Colin McGregor (macattack) wrote in omega_rpg, @ 2008-07-08 17:48:00 |
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Entry tags: | coby, mac |
Who: Mac and Coby
What: Fireworks in the sky and in the bar.
Where: The bar and outside.
When: July 4th
After two miraculous and somehow still boring weeks in the hospital, Coby was in desperate need of some real entertainment. Upon his release he had taken care of his basic needs: food, shelter, and making nice with the neighbors. The atmosphere outside seemed clean - the air fresh, the water clear, almost like everything was still...well, normal. He'd taken the opportunity for walks around the village and had a pretty good idea of where everything was. And on one of these outings he had discovered there was a town bar.
This morning had been the first he didn't wake up fearing his stomach, and now, standing in the middle of the empty street in front of it, he was ready for - and really needed - a good stiff drink.
Like almost any other dive bar he'd been to, this one was dark, decrepit, and smelled of stale beer. Manning the shelf was his friend from the hospital. Awesome.
"Well, if it isn't the tissue angel." Coby straightened his new tie, procured from an abandoned outlet store, and took a seat at the bar with a pleased smile.
Mac had been leaning against the bar, reading a book he'd borrowed from the library on recommendation from Simon. He was starting to get bored and restless once more, and Simon was probably hoping to keep him occupied to avoid him deciding to leave the town again.
He'd been dropping by the bar almost daily now, since people seemed to come by fairly often looking for a drink or two to help forget all the shit that was happening.
"You're a little overdressed for this place," Mac replied, glancing up as Coby entered the bar.
"Nah. How else am I supposed to pick anyone up if I don't look my best?" He nodded to the book in Mac's hands. "What're you reading?"
Mac lifted the book to show him the cover: 'The Nuclear Age' by Tim O'brien. He'd read a couple of his other books - most of which were about the Vietnam War, and he liked the way the guy wrote.
"Seemed appropriate," Mac said with a shrug.
"Any tips on how to survive nuclear warfare in there?" Coby looked past Mac to the shelves and tried to decide which poison to choose.
"Right now it's mostly about a guy who's fucking paranoid, not actual bombs."
"Well is it any good, at least?"
Deciding that waiting for their small talk to segue into Mac asking him about a drink would take too long, Coby swung his legs over the bar top and slid over to the other side, then grabbed a bottle of Jameson and a tumbler.
"It's not bad," Mac replied, watching the kid slide over the bar.
Most people just came out and asked for their drinks, which was why he hadn't asked him what he wanted.
He set the book down and leaned against the bar. "All you had to do was ask."
"I didn't want to bother you." Coby took the cap off and slowly tipped the bottle towards the rim of his glass. He filled it about halfway and then looked back up at Mac, cocking an eyebrow. "Want one?"
"What and interrupt all the nothing I've been doing?" Mac replied, his frustration at all the stand still evident in his voice. "Sure, why not."
"Yeah, I'm really glad I escaped the city and found refuge in a town that has absolutely nothing to do. Makes it easy to forget all my problems. Like a vacation!" He grabbed another glass and poured a drink for Mac, handed it over, clinked their glasses together, and said "Cheers" before downing all his whiskey in one swallow. It burned so good. "I should get me one of those." He pointed to the book. "Taken from the library?"
Mac was taking it easy on the drinking since he and Edie had done enough shots to down half a handle of Jim Beam, so he just took a healthy sip of his instead of shooting it.
"Yeah, they've got a pretty big selection."
"Any reccommendations? I'm not actually much of a reader of novels." He poured himself another glass and held up the bottle to ask if perhaps Mac would like to join in the drinking fun. He didn't look like he was about to start chugging it, but Coby was trying to be friendly.
Mac shook his head at the offer, still vividly remembering the hangover from the last time.
"I ain't much of one either," he said. "Simon would be a good one to ask. He's the librarian."
"Simon," Coby repeated. He should remember that name. "Is he a friend of yours?"
"Yeah," Mac replied, taking another sip of his drink. "Known him a long time."
"It must be nice having a friend in this town," Coby said, mirroring Mac's casual lean against the liquor wall to face him. "I've met some interesting people around, but no one I could really call a friend."\
"He's the only person I really know here," Mac admitted. "I was just here to visit him when the world went to shit."
