mooore AU
Title: shift to drive (Motorbikes AU, a prequel of sorts)
Pairing: Rook/Thom, pre-slash
Rating: PG for swearing
Summary: Thom remembers how they met, this time.
Thom remembers how they met, this time. For the second time.
It was late at night, after a double shift at work and a line of irritable customers and unintelligible Chinese-accented English. He was walking home to an empty apartment. His clothes smelled like lo mein and there was a stain on his shirt, right in the middle, making him feel awkward and unpresentable but too weary to care. His glasses were slipping, sweat-slick, down the bridge of his nose. If there was a moon in the sky he couldn't see it beyond the smog.
He trudged home, slowly but steadily, only two blocks now from the bus station. It wasn't a bad neighborhood but it wasn't a good one, mostly full of immigrants and their many families, crammed too many bodies to a room, hanging out the windows. Even as he walked by the smell of curry drifted from an open window, a woman sang a lullaby, soft and low, in an unfamiliar language. A single car drifted by though the darkness. One of the headlights was broken. He remembers this clearly, remembers the single globe of light forlornly drifting past.
And then he remembers a man, a businessman, emerging from an alleyway just ahead. Well, perhaps not an alley so much as a side street, but narrow and almost always empty of passersby at this time of night. Thom raised his eyebrows, glancing slantwise at him. He was curious, for a moment, and then cynically amused- the man's suit was crumpled, hair tousled, his expression slack in a familiar fashion. Of course. No man in a suit that expensive would come down here for any sort of business, but they sure as hell came in droves for the women, dark-eyed and dusky. Thom didn't even make eye contact as they passed each other on the sidewalk. He didn't need to look that man in the face to know him.
Just as he reached the mouth of the street the business man had emerged from, hands buried in his pockets and mind once more drifting, there was another man. This one came from the same direction and they nearly ran into each other, doing the tentative left-right dance of strangers in the way. And then Thom halted, and froze, and stared.
He recalls more than anything else the way the other man looked silhouetted by night. Tall, but not taller than him, sturdier, head and body at sharp angles. Thom caught the glimpse of a profile, a familiar annoyed twist to unfamiliar lips, and did not move. After a moment, the man stared back. After two, he glared. When Thom did not respond to either tactic, he spoke.
"What you lookin' at?" he asked, low and harsh, like he'd had a cold recently or worn out his voice. The strange rasp jolted Thom and he shook his head. The smile on his lips was decidedly bitter. It was stupid, really. He didn't know what he'd been thinking. It had only been a conversation the day before that had the past at the forefront of his mind, bringing up faces better left forgotten. After all, there was no young boy here, so easy smile, only a man's face edged in shadows. He let out a soft chuckle. "Not a damn thing," Thom said, and laughed again.
Of course this innocent answer was precisely the wrong one. He knew that now, that he had issued an unknown challenge. The man drew closer, and Thom saw that his hair was blond, tinted amber by the flicker of a television in a nearby window. Thom did not step back. This seemed to puzzle the stranger, made him lean in even closer, until Thom could tell even in the dark that he was sneering. He wonders how they must have looked, then; himself slouched, weary, open-edged and sharp, the other man looking up into his eyes like a wild animal with something to prove, the two of them scant inches apart and backlit by a shifting orange light.
There was the snick of a switchblade opening. Thom had a feeling it was aimed somewhere unpleasant. "You got a fucking death wish?" was the next question, a growl in the tone, and Thom felt puffs of air fluttering against his neck. They were too close suddenly, far too close, and Thom felt backed into a corner although the air was clear for yards.
He's still not sure what prompted him to answer, after a scant second, with another question.
"You got a fucking brother?"