High Energy Collision [Completed]

Chapter 4 - do I know you?

Working behind a bar at a night club had a surprisingly meditative quality to it.

Plan loved the retro-futuristic design, particularly the ceiling imitating a starry night sky and he loved watching people move on a full dance floor like molecules heating up and evaporating into a gas.

Watching people ebb and flow around each other made him feel relaxed and had led him to enjoy attending to customers, despite most of them being drunk and erratic. It made him smile, because even seemingly erratic behaviour was never truly random, and in his mind, he started to try and calculate most probably courses drunkards would take to reach the bar, the restroom, or the exit.

Before he had started working here, Plan had never thought he would enjoy this type of work, and he might count himself lucky that he hadn't had any other options to begin with.

On Monday evening, he had met with his friends Birk and Ellie, whom he had already played with as small toddlers at the edges of the rice terraces while their parents and his grandