by Alix Hadden
When he went to the front desk to hand in his locker key, Fran, the owner was just coming out of the back office.
"You were doing pretty well today, there," Fran said, taking the key from him. "That problem, the one on the overhang?"
"Yeah, I couldn't get it yesterday, but it came together first time today," Kir said.
"That's how it goes sometimes," Fran agreed.
"Hey," Kir found himself asking. "Was there a newbie in yesterday afternoon? Red hair." Nice arse, he didn't say. "I was chatting to him on his way over, wondered how he was doing."
He cringed internally as soon as he'd said it -- just how obvious was he being? -- but Fran was nodding.
"Yeah, I know the one. Seems like a nice bloke. Keen, too -- was asking me about shoes. His technique's terrible though. If he's a friend of yours, you should come down here with him sometime, give him a hand, yeah?"
"I -- yeah, I might do that," Kir said. He could feel the heat rising in his cheeks. "Okay then. See you tomorrow, I guess?"
"You have a good day," Fran said cheerfully.
Kir nodded and pushed the glass door open to walk out into the sunshine.
There was a queue, when he reached the cafe, and Ali was behind the counter, looking slightly frazzled. She spotted him as he joined the back of the queue, and raised a hand to wave before turning back to the gleaming silver coffee machine. Kir always found the machine slightly alarming. All that steam and shiny chrome.
He probably ought to have a mint tea or something. He was pretty sure he'd had at least three coffees this morning. But he kind of fancied one of those really frothy absurd coffees, ninety percent sugar and flavourings. Even if Ali would laugh at him.
The door jingled behind him. He glanced over his shoulder to see who was coming in, and his stomach did something peculiar.
Zach.
Zach had spotted him, too. His eyes flickered away from Kir, and he hesitated, his hand still on the door, before he looked over at the clock above the coffee machine, took a breath, and walked in.
Kir really had fucked up that conversation yesterday, hadn't he?
"Hey," Zach said, with a polite smile that bore no resemblance to the grin Kir had seen before. "How's it going?"
"Yeah, I'm...yeah. Good." Kir cursed his sudden inability to put words together.
"How was your meeting?"
"It -- yeah. Went fine." Friendly. He could be friendly. He wasn't going to come onto Zach, or do anything else about it, but he could be friendly. "How was your climb?"
Zach's smile was wider this time, more real. "It was good. I'm really enjoying it. I'm absolutely terrible, though."
"That's just practice," Kir said. He paused for a moment, wondering if he wanted to make the offer, then found his mouth opening without further conscious thought. "Look, if we're both at the wall sometime, I could give you a few tips? I'd have gone back with you yesterday if I'd had the time."
He had the horrible feeling that he sounded insincere. He knew that often, the more anxious he was, the more he sounded like he was faking his emotion. Weird robot Kir. That had always been another of the problems with Becky.
"That would be great." Zach's smile actually reached his eyes, this time. Kir badly wanted to see him smile like he had yesterday, open and slightly dirty. This wasn't that. This was a friendly smile, sure, but that was all. Which was fine. Kir just wanted to be friends.
They'd reached the front of the queue, where Ali was looking at them brightly with a very inquisitive expression.
"Hey Kir. Hey Zach. I didn't know you two knew each other."
"We both go to the same climbing wall," Kir said.
"I'm super new though. Kir's just offered to give me a few tips, if we run into each other sometime."
Ali was very obviously putting things together and coming to what was -- unfortunately -- entirely the correct conclusion. Kir tried to glare pointedly at her without Zach noticing.
"Oh, right!" she said brightly. "Well, Kir certainly spends enough time there, he ought to be helpful. Anyway, what can I get you?"
"Peppermint mocha," Kir said, "and no comments about it either, thank you. I've been up since four and I need sugar with my caffeine. And -- Zach, can I get your coffee?"
Zach smiled, that open, slightly dirty smile that gave Kir ideas about Zach's mouth. He blinked, and realised Zach was saying something.