"But still, it's a creature comfort that some of us don't have." Coby looked down into his glass and wondered if he'd ever find anyone who felt familiar in this town. So far Mac seemed to be the best candidate, since he's the guy he'd spoken to more than once. With another smile he looked back up and shrugged. "Gotta take what you can get, you know?"
This was true, Mac supposed. At least he had some familiarity. "Guess so," he said, finishing off his drink..
"Hey Mac, do you know what today is?" There was a calendar hanging behind them, and someone had actually thought to turn the page to the right month.
"Barbeque and fireworks day," Mac replied.
"Independence Day. Where is Bill Pullman to save us now?"
"I never saw that movie," Mac said with a shrug.
"What?" he responded with a dropped jaw. "How could you have never seen that movie? It made like a hundred billion dollars at the box office, by sheer numbers alone EVERYONE has had to have seen that movie." He laughed. "You're a strange duck."
"I wasn't in the country when the movie came out, so I missed my opportunity," Mac said. There were actually quite a lot of movies he hadn't seen.
"Where were you? Romantic getaway?"
"Iraq," Mac replied, taking the bottle and pouring himself a second drink.
"So that's a yes then?"
Mac smirked at Coby. "Nothing like a little gunfire to get you in the mood for love." Actually...
Scratch that, he wasn't going to think about that.
Coby gave him an interested smirk. "I'll say. A bunch of muscular army guys sweating in the desert sun, high off their own adrenaline?"
Bleeding all over the place, blown to several bits. "Loads of fun," Mac said, taking a sip of his drink.
"Too bad it didn't seem to do anybody much good." Coby polished off his second glass and started for a third. "We don't seem to be very independent now."
Mac snorted. "Independence. I never got the feeling that's what we were fighting for."
"Well I guess it doesn't really matter now, since we lost the fight." Coby shrugged and let the somber mood take over. It was exhausting, always pretending to be carefree like the whole world wasn't ending when it was.
"Looks like everybody lost," Mac said.
Coby raised his glass and said, "Seeing as it's a national holiday, and we are totally fucked as it is, and stranded in this bar together, I feel like we should make a toast. Why not, we have to celebrate something in honor of the 4th."
"A toast to what?" Mac asked, eyebrow raised.
"How about to new friends. Maybe. Maybe more."
Mac's eyebrow raised further, but he clinked his glass against Coby's. He was almost sure that was a come on - just as he was fairly sure the kid was gay, based on a few choice comments he'd made.
Satisfied and taking that as a definite sign, Coby put down his glass and shed his jacket. It was to warm inside for his usual getup.
"So, friend, what have you been up to since leaving the hospital? I missed you in the room, you know. That place is creepy when you're alone." His hands played with the knot in his tie, trying to loosen it.
"Helped out Simon, mostly," Mac replied, eyes lingering briefly on those hands loosening his tie. "His daughter was the girl in the next room over. He's been having daily freak outs since we got back."
"A daughter? I didn't think you were old enough to have friends with kids." The knot was more stubborn than originally anticipated.
Mac gave a laugh. "I'm thirty five, kid."
"Really? Thirty five? You don't look it."
The tie came loose and Coby did away with that too, then untucked his shirt and rolled up his sleeves. That felt much better.
"So how old is the daughter?"
"Sixteen." Mac was already in a t-shirt - it was summer and he wasn't a fan of the heat after all his time spent in the desert.
"That would make your friend nineteen when he had a kid? That's a little young, but hey, she's made it this far with all ten fingers and all ten toes, right?" He shrugged. "Are you as much of a hardass with a teenage girl as you are with everyone else or is she your sweet spot?"
"Simon's older than I am," Mac said. "By a couple years."
At the question of how he acted with Clara he shrugged. "She's a good kid."
"Do you have any kids of your own?"
Mac laughed. "No. Definitely not. I'd be a fucked up mess of a dad."
Coby laughed as well, relieved to be getting a reaction aside from Stoic Indifference. "So no wife, no kids. What exactly do you do with your time then?"
"Tend bar?" Mac replied. "I ain't exactly a social person."
