Chapter Three

A small place two streets back from the water.

The place Jack takes him to is exactly what Jack had promised — no white tablecloths, no reservation system, just a small, unassuming spot two streets back from the water with a hand-painted sign and maybe eight tables total. The kind of place that survives entirely on regulars.

“Best fish tacos on this side of the pier,” Jack says, holding the door for him. “Also the only fish tacos on this side of the pier, but that’s beside the point.”

“High praise either way.” Adrian glances around as they sit — mismatched chairs, a chalkboard menu, a couple of ceiling fans doing their best against the evening heat. “I like it. It doesn’t try very hard.”

“Neither do I, in case you hadn’t noticed.” Jack leans back slightly as he says it, unselfconscious, and Adrian’s eyes catch on the stretch of his forearm against the table for exactly one second too long before he looks back at the menu.

“I had noticed, actually.” Adrian picks up the small laminated wine list by the salt shaker, mostly out of habit. It’s short — four options, nothing remarkable — and he sets it back down without comment, the same easy way he’d set down a menu anywhere. Some habits don’t fully switch off, but he’s long past needing every glass of wine to be interesting to enjoy an evening.

“Not much of a selection,” Jack says, catching the glance anyway. “Fair warning, before you ask.”

“It’s fine. Honestly.” Adrian means it. “I’ll drink whatever you’re having.”

Jack raises an eyebrow, faintly amused. “That’s a dangerous thing to say to a man who mostly drinks whatever’s cheapest and cold.”

“Then I’ll drink that too.”

Jack spends the next few minutes talking Adrian through the menu with the same unhurried confidence he’d shown around the workshop — no showing off, just a man who knows what he likes and isn’t precious about it. They order — Jack’s pick for both of them, in the end, with Adrian’s easy blessing.

“So let me get this straight,” Jack says. “You know enough about wine to look personally disappointed by four perfectly innocent bottles, and you spend your working life keeping a plane full of people happy. What else aren’t you telling me?”

Adrian blinks. “I wasn’t disappointed.”

“You apologized to the wine list with your eyes.”

Adrian laughs, caught out. “All right. Fair. I did train in wine, years ago. Properly, I mean. It started as an interest and got a little out of hand.”

Jack grins. “I’m beginning to see a pattern.”

“You’d be amazed what you accumulate after almost thirty years of doing the same job in different uniforms.” Adrian says it lightly, waving off the rest of it before it turns into a résumé.

The food arrives, and it’s better than the setting has any right to suggest. The conversation moves easily from there — restaurants they’ve loved, cities that surprised them, Jack’s years of tinkering with engines that started, apparently, with a lawnmower he wasn’t supposed to touch at age eleven. Adrian laughs more than he expects to. There’s a dry, quiet humor to Jack that sneaks up on him, delivered so flatly it takes a second to land.

“I collect ways to avoid sitting still,” Adrian says at one point, when Jack presses gently on the growing list of things he apparently knows how to do. “It’s less impressive than it sounds.”

“I doubt that.”

“You’d be surprised.” Adrian takes a sip of the wine — not remarkable, but perfectly pleasant, and he’s enjoying it exactly as much as the company deserves. “I get bored easily. Learning something new is just a socially acceptable way of running from that.”

“That’s either very wise or very sad.” Jack says it easily, and Adrian is annoyed to find himself looking at his mouth instead of thinking about the question.

“Ask me again in ten years.” Adrian tips his glass toward him, mock-toasting. “I’ll have an answer by then.”

Jack laughs at that, properly, head tilting back, and Adrian feels something settle in his chest at the sound of it — easy, warm, entirely unguarded.

The second glass of wine arrives without much thought, and Adrian, glancing at his watch out of pure habit, does the math too: somewhere around six in the morning back in Aarhus right now, which explains rather a lot about why his eyelids suddenly feel like they’ve been assigned actual weight.

“You alright?” Jack asks, catching the blink Adrian hadn’t quite managed to hide.

“Perfectly.” Adrian sits up a fraction straighter, entirely unconvincingly. “Just doing time zone math. Ignore me.”

“Mm.” Jack doesn’t look convinced, but lets it go, and the conversation rolls on.