"...getting a bunch of people from the office," Zach said. "So thanks, but it's fine."
Ali was watching the exchange, and Kir could tell that it was only by a strong effort of will that her eyebrows weren't up in her hairline.
"Right then," she said, "peppermint mocha for you, that's three pounds twenty please, go wait over there where you can load it up with more sugar." She turned to Zach to take his order, and Kir dutifully went over to the end of the counter.
His coffee arrived while Zach was still paying for his. He hesitated for a moment. Should he try to arrange a time when they'd both be climbing? But they'd just said, if they ran into each other...but he shouldn't overstep that, should he. Should he? Zach looked over, saw Kir holding his coffee, and nodded at him. That was a friendly nod, but it was a dismissal, wasn't it? He should just leave it. With a sigh, he took his coffee over to a seat in the corner and started getting his laptop out of his bag.
The queue had disappeared; there was no one waiting behind Zach. Ali finished taking Zach's money, then turned to the other barista, who was busy making Zach's drinks, and said something. The other woman nodded, and Ali ducked out around the edge of the counter and made a beeline for Kir.
"It's him? Isn't it?" she hissed.
"Ali, for fuck's sake, shut up."
"No, but it is. The climbing wall guy. So. Did you ask him out?"
"What? No!"
"Why not? You were going to meet up, that's what you were saying, right? So arrange it! He's cute. He's definitely flirting with you."
Zach had his coffees now, and was adding milk and sugar and shakes of chocolate powder across the tray. He'd be going in a minute.
"He is not flirting with me," Kir hissed.
"He is so!"
Zach turned round, caught Kir's eye, and smiled again. Kir could feel himself going red.
"He is," Ali insisted. "Also, he's cute, and he's nice -- he comes in here pretty often. I'd have tried myself except he's blatantly gay."
"You don't know that!"
"My gaydar is impeccable," Ali said. "Look, he's going to go, and you're going to have to hang around your climbing wall like a lemon waiting for him to show up and you could just short-circuit that by asking him out now."
"I told you. Celibacy. This is just about being friends."
"I swear to god, I will ask him out for you," Ali said.
"You won't."
"Watch me."
She stood up, and Kir, panicking, stood up too.
"Now," she hissed.
The only thing worse than asking Zach out himself would clearly be Ali doing it for him, and he knew her far too well to be certain that she wasn't actually about to make good on her threat.
"Zach?" he said, wending his way back through the tables.
Zach had just picked the tray of coffee up. Was Kir annoying him? Was he happy to see Kir? He was smiling, but... "Yeah? Everything okay? I didn't know you knew Ali."
"We've been friends for ages," Kir said, deliberately not looking back over his shoulder to where he was entirely certain Ali was openly watching them. He could just say, let's arrange a time to go climbing. That would be the sensible, friendly, platonic thing to do. "Look -- look, I wondered, maybe, if you wanted," he swallowed. Climbing. Friendly. "If you wanted to go for a drink sometime?"
Shit. That hadn't been the plan.
Zach's smile got a bit wider. And a bit dirtier. There was something in his eyes, now...Kir's throat was dry. It might not have been the plan, but maybe Ali was right after all. Maybe this was a better plan.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'd like that."
"We can talk about climbing, or something," Kir said, sounding like a total idiot.
"Sure," Zach said, and Kir could have sworn that Zach batted his eyelashes at him. Which would have seemed absurd except that Kir could feel his dick twitch, the way Zach was looking at him, eyes wide and that mouth...
"I'd write your number down, but my hands are kind of full -- can I tell you mine, you can text me, then I'll have yours?"
"Sure," Kir said, pulling his phone out.
He typed the number into the phone, then sent a text saying "Hi. Kir here."
"Got it," Zach said, nodding down towards his pocket. "Felt the buzz."
And that was another flirtatious grin. Kir's pants were definitely feeling a bit too tight.
"I'll drop you a text when I can get at my diary, and we'll sort something out?" Zach said.
