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Izzy hates the Spring. He hates how everyone winds up waltzing around with wonder-filled faces, gazing out at the world like it’s suddenly Better just because the sun’s in a slightly different place. He hates how much longer it takes to park the motorcycle when bougie little scooters and e-bikes take up all the spots, how quickly it gets too warm to wear any decent looking jacket without sweating to death, and he especially hates how the color palette of everything from looming adverts to flowerbeds is attacked by a jubilant army of tacky pastels keen on pissing him off personally: all pinks and purples and chartreuse. Izzy hates a fucking chartreuse.
He especially hates that he seems to be the only one sane enough to have this very reasonable reaction. Edward had once told him that the spring made him want to write poetry. Thinking back, that was probably around when Izzy realized that he was never going to fuck him.
He doesn’t particularly like remembering that either.
But, despite the spring, it’s still New York, and Izzy, despite himself, fucking loves New York.
It has gotten significantly more obnoxious over the past twenty years, but it’s just a part of him now: the salt stains of winter, the garbage-piss stench of summer, the leaves that skitter across the streets when the days grow shorter, and even how, on a day like this, you can just smell the ocean on the breeze that presses in with eager outstretched fingers. So, it’s his city, and he’s its miserable bastard – even on a spring day, in Washington Square Park, when Stede Bonnet’s fucking dog won’t stop smiling at him as she trots at his side.
“You’re not doing yourself any favors, you know?” Izzy says. She just grins, all pretty soft eyes and that big square nose and she’s lucky she’s such a sweetheart or he might actually mean it.
On his other side, Cat sees a squirrel.
“Oh you little cunt don’t you fucking—”
The terrier tries to launch himself free from the laws of gravity.
Luckily, he’s a little bugger, so Izzy manages to reel him right back in. Cat falls back into step on his other side, beaming back up at Izzy.
“Trust me, mate,” Izzy grumbles. “You wouldn’t know what to do with it.”
Cat turns back to the path like he’s already forgotten, tongue flopping out the side of his mangy blond face, which admittedly, is little less than mangy these days. Bonnet’s taken to brushing him out every fucking morning – something Izzy certainly isn’t going to keep up while they’re away. Thing’s a street dog, it should look like it – point of pride, showing where you’re from.
Izzy stalks towards the dog park, more than ready to get this morning over and done with. The whole park is bouncing with that irritating giddy energy: children screaming bloody murder as they race around the fountain, teens moving in chittering packs, three particular assholes trying their best to get laid by breaking out acoustic guitars, all of them spread equidistant from each other to create some sort of Bermuda Triangle of annoyance.
A few hellos call out in Izzy’s general direction, which is baffling until he realizes they’re talking to the fucking dogs who everyone seems to know. One of the groundskeepers actually drops his rake to jog after them, waving and calling out until Izzy’s forced to give up the charade that he doesn’t know who the fuck he’s talking to. He has to stop, wait, and chat while the man kneels down to give Cat and Venny two treats he’s had on him apparently for just this occasion.
“Having fun with your babysitter?” he grins, knelt in front of Izzy, ruffling the pups’ ears as their tails go bananas. “Bet your dads are having a blast.” He winks up at Izzy who has to try very hard not to kick him right over onto his ass.
After what feels like fifteen fucking years, they finally make it to the dog park.
Izzy grumbles as he gets the gate open, maneuvering both leashes into one hand. Thanks to all this wrangling he’s had to skip the second black coffee he’d usually bring along for the walk; the lack of caffeine is already starting to drag nails over his brain. He kicks the gate shut behind them, trying to get the leashes in order as Venny and Cat loop around him in increasingly excited circles.
“Jesus, fucking— just—” Izzy darts down, managing to unclip Cat who bolts instantly into the park, and Venny, never one to be left out, lunges after him. Lunges with her leash very much still on – the leash that also just happens to be very much still wrapped around Izzy’s leg.
Izzy’s brain just mutters one: Oh Fuck, before—
Venny’s leash unclips. She tears off happily after Cat. Izzy’s left behind still standing, staring back at the stranger who’s saved him. A stranger who’s a few inches taller than he is, with very green eyes, and– just, well… shit.
