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“Pretty good? Smashed it, more like.” Kai shoulder-barged Leo. “I got the impression this was the first session those guys have actually enjoyed in a very long time.”
Quint raised his brow. “Yeah, why so?”
Kai looked his way. “I think they’re just pissed off with having to marry random backing tracks with a ‘celebrity’ that can’t be arsed. I use that term ‘celebrity’ very loosely and with huge inverted commas. This seemed like the first time they saw real passion, and Leo here just went for it, you know?” He winked over. “I was great too, obviously.”
Quint coughed a laugh. Yeah, that washisLeo there.
“What’s so funny?” Leo looked between them.
“Nothing, sorry,” said Quint quickly, maybe a little too quickly. “That sounds amazing, really.”
Whatwasfunny was how odd it was hearing Kai call Leo, well… Leo. As far as Quint was concerned, Kai was Leo. When Kai found Quint in his last life, had he found it as odd that Quint was ‘Quint’? Reboots didn’t gain the full experience of past lives, so Quint didn’t really know what his name had been beyond Quint. It was yet another strange quirk to get used to.
One of the bar staff snapped him from his daze as they came over to the booth to take their drinks order. Leo ordered a Martini, and Quint ordered a Negroni. Kai perused the cocktail menu, seeming unable to make a decision, then he glanced up.
“Your man here seems to know his stuff,” he said eventually. “I’ll have a Negroni as well.”
The ‘your man’ stung Quint, but Leo’s cheeks flushed and an eyeroll went Kai’s way.
“So, tell me more about you, Kai,” said Quint, keeping the conversation going. “How do you guys know each other?”
“Oh, we’ve known each other forever,” said Kai. “My parents moved over from Ireland when I was eight and settled in York for work. Dad was a civil engineer. About a year later, Leo came to my school, and I took him under my wing, kept him on the straight and narrow. We’ve been inseparable ever since. Well, not like ‘that’, but you know what I mean,” said Kai.
“Why did you say…like that?” said Leo. Anger burned in his eyes a little. He was rattled, had been since they’d sat down, rightly so in Quint’s eyes, but they’d been trying to avoid it.
“Say what?” Kai frowned at him.
“Notlike that’. As if I’m repulsive.”
Quint sat back in his seat, trying to distance himself from the tension, which was just when Kai naturally turned to Quint for some kind of backup.
“What is it with you two?” Leo looked between them, then rested on Kai. “Why are you fucking looking at him like an old married couple?” He shoved the table. “Come to think of it, what’s wrong with this whole fucking place? It all feels… off. First that woman over there called you Leo, now you two are having some unspoken thing between you that looks like it’s only ever going to end in angry sex. What is it, Kai? You couldn’t get anywhere with me so you want to fuck him?”
“What?” Kai started to stand, and yeah… that was Quint’s Leo there. He could only be pushed so far before he called enough. But the waiter chose that exact moment to turn up with the drinks and made the executive decision to flee the scene, postponing his delivery with consummate professionalism.
“Easy,” said Quint, trying to calm Leo down, placing a hand on his arm.
“Oh, fuck you. I’ve seen the way you two look at each other, smirking over fuck knows what.” Leo stood up and glared down at Kai. “I gave you his number, didn’t I? Have you been calling each other? Is that why you didn’t want to come?”
“What? No, of course not. This is the first time we’ve spoken to each other,” said Kai.
“Yeah, what-the-fuck-ever.” He tossed some money on the table. “I’m gonna get an early night. Perhaps then you two can really get to know each other properly, right?”
“Leo, Wait.”
Ignoring Kai, Leo grabbed his coat, which caught on the top rail of his chair, so he tugged it until his chair fell over. Then he headed to the exit.
“Fuck.” Kai rested elbows to the table and rubbed at his head after he picked the chair up. “I really didn’t want this.”
Quint wanted to reach over, ease some of the hurt, but it wasn’t the right time, not at the risk of Leo coming back in and getting hurt. “What do you want to do? How are we going to handle this?”
Kai shrugged, and when he looked up, a lifetime of hurt filled his look. “Come clean about who we are, because, fuck… this shit really hurts.”
Quint stiffened, but it was there: how they fell in to working life out like time hadn’t pulled them apart. “We'll lose each other in the next life. You know as well as I do. That’s not an option.”
“I know, I know. But he deserves the truth.”
Quint dropped his head a little. “Of course he does. They all do. And a part of me wishes I’d never met him, not like this, not at the cost of what it’s going to do to either of you.”