"Really? Because you're socializing with me right now." Coby leaned forward. "Is there something else you'd prefer to be doing?"
"I mean I don't go out of my way to be," Mac clarified, leaning forward as well so their faces were close, giving Coby a slight smirk before straightening.
"And yet you're still talking," Coby pointed out. He winked and turned back to the bottle.
"Not much else to do at this point, is there?" Mac said. "A whole lot of talking and a whole lot of reading."
Coby went to reach for the whiskey, but was struck by a better idea. "There's something else we could do. It's illegal in
eleven states."
Mac snorted. "Probably not anymore - are there even states anymore?"
"I don't really know. Come on. It's a brilliant idea, and it's fun, and it's an appropriate way to celebrate the occasion." Coby hopped back over the bartop and turned to make sure Mac was following.
Mac gazed at Coby a minute before eventually shrugging and finishing off his drink. He followed the young man, but he took the normal way out and walked around the bar. "What are we doing?"
Coby fixed him with a lascivious look. "I'll give you a hint: it ends with a bang." He led the way out the door and started up the street.
Mac followed, more to keep an eye on him than anything. "So where the hell are we going?"
"To the convenience store." It wasn't far, but Coby couldn't be 100% sure he was heading in the right direction in the late dusk. The sky was getting darker by the minute and soon even the dim blue overhead would cease to light their way.
"Then you might want to take a left here," Mac said. He'd gotten pretty good with knowing his way around town.
Coby stopped mid-stride and turned left, grinning sheepishly. "What would I do without you watching out for me?" He continued on the road, it looking a little familiar now.
Mac smirked. "Get lost."
"Eventually I'd find my way back because I'm pretty sure this town is smaller than a bread box, but I appreciate the company." He grinned and nudged Mac's shoulder with his own before pulling open the door to the local mini mat.
Overhead the jovial bell rang to signal their arrival, but of course no one was there to hear it. None of the fluorescent store lights were on, but harsh white illumination came from the mostly empty soda cases. Coby went straight for the cash wrap in the center, a little island of worthless lotto tickets and beef jerky in a sea of snack cakes and paper goods. "Ooh, cigarettes, score." He pocketed a few packs, thinking he'd be back tomorrow for more. Then he began to rummage through cabinets.
"What are we looking for?" Mac asked, snagging a pack of cigarettes for himself.
Coby ignored Mac's question, distracted by the fact that he couldn't actually find what he was looking for even though he knew it was here. He tried another set of cabinets, but they were firmly locked. Kneeling, he looked up at Mac. "I don't suppose you want to be all macho and break those open."
“Not really," Mac replied, leaning on the counter and looking down at him. "Why?"
"Guess I'm going to have to do it myself." Now, Coby wasn't exactly a hardened criminal in college, but he was a frat boy, which was close. He'd done his fair share of harmless breaking and entering for personal profit. All he needed was a pair of scissors and a bobby pin. The scissors were already on the counter. "Mac, do you know what a bobby pin looks like?"
"No," Mac deadpanned. He reached across the counter and hit a button on the cash register, which popped open. Leaning across he pulled up the tray and found a small key ring with several little keys for the cabinets on it. He held them out to Coby, key ring dangling off a finger. "Used to work in a 7-11 in high school."
Coby tried not to look surprised and/or embarrassed, but he failed. "Wow. Okay, that works too." The keys fit smoothly into the locks, and he slid the cabinet doors aside to reveal quite a stash. "Here we go!" He pulled out a box of Trojans and grinned.
Mac's eyebrows lifted into his hairline. "Are we making balloon animals?"
"Kidding." Coby tossed them aside and then pulled out an armful of what they were really there for: fireworks. A few roman candles and molotov cocktails, a few boxes of rockets, and an entire case of aerial repeaters.
"They sell that shit in convience stores?" Mac said, surprised. He'd never seen that in Boston.
"Here they do. Where you're from, and where I'm from, that's a big no no." Coby dug out a few more boxes of sparklers and splayed it all out on the floor. "Do you think we can carry all this?"
"Well how far are we goin'?" Mac asked.
"If you're up for a little trip we can go out to the hills and set them off. Should be quite a show." He started picking the boxes up again, stacking as much as he could. "This is gonna be awesome!"
