Chapter Twenty-Five: November, 2000
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"I'm sticking to the floor," Aaron complained, lifting his foot to illustrate that he was doing just that.
"I'm sticking to you," Kate muttered, clinging to his side. "This place is rank."
She wasn't wrong. The beat was throbbing, the people around them blank-eyed and gyrating along; a writhing mass of sweat and heat. Aaron blinked sweat out of his eyes and curled his arm around her shoulders, feeling kinda bad. This wasn't her scene—not really his either—and only his practised charm had gotten them through the door when she'd nervously held out her fake ID for inspection.
"There are back rooms," Kyle called to them, bouncing on his heels. This was his scene, and he was wild with the thrill of the night. A bottle in either hand and a joint hanging out of his mouth as he waited for Keith to finish flicking split drink from his jeans. "Hurry up, I look like a tool."
"You are a tool," Aaron told him, shaking his head as Kyle gestured for him to take the joint before he fucking swallowed it from the people jostling him. "No. You brought it in here. Your problem, not mine. I'm not getting my ass kicked for carrying something I don't even smoke."
"No team spirit!" his friend hollered. Aaron felt Kate shiver slightly as another man shoved past them, pupils huge in the strobe lighting that reflected from clothes and skin and the twining smoke hanging in the air from both the machine working to obscure the dancefloor and from the cigarettes visible as red glows in the dark-blue gloom.
"Come on," Aaron coaxed her, spotting the rooms that led away from the throng. "We'll grab our drinks and head into there. They'll be quieter."
"Hardly," she grumbled, weaving the way through the horde to the bar, her fingers tight around his. Aaron knew they'd only ended up here, away from the more-well known locales, not because of 'charm' like Kyle kept trying to say, but probably more because everyone was so off their tits they'd be able to score easily.
The whole thing left him feeling unsettled and anxious, on edge, and he knew Kate felt the same. Knew her eyes were following her sister as Jenny vanished into the crowd with Keith. By the time any of their group made their way back to them, they'd probably be smashed.
"Sorry for dragging you out with this lot," Kate was apologising, as they pressed into the smoky back room, coughing slightly at the thick scent of nicotine and weed layered in the upholstery and manky carpeting. Three pool tables were lined against the back wall, a couple of poker tables to the side, the rest of the space made up of red booths with tacky plastic-coated tables and stiff curtains that could be pulled to hide the seats within. Aaron eyed the tables, eyed the stained booths, and shuddered at the idea of touching any of it. "I didn't think he'd be such a fuckwit tonight."
"Your boyfriend," Aaron grumbled under his breath, eyes burning, watching as the group by one of the pool tables began to meander away. "Great taste, by the way."
"Like you can talk," she snapped back. They found stools, dragged them to the table and managed to lift the cue from the man staggering away. The wood pulled at his skin as he rubbed his knuckles tentatively across the edge, clearly having never seen a damp rag in its life. "Best of three?"
He nodded, setting up. Glum that this was it. Nineteenth birthday, and he was spending it being dragged from miserable DC nightclub to miserable DC nightclub as Kate bickered with her boyfriend and the others got increasingly off their faces. And there wasn't enough alcohol in the world to haze this experience into something palatable, although as he steadily worked his way through several bitter beers, it did make the revulsion of his surroundings sink away slightly.
The night hammered on, the air getting thicker. He won the first two, lost the last as the thick smoke began to cloud his judgement. Played her again for threes, lost both despite her glass hitting empty more often than full. The others were nowhere to be seen. A couple of times, Kate went to weave unsteadily away to look for her dropkick boyfriend.
Both times, Aaron coaxed her back, ignoring how crappy the atmosphere in there was. Sickly aware that Kyle, knowing him, was probably finding his own amusement out there, and it really wasn't something he wanted Kate walking out on.
Not tonight. They'd deal with it, again, another night.
I miss New York, he thought, not for the first time, and leaned back on his cue to try and gather his wits, scanning the room. College was grating on him, the courses tough, the professors demanding, and every chance he tried to grasp to relax ended up like this. With him mediating his friends' bullshit squabbles. Eyes lingering on the poker tables, there was a crowd pressing around them, the drunkest of the lot leaning over the table and shouting. He looked away quickly, as a broad-shouldered, rough-faced man jerked his gaze up to meet his and sneered. That was a corner to avoid, then.
A girl fell out of the booth nearby, crawling to her feet and stumbling away, leaving the curtain open. Aaron glanced automatically in, watching numbly through his headache and aching head as the inhabitants ducked low over the line on the table.
"Oh great," Kate hissed, glancing over. "Knew there'd be coke everywhere here. Great. Can we just go?" She looked miserable, glass empty again, face flushed, and Aaron looked at her and then straight past her, a flicker of movement over her shoulder catching his attention. The crowd at the tables had gone quiet, a man standing with his shoulders bowed as the rough man from before pushed against him.
