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It wasn’t supposed to snow tonight, just threaten with heavy clouds and hold out until the morning. It was supposed to be this cold, yes, and that’s much more of a suspect than the spare flurries coming down right now (more like sad, wet confetti than anything actively causing a problem) as to why Kid’s rented bike has stalled.
He could, in theory, walk the bike back to town, but in this weather it would be less than pleasant, and even if it takes a while for him to get it going again, as long as it doesn’t start to really snow in earnest (and, not that Kid believes in any of that superstitious shit, mind you, but he wishes he had some way to take that thought back) he’ll still make it back quicker if he takes the time to fix it.
Perhaps he shouldn’t have gambled on the weather in an unfamiliar place on an unfamiliar bike, just outside the mountainside town where he’s been working for the past week and a half, but he’s only here for a few more days, and he’d wanted to get out and see the area a bit, and his own bike is back at home in Akita and he misses it, needs it, needs something to ground him in this unfamiliar place.
He’s fixed enough motorcycles in his time to know where to start fixing this one, and the next few places to go if that doesn’t work. A few times, he turns the ignition on, tries to rev it up, and turns it off. Nothing. The tank’s still far from empty, even if it had been bleeding gas and the indicator was busted it would still have enough to take him back to town. The battery might have come loose, but he’s going to need to maneuver around to check it, and in the dark that’s not much fun. He’s got some tools with him, but no flashlight, another stupid oversight; he’s got the built-in light of his phone but it’s low on juice and if he needs to call someone he’d rather save the battery for that.
Kid digs in his toolbag for a screwdriver, just in case, then sticks it between his teeth. He turns on the flashlight, sticks his phone into the breast pocket of his coat, and crouches down to take a look; as he does he hears the sound of tires on the road behind him, and then the bright headlights of a car make his phone redundant. The car slows behind him; it’s not passing close by--it’s not passing at all, slowing to a stop. Help, or something else?
Kid’s no easy target; he may be a one-armed man stranded at the side of an unfamiliar road, but he’s got a knife tucked into his coat sleeve (and two more in the pockets of his pants) that he’s more than capable of using, and he’s probably bigger and stronger than whoever might try and attack him. The car door opens, and Kid keeps his fingers on the knife.
Kid can’t see the car too well, what make and model it is; it’s a simple dark sedan, and the driver, once Kid’s eyes adjust to the light, is a man about his age, wearing a coat that looks like one of those edgy fashionable fake gang member things. He’s got weird printed pants (if Killer were here, he’d tell Kid he’s one to talk, but Kid’s got a cohesive aesthetic; this guy absolutely doesn’t, though the print on his pants does kind of go with the print on his hat). And despite all of this, the guy’s actually pretty attractive, in a way to which Kid’s not sure he wants to be attracted. Maybe it’s the mean frown on his face, or the goatee, or the way his hair sticks outs in a way that looks practiced but Kid can tell needs no product, or how exhausted he looks (maybe he’s an idle rich kid, but idle rich kids usually drive more ostentatious cars than this one).
“Stuck?” says the guy.
“Yeah,” says Kid. “You got a flashlight?”
“Let me check.”
He goes around to check his trunk, and Kid fingers the edge of the knife in his sleeve, but when the guy returns, a pocket flashlight is in his gloved hand and nothing else, no tricks on his face. Kid hastily turns off his phone light (battery’s holding steady at 15%, better than expected), turns it on, and--wow. The LED is good.
“Thanks,” says Kid.
He hangs the flashlight from the rim of his goggles, then pops the cover off the battery, shielding it from the oncoming snow with his body. Yeah, the negative cable’s loose--so the cold probably wasn’t at fault here, but Kid will blame it anyway. At least it’s easy enough to fix if this is the only cause of the problem. He places the cover on the seat, screws the bolt in, and then turns the key in the ignition. The lights flash to life, thank fuck. Kid turns off the flashlight--he probably could have seen well enough without it in the glow of the headlights, but if things had been wrong--if they go wrong again while he’s still got the flashlight on him--he’d be glad to have it. He makes to hand it back over, but the guy shakes his head.
“In case you need it again. Here, I’ll give you my number; you can return it.”
He removes a small notebook from his pocket, scrawls something down on it, and tears out the sheet of paper and hands it over to Kid--for a second Kid wonders if the guy is hitting on him; it’s a flashlight, easy and cheap enough to replace, and not the kind of thing you’d hand out to a stranger if it had some sentimental value attached. Kid pockets the paper, and the guy seems satisfied with that, and returns to his car (so, maybe not flirting). He’s already driven off by the time Kid’s got his helmet back on.
When Kid returns to his hotel, the piece of paper in his pocket is soaked through from the snow, now falling in earnest, the numbers blurred far beyond recognition. Kid tries every combination of numbers he can reasonably guess at; none of them ever calls him back. There’s no name on the paper.
“It’s fucking cold, man.”
Wire squares his shoulders, crossing his arms over his chest, illustrating the point but not to Heat smoking out the window (though the effect is mostly ruined by Wire’s mesh tank top, the obvious reason why he’s cold from just a draft, and Killer’s already offering Wire his sweater).
“It’s snowing,” says Heat, taking another drag on his cigarette.
Kid’s not interested enough to get up and look closer, but through the open window above Heat’s head, if he squints he can see the flurries of snow coming down, just like outside that mountainside town last year. Kid scowls; he doesn’t want to think about that, the ruined piece of paper and the flashlight still sitting in his kitchen drawer, the calls he’d made long since buried and probably gone from his call log at this point. He still hasn’t heard back from any of them, and the guy could have a different number by now. Maybe he’d given Kid a fake number--but if he hadn’t wanted the flashlight back, couldn’t he have just said so? Kid’s still not sure if the guy was hitting on him or not, but he hadn’t given him much to go on, a few seconds in the snow, and he knows he’s not bad-looking, scars and all, and--yet.
It’s been nearly a year. He should let it go by now. It’s just a missed opportunity, like barely losing the Battle of the Bands when they were all in college--better to be bitter about that, anyway, transfer his feelings like coffee grounds from the pot to the mug.
“More beer?” Killer nudges his shoulder.
Kid looks at his; he’s nearly done. “Sure.”
Heat finally shuts the window, stubbing his cigarette out on the sill. Wire’s still got his arms crossed, and Killer’s sweater is draped over his shoulders like a shawl; it doesn’t look very effective.
“You look mad,” Heat says, gesturing to Kid with his chin.
“Just thinking,” says Kid, and swallows the rest of his beer, almost a little too quickly.
“About what? Work?”
“Nah. That guy I met last year.”
“Still hung up on him?” says Wire. “He can’t have been that hot.”
Kid rolls his eyes. It’s not that he was that hot (although, maybe, he was that hot); it’s about how he’d stopped and helped, offered the flashlight, given advice without sounding condescending, even though he’d also seemed kind of mean--perhaps that was just Kid’s intuition, taking one to know one or something. Whatever. It’s all those things, and it’s the near-miss, the train doors slamming shut in his face, the clear series of paths not taken, illuminated with giant signs the way exit rows on an airplane are supposed to be when the power goes out (what if Kid hadn’t gone out, what if he hadn’t gone far, what if the damn rental bike hadn’t broken, what if it hadn’t snowed, what if it had been just a little warmer, what if his phone had been charged and he hadn’t needed a flashlight, what if that guy hadn’t seen him, hadn’t stopped, hadn’t had a flashlight).
The guy is probably still in that town, or maybe somewhere else--maybe he’d just been passing through, or on vacation, or, like Kid, out there for work (whatever he does). Still. Kid tips the empty beer bottle back into his mouth again, then turns. Killer’s still in the kitchen, fussing around with something.
“I’m not hung up on him,” says Kid. “I don’t know. I don’t like leaving things open.”
(Perhaps he should consider it closed, though, an opportunity lost, but though he’d never call himself a crazy optimist, it doesn’t feel as if it’s over and done with.)