"Long as we stay away from the trees," Mac said. "Last thing we need is a forest fire."
"Scout's honor. No trees. But you have to help me carry stuff." Coby gathered the last of what he could and stepped out from behind the counter. His weight made the door give easily, and he was back out in the humid July night.
Mac took the rest of the fireworks and followed him, again, mostly to make sure he kept out of trouble. And maybe a little bit because Coby had managed to pique his interest, ever since their first meeting at the clinic.
The stack of boxes was precariously balanced, and it only took a few solid steps to send their center of gravity completely off kilter. The fireworks tumbled to the ground. "Oh fuck." Coby dropped his empty arms. "I should've seen that coming." He stopped to dig a cigarette out of his new pack and flicked his trusty lighter, inhaling the smoke deeply. Those things on the ground could wait a minute. He was in desperate need of one of these.
Mac shifted the boxes in his arms, but wasn't in any immediate danger of dropping anything.
"Smooth," he said with a smirk, as the boxes scattered on the ground.
Coby took another puff and stared down at his mess. "Okay, so I'm overly ambitious." He grinned and bent down to gather them up again. If his calculations were correct, Mac would be checking him out right abooout....just a little to the left...right about now.
Predictably, Mac's eyes fell on Coby's ass as he bent over to pick up the fireworks.
"Yeah," he said. "Looks like you took more than you can handle."
Coby stood, victorious, the boxes safe and sturdy in his grasp. "I can usually handle a lot." Ash dropped from his cigarette as he stared straight at Mac, no move towards the hills. He grinned and shifted the weight so that he could tap the rest of the burnt paper off the end. "But we don't have to worry about that now. So, this way?" He pointed east.
"Try not to light a box of them with that cigarette," Mac said, returning the gaze evenly. He then gave a nod. "Yeah, that way."
"Why, would you be sad if I exploded into a giant burst of glitter?" Coby led the way to the grassy hills and tried to survey the sky. It wasn't too cloudy, luckily. The makings of a perfect night.
"I just don't want to be the one who has to clean the pieces of you off the countryside."
Their banter had made the minutes pass quickly, and soon they were standing near the top of an incline with nothing and no one around them. The grass was dry and rough in patches...better not set the fireworks off near there.
Coby dropped his armload on the ground. "So which do you prefer? Slow lead up to a grand finale, or just a nice big bang?"
It occurred to Mac as he set down his own fireworks, that this could actually have a use besides their own entertainment. If there were people out there, looking for someplace safe to go, the fireworks could serve as flares, giving them an idea of a direction to head in.
"Let's make it last," he said.
Coby raised an interested brow. "I like the sound of that."
He began unpacking the boxes and made rows of rockets like little soldiers at arms. "Tell me when you're ready."
"Ready when you are," Mac replied. "How do you light those suckers? Just a lighter?"
"I don't know, but we're about to find out." Coby dug out his lighter again and sparked it, holding it against the end of the first fuse for a few seconds. It caught and sparked and he stepped back a few feet before it took off into the air with an ear-splitting whistle and popped in the sky into a million little gold flecks.
Mac couldn't help the grin that lit up his face as the fireworks did the same to the sky. It was one of the fond memories he had - back when his mom was still alive, the whole family going to the bank of the Charles and watching the fireworks over the river.
Coby knelt to light another row. For an amateur, the display wasn't half bad.
He couldn't help but think of how he had spent the holiday the year before, sitting in Battery Park with his brother and his best friends, all of them drunk and laying in the grass staring at the black sky and watching the show as if they were the only people in the galaxy. Tonight he got that same feeling, that he was incredibly alone watching this. The only difference this year being, he really was. He took his eyes off the sky and looked at his company.
"Oh my God, are you actually smiling?"
Mac glanced at the kid, reaching into his pockets and pulling out a pack of cigarettes.
"Yeah, yeah, it ain't impossible for me to smile," he said, lighting one up and taking a drag.
Coby waited for the noise to die down before he asked, "Well why are you smiling?"
Mac shrugged. "I like fireworks?" he said. "Why? Should I not be smiling?"