Not my problem, Aaron thought, seeing the skinnier man's back hit the wall, chair cracking on the ground. Fight coming. And, time to go, as the first punch was thrown and the man dropped.
Grabbing her hand, he dragged her against the surge of people trying to get a good look, half screaming because they could, half shrieking for them to hit him harder, come on, and a small subset trying to calm the rest down. The crowd pushed back, despite their intentions, and Aaron swore and let himself be carried with it, spotting a fire exit door propped open by a ratty brick to try and let some air in and diving for it. The crowd pushed between them, the fight working its way to the door even as Aaron tried to do the same, barely making it before people began to bustle around the exit. They dived through, Kate stumbling and hitting the asphalt on her bare knees, gasping. The door banged shut behind them, the sound of people cut off as abruptly as if a switch had been flicked.
Cool air burst into his lungs, clearing the smoke and the shit from his chest, and he took three breaths and sighed with relief, the alley around them dipping and weaving and doubling over in an attempt to pull his feet out from under him.
"Thanks," Kate said, standing and leaning over to check her bloodied knees, before promptly staggering to the garbage bags and dumpsters and loudly puking into them. Aaron winced, his stomach lurching in sympathy, following her and tugging a lock of sweaty mouse-brown hair out of splatter range. "Urgh, oh god, don't look, Aaron—"
"S'fine," he mumbled, looking away to give her privacy. A drunk stumbled past the mouth of the alley, pausing, and Aaron could hear him loudly reliving himself against the brick.
This was it. No more. No more fucked up weekends doing this. He couldn't stand it, and it was messing with Kate's head too. No more.
But he knew he'd be back here next week, or at one just like it. What choice did he have?
The door slammed open, a man hurtling out and hitting the brick wall opposing the door with a yelp, slithering to the ground. Aaron yanked Kate up, pulling her to the mouth of the alley, as men poured from the door and surrounded the fallen one. The fight had followed them, and they needed to be…
"You little shit," snarled one of them, and even walking away Aaron heard the meaty thwap of foot meeting gut, the gagging choking rasp torn from the kickee's mouth. "Cheating cunt."
Fuck.
"Keep going, stay in the light on the main road," he murmured, shoving Kate forward, and her brown eyes widened, slipping past him to look back at the scene behind them. He passed her his phone and wallet, knowing he'd probably lose both if this went badly. "I'll meet you out there. Keep your phone on you."
"Aaron, don't be a hero," she pleaded, but he wasn't, not really. It wasn't heroic to do what you had to.
He wasn't the kind of person to walk away from five on one.
He turned back and walked resolutely towards the cluster. Kate's footsteps raced away, going for help likely. His own footsteps he kept quiet, soft on the dirty ground, until he was close enough he could smell the blood and spit in the air. Glanced down at the person huddled on the floor, found himself looking into wide hazel eyes that stared at him like he was a ghost. Looked back up, at the white expanse of a sweaty neck and bristling crew-cut. "Excuse me," he said politely, and when the man turned around with a grunt, he broke his nose.
Five on two didn't exactly end well either, but it ended well enough.
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Everything hurt. Kate yammered, Keith was swearing, and Kyle was whimpering about his broken hand. Aaron stared at the sky above, the asphalt cold and stinking under him, and thought glumly about getting up.
"I'm calling for help—hey!" Jenny was saying, and Aaron heard a scuff of movement next to him as the other man leapt upright with complete disregard for his health. "Wait, you need to see a doctor—you're bleeding!"
Aaron heaved himself over, onto his knees, ignoring Kate's gasp, watching the man walk unevenly away without so much as a thank you. Quickly, limping stride, hurried; as though he was running from something. Someone.
"How hurt is he?" Aaron said, words thick around a swollen mouth, and Jenny shot him a distressed look. Hurt enough, then, for the nursing student to worry.
Damnit.
"Urgh," he grunted, his gut screaming as he stood and jogged after him, trying to wipe the sticky wet from his mouth and only smearing it worse with blood from his knuckles.
"Aaron!" floated after him, but he kept going doggedly on, until he rounded the corner and found the man stopped, his back to him and head tilted down and to the side. Waiting. Wide shoulders bowed forward, one arm curled around a slender stomach, brown hair tangled and over-long. Something in Aaron's chest tightened at it, a reminder of something been and gone, and he shoved it all aside.
"You're hurt," he said, stupidly, because hi pot, here's the kettle. "A thanks would be nice."
"Thanks," mumbled the man, and didn't move. Aaron stepped closer, eyeing his neatly pressed slacks, the ironed shirt, the careful fold to his collar. The black coat folded over one arm looked warm, well-made. Not exactly the club's usual clientele, even when splattered with grime and blood and spit. Spit. They'd spat on him. For some reason, this made Aaron furiously protective. "Is that all you wanted?" Aaron stepped forward again, and the man looked forward and away sharply, almost violently.
