. What the hell was he becoming? A grimace immediately followed. “Oh god, I never call myself Harold. What— I don’t know why I did that.”
“Must be the one percent rubbing off on you.”
“I’m Hal. Hal. Which, yes, is technically short for Harold, but I’m begging you, from the bottom of my heart, don’t call me that. Who names their baby boy Harold in this day and age? Like, you hear Harold and you picture a fifty-seven year old bus driver. Or a guy who owns a yacht and calls his mom mummy. Someone who's had the same brand of slippers for twenty years and has a lot of feelings about the neighbours' hedges.”
“I know three Harolds, and none of them have hair.”
He shot another smile and made a show of raking a hand through his hair. It was crusty with product, and he knew for a fact that he accidentally left it sticking up wrongly. “And that’s why I’m a Hal.”
“Bruce,” Hot Guy returned.
“Good name. No unfortunate associations. You don't picture a yacht or a bus or anything.”
“What do you picture?”
“Bruce Willis, mostly. But that might be because I was supposed to be watching Die Hard tonight.”
Very much to Hal’s delight, Hot Guy-Bruce was the type of weirdo to take the space in the armchair with him. Matching the freak, a good sign.
That was all well and good, but it was an objectively stupid idea. Neither of them were small men, and fitting into an armchair built for one was optimistic at best. What followed was less of a flirtatious oops, is this seal taken? and more of negotiation between their respective bulk. Their broad shoulders overlapped, Bruce’s arm found the back of the chair because there was nowhere else for it to go, and Hal was angled into him whether he'd meant to be or not. He didn’t mean it, but he sure as hell wasn’t complaining.
Flash back to the movie magic, Jane Austen – As well as never being the kind of guy to make a pinhole memory of the aforementioned Byronic hero, Hal was also never the kind of guy to get all daydream-y about the way they smelled. First time for everything though, because Bruce smelled of deep warm wood and expensive spice. Probably the cologne, but Hal’s dumb smitten brain was going to just go ahead and assume that Bruce just naturally exuded Eau de Monsieur Darcy.
“So, Bruce,” Hal said. He liked the way his name sounded. “You hiding from anyone specifically, or is this more of a general protest?”
“I made the mistake of promising Veronica Cale a dance.”
Cool. Hal had no idea who that was. “Well, I can promise you there’s no dancing in here.” Before Bruce came in, Hal absolutely did a weird little dance jig when the Sharks scored in the first quarter. “Unless I can interest you in the Macarena.”
“That’s… That’s probably the last thing I expected you to say.”
“And yet, I’m deadly serious. Consider it a protective service. You can't be on a dance floor with some chick if you're watching me do the Macarena in here.”
Bruce raised his eyebrows. “As compelling as that sounds,” he said, amused, “the room’s a little small for a demonstration.”
“Your loss. I can bust a pre-organised dance move better than most. Catch me doing the Running Man in a crowded room, no shame. It's a gift, honestly. People don't know what to do with it.”
“I can’t exactly relate,” Bruce replied. “My experience is mostly confined to gala ballrooms.”
“Then you're missing out,” Hal continued, warming to it. He was perfectly willing to stand up and perform the entire back catalogue of the disco era if it made this stranger smile again. “I know ‘em all. The Hully Gully. The Loco-Motion. The Cha Cha Slide. Which, yeah, it's got instructions built into the song, but you'd be surprised how many people can't execute under pressure. Not me. I thrive.”
The laugh Bruce let out then was another notch for the rom-con playing in Hal’s head. “You’ll have to show me some other time,” he said.
“Show you?” Hal turned to face him properly, faux-scandalised on principle. “That's not how it works. It's participatory. Hands-on. You can't just observe the Cha Cha Slide, Bruce, it defeats the entire point. Takes two to tango, as they say.”
“Does the Cha Cha Slide take two?”
“Everything worth doing takes two.”
He’d meant to be suave about that. Hal was a charming guy and he’d had great success with worse lines before. A little bit of implication here, a little wink-wink-eyebrow-eyebrow there, just to establish the baseline. Gotta make the flirting clear, or he’d just come across as a weirdo.
It just so happened that when he reached out for the canapé tray to punctuate his sentence with a noble bite of quiche, his hands came away empty.
Hal, in all his suaveness, made a sound that was not very suave at all.
“Was the quiche really that good?” Bruce’s blue-blue eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled. Hal liked that a lot.
Too bad he was fixated on his canapé tray. “They were really good,” he said. He gazed mournfully at the remaining crumbs before redirecting his gaze back to Bruce, who was watching him (fondly, maybe? Hopefully?) “Where would you be on the judgment scale if I went out to grab another tray? Like, give me a number.”
“I—”
“And before you answer, I need you to know that no matter what you say, I’ll be going to grab another one. And frankly I think you should be asking yourself why you're not more passionate about the mini quiches, because that's the more interesting character question here.”
“I was at three, but it’s gone up to a six because you seem unusually seduced by the quiche.”
“What can I say? I’m easy to seduce.”
“Is that so?”
Hal grinned. “Maybe. So, you can wait here while I grab more mini quiches and if you’re good I’ll also swipe one of the trays with the weird salmon bites.”
“Or,” Bruce said, leaning a little closer, “we could just leave?”
“Oh?”
“There are more interesting things to do than suffer through another sunk cost gala.” The blue-blue eyes dropped to Hal's mouth then back up. Damn, Hal could get lost in those eyes. He could also conk his thick head against the tiny table for thinking something so cliché. He was usually better than cliché. (He wasn’t.)
“I could be persuaded,” Hal said. His heart was thump-thump-thumping way too loud in his chest for how cool he was playing it right now. “I know a sports bar not too far away from here. We could grab a drink. Catch the rest of the game.”
“And watch the Knights dismantle the Sharks.”
“And watch the Sharks' triumphant fourth quarter resurgence.” He reached up to hook a finger in the knot of his own tie, ready to loosen it up and enjoying the way Bruce’s eyes dropped down to follow the motion. “And then, if you play your cards right, I might invite you to join in on the rest of my evening plans.”
“Which are?”
“Well, I've got the full Die Hard franchise on DVD and Bruce Willis in a white tank top is one of the great unifying experiences of our time."
Bruce held his gaze for a moment. Blue blue blue. Hal inexplicably wanted those blue eyes on him for the rest of forever. Then, just as he was doing the cheesy heroine-chic thing of drifting closer to, like, swoon or something – whatever the masculine version of swooning was when he wanted to get all macho about it – Bruce pulled away. He untangled their bodies, which had drifted close enough to get tangled in the armchair, and offered a hand down to Hal.
“I’ve been told I have good cards."
Hal took his hand and let himself get pulled to his feet. “Guess I'll find out," he said, and he followed him out of the closet.