Raglan sings along under his breath, mouthing the instrumental bits while tapping on the steering wheel with the fervor of a man who takes his music seriously.

The Chevy's interior is dark, illuminated only by street lights passing by. Were it an ordinary hookup, Ricky would have used the darkness to his advantage by resting a hand on Raglan's knee, maybe even knead his thigh. Instead, he sits in the passenger's seat, gripping the seat belt.

"You said you were off 35 th ," Raglan says once the cassette ends. He ejects it, flips it, and feeds it back into the stereo. "Would that be avenue or boulevard?"

"I don't think my roommate is going to be cool with me bursting in at four in the morning," Ricky says, forcing nonchalance into his stiff delivery. "Do you have a couch I can maybe crash on?"

Raglan glances at him, eyebrows pinched with concern. Ricky is already sifting through a catalog of potential excuses when he answers with a hesitant: "I do, yes."

"Radical."

"Radical? How old are you again?"

"No, you don't get to give me shit when you're the one listening to Frankie Vallie on a mixtape, Steve."

"They're classics. Just like my darling Bonnie here," he says, patting the dashboard.

"You named your car?"

"Am I to believe that you're a programmer who doesn't name his electronics?"

Ricky thinks about it. "I had a Walkman I named Johnny when I was a teenager. After John Francis Bongiovi. From Bon Jovi."

"I know who Bon Jovi is."

"Do you? You seem pretty stuck in the 80s."

Raglan makes a gesture with his hands that roughly translates to 'youth these days'. "That was the previous decade. Which was a good decade, mind you. And Bon Jovi has been around since '83."

"Whatever, man."

Ricky turns his attention towards the bleary outside world, thinking himself in circles. Maybe if he doesn't directly look at the mental block in his head, he might — "I don't normally bring young men home with me."

To put it in physical terms, it's like his brain is a CD and the laser just snagged on a scratch. It's a joke, Ricky knows it is, but he can't help himself. "Stick to men your age, huh? Is that why your wife left?"

Raglan's head whips towards him so fast it's a wonder he doesn't drive into a ditch. His mouth opens and closes like a robot with corrupted code. I can fix him, Ricky thinks.

Then, with more seriousness than is merited, he says, "Family tragedy."

Ricky would have felt bad for him if he didn't recognize it for the low blow it was. "Damn. That sucks."

The shadows that half obscure Raglan's face transform him like sand shifting to reveal a long-buried structure hidden beneath. "How did your parents die?"

The question is such a shock to Ricky's system that he can't process it for two songs. "How do you know that?" His aim for casual curiosity fails. Nobody knows about that. There is a very good reason why nobody knows about that.

"It was on your file."

Oh. That makes sense. "Car crash," he lies. "Dark, stormy night. My old man was trashed behind the wheel."

Raglan glances at him again, steely eyes unreadable. "I'm sorry to hear that." The tone of his words does not match the look on him. "No one deserves to lose a loved one. Let alone both parents at once."

"People die. That's how it goes."

"That's how it goes," he echoes, then turns up the volume.

Raglan's house is spartan at best, impersonal at worst. It reminds Ricky of the office they first met in in Minnesota, lacking the warm touches of an established adult. There's a coat hanger by the front door with a couple of fleeces, a vest, and a leather jacket. The dining room table only sits two, and the kitchen is clean save for a half-empty bottle of whiskey by the sink. It smells faintly of cigarettes, as if the previous tenant was a chronic smoker and Raglan's been trying to wipe the walls clean of it.

"Nice place you got here."

"A home away from home," he says, holding out his arm like a performer about to introduce the next act. There's a theatricality to him, his gestures comedic. "Please forgive the lack of personality in this here abode, but I'm in a bit of a transitional period."

Speaking of transitions. "Listen, Steve, if we're going to do this—"

"Doing what?"

Ricky huffs out an uneasy laugh. "You know. The horizontal tango? The dirty? Cleaning out the pipes?"

"Sex. Right."

"...You can sound a little bit more enthusiastic about it, dude. Can't just treat a guy and then act like you'd rather be watching Saturday morning cartoons." Raglan, the bastard, considered it. "Say sike."

"It's been a while," he says, agonizingly honest, and Ricky heaves a sigh of relief. The way he stands there, freakishly tall as he is, makes him look like some guy struggling to make sense out of his life. Ricky doesn't pity him, but he does feel bad about jumping to conclusions. This man couldn't hurt a fly if he wanted to.

further delay, Ricky unbuckles his jeans, hooks his thumbs over his boxers, and shoves them down just enough to give Raglan a clear view. "So you know what you're getting into."