"Not gonna get checked out?" Aaron said quietly, because there was something disappointing about this. A man this neat, this put-together, in that club… drugs. "No point in me getting my ass kicked for you, only for you to go home and die from internal bleeding or something."
"Or something," the man replied pertly, a smile in his voice despite the slur from what Aaron suspected was a split lip. "That was unnecessary, what you did. I'm grateful. But I brought it on myself, you didn't. I was clumsy."
"They said you were cheating."
"I was. Clumsily." The hand curled over his stomach drifted down, slipped into the hanging pocket of the coat and withdrew a wad of notes. Aaron twitched, staring at it. "Their drunken attempt at 'teaching me a lesson' also allowed me to regain my winnings. Here. My thanks."
The bundle hit the ground in front of Aaron, unrolling in a shuffle of green. Aaron stared at it before tearing his eyes away and jerking them up to stare at the man as he began to walk away.
His brain caught up, sending him hurtling forward to grab the money and pound after the man, fingers roughly digging into the thin bicep and yanking him around to shout, "You fucking encouraged them to beat you, didn't you you fucking idio—"
And he stopped. Stared. Reeled.
"Hi, Aaron," the man said softly, tongue flicking over the oozing cut on his mouth. Not a man at all. Not even close. Taller than Aaron now, sure. But not a man. "You look… exactly the same."
And Aaron said nothing, just stared dumbly at Spencer as he tugged his arm gently free and hung them awkwardly by his side, a lock of hair flicked messily into his eyes and his thin face downcast, mouth a tight line. Eighteen years old, Aaron calculated quickly, and looking every inch like he had the first time they'd met.
Except not really.
Thinner now, somehow. Pinched. Eyes ringed in the purple that denoted not enough sleep, clothes neat and quality but awkwardly tailored to a small frame. No glasses. The glasses were gone. Where had his glasses gone?
"You don't," Aaron said finally, blinking himself awake and feeling out of place, lost, unsure of anything really. Questions clamoured on his tongue, choking him, and he couldn't think to work out which one to ask first. Or at all. He felt sick, heart hammering, blood spinning, and knew he was probably about to eat dirt. "What the fuck."
Not really what he'd planned to ask, but hey, it was something.
"You're falling," Spencer said, watching him go down.
"I'm sitting," Aaron corrected, and smacked away the hand held out to him. "It's voluntary."
It wasn't. Ow, he thought miserably as his tailbone smacked the curb, dropping his head between his knees in a rush of giddy/drunk/shocked.
A shadow passed over him. Aaron blinked up, found himself face to face with black slacks and a scuffed silver belt buckle denoting a stylized VU. Tacky and entirely not Spencery, and he looked further up, face flushing, realizing he was also staring directly into the man's crotch. Spencer looked down at him, face blank behind the bruising, pupils reacting easily to the light. Not high, Aaron thought, and choked out a laugh because of course he's not. This was Spencer. Spencer, without the soft weight of childhood smoothing the edges of his face. Spencer with sharp cheekbones and arched brows, his eyes dark and clear. Spencer with a coiling scent to his wrists when he reached down to help Aaron up, his cologne dark and musky and going straight between Aaron's hips in a hot rush of remember this feeling.
Oh, he remembered alright. Remembered the fear and the loss and the hurt.
And he let himself be pulled upright, then stepped away.
"We need to talk," he stammered out, nowhere near as calm as he'd hoped to sound. "Now."
Spencer cocked his head to the side, tossing his chin tightly to flick hair from his eyes, and the heat jolted again. You got so pretty, Aaron thought wildly, eyeing those lips, those eyes, the shape of his jaw. What the fuck.
"Okay," said Spencer with a smile, his smile. Warm despite the bloodied mouth and purpling cheek. Familiar despite the years between them. Happy, despite the last things they'd ever said to each other. "Your friends are looking for you."
They were. Aaron called out from the alley, frantic. He swore. Kate had his wallet, his phone. He could get them—they could go to a diner, something, anything, sit down in the light and the cheer and fix everything. Fix everything they'd broken.
"Wait here," he said, holding both hands up in a coaxing motion, and Spencer nodded and slung his own hands into his pockets, settled his posture into a waiting pose. "I'll grab my stuff and come back, and then we can talk, okay?" Another nod. Sure, said after him in a bright tone, hardly slurred at all. Aaron could swear he ever heard a quiet happy birthday, but when he looked back before ducking around the corner, Spencer was silently watching.
And when Aaron jogged back to the spot where he'd left him, he was gone.
"Aaron?" Kate panted, skidding to a stop next to where Aaron was staring helplessly at the empty street. "Who are you going with? Where's your friend?"
A swallow that hurt. Familiar pain, guilt, grief, misery.
"We're not friends," Aaron snapped, and turned away.