"Yes, the express purpose of me lighting all this shit is for you NOT to smile." Coby laughed and sat on the ground. "I was just wondering. Although you're not really a Chatty Cathy so Iguess I shouldn't have bothered to ask."
Mac took another drag. "It reminds me of my family," he said after a few minutes of silence. "Mostly my mom. She loved this kind of shit."
Coby laid his head back on the grass and dug out another cigarette too. "Funny," he said. He lit up. "I was just thinking the same thing. About my brother."
Mac's brother hated things like fireworks. And family. "Older brother or younger brother?" he asked.
"Older," Coby replied. "By about four years. He lived in the city too so I saw him pretty much every day. It was nice. We were lucky to be close."
Mac finished his cigarette and dropped it on the ground, running his show over it. "Mine was older too," he said. He always spoke of Brody in the past tense, even before the bombs had gone off and probably killed him - assuming he'd even been alive still. "Haven't seen him in about twenty five years, though."
A quick breeze took the tip of the ash off Coby's cigarette. He inhaled more insistently and said, "I take it you weren't really close then. That's a shame. Were you one of those unplanned little miracles that popped out seventeen years behind the curve?"
"We were close," Mac said. "At least I'd thought we were." Looking back on it, it might have just been hero worship. "He and dad fought a lot though. He took off when he was eighteen."
"Sounds a little like my brother. Hey, maybe we're estranged siblings." He laughed to himself, then realized it wasn't a funny joke. "Just kidding. That was creepy. Nevermind." He flicked the rest of the butt away and leaned forward to grab a sparkler out of a pack. "But Stefan basically booked it to New York and never looked back. And of course his baby brother just had to do what he was doing
and go where he was going. If I wasn't such a tagalong I would never have moved out there and I wouldn't even be here right now." He lit the sparkler. It started shooting green sparks everywhere. "Where did your brother wind up?"
Mac's eyes watched the sparkler. It looked almost like a flare. "I don't know. He disappeared like a fucking ghost. My dad never bothered to look for him, and I was too young to go do it myself." He'd thought about it a couple of times though. Just taking off after school to see if he could find him.
"I'm sorry." Coby saw that Mac's eyes were fixed on his festive toy and he held it out, kind of like a peace offering.
Mac just shook his head. "I'll just burn myself like a fucking ass." He looked down at the rest of the fireworks. "Let's light the rest of them."
"Okay so you're cool with getting near the big shit and a little sparkler freaks you out?" Coby fell backwards and laughed like a little kid, holding the sparkler aloft like the Statue of Liberty.
"Come on, seriously." He rolled onto his side and held it up. "Take it, I've got more." The fuse was starting to creep down to his fingers.
"I didn't say it freaked me out," Mac replied, eyes rolling, and not reaching out for it. He crossed his arms over his chest. Honestly it was more because he didn't really want to look like a fucking fairy holding a sparkler.
"Deny it all you want, but I think you're scared." He let it fizzle into smoke and dropped the dead end into the grass, then got up and kneeled next to Mac to finish setting up the rest of their contraband. With an antagonizing grin he pulled another sparkler from the box in his hand and whipped out his lighter, his thumb on the ignitor threatening to set it off.
Mac had been in the middle of the desert as people dropped mortar shells on him and his buddies. That had been scared. He gazed at the kid flatly, no anticipation or concern in his expression.
Coby leaned in closer until their foreheads were practically touching. "You look nervous." He clicked his lighter on.
Mac looked the opposite of nervous. He almost looked bored. The corner of his mouth twitched into a smirk. "You might want to check your eyesight," he said, staring back at him, not even flinching as the lighter flicked on.
Neither did Mac.
A few very tense moments passed like that, neither one of them moving even a fraction. Until Coby leaned in even closer, his lips just barely out of reach from Mac's, and said, "I thought you were lighting the rest of those off." He leaned back and ignited his sparkler and it burst to crackling life.
Mac could feel Coby's breath on his lips, and he'd thought the kid was going to go for it until he pulled back. "Tease," he said with a wicked smirk, before moving to stand, planning to light off the rest of the fireworks.