"Oh, you silly little creature." Removing his glasses to clean them with the corner of his shirt, Raglan tucks a smile against his collar. "I've read your file," he says again, slowly this time, and it just then occurs to Ricky that he has no fucking clue what all about him was in that manila folder.

That silly little creature scratches something at the back of his neck, however. Like a dog who's just discovered a delightfully ticklish spot.

"We can share the bed," he continues right against Ricky's ear, startling him.

The way he moves elicits the image of smoke over water. It's disconcerting how practiced and controlled, how coiled up, but rather than strike, he moves as sinewy as a snake.

The danger of it gets Ricky high. The not knowing, the nagging voice that tells him he shouldn't because he knows him from somewhere he cannot remember; he has to. The purple Chevy, the — the loud bangs… balloons? Popping balloons. The screaming—

"Ricky?" The name is whispered against his neck and that's the end of it. No more thoughts. Time to feel, and feel a lot. Large hands on his biceps, thumbs digging into tight muscle and working them until they loosen.

A kiss is pressed to the soft bit of skin beneath Ricky's ear, salt and pepper beard tickling an embarrassing sound out of him that is soon stifled with a kiss.

It's not Raglan's first rodeo.

Ricky has slept with enough 'straight' men to recognize the automatic procedure of undress, lay down, fuck, sleep. Raglan puts his talents to use with a fluidity to be envious of.

Clothing gone and back on the stiff mattress, heavy heat begins to take over, but not enough for Ricky to miss the way Raglan pulls back to stare down at him. Long fingers ghost over the gauze securely taped over the split skin below his ribs.

"Smacked into a table," Ricky says, resting his foot against Raglan's chest.

"You should be more careful."

"I'll start right now. You got any condoms?" Raglan wraps a hand around his ankle, teeth braced against Ricky's calf. He tenses but the bite never comes, the hold used instead to pull him further down the bed. Groin to groin, Ricky is sorely tempted, but he knows better than to play with this kind of fire. "Party hat for the birthday boy. I'm gonna have to insist."

"Alright, alright," he says, sounding every bit his age. He does look slightly younger without his glasses, dressed down and hair in disarray. Mid forties then, at the most.

Kneeling on the edge of the bed, Ricky takes it upon himself to inspect the foil packet and does Raglan the favor of slipping it on with the added aid of his mouth. He can do without the hair pulling, but puts up with it because in all honesty? The encounter is gearing up to be worth it.

That's the horniness speaking, but Ricky always considered himself gifted in the art of languages. It's not his fault his fluency comes about at the tail end of an adrenaline rush, and that's all this night has been, one hit after another. Overwhelm the system, cross a couple of wires, and there he will kneel, pumping more than just epinephrine until something gives.

With a rapidly tiring jaw, the absence of sound becomes discomforting.

Raglan is there, standing in front of him, but he is not present. Parted lips and closed eyes tell Ricky as much. It clicks then, but he's too horny to be mad at him for it.

Ricky is just a stand-in. A toy — no, not even a toy. A cocksleeve.

"Who you thinking about, Mr. R?"

Sweat has made hair stick to his forehead, and the way his eyes snap open with a hint of disorientation makes Ricky even less mad. The poor guy's so pent-up he's borderline desperate. "What?" Raglan clears his throat and tries again, this time with a smile. "Let's see. I am thinking about this strapping young man who is about to rock my world."

"Nice save," Ricky says, resting his chin on Raglan's shoulder, still working him with measured tugs that mimic the twisting of a knife. Red blood, white semen — it's all the same.

Nudged onto his back, thighs parted to accommodate him, Raglan drapes himself like a weighted blanket. He's deceptively built under his layers, slim muscles at visual dissonance with what Ricky knows about him. What little Ricky knows about him, but that's how it goes with one-night stands.

It's there though, in the curl of his lip that shows off sharp canines, in the scrunch of his nose, in the tightening of his hand around Ricky's neck. Sex and violence are often interchangeable, and while Ricky has always gone out of his way to keep both separate, the sight of Raglan — of whoever this man is — breaking at the seams is a potent aphrodisiac.

Everyone has their secrets, some darker than others, but Steve Raglan? The unassuming career counselor with a penchant for showmanship and fatherly kindness? He's a breed all his own. And Ricky is more than a little curious as to what fucked up little secrets the old man is keeping.