It’s just when Kid’s stopped carrying the flashlight in his bag--which, to be fair, is long after he’s started actively trying to date, after he’s decided that he won’t just be some loser stuck in the past and on someone he’d never actually had a thing with--that he sees the guy again. He’s waiting in a coffee shop by the medical complex because Killer has a doctor’s appointment and doesn’t like hospitals any more than Kid does (they always make Kid want to gag on the anticipation of the smell of hand sanitizer and cleaning supplies clogging his nose, touch the scars on his face and his left arm where it ends, look around two or three times to make sure none of his old doctors are around even though that was a different hospital and a long enough time ago they’ve probably all forgotten him by now).
Kid orders himself a coffee, pours in enough sugar to the empty space below the lip of the cup, and then stirs it in, splashing some over the side the way he always does. It’s no matter; the coffee ends up exactly as sweet as he wants it, mixing with and masking the bitterness with its own sort of bite, the only way Kid ever takes his coffee. It’s still too hot to drink, so he pulls out his phone and his charger, plugs it into the nearest outlet, and then, glancing up at the menu board behind the counter, he sees the guy.
At first, he’s sure it’s just his subconscious playing tricks on him, a different tall man with hair sticking out a different angles and a beard, but then it’s almost as if he catches Kid’s eye without seeing, turns to look at him after paying for his order, and it’s definitely him. He’s got the same tired, worn-out look on his face, the same obscenely pretty eyelashes, the same twist of a mouth.
Well, fuck.
The guy takes his drink and walks straight to Kid’s table.
“Do you still have my flashlight?”
It’s a rude, abrupt opening, not that Kid would have started with pleasantries, not that he would have known what to say, but fuck, he really wants to smile.
“Not with me. But I do still have it.”
Unprompted, the guy sits down across from Kid, and sips his drink. Kid looks at him--he’s wearing a suit, a nice wool coat, completely different from those printed pants and the fake gang logo jacket.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Kid finally manages.
“I work nearby. I’m a doctor.”
“You’re too young to be a doctor,” Kid says, automatically, because there’s no way in hell he’s that old (like, he has to be younger than kid).
The guy frowns a little deeper, pronouncing the furrow in his brow like an elocution lesson. “I’m twenty-six.”
(Still pretty young, though older than he looks, and maybe that’s the reason for the formal dress--what is he, some kind of medical prodigy?)
“What kind of doctor?”
“Surgeon,” he says.
“Huh,” says Kid, and then he takes a sip of coffee--it’s cool enough not to burn his tongue now, and the sweetness is refreshing.
“Anyway. I’m sorry I didn’t call you and give your flashlight back. The paper got all soggy and I couldn’t read the numbers. But I did mean to give it back.”
The doctor gives a slight nod, and Kid pulls a face--would anyone really lie about this?
“Put your number in my phone? I’ll give you a call and you can come pick it up.”
He nods again, and Kid opens the contact list in his phone. The doctor removes one glove (there are tattoos on his hand, but Kid can’t get a good look at them while his fingers are moving so quickly), taps in his information on the screen, and then sets it down on the table. He’s calling himself; the contact name on the screen is, presumably, his--Trafalgar Law. It’s strange, after this whole time, to put a name to the face and the voice, to the idea of him. Law takes his own phone out of his pocket and declines the call, though he doesn’t ask Kid for his name or any of his other information.
“I should get back to work,” he says, putting his phone back in his pocket and replacing his glove.
He turns to go, and Kid watches him leave, the grip of his hand around his large drink, the long strides and what he can make out of his silhouette.
“Hey, Trafalgar?”
He turns, his mouth not so set in its frown, as if he’s pleased Kid used his name.
“You single?”
He nods before turning and leaving the shop, doesn’t look back before he’s lost to the snow coming down outside and then, presumably, out of range of the window.