He knew it. Of course he knew it. But it didn't stop his eyes from widening or his mouth opening in a premature retort. But he couldn't think of a thing to say, except, "Uh...sorry." Quickly he turned his head away so that Mac couldn't see the smug self-assured smile that spread across his face. Behind him the hiss of lit fuses went off.
Mac watched as the fireworks began all going one after the other, like the big finale's that most towns had. Of course the display leading up to it hadn't been all that amazing, and nothing compared to the fireworks that Boston put on over the Charles, but still. For a small shitty town in East Bumblefuck during the middle of the apocolypse, it was pretty damn nice.
"So don't you feel a little better having a kind-of-normal Fourth of July?" Coby asked once the last rocket had popped and burned out.
"Guess so," Mac replied, wondering if Simon had seen the fireworks.
Whatever welcoming attitude Mac had been giving off before, he certainly radiated cold now. The two were just sitting in the dark, unmoving, and Coby didn't really want to leave but he got the feeling he couldn't stay here. "Do you want to head back into town?"
"Sure," Mac replied. He pulled out his pack of cigarettes and tapped another one into his palm, lighting up.
Reluctantly, Coby pushed himself onto his knees and stretched. He wondered what time it was - it had been dark for a little while already. The ground was littered with empty boxes so he started collecting a few. Littering was really the least of the planet's worries but it was a habit of his to pick up after himself.
Mac watched him a moment before helping him. He stepped on a few of the boxes, smushing them flat to make them easier to carry.
"Good idea." Coby folded a few into themselves and stuffed what he could into one of the bigger containers. "Thanks for hanging out with me tonight, by the way." He ripped one of the boxes in two and crushed the flat halves into compact pieces. "Makes the time go by faster."
“Uh, sure," Mac said. He was quiet a moment, concentrating on the boxes before adding, "It was a good idea, anyway."
"I told you!" With a triumphant look, Coby threw a box and hit Mac in the shoulder. Victory assault. "I am fraught with good ideas."
Mac, fortunately, had good reflexes, and he caught the box before it fell to the ground. "Watch it, I'm trained in all forms of ass kicking."
"I'm sure that will come in handy," Coby replied. "You know, we should save these for something. Maybe fuel for a fire or supply containers or raw material for the next great flying machine. Because we have limited resources available to us." He closed the distance between them with a few steps. "We can't let anything go to waste."
Mac gave a nod. "Sure. It couldn't hurt. I can keep in the back of the bar - there's other boxes back there already."
"Alright, back to the bar then. My buzz is wearing off." Coby felt like he was getting a second wind and he ran down the hill back to the street.
Mac followed at a more sedate pace, walking down until he reached the road and heading back towards the bar.
Coby reached the bar long before Mac and pulled another cigarette from his pack. He held it unlit in his fingers and watched his new friend approach, muscular arms full of boxes. Even though he was quiet, slightly hostile, and more than a little rough, Coby liked him. In fact he was sure that in time he'd only grow to like him more. Mac wasn't a prissy city boy like all the rest of his friends and ex-boyfriends. That was a surprisingly welcome change. And since they were stuck here for a while, and since he was overly sure that Mac was in desperate need of good company, and since they had a whole empty room full of liquor behind them...Coby was forming a plan.
When they made it to the bar, Mac put the boxes in the back room before returning to the front area of the bar. After the noise of the fireworks it seemed very quiet so he went over to the jukebox and turned it on (having figured out how to rig it to play without charging), letting it shuffle.
Coby tossed his armload in a corner and went behind the counter to peruse the top shelf. "Why don't I give you a night off and play bartender?" He grabbed a bottle of bourbon and one of Triple Sec and turned around, setting it all up on the bartop. "I love this song by the way."
Mac shrugged and took a seat on the other side of the bar. "All right," he said. "Yeah, I don't know it. I just set the thing up to shuffle the music."
"Excellent." Coby took the shaker from the sink and began mixing one of his favorite drinks, twisting the contents around in it to the beat of the song, and he began to sing along to the Cardigans. "Love me, love me, say that you love me, fool me, fool me, go on and fool me." He gave Mac a cheesy grin and poured the drinks out. "How do you not know this song? It's a 90s radio classic."