“Uh.” Izzy manages.
The other man is wearing a brown leather jacket with a thin dark shearling lining around the collar. The jacket’s pushed up on the sleeves a few inches, revealing the toned weight of two tanned, freckled forearms. Under that he’s wearing some crisp black dress shirt that stretches across his chest. It’s open three buttons down and oh, freckles there too, huh? Great, good, perfect–
“Here.” The man holds the end of the leash out for Izzy to take it back.
He’s got dark jeans cuffed once at the bottom that fit exceptionally well, a thin gold chain peeking out from under the collar of his shirt, and is that actually a fucking ear cuff–?
The man narrows his eyes, raising the leash a little higher.
Izzy makes himself grab it. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” The other man lifts his cup of coffee. “Annoying if someone breaks an ankle in here. When they bring in the ambulance traffic’s blocked for ages.”
Izzy stares. “Glad to not be such a fucking inconvenience then.”
The man gives him a look. It’s slow and it’s clear and even amused – like he doesn’t believe him, like he thinks Izzy might not mind being an inconvenience, like he might actually find that an interesting surprise on a Tuesday morning. It makes something warm scramble up the back of Izzy’s stomach.
His mouth cants up on one side as he meets Izzy’s eyes and then he’s turning. He strolls across the wood chips, dropping down onto the nearest bench and leans back to take a sip of his coffee.
Izzy frowns. Something is happening here. It’s subtle as hell, and Izzy could very well be imagining it, but there’s an openness in how the man’s sitting, how he’s still turned a bit towards Izzy, how his arm is tossed over the back of the bench. It almost feels like he’s still looking at him, almost feels like he’s raising a brow in quiet expectation without doing a fucking thing.
It’s irritating, undeniably, but in a way that’s like having a song stuck in your head, or like a smell that tickles a memory you can’t place, or like waking up one morning, remembering something you ate years ago, and not being able to do fuck all until you walk your ass all the way back to the East Village to try and find it again.
Izzy walks over to the bench and sits down. Even here in the shade the day’s already getting warm. He unzips his jacket, running a hand through his hair to push it back, newly vexed that he chipped the paint on two of his nails getting the dogs out this morning.
The dogs in question are having the time of their simple fucking lives, charging around one of the drinking fountains in wild circles. There's a husky getting interested in whatever they’re up to, along with a rounded little Australian cattle dog, and some lanky poodle. Izzy wonders idly which belongs to the man next to him.
Overhead, a flurry of birds takes off from one tree to the other, chasing each other up and out into the clear sky. Around the edge of the park the tulips are up and there’s a lilac bush just behind them that’s started to bloom. The sun dapples its way down onto the wood chips and fresh grass and lacquered benches.
“Shitty fucking day, isn’t it?” Izzy says.
The man next to him chokes on his coffee. At least Izzy thinks he does. It’s such a bloody dignified sound he can’t be sure.
“Mm,” the man hums, swallowing properly this time. “Miserable.”
“Oh yeah, you think so?” Izzy can’t help tossing back.
“No,” the other man says with that cut of a smile again. He turns, gazing out over the park. “You can smell the ocean on days like this, and I like that.”
Something in Izzy’s chest gives a little leap. “Yeah,” he hears himself say. “Suppose that part’s not so bad.”
And it really isn’t, is it? What with all the damn lilacs and blossoms, not to mention the the coffee the other man is drinking, which smells fucking incredible. Izzy glances over jealously to see if he can recognize where it came from. The man’s holding the coffee in the hand he’s got rested on his knee. His left hand. The hand that has a ring on its second finger. Because of course it does. Because fuck Izzy personally. And just like that the day is miserable all over again.
Izzy’s jaw tightens. He should just get up and walk away. That would be something, wouldn’t it? Actually acting on an instinct for self-preservation. Maybe he’ll try it one of these days.
“So are you being bribed or threatened?” the other man asks.
Izzy pulls his eyes off of the fucking ring, honestly not sure if he even heard that right. “What?”