Law proves not to be much of a talker, except when he wants to be; he’s the kind of guy to wait and wait and put his cards down at the last possible second, but it’s not for lack of confidence in what he says. Kid knows he’s the kind of guy to rip through things, talk loud and fast and often, play his cards when he gets them and assume he’ll pull it all through. People like Law tend to find him irritating, but Law mostly doesn’t (and when he does, he’s faking it, or play-fighting, no teeth to give him puncture wounds). On the surface, it’s the kind of thing that gets Wire to make an offhand remark about how Law’s like Killer, but--Kid doesn’t like to compare people like that, and they’re really not alike at all.
(“I can’t believe you kept thinking about me for two years,” Law says, his mouth twisting into a dark grin, and Kid glares back at him.
“You were the one who recognized me.”
“Maybe I just missed my flashlight.”
His eyes give him away, not that he hadn’t already given himself away before then. Even though he’s probably got nothing else to say, Kid kisses him to shut him up for good measure. Just because.)
Kid moves into Law’s place in the fall, when his lease is up. Law’s place is bigger and more convenient for both of them, closer to most of Kid’s friends and right on the bus line that goes to the shop where he’s working as a welder, near a couple of decent motorcycle shops, and close (but not too close) to the hospital complex. There’s a leaky sink that’s easy for Kid to fix, enough room for all of Kid’s tools and space on the bookshelf for his records, space for them both to fit and share. Kid finds room for his hair gel on the ledge of the sink, and gets used to unfogging the mirror from Law’s shower on days when Law has to go in early.
And as the autumn brings cold and shorter days, it’s still plenty cozy, warm under the blankets when they’re both there. Law sleeps more, his face freezing into more of a frown (and Law’s friend Shachi tells Kid, once, that Law really hates the winter--as if he almost can’t believe it was snowing when Law met Kid and they’d ended up getting together, as if that was nearly a disqualifier).
There is still so much about Law that Kid doesn’t know, but there’s still so much about Kid that Law doesn’t know, either. Maybe they’re doing things all wrong, ass-backwards and right foot last, but Kid doesn’t really know any other way to be.
The sky looks like snow, dark for late afternoon but light for mid-evening; the transition between the two happens, as it does this time of year, while Kid’s on the bus, playing with his phone. When he gets off, near the end of the line, he steps onto an empty street, lit by window signs and streetlights and the brightness of the sky, though the light does not reveal any snow falling yet.
Law is asleep on the couch, half-finished coffee mug on the table next to his reading glasses, one of the stems still crooked. Kid deposits his bag on the floor and picks up the glasses, heading into the kitchen to look under the sink for the right screwdriver. He’s hungry, maybe should have picked something up--but then he’d have to wake Law up to eat, so maybe they’ll just order up later.
Adjusting the screws on the glasses is a small thing, but Kid has to squint to see properly (one of the bulbs in the overhead fixture is burned out, and Kid keeps meaning to ask Law to do it but he hasn’t yet). He almost loses the screws in the folds of his pants, but in the end the thing’s done. He leaves the glasses on the counter before he puts the screwdriver back, and as he’s closing the cupboard he hears the floor creak; Law was maybe not as asleep as he’d thought.
He’s rubbing his eyes though, his hair sticking up at odd angles (he needs a haircut, but it would be cute if he were to let it grow a little longer too, Kid thinks).
“Your glasses are on the counter.”
“Oh. Thanks,” says Law.
He yawns, not bothering to hide it, like a housecat interrupted; Kid catches the gesture, popping his jaw. He rises to his feet.
“Takeout for dinner?”
Law nods. “You order. I’ll pick it up.”
He fusses with the coffee maker, doesn’t ask if Kid wants any (he never has any coffee this late, and if he was going to he’d say something and Law knows it), while Kid digs through the menus until he finds the sushi place down the street, leaving the phone in the crook of his neck and hugging Law around the waist. Law sags into him like a shelf pressed into place on a self-assembled bookcase, flipping the switch on the coffee maker and then turning to hug Kid around the waist, and Kid nearly doesn’t answer when the restaurant picks up on the other end of the phone.