Mac watched Coby singing, lips quirked in bemusement. "I didn't listen to a lot of radio," he said. Most of the music they had over there were cassette tapes.
"You don't know what you're missing!" Coby nudged a full glass towards him. "Just kidding, the radio sucks these days. Well we won't have to worry about that anymore!" He picked up his drink and walked around to the bulbous neon box. "I don't suppose they've got any Fugazi on here..."
Mac took the drink and tasted it. "Not bad," he said. At the kid's next words he said, "The fugwhat?"
"Fugazi. They're a post-punk band from the early 90s and they just happen to be my favorite." He clicked through the little platelets of record titles. "Unfortunately, I think I'm shit out of luck on that one. Oh well." Mercifully, there was a Radiohead album in stock. Shocking. "How do you work this thing?"
Mac got up and walked over to the jukebox. "What song do you want?" he asked. When Coby told him, he showed him what buttons to press.
“Thanks." Something much slower came on over the speakers and Coby resumed his position at the bar, leaning forward on his elbows. "So, what do you think?" He nodded to the drink in Mac's hand that was almost empty.
“Pretty good," he replied. "You mix a fair drink."
"Thanks, I have a lot of alcoholic friends." Coby set about making another batch, the ice in the shaker making an unpleasant clacking noise. He poured all the liquid out and took a sip. This drink was twice as strong, and perfect. "So can I ask you something Mac?" He licked some stray drop from his thumb.
Mac took a swig of his second drink before saying, "Why not?"
He spoke slowly. "What causes a dark, mysterious loner bartender to allow himself to be led around by the likes of a smooth-talking rule-bending boy from the city?"
"Not like I've got much else to do," Mac replied honestly. He was so restless that taking another jog out into the radiation was starting to look appealing.
"Oh I could give you something to do, Mac." He twisted his free hand in the fabric of Mac's shirt collar and pulled him forward, meeting him halfway and kissing him only as hard as he thought he could get away with.
Mac was only half surprised by the action. The kid had seemed fairly forward early in the game, but then he'd backed off, around the time Mac had been sure he was going to go for it.
So he hadn't been positive about his intentions.
Mac actually couldn't remember the last guy he'd kissed - somebody back in Boston - a one night stand a few weeks before he'd come to see Simon. And living with that man had given him a hell of a lot of sexual frustration - enough to have him getting drunk and having a hot and heavy makeout session with a woman.
So when Coby kissed him, he didn't hesitate to return it, one hand sliding to the back of his neck and pulling him closer.
It was a more favorable reaction than Coby had been expecting, honestly. He was surprised that Mac hadn't just hauled off and punched him by now, and this was even better. With a fervor he hadn't felt for anyone in a long time he pushed himself even closer, straining over the edge of the counter between them, practically crawling on top of it. This guy certainly knew how to kiss. He must've had a lot of practice.
Mac shifted his position so that he was nearly standing, one knee on the bar stool so he was at a better angle to kiss him. His free hand slid his drink from it's position between them to avoid spilling
Coby broke it off first and tried to pull away, even with Mac's hands holding him in his place. His breathing was a little faster than it had been before. "This." He slammed his hand on the bartop. "Is in the way."
Mac smirked, loosening his grip so Coby could back up. "Your fault," he said.
Coby leaned back and couldn't help the absolutely dumb lovestruck smile on his face. He shrugged, trying to act casual. "There was no time to uproot it from the floor."
Mac let out a laugh. "I'd have paid good money to watch you try."
Coby laughed. "I would've had to use that good money for an equally good chiropractor."
Mac grinned, moving so he was once again sitting and taking a sip from his drink. "Probably better you didn't try."
"Well we're not all built to fell trees with our bare hands, now are we." Coby picked up his abandoned drink and polished it off, then rounded the counter's corner and picked up his jacket. "I should get going. It's almost closing time."
Mac turned on his stool and watched him, giving a nod. A thought occured to him.
"Hey, if you could keep this between us..."
Coby caught on and nodded, then leaned in to kiss him one last time. "It stays between us." He straightened up and headed towards the door. With a brief pause, he turned back and said, "Hey tissue angel, if you get lonely in this bar all by yourself, I'm right across the street." He pointed towards the motel and shut the door behind him.