“To watch them.” The man gestures with his coffee in the direction of Venny and Cat. “I know who those two usually come round with, and with boots like that and those nails I’m gonna go ahead and assume following someone else’s dogs around picking up their shit all day isn’t your professional calling.”
“Look at you,” Izzy drawls sarcastically. “Circle gets the fucking square.”
The other man does that smile again. The one that feels like a splinter Izzy can’t stop fiddling with.
“I play the bass,” Izzy grumbles, looking away.
“What, on purpose?”
He can’t help the laugh that huffs out. There’s something just so utterly, casually, unimpressed about the man’s tone; it makes for a surprising change. “Yeah. Suppose most days it’s on purpose.”
The man hums into his coffee, taking another sip. “Where are Teach and Steve anyways?”
Izzy frowns. “You mean Stede?”
“Sure. Whatever.”
And Christ, this is quickly escalating from a situation to a genuine fucking problem, because the man is wearing a wedding ring and Izzy hasn’t gotten up and left like he ought to, because Izzy is being a bastard and he’s still just sitting there, with that clever, unbothered expression like he’s actually enjoying himself, like he’s actually having fun.
“Holiday?” the man asks.
The word sits in Izzy's throat, but it’s been getting easier to say, hasn’t it? And that’s its own sort of nightmare.
“Honeymoon,” Izzy answers.
“Oh,” the other man says, like it’s barely anything, like it’s nothing to him, which, yeah, well of course it isn’t, is it? He’s just some bloke in the park. It doesn’t feel like an albatross around his neck.
Izzy glares firmly at where Cat and Venny have started to excavate a half-buried tennis ball.
“Cruise then is it?” the man asks, dripping disdain. “Or fucking Disney?”
The laugh punches out of Izzy before he’s ready for it: it’s genuine and light and oddly makes something unwind in his chest. He finds himself smiling back. “Would you believe me if I told you it was – honest to God – a fucking Disney Cruise?”
“Christ,” the man groans. “I would actually, yeah.”
Izzy shakes his head, grin still stuck on his face as he looks out to where the dogs have managed to extract the tennis ball to the envy of the park at large.
“Bloody nightmare,” the other man mutters. Which just happens to be right when Izzy sighs out the exact same fucking thing.
The smile stumbles off Izzy’s face, and, for a moment, in the warmth of the spring and the breeze that smells of the sea, they just stare at one another.
A bark sounds across the park, snapping them out of it.
Izzy tugs his eyes away; it’s not Venny or Cat at least, just the husky loudly making some eager new friends.
He leans forward, trying to give himself a firm mental shake, but it’s disgustingly hard to stop his chest from doing this terrible, warm, fluttering thing. “One of these yours then?” Izzy tries, glancing over. “Or do you just make a hobby out of loitering around parks being a judgemental prick?”
The other man smirks and, without looking away from Izzy’s face, gives one tight, crisp whistle.
Across the park, the cattle dog spins instantly, as if waiting for instructions. The man drags his attention off Izzy, turning back to the pup and giving her a brusque nod, as if to say she’s fine just where she is. She drops her mouth open into a dopey smile before spinning back around to see where Cat and Venny have gotten off to.
“What’s her name?” Izzy asks, because that’s a more normal question than: “Think you could whistle at me like that again? Because I think it just actually made my dick think God may be real.”
Instead of answering, the man expels a thoroughly miserable sigh.
“That bad?” A smile is sneaking back onto Izzy’s face. “Come on then.”
The man rolls his eyes, leaning a little deeper back into the bench. “Athena.”
“Get the fuck out.”
“Trust me, I wish I could. I didn’t name her.”
“God, I fucking hope not,” Izzy says. “Who did?”
“It’s my boyfriend’s dog. And he has god-awful taste.”
Izzy’s brain hiccups.
“Your boyfriend’s dog?” he repeats lamely, staring at the wedding ring.
“Yes.” The man’s tapping that finger against his coffee cup. “Husband’s more of a cat person.”
Something in Izzy’s head suddenly feels as though it’s trying to communicate with aliens using scrabble pieces alone, scrabble pieces that seem to be for some reason covered in melted butter, and half of them don’t even have any letters on them at all.
