Chapter Text
TK Strand cannot find a parking spot for the life of him. Not only that, but his mother won’t stop calling to see if he has boarded the plane yet.
He sends her a quick text as he waits for a white tesla to pull out of a spot, before he quickly steals it from a red SUV. TK takes a breath as he shuffles to get out of his seat, barely remembering to unbuckle before he hops out.
After reaching into the back of his car to find his backpack and his suitcase, he begins to pick up speed to the entryway of the Austin airport.
Nancy left the apartment this morning extremely early, after she had offered to carpool with TK. At that moment, he had doubted that he needed to start getting ready 3 hours in advance, so he took the time to get some extra rest before his flight.
Standing in the busy terminal 45 minutes before his flight takes off, he regrets his decision to prioritize beauty sleep. TK pauses with his bags at his feet, grabbing his phone out of his gray sweatpants to call his roommate.
“Dude, where the hell are you?” Nancy Gillian’s voice rings loud in his ear, the sound echoing as he jerks his head away from the speaker. “I’m in the lobby, I ran into a lot of traffic.”
“No shit! Why are you calling me? You need to focus on where you’re going!” TK follows the crowd, taking a second to read the directional signs above his head as he continues toward the check-in. “I know, I just wanted to let you know I’m in the building.”
“Marj got here an hour ago, buddy.” TK can’t help but laugh as he hears his other friend shout in to say she is listening, and he rolls his eyes as he finally enters the line to obtain his boarding pass.
“I gotta go. See you in hopefully the least amount of time possible.” She says a quick goodbye before TK turns his phone off, ignoring the message he sees pop up on his screen from his mom.
After he finally receives the object that holds his permission to board, he rushes to get to bag check, his foot tapping furiously on the ground to somehow work out his nerves. It doesn’t help that the security here is blatantly rude, and when he tells her he needs to get there quickly, she asks him why he didn’t leave earlier.
TK blinks at the woman, unable to explain because honestly, she’s right. And he is too stubborn to admit when he is wrong, so he stays quiet. Finally, she lets him through, and he doesn’t have the patience to stand behind the large crowd of people filing into the hallways.
He looks down at his pass, noting the gate he needs to find in order to actually board his plane. Suddenly, he is hit by a sudden solid force, and he gasps as he feels something hot coat his chest and abs.
In flight or fight, his hands have a mind of their own as they push whatever he ran into back off of him, and when he finally looks up to see what that was, he is met with a man. A gorgeous man. TK glances back down, taking in his once white shirt now coated in a dark hazel liquid that is still seeping down onto his shoes.
“I am so, so sorry!” The handsome man, with an even handsomer voice, apologizes, staying away since TK practically shoved him into the wall. TK looks up at him, into a deep brown, and shakes his head.
“It’s okay, really. I’m sorry. I was running and then I shoved you–.” The man laughs, and TK’s ears perk up at the sound. He desperately wants to hear more.
“No, you’re good.” TK wishes he could stay and talk, just to listen to the sound of his voice, but he is still in a rush, and as he glances at the clock, he realizes he has 15 minutes. The man, as if reading TK’s mind, unzips the jacket he wears and passes it over, offering it to TK.
“Here, you can cover the stain with this. Hopefully you’ll have a washing machine wherever you’re headed?” The stranger suggests nervously, almost like he is praying that’s the case. TK laughs, accepting the article of clothing.
He doubts that that will happen, given that he’ll be staying in a man-made hut on a beach somewhere, but he doesn’t tell the man that. “Thank you– how will I return it?” TK asks, about ready to hand it back when he shrugs.
“I won’t be needing it. Just.. take it as an apology for the spill. And also for taking up your time. You better go.” The stranger nods his head in the direction TK had been heading, and TK takes a breath, thanking him once more before he zips up the jacket and gets on his way.
TK finds himself thinking of the stranger when he finally finds his friends, who are rising from their seats now to board the plane.
“And then my mom was calling and I was overwhelmed–.”
“Chill, TK. It’s okay. You made it, didn’t you?” Nancy tells him as they walk the tight aisle of the plane, squeezing past different characters as they find their seats. Marjan, one of his closest friends and social media manager, is leading the pack, her being the one with the best sense of direction here.
“Barely,” TK mutters as he avoids somebody’s foot, setting aside his anger for the lack of courtesy.
“Aha! Found ‘em!” Marjan cheers as she slides into the row, TK not even bothering to fight for the window seat because he knows that one of the girls would end up winning anyway.
Nancy is eventually declared the winner, seeing as she was the one who did all of the planning to get them here today.
“Care to explain the plaid with the sweatpants?” Marjan asks as she passes TK their carry-ons for him to load into the overhead bin. TK huffs, sparing a glance at what has to be the most ridiculous outfit of all time, and shakes his head.
“A guy ran into me– or, I kind of crashed into him. He was carrying a coffee.” TK explains shortly, finally sitting down in his seat after stuffing the bags inside the cubby. He doesn’t bother buckling just yet, waiting until take off to do so.
Nancy looks at him, smirking, and TK prepares himself for whatever comes next from her mouth.
“A meet-cute?” TK lets his head lull back onto the head-rest, taking a moment to comprehend what she just said before he replies. “A what?”
“You know, like those tropes in books and movies where these two strangers have some sort of inconvenient, but also adorable, way of meeting each other. Did you get his number?” Nancy asks, talking at rapid speeds as TK begs his brain to follow along.
Marjan giggles after glancing at him, shaking her head. “You broke him, Nance.” She whispers, loud enough for TK to hear.
He rolls his eyes, ignoring her to instead zero in on Nancy, “why would I have gotten his number?”
Nancy groans obnoxiously, relaxing back into her seat beside the window.
“You know nothing about love. You probably just missed out on your chance of spending eternity with your soulmate and having cute and squishy stories to tell the grandchildren.” TK blinks, the word soulmate ringing in his ear.
That stranger was not his soulmate. His soulmate abandoned him in the middle of a fancy restaurant somewhere in downtown Austin. His soulmate walked out of their dinner while TK held a ring clutched between his fingertips.
His soulmate ignored him when he sent a message about his relapse, and then blocked TK after it was received.
“Nancy,” Marjan mutters, elbowing her friend with a sigh. TK can tell she is searching for a way to fix this, but he shakes his head, smiling. “I’m okay. Really.”
Nancy looks at him as though she is genuinely sorry for bringing it up, and he hates that he is so sensitive to let stupid things like this bother him. “Stop. I’m good, I swear. I’m just.. gonna use the restroom before we fly.”
And with that, TK rises from his seat, a pang in his chest and a sting behind his eyes.
“Airplane mode is not for the weak.” Marjan complains as she lays her head on TK’s shoulder, the woman with a frown on her face as she tries to open her instagram and instead of showing her a feed, the page buffers.
“Do you think the resort will have service?” Nancy questions, the window still down and her eyes never straying from the endless sea of blue painted across the gulf of Mexico.
“I’m sure it will. It’s kind of touristy, isn’t it?” TK chimes in, having come down from his sudden sadness within the hour and a half they’ve been in the air.
“Otherwise, who will keep my business up and running while I’m getting my vacation on?” He teases, watching as Marjan shoves him playfully and sits back up while Nancy and TK snicker. His ‘business’ is a simple account on different social medias where he posts his art, pages that don’t get many clicks.
Five years ago, TK met Marjan at an art show in Harlem, New York. They got to talking, and when it was mentioned that he was a freelance, self-employed, self-proclaimed artist, she had the brilliant idea to help him start an instagram page.
TK owes her a lot, even if right now things aren’t going super well. He hasn’t been as inspired lately, and no new work means no new content, which means no revenue.
Nancy, his closest friend since they were in middle school together, is an up and coming model. TK thinks she is beautiful, and she deserves a lot more attention than she has gotten so far, but he knows one day she will be the next Adriana Lima.
Nancy is cut off from whatever joke she had been making when the pilot makes an announcement to say that their plane is expecting turbulence but not to worry and that everything is under control.
TK’s heart pounds in his chest, and he tries not to let his worry show as he readjusts in his seat, making sure that his lap-belt is buckled in. Marjan reaches over subtly, gripping his hand tight.
She knows what happened to him. More specifically, she knows what happened to his father last year.
Nancy clears her throat, “wanna listen to music?”
TK glances at her, and the headphones he has in his lap, and nods his head. He leans forward, and with shaky hands, connects his downloaded music to his ears, and relaxes just a bit at the sound of macklemore in his ears.
