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Shougo’s getting pretty tired of being ignored by bartenders. This is the third place he’s been this afternoon, and the fifth bartender who’s walked right past him as he signaled. At the other end of the bar, a group of white girls with grown-out bleached blonde hair and matching sorority shirts scream; they’ve got what has to be at least their fourth round of shots. This time it looks like tequila, and they’re getting sloppier (Shougo can see the alcohol dripping down their mouths from the corners as they smack their shot glasses back on the bar). Shougo smacks his hand on the bar, and that at least gets the bartender’s attention, even if it’s a glare.
Shougo slips in another peek at his phone; Ryouta’s now twenty minutes late.
“Belvedere martini,” he says as the bartender passes, and hands over his debit card.
He tries to mentally calculate the over/under of her getting it right and doing an okay job, but at a bar where they’d barely glanced at Shougo’s brother’s ID at the door, it seems pretty dubious. The real question is how much of an insult to Shougo Ryouta had meant this choice of venue to be. He could have at least picked a hotel bar or a speakeasy, or a place it’s kind of conceivable that they’d see someone they both know, but a dive bar on St. Mark’s is a particularly bad choice now that not even the hipsters want to go here. They’re all the same, smelling like stale cheap cigarettes and puke, sticky floors and sticky tables and a general sense of seediness that can’t be coopted into anything else.
(Shougo’s brother would say that at least it’s not fake, but Shougo’s brother wouldn’t set foot in any bar within ten blocks of here. Shougo had left him at some hipster place with a sidewalk cafe and real tables, all the things that matter when you’re in college and pretending to be adults even though all your money still comes from your parents, and that don’t matter as much when you’re seventeen and still trying to sneak your way past bartenders. Unless you’re Ryouta and his friends, which—well. The air’s not sour enough to turn Shougo’s mood back to petty jealousy.)
The glass he gets for his martini could be stained or it could be the light, and Shougo’s not stupid enough to send it back. Ryouta would be, will be if he ever gets here. There are worse things than drinking alone, though, and maybe some drunk Long Island girl will let him hit on her and he’ll convince her he’s totally going back deep into Suffolk with her but end up dropping her off in the train station. Shit like that he could do every weekend, yeah, but Ryouta’s not really celebrating the end of midterms. The day he studies, the day his grades stop inflating on the strength of his ego and oily charm, is still far away. Maybe nonexistent.
Shougo has to actually show up for class, but it’s not like his grades matter much. He’ll get into some state college somewhere in the boonies where his mom and dad will argue over who has to pay the out-of-state tuition and he’ll smoke weed in the woods with hick kids who are less annoying when they’re high and come back after four years with a piece of paper and an entry-level job somewhere his name still holds a little bit of weight.
Ryouta will probably end up at, like, Yale or someplace—though Shougo’s always had a suspicion Ryouta wants to go to California and get a deep tan and hang out with celebrities and actually do modeling full-time, like he’d said he would when they were in elementary school and Shougo’s front teeth had grown in all awkward and his knees were perpetually skinned and Ryouta had passed out cards in class that had his name and photo on them, professionally done, because he was going to a shoot that weekend.
Fucking hell. Why’s he thinking about any of this now? Ten years ago, when you could still see pores on Ryouta’s face, ten years in the future when Ryouta will be working in Hollywood with his degree from fucking Stanford or some shit and Shougo works in an office here. What does that matter, anyway? So their pasts are entwined, and their futures probably aren’t; they’re still young. (Not like knowing better’s ever stopped Shougo’s parents or his brother, so why should they get all the fun?)
The martini’s not strong enough for the price, but it’s easier to down in one go that way. As he slams it back on the bar, he smells something familiar in the air, and though usually he’d wrinkle his nose, Ryouta’s Bleu de Chanel is a bit of a welcome respite from the air in here.
“Starting without me?” says Ryouta.
“Didn’t think you were coming,” says Shougo.
He signals for the bartender again, and is ignored, again.
“Honestly,” says Ryouta, rolling his eyes and shrugging off his navy Dior coat. He drapes it over Shougo’s arm, and Shougo lets it fall. Ryouta catches it in midair, glaring at Shougo as if it’s his fault—he’s not a fucking coat stand, and there’s a barstool within reach.
“Excuse me?” says Ryouta.
The closest bartender turns, her scowl almost instantaneously turning to a cautious smile as her eyes meet Ryouta’s. Fucking why does it work like this? Ryouta’s pretty, but he’s not that pretty.
“Can I help you?”
“I’ll have a gin and tonic. And my friend here will have another vodka martini.”
“Belvedere,” says Shougo. “And I have a tab open.”
“Great, we’ll put it on yours,” says Ryouta.
“I wasn’t offering to pay for you,” says Shougo. “And don’t order for me.”
Ryouta snorts. “Like it’s hard to know what you’re going to have.”
Shougo crosses his arms. All of a sudden, he feels more overexposed than a roll of film left out to cook in the sun. A jewel Ryouta’s inspecting, magnified to see every single flaw blown up at five hundred times larger than it is. He’s not a fucking coward, though; he won’t look away. Ryouta’s got plenty of flaws of his own, and last season’s Gucci loafers are just the ones he probably cares about the most.
That’s not true. It’s a disservice to Ryouta, and to how well Shougo knows him, to say that even bitterly.
The bartender’s back already, drinks in clean glasses, and Ryouta thanks her with a flash of a smile. Shougo sighs.
“Jealous?”
“You fucking wish,” says Shougo. “I don’t have to do that shit to get a drink.”
“Then why aren’t you drunker?”
“Unlike you, I can hold my liquor.”
Some people say the best lies are the boldest, but Shougo can’t get shit past Ryouta. It goes both ways, though—and it’s rare for something between the two of them to be so even. Shougo will take it. And he’ll take the kiss Ryouta gives him, but that’s not the only thing he’ll take, hands in Ryouta’s back pockets squeezing his ass and clawing at the seams deep in the fabric, sucking the taste of menthol and gin and tonic from Ryouta’s teeth.