Dark and cold or bright and warm

[forthedog]

There are innumerable bars in the city. Some of them, Mike is familiar with; the ones between the Dollhouse and home are well known to him by now and he to them. Some of them he hasn't met yet, simply by virtue of rarely going into the parts of the city where they are. And one of them he won't go back to, though the glass and the blood are long cleaned up and the bullet is picked out of the wall.

The one he's heading toward isn't really any of these, not entirely new to him but not close enough to be all that familiar, not exactly upscale but also not the kind of dim, smoky dive that he usually goes to when left to his own devices.

He doesn't know what this is about. He feels like he should. Because it's definitely about something.

Meet me at the corner of Haight and Beacon at 9.

It's a cold night and not as crowded as it had been in early fall, and Neil's the only one standing on the corner. Mike moves closer, not hurried, allowing himself the intervening time to just... look. Because naked or clothed, that's another thing he's not anywhere near tired of.

When he stops he looks from Neil to the bar and back again, one eyebrow slightly raised. "Hi."

Comments

[likeaplanet]

It might've been easier if I could've just forgotten like I know he has. Less complicated. Less fucking confusing, trying to keep dates straight and which ones matter now and which ones don't. But even without Tom here, even with our quickie City Hall wedding a few months back, our first wedding... it matters.

But the day before Thanksgiving was too fucking chaotic to make a big deal of it, so instead, I've waited 'til today. I've waited 'til after my shift, shooting off an invitation to one of the nicer bars I've been to in this city. I'm not nervous, not really, but when I see him there on the street corner, my stomach does this funny swoop thing that I can't really ignore.

Grinning crookedly, I close the distance between us and lean in to press my lips to his in a fleeting kiss. "Hey."