TK holds the door open for Nancy and Marjan as they step out of their taxi, smiling and waving as their driver pulls away, the white of his van growing blurry as he turns a corner. TK hoists his bag over his shoulder as Marjan pulls up her reservation on her phone.
“Did you check in online?” Nancy asks as the girls begin to walk, and TK scrambles to get his phone out of his pocket before responding with a yes. At least he didn’t forget to do that.
“I’ll call Paul,” Marjan mutters to herself before her phone begins to ring, and a couple seconds later a man’s voice answers with a happy hello.
“Hey, man. We’re almost to the lobby.” TK takes in his surroundings, the beautiful streets of Fort Myers Beach. There are colorful, coastal buildings lining the side of the road, and when you look down toward the water, tropical huts line the edge of the sea.
“Sounds good. I’ll meet you out there?” Paul suggests, and Marjan agrees before they say goodbye and hang up. Nancy nods toward a building with tiki decorations, before they enter one after the other.
“Good afternoon. How may I help you?” A pretty woman with butterfly locks greets them from behind a desk, looking no older than 22. “Hi, we have reservations for a week. We’re with Paul Strickland. It could also be under the name of Asha Fulton,” Marjan adds, smiling at her as she speaks.
The woman glances at each of their held out palms before she types on her computer. The sound of beads fills the room before they’re met with the sight of their friend, Paul, decked out in a Hawaiian button up and khaki shorts.
TK can’t help but laugh, noticing the bit of sunscreen on his nose. “Aye,” he shouts, doing a little twirl for them which makes the group chuckle.
Giving each of them hugs, he asks how the trip went. As the girls fill him in, TK notices his bare ring finger, which will be weighted come the last Saturday of the month. The woman at the desk is watching them with a grin, before she asks for their ID’s.
After giving all of their information, she hands a key to each of them, TK looking down at his own to see a number 38 etched onto it. “Thank you!” Paul waves before he takes his friends through the doorway that he had walked through, and they’re instantly met with the sight of the sand and ocean.
Paul takes them down wooden steps and across a bridge as he talks about how nice it has been so far, and TK decides he should speak up, so he asks when they arrived.
“We got here yesterday, and the staff here have been so nice. There were complimentary sandwiches and wine in our room.” Paul says, looking giddy as ever as they finally step into the sand, and TK regrets wearing tennis shoes the second he feels the roughness beneath his feet.
“Okay, numbers, please!” He demands, and Marjan announces hers first, then Nancy, and then TK’s.
Nancy and Marjan’s are right across from each other, so they drop the two of them off before Paul continues the walk to his hut, which is a little further away. TK finds himself a little grateful for that, that when he needs to get away from the crowd, he has a place to go.
“It’s really beautiful,” TK compliments after unlocking the creaky door, breathing in deep to take in the lovely fruity air freshener inside. Paul follows him into his new room, offering to help with his suitcase which TK begrudgingly accepts.
“I’ll leave you alone so you can unpack.” Paul decides, nodding in his direction before he goes to leave, but TK stops him, watching as Paul turns to him.
“I’m happy for you. I really am.” TK reassures, and Paul looks down. TK knew what he was thinking, that he was feeling guilty for having a wedding so soon after TK’s dreams of having one were cut off so abruptly and tragically.
But Paul doesn’t need the burden of caring about his feelings right before the best day of his life, so he moves to hug his friend for the second time since he arrived in Florida.
“Thanks, man.” Paul mumbles, and with one last squeeze, he disappears. TK looks around the room, at the white duvet on the queen bed he’ll occupy for a whole week, at the open door to his bathroom, clean and minimalistic.
TK moves around the room, and then begins to unpack. To the best of his abilities at the moment.
Most of the stuff he brought is left in his suitcase apart from some of the necessities. TK’s luggage is full of pretty boring outfits, as well as dressy ones for the rehearsal dinner, the reception, the ceremony, the after party, etcetera.
He creates a mental note to remember to ask Paul where exactly he is supposed to wash his clothes, before he moves on to unloading his toiletries. TK looks at himself in the mirror, trying to tell himself that this trip is what he needed, and it’s not a desperate attempt to find happiness at a time in his life where he feels like that is impossible.
As he exits the bathroom, he spots his phone on the mattress of his bed, and finally decides it’s time to call his mom back.