"Sure," Kir said.
He watched Zach all the way out of the shop, standing there like an idiot. Ali at least had the manners to wait until the door had shut behind Zach before she whooped and jumped up to give him a high five.
"He hasn't actually texted yet," Kir said. "It might not happen."
But he was grinning too.
It was absurd to be wound up about this. It was just a drink. Kir told himself that several times as he got changed, and resisted second-guessing himself on which T shirt to wear. It was just a drink. Nothing to see here. Then he spent another five minutes debating whether he needed to take a hoodie -- it was warm enough right now not to need one, but that didn't mean it would be by the end of the evening -- until he had to admit to himself that he was just putting off the moment of leaving. And that obviously he should take a damn hoodie, this was London, not somewhere that actually had reliable summer evenings.
The pub they'd eventually decided on, over text, was up in Borough, a bus ride from Kir's place. He didn't actually know where Zach lived, though obviously he worked near Ali's cafe. But apparently it was convenient enough for him, and it had decent beer, which was a draw for Kir although he had no idea what Zach drank.
He was early. He didn't want to be early. On the other hand, he didn't want to look like an idiot walking round the block, either, though he did take the longer route from the bus stop. He hesitated for a moment outside -- if Zach shows up now you'll look like an idiot, just hanging around outside -- then set his shoulders and pushed the door open.
Zach wasn't there, which was unsurprising, because it was still five minutes to seven. On the upside, that gave Kir a chance to get his drink and find a table and try to calm the fuck down.
His phone buzzed while he was waiting for the woman behind the bar to get his pint. He pulled it out with a sudden lurch of worry that it would be Zach, cancelling last-minute -- but no, it was Ali, texting a slightly lurid good luck message in all-caps. He scowled affectionately at the phone and put it back into his pocket; then felt someone behind him.
Zach. His stomach lurched again, but slightly differently this time. Zach, right there, smiling at him.
"You're just in time," Kir said. "I haven't paid for mine yet -- what can I get you?"
Lager, it turned out, which was something of a shame in a pub renowned for its real ale, but hey, Kir wasn't in the business of judging other people's drinking choices. Zach had disappeared when he turned back around, a pint in each hand, but after a second Kir spotted him over in the corner, waving from a table.
"Someone was just heading out, so I nabbed it," Zach said.
"Good work," Kir said, handing Zach his lager and sitting down himself. "Cheers."
"Cheers," Zach said, taking a sip of his beer as Kir did the same.
Zach was wearing a grey T shirt that clung to his chest enough that Kir was fairly sure he could see the outline of a nipple piercing. His mouth went a little dry, and he took a hasty sip of his beer. He couldn't just reach out and touch, even if his hand itched to.
He dragged his gaze back up to Zach's face. Zach was looking straight at him, and smiling slightly. Kir tried not to acknowledge that he'd just been caught -- letching, there was really no other word for it. On the upside, Zach -- maybe didn't seem to mind? He reined himself sternly in. This was just a friendly drink. Zach might have seemed pretty flirty so far, but he probably just the sort of person who flirted with everyone, just in a friendly way. Even if he wasn't, this was still just supposed to be a friendly drink, and almost certainly Kir was going to screw it up anyway. Zach was still smiling at him. He should say something, shouldn't he?
"How's your day been, then?" he asked, taking refuge in the banal and also in another sip of his beer.
Zach shrugged. "Work is work, you know how it is."
"You work in an office, though," Kir said. "Or at least, I assume that, given that you were buying all those coffees. Unless you have a serious and very weird caffeine habit of your own that requires writing notes to yourself to remember." Zach snorted. "I haven't worked in an office since, hell, probably since I had vacation jobs when I was at uni. I'm not sure I do know how it is."
Zach grinned. "There are people. The people ask you to do things. Then you do them. It probably hasn't changed much since you were at uni, whenever that might have been."
"Best part of a decade, as it happens," Kir said, and pulled a face. "Advancing years."
"Coming up on thirty?" Zach said.
