#tbnt

It flows off his tongue so easily. Calling this other man ‘dear.’ It makes Dave notice how the collar of the shirt underneath Klaus’ vest swoops so low, so revealing. His loose posture, the thick dark lines bringing out his eyes. The spark shining in those eyes when they slip slowly from the whiskey swirling in his glass up to meet Dave’s gaze.

Dave flushes. Suddenly his palms are sweaty and his mouth is dry. He grabs a towel to wipe down the already clean counter, needing it more as a prop than anything else.

Klaus takes another sip. He takes an expectant inhale, but hesitates, just blows the air out in a sigh. The Penguins are doing a poor job of filling up the otherwise empty bar.

A good bartender is a good listener, can team up with the alcohol to get a heavy story out of a burdened man and send him on his way lighter than before. But Dave hasn’t even been here for four whole months. He’s not that good.

Klaus picks up the slack. “Nice fellow like you, probably you’ve got a girlfriend.”

Dave nods. “Annie.”

Klaus nods too, like he was expecting this. “But you’re planning to propose to her soon.”

Yes. Dave doesn’t know how something like that can be obvious to an outside observer. There’s no rings, no actual proposals have happened yet. But it’s true, what Klaus is saying.

“That’s what you do when the girl you took to prom stays with your sorry ass for this long, right?” he says.

Klaus looks thoughtful. “You’ve really got to be sure that it’s the right thing to do, when you do that.” His gaze cuts to Dave, much more piercing and clear-eyed than he’s used to seeing in this place.

No one could accuse Dave of not devoting enough thought to popping this particular question. Most of his classmates didn’t wait near as long as this to get married, actually. A couple of the guys from marching band are fathers already.

Annie is nice. She’s lovely. She’s got a beautiful singing voice, and she’s kind to everyone. Kind enough to go to prom with Dave, and to stay waiting for him for this long. There’s being a gentleman, and then there’s whatever Dave is doing.

What he’s doing is nothing. He’s pretty sure he doesn’t deserve the credit he gets for being ‘such a respectful young man,’ since it’s not like he is responsibly overcoming his baser desires. He just hasn’t felt like that about Annie. Not yet. So he hasn’t proposed yet, either.

He knows he’s supposed to - he’s known that, for a while, but it’s been weighing on his mind even more lately. Since his dad’s accident. Life is short, and his mom could really use some good news now, and Annie is nice, and somewhere buried in all of that must be the reason why it’s the right thing to do.

He really is the worst bartender. This conversation is all turned around. He tries to get things back on track. Be conventional. “Do you have a girlfriend, then?” His voice comes out sounding odd, for some reason Dave can’t place.

He’d be shocked if this guy was single. Not with a smile like that.

“No, I’m - ” Klaus’ voice is strangled and strange, too. “I was close with someone. But he - we couldn’t make it work.” He’s looking at Dave like he’s wishing for an answer, but it’s not even a question. Then he blinks the suspended moment away, and grumbles off to his side, “I get that.”

Dave didn’t miss the pronoun. He shouldn’t focus on it, Klaus was quick to correct it. But he can’t stop hearing it. There’s only the three of them in whole bar, but something about the close weight of the air makes it seem like they are enclosed in the same small space.

“She made me want to be a better person,” Diego says into his empty glass, “because she was just a good person. Now I’ll never see her again.”