It rolls on for a while longer, actually — long enough that Adrian loses track of when the restaurant starts thinning out around them, long enough that his part of the conversation starts arriving a half-beat slower than it should.

“...and that’s when my sister told me I couldn’t keep the goat,” Jack is saying, at some point, with the patient air of a man repeating himself.

“Sorry — the what?”

“The goat, Adrian. You just missed the entire goat.”

“I did.” Adrian presses two fingers briefly to his eyes, half laughing at himself. “In my defense, my body currently thinks it’s the middle of the night, and I refuse to leave before I’ve heard the end of the goat story.”

“Very committed to the goat.”

“Extremely.”

Jack studies him for a second, something fond in it. “You’re fighting this pretty hard.”

“I’m fighting this very hard,” Adrian admits, entirely without shame. “I’m enjoying myself. I’d rather be tired tomorrow than leave early tonight.”

Something shifts, briefly, behind Jack’s eyes at that — pleased, maybe a little touched, though he covers it fast with a shrug. “Well. Far be it from me to argue with that kind of dedication.”

They stay another half hour, easily — the goat story gets finished, along with a second one about a badly timed flat tire during Jack’s own twenties — and by the time they’re standing outside, the night has gone properly dark, the air cooler now, and Adrian’s stubborn refusal to admit defeat is losing a battle his body has already conceded.

“I’ll drive you,” Jack says. It isn’t a question.

“I can walk.”

“You can,” Jack agrees, echoing the exact same line from their first afternoon together, “doesn’t mean you should. You’re swaying slightly, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“I am not swaying.”

Adrian is, in fact, swaying very slightly.

Which is ridiculous. Two glasses of wine wouldn’t normally register as much more than dinner. But two glasses of wine after a transatlantic flight, a full working day and more hours awake than he cares to count are apparently a different matter.

He straightens, mostly on principle.

“See? Perfectly steady.”

Jack looks at him for a second.

“Very convincing.”

“Get in the truck, good posture.”

The truck smells like Jack — engine oil and something faintly like cedar, not unpleasant, almost familiar now after just a few meetings. Adrian settles into the passenger seat, fully intending to keep the conversation going, fully intending to stay sharp and present right up until the hotel door.

He manages about four minutes of it.

The city lights blur softly past the window, the engine hums low and steady, and somewhere between one sentence and the next, Adrian’s head tips gently sideways, coming to rest against the window, then — as the truck takes a slow turn — against something considerably less cold and considerably more solid.

Adrian wakes with a start as the truck comes to a stop, disoriented for a full three seconds before the situation reassembles itself — the truck, the hotel entrance through the windshield, and the undeniable dampness on Jack’s shoulder that he is very much responsible for.

“Oh my God.” Adrian sits up so fast he nearly hits his head on the ceiling. “Did I just — I fell asleep. On you. Did I fall asleep on you?”

“You did.” Jack doesn’t even try to hide his grin. “About four minutes in. Very committed effort, right up until you weren’t.”

“I am so sorry.” Adrian presses a hand to his face, mortified. “I swear I’m usually better company when I’m actually conscious.”

“You talked in your sleep a little too, for what it’s worth.”

Adrian goes very still. “I did not.”

“You really did.” Jack’s grin only widens. “Mostly nonsense. Something about a goat, actually.”

“That is deeply unfair, and I refuse to believe you.” Adrian rubs a hand over his face, laughing now despite himself, despite the mortification, despite the very obvious wet patch on Jack’s shoulder that he is doing an admirable job pretending not to notice. “I am never going to live this down.”

“No,” Jack agrees, entirely too pleased with himself. “You’re really not.”

Adrian reaches for the door handle, then pauses, some of the laughter settling into something quieter. “Thank you. For tonight. All of it — the dinner, the drive, the world’s most patient response to me falling asleep on you.”

“Anytime.” Jack says it simply, no joke behind it this time. “I mean that.”

“Goodnight, Jack.”

“Goodnight, Adrian.”

Adrian climbs out, shuts the door, and walks toward the hotel entrance. He makes it about halfway before something makes him look back.

Jack is still there. Hasn’t pulled away yet.

Adrian lifts a hand, feeling faintly ridiculous about it. Jack lifts his back, the same small gesture, no bigger than it needs to be.

Then Adrian turns and goes inside, before he can find himself a reason not to.