"Past it, just," Kir said, trying not to think of it as an admission. It wasn't like you could run away from getting older. Even being a mage didn't help with that.
"I've always liked older men," Zach said, grinning across the table, head tilted slightly to one side.
"Tell me, then," Kir said resignedly. "How old are you?"
"Twenty-five," Zach said.
That was okay. For a horrible moment Kir had thought he was going to be twenty or something -- though he didn't look quite that young, young but not quite that young -- and that might be well over the age of consent but it would still have felt pretty much like cradle-snatching.
"Positively youthful, yes," Kir agreed, dryly, and Zach's grin widened again.
"So what is it you do, not in an office?" Zach asked.
"Coding," Kir said. "People ask me to write code, and I write code, and then I give it to them and they complain about it and I charge them all over again to write what I'd have written in the first place if they'd given me a decent spec."
Zach laughed. "So, see, not all that different from what I do. People who ask you to do things are fundamentally annoying, I think."
It turned out that Zach worked for a small transport charity, in an office based just around the corner from Ali's cafe.
"They're digging a bloody great hole right next to us at the moment," he said with a grimace. "Makes a hell of a racket. I don't know what was wrong with the old building that they had to pull it down instead of, I dunno, just renovating it or something."
"Yeah, but that's just par for the course, right?" Kir said. "Pull it down and start again, put something horrendous in its place."
"To be fair, the building that was there before was old, but it wasn't exactly a shining light of architectural genius," Zach said. "Kind of doubting this will be either, you know? Anyway, right now I kind of don't care one way or the other, I just want it to be less bloody noisy."
"It was everyone else in the office I always found being noisy, when I still worked in open-plan offices," Kir said, grimacing. "Drove me nuts."
"Oh, I quite like that," Zach said. "I like being able to talk to people, you know? They're good people, my colleagues. Good mates, some of them."
"I basically don't like people," Kir said, then remembered that he was talking to someone he'd only just met, rather than someone like Ali who already understood his fundamental curmudgeonly nature, and cursed himself. That was hardly going to entice Zach, now was it? If he even wanted to entice Zach, which probably he didn't anyway, and...
But Zach was laughing. "Yeah, obviously you are wholly anti-social and never come out to talk to anyone
ever." He gestured, slightly, in the direction of the pub they were sitting in.
"Well, you know," Kir said, absurdly relieved that he hadn't made himself look like too much of an idiot. "Special occasions, and all that."
"Special occasions, huh?" Zach said, leaning ever so slightly closer across the table. "I'm flattered."
"You should be," Kir said, meeting Zach's eyes.
He nearly panicked that he'd said too much, been too obvious, misinterpreted how Zach was acting. But then Zach's pupils widened a bit, and Kir felt a curl of heat in his stomach.
"I guess I'll just have to make sure I make it worth your while," Zach said, his voice a little lower than it had been.
For a moment, they held one another's gaze. Kir swallowed, and bit on the inside of his lip. Then Zach smiled, sat back just a little, and picked up his nearly empty glass.
"And I'll start off by buying you another drink, if you want one?" He drained his own glass, and stood up. "You'll have to tell me what you were drinking."
"Pint of Best," Kir said, still a little lost in that moment. He watched Zach's back -- watched his arse, best to admit it, in jeans that were a lot tighter than the ones he'd worn to go climbing -- as the other man walked towards the bar, and tried to work out what he wanted out of this evening.
A shag, he heard Ali's voice at the back of his head. A pint down, and thinking about Zach's eyes meeting his, Zach smiling just a little at him across the table, he could admit to himself that that might well be something he was after.
But he wasn't up for a relationship. But then, neither had Zach indicated that he was after anything of the sort.
If he just wanted a shag, wouldn't he be on Grindr? his back-brain enquired.
There was a half-way house, wasn't there? Somewhere between semi-anonymous sex with someone you'd swiped right on, and A Relationship? Somewhere like -- like having a drink, and seeing where things went.
