Thirst Trap [https://i.imgur.com/oxezwME.png]
----------------------------------------
“Honestly,” Rocco scratched the back of his neck, “I didn’t think you’d come.”
“You look like shit.”
“Ah, thanks.”
Richard stared as best he could, with as unimpressed a face as he might muster, with his hands in his pockets and a head full of rememberings. Somehow, he wasn’t sure how convincing it was, and Rocco seemed more interested in the scanty clouds above them than the man who’d posted his extraordinary bond in spite of every single reason not to. They idled outside the police station looking for a reason to part ways, and the spiritual elephant separating them trumpeted, wild and untameable.
“So, what did you do?” Richard nodded to the building.
“Some things, I guess. Bit of an altercation,” Rocco said.
“Ten thousand for bail is not some things, man.”
“Is that how much it was?” Rocco pulled a toothy frown that neither man found sweet, nor savoured. “I might have been caught with some stuff that… wasn’t strictly mine.”
“I heard you’re pretty good at that.”
Rocco shot him a glare that nearly withered the bushes around them. Even the breeze retreated from its strike. “Don’t, Richard.”
The man was caught off guard by the curtness, a rose more thorn than flower. What scope Rocco had to be offended by reality escaped Richard, but he recoiled all the same, and looked downwards at his feet for an uncomfortable forever-moment. Where once had been silence, now came truly startling quiet, as the city itself paused for a moment to luxuriate in the awkwardness. Richard longed for a satellite to plunge from the sky and crush him then and there to spare the tension one man was feeling and the other wielding like a whip of scorching impartation.
Rocco watched Richard shuffle in place—his was the image of a nervous teenager whose heart sat in another’s palm, and Rocco longed to fill the space with something that would make Richard squirm in his skin and twist against the conflict written right across his face. Yet, for all his desire, he couldn’t find the words. Rather, in trying, Rocco found something the taste of guilt, new to his torturous vanity.
It takes two.
Rocco bit his lip. “Why’d you do it?”
“Do what?” Richard didn’t look up.
“Bail me out.”
“You asked nicely.”
Rocco pushed off from the station’s wall. “You didn’t come all this way because I asked nicely, because I didn’t ask nicely.”
As the other man began to meander away, Richard moved to follow, to issue a retort of his own making—and forgot about his foot. He took a wrong step and the muscles screamed, and shot a searing ripple up his leg. He swore, tripping forwards, hands caught in his pockets. Eyes snapped shut, the ground rushed at him.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Everything stopped.
Came spinning whiplash. A shaky inhale. Richard prepared for his nose to be broken and spurting blood down his face, for pain as soon as the shot of sudden adrenaline faded. Only, the surge did fade, and he took another breath, and was some way off the floor, bundled some way into Rocco’s desperately outstretched arms, and braced against the man’s knee.
He even smelled the same.
The embrace lasted longer than accident, and started the elephant trumpeting in a completely different key. Rocco began to strain, for Richard was a heavy man—Rocco was too, but more on the heart than the hips—so he shifted Richard’s weight and helped him back up, much as he’d done the last time they were this close. He was getting good at it, his gentle touch.
“One foot in front of the other. It’s what all the cool kids are doing,” Rocco said, brushing Richard’s jacket.
Richard stifled a grin and nodded, rubbing his face and testing his right foot with tentative taps of his toes. Embarrassment looked the same on the cheeks as a different, far more dangerous emotion, and silence again filled the space between the two men, but now they were two feet from each other and too close to hide behind it.
“So, what was that? Twisted your ankle or something?” Rocco pointed downwards.
Richard shook his head. “No, I—I dropped a bottle last night, and… stepped on it.”
“Christ,” Rocco said, concern churning to sardony. “Did my texts startle you that much?”
It took restraint bordering on self-destruction not to answer the question. All Richard managed was to let a chuckle-hum flee through his nose to relieve the pressure in his head that would otherwise have burst like a bicycle-pumped grape. “I should’ve had it checked out.”
“Why didn’t you?”
With raised eyebrows, Richard palmed the sky, like the answer were self-evidently staring them both in the face and extremely unforthcoming.
“Ah.” Rocco gave in to his biting smirk. The lopsided snarl—the tiny flash of brilliant white teeth beneath—had been the reckless abandon of many. “My bad for dragging you so far out the way.” He scratched his back and looked away, watching a lone car pass them by. “I owe you a coffee, at least. Or a drink.”
Those words dropped Richard’s heart so quickly in his chest that it beat any amount of heel-stabbing sickness. Not a single fibre of his being thought it a good idea. Last time, perhaps a day after Rocco had left him to recover from their cardio—as he’d put it—Richard’s date came inquiring after a certain set of keys that had vanished, that she believed he might have accidentally picked up. It didn’t take the two of them very long to realise what had happened, especially once Richard discovered two of his watches had also vanished into the seeming aether. His date had stormed off abluster, but he bottled his anger, for reasons he still couldn’t, or wouldn’t willingly, put into words. It had festered since, neither strong enough to spur him to action nor subtle enough to fade away, and become a web of excuses chasing after reasoning they simply didn’t possess.
Richard should’ve hated the man, and he knew that he should, and he knew that he didn’t as much as he should.
“What do you say?” Rocco turned back to make pointed eye contact. “Coffee? Drink?”
“Sure, but”—hesitation would not be his saviour now, either, so Richard merely exhaled—“I want to talk about some stuff.”
“Stuff?” Rocco said. “That sounds like it’ll be uncomfortable.”
“I could always go to the hospital instead.”
The dark bargaining caught Rocco in his side for a second, dismissed with a shrug. “Fine. We can talk about stuff.”
“And over a drink, not coffee,” Richard said. “Nobody makes it the way I like around here.”
Rocco nodded too pensively to that, and his masque slipped. Whatever was underneath it, the extent of his real self, seldom came through. “When?”
“This evening. I’ve got errands.”
“Am I keeping you?”
“Little bit.”
Rocco rubbed sleep from his eye. “…Where?”
“The less walking, the better,” Richard said, raising his problem-foot.
“So, yours?”
“Mine.”
Rocco pointed. “Bacardi?”
Richard frowned. “Rum.”
The rope grew tighter.
“Vodka?”
“Rum.”
And tighter.
“…Whiskey?”
“Whiskey.”
And tighter.