AJ grinned. Of all the gin joints in all the world. Or something. He leaned against the gas pump and cocked a hip out. "Fill up here often?" He peered over the top of his sunglasses, eyes brimful of laughter.
Chris snapped his head around, mouth tight. AJ held still, waiting for recognition to seep in. He relaxed when he saw the lines around Chris's mouth ease into a reluctant smile. Maybe he was not entirely unwelcome here. AJ's own smile grew considering.
"McLean," Chris said, sticking out a hand. AJ clasped it, not letting his fingers linger overly long on the skintight and skinwarmed leather of Chris's driving glove. "What brings you out this way?"
AJ lifted one shouler. "Just driving. We had a weekend off, so-" he waved a hand at the interstate in the distance. "You?"
Chris nodded sharply, once. "Yeah. Just got the motor rebuilt on this one-" he patted the back of his bike's seat "-so I'm taking her out for a test drive."
"You going all the way?" AJ asked. Almost a rhetorical question, really, since there was very little of interest off of I-15 once you got past Barstow.
Chris shaded his eyes with his hand and looked away. "Unless I get bored first, yeah."
"Last one to the city limits buys the other one dinner?" AJ offered.
Chris stared at him hard. "Why?"
"Why not?" At Chris's continued frown, he sighed and flung his hand out. "Look, today is a fine, fine day. We're both riding in the same direction; why not? The worst that could happen is that you're out a dinner and have to put up with me for an hour."
The set of Chris's shoulders eased, and a smirk began to tease at the edge of his lips. "That's assuming you win. An awfully big assumption, doncha think?"
AJ grinned again as anticipation flashed through his veins. "Big words, Kirkpatrick." The gas pump beeped at him, and he tore off his receipt. He pretended not to notice Chris watching as he shoved the receipt into his back pocket, just like he pretended not to notice how the denim pulled tight across Chris's thighs as he swung a leg over his bike. That was for later. For the moment, AJ slid behind the wheel of his car, let his fingers caress the gear shift once, and turned on the ignition. He slid her into neutral and revved the engine once, twice, three times. He heard the engine of Chris's bike join him at 3000 RPMs. He looked over and saw Chris's mouth open in a soundless laugh. Smooth as silk, they slipped into first gear near-simultaneously and peeled out.
The gas station owner looked up from his newspaper behind the counter. "Goddamn boybanders," he said around the toothpick wedged in the corner of his mouth. "Always leaving tire tracks on the goddamn concrete. Ain't it so, Mother?"
The owner's wife swept the snack aisle placidly. "Yes, but those Timberlake and Carter fellows always buy extra snacks, now don't they?"
The owner grunted meditatively and flipped to the editorials.
About ten miles west of the Strip, a tractor trailer had flipped, backing up traffic for over a mile. AJ, who had had at least a 500 yard lead at that point, waved one finger at Chris as he weaved past on the shoulder. A half an hour later, AJ pulled up to the city limits sign. He attempted to scowl through his laughter as Chris waved a stack of menus at him. He also flipped AJ a water bottle as he got out of his car.
"Told you I'd win. No car is a match for my baby. And I want a real meal out of this, McLean. No pawning me off on a casino buffet. There had better be waiters. A guy with one of those table crumbers wouldn't hurt, either."
Chris rambled on, gesturing with an appropriate menu from time to time, until AJ laughed and shoved him towards his motorcycle. "Follow me. I know where to take you."
They edged their way through traffic to the other side of the Strip, past the flashing lights and glamorousness that just tiptoed over the line into sleaziness, out to where the sunset was visible past the neon, to a ramshackle, slightly decrepit strip mall. When AJ turned off his engine, he could hear Chris already mock-complaining. "McLean, McLean, you got the wrong kind of strip. You were supposed to turn back there. Did the sun get to you?"
AJ grinned and ignored him. A bitching Chris was a happy Chris. "If you don't like this place, I promise we'll go back to the Bellagio and you can beat me at poker and maybe even make me wear one of those stupid Excalibur hats."
Chris poked at him as he opened the door and ushered Chris inside. "I'm holding you to that stupid hat thing."
It was a tiny, family-run Mexican restaurant that one of AJ's old Vegas-based dealers had recommended to him years ago, and whatever he did or did not remember from some of those trips, he remembered the enchiladas here. He came back sober for the first time with Sarah, and it was easy to pretend that it was the habanero salsa that had him choked up. Later, after Sarah was gone, he made himself come back again and kept coming back. Whatever else, their mole sauce truly could make a grown man weep. In a good way.
Of course Chris liked it. Of course one hour turned into three, with the restaurant closing up shop behind them. Chris ordered a beer but toyed with it for the entire meal, preferring instead to steal things off of AJ's plate. The owner's mother eventually shooed them out with extra sopapillas, and they left in laughter, shoulders brushing as they walked back to their vehicles.
They sat on AJ's trunk, sharing the last of the sopapillas, with AJ threatening serious bodily injury if Chris smeared honey on his new paint job. This degenerated back into the argument they'd been picking at desultorily all night - whose vehicle was superior. Chris jumped off the trunk to gesture at the many fine points of his bike, and AJ watched, only half-listening. He slid off his car and sauntered up to Chris, who had diverged onto a tangent concerning the aesthetic superiority in general of the motorcycle to the car. "Plus, everyone knows that motorcycles are sexier."
AJ laughed low in his throat and pulled Chris's hips snug up against him. He walked them both backwards until he was leaning up against his car, Chris's shoulders pulling away but hips twisting closer. "Everyone knows shit, then. My car, always and forever, will be sexier than your motorcycle for just one reason."
"Why is that?"
"One word." AJ leaned forward and licked the last stickiness of the honey away from Chris's lower lip. "Backseat." He reached behind him and opened the driver's door.
Chris laughed, bright and clear, then followed him.