He orders the same set of combos they get every time; after all, he’s a creature of habit and Law’s a picky eater.
“Twenty minutes,” Kid says, as the call disconnects.
His hand’s not free, on the small of Law’s back; he could take it off, but it won’t be too uncomfortable to cradle it between his neck and ear for a little while longer.
Law always looks so tired, always is so tired, but that makes his sexual stamina all the more impressive. He goes and goes, fingers denting Kid’s chest when he rides him, nails digging red crescent moons into Kid’s back, drawing himself out longer and longer when Kid gives him a blow job, until Kid’s jaw is aching and sore and tight, until he feels like he won’t be able to talk for a few days. Here, Law won’t dress his want up in sidelong remarks or small gestures; he’ll just go for it, take and take and give and give like it’s already gone out of style and he’s going to be obnoxious about it.
“I like this side of you,” Kid says.
“I know,” says Law, wrapping his legs tighter around Kid’s waist.
Kid’s already kissed all the lipstick off his mouth and onto Law’s face, probably, but better have one more for good measure.
Kid wakes up to his arm empty, his hand open at the end of his line of sight, the shrieking of the pipes like a tuning fork if his ear were up close next to it, and then the ringing afterwards. Law’s in the shower, and it’s fucking cold, which is probably why he’d woken up. Most of the duvet is on Law’s side of the bed, crumpled around nothing; Kid steals it back, securing it tightly around himself on the far side to make a cocoon. The window’s still cracked, but the sounds coming through it are muted, not drowned out by the pipes but by the snow still falling outside, flakes butting against the sliver of window visible behind the curtain like ghost flies. Kid looks at his hand; the nail polish is flaking away at the ends again.
He pulls his hand under the cover, shivering at his own touch on his bare chest and closes his eyes. He needs a shower too, and he’d shower with Law but they’d probably end up having sex again, take an hour, use up all the hot water just when they really needed to shower again, and the idea is appealing but so is sleep. The water shuts off with a squeal, and Kid closes his eyes.
The soft creaks of Law’s feet on the bedroom floor, the shuffle of the towel against his hair, the smell of Kid’s own shampoo, the dip of the mattress when Law sits back down--and then Kid opens his eyes. In the half-dark, he can still see the shape of the tattoo against the skin of Law’s back, his skin picking up light in ways the ink doesn’t. Kid extends his arm, his reach not quite long enough to place his palm over the design but enough to trace the bottom with his finger and then drag down Law’s spine. Law turns his head, flicking droplets of water from his hair onto Kid’s wrist.
“Are you going to give me some of the cover back?”
“Nah,” says Kid. “I’m good.”
Law still crawls in next to him anyway, into the crook of Kid’s shoulder, fucking freezing at first, but not intolerably so.
“I don’t like the cold,” Law complains, which--no shit.
“You met me in the cold,” says Kid.
“I used to like it less,” says Law, rolling over into Kid’s chest, and the honesty of it nearly knocks the wind out of Kid--from Law, that’s sweet, but it’s straight to the point, cutting with a clean blade.
Kid still, sometimes, considers the possibilities, the other worlds that could exist if all those theories about multiverses have any merit, every choice dividing timelines neatly into two or three or five. Any universe where they hadn’t met that night but still met in the coffee shop, or where they’d met somewhere else (an airport, a train station, a grocery store), or where Kid had tucked the paper into a more secure place in his pocket, but those other worlds are hidden behind other choices, welded together with different seams, weight distributed differently, blurred and faded in a way to which his eyes can’t adjust. Kid’s never been one for pointless speculation anyway. What matters is what they have here, and it’s pretty damn good; even if all the other hims are satisfied, even if they’ve got two years’ more worth of satisfaction with Law, Kid wouldn’t be tempted to trade this away.
(Sure, that’s a sappy thought, sweet like stale candy, sweeter than Kid likes his coffee, but it’s not like Law’s not thinking the same thing, at least some of the time, when his smile’s far too subtle, through his fingers with his chin in his hand.)