“What about you then?” he just manages. He knows it comes out all sarcasm but he can’t help it – he’s starting to think his tongue is just shaped like that. “You a dog person, or a cat person?”
The other man sniffs. “I’m a doing exactly what I fucking want with my time person.”
Whatever’s trying to put those Scrabble pieces together in his head trips, swears, knocks the entire fucking board onto the floor.
“Cool,” Izzy says.
And oh Sweet Bloody Christ– Cool? COOL!?
The man’s brow furrows, turning in his direction, but before Izzy can will his body to dissolve into molecules that vanish into the breeze, a buzzing vibration shoves into the space between them.
“Shit–” The other man rolls his eyes. “Sorry.” He reaches into his pocket with a chagrined expression. “Right on fucking cue…”
He looks down at the phone. A small frown flutters over his face. He lets out a huff, hands pushing into his knees, getting to his feet.
It takes everything in Izzy’s terrible little body to not instantly pop up after him. He just manages to keep a hold of himself, which thank God, because his cheeks already feel like they’re made out of fire.
The man gives another of those tight whistles, this time following it with a snap at his side. The dog responds like the rest of the world has stopped existing, sprinting over and skidding to a stop by his feet.
On the bench behind him, Izzy actually has to cross his legs, which yeah, alright, he wouldn’t be surprised if this fucking blush doesn’t wear off until Wednesday.
“Good luck with those two,” the man says. He’s looking out to Venny and Cat, but his voice sounds like he means something else. “They’re actually sweet. It’s less annoying than I would've thought.”
“Trust me,” Izzy grumbles, clinging desperately to the illusion that he’s still talking about the fucking dogs. “I’d much rather be doing exactly what I fucking want with my time.”
“You should give me your number for when you are.”
Izzy blinks. At least he thinks he does. It’s equally possible the entire world has just flashed in and out of existence.
“I– what?”
“I’m busy tonight. Unfortunately.” The man standing in front of him is scrolling through his phone, flicking at the screen idly, like he’s rescheduling a fucking doctor’s appointment. “But, it seems as though the weekend is more open than I thought.”
He taps a few more times before holding the thing in Izzy’s general direction, expression mildly expectant. “If you’d like.”
Izzy stares at the offered phone for exactly four seconds before scrambling to retrieve his own so fast he almost drops it.
The man waits patiently, smile flicking up on that damned corner again. Izzy takes the phone, shoving his own into the man’s waiting hands. He does his level best to type words properly as something that feels like bloody champagne is popping off in his chest.
The other man finishes typing first, offering Izzy his phone back. Izzy gives him back his as he accepts it. It’s a little warmer now from the stranger’s hands.
A huff of a chuckle falls out of the man in front of him as he looks down at the new contact screen. He grins, flashing the phone back to Izzy where it reads Dog Park Bastard.
“Cute,” he says with a low, rolling sarcasm that Izzy realizes with a sudden clarity he’d really quite like to step on his throat.
Some utterly blessed instinct to bite back makes him raise his own phone, showing off where the new contact screen just reads James.
“Boring,” Izzy drawls.
The smile on the other mans’ face widens dangerously. He looks down to Izzy’s mouth then firmly back into his eyes. “We’ll see about that.”
And just like that he’s gone. Izzy's left winded on the bloody bench , watching him make his way to the gate. His jeans do some frankly absurd favors for his ass as he kneels down and clips the leash onto the cattle dog and then he’s heading back out, vanishing into the crowds of the park.
Izzy lets himself fall back onto the bench.
Venny and Cat tear around the fountain again, nudging at their newly discovered treasure with big noses and fast paws. Overheard the trees shudder, sighing and stretching in the breeze. Izzy lets his head lean back, releasing a long, low breath as he looks up at how the light moves through the trees. It’s too warm, and the assholes playing guitars in the park around him deserve to die slowly, and he personally would do a murder for a coffee right about now, but his phone is warm in his pocket, and the breeze smells of the sea, and he supposes – just possibly, maybe – there might be something to this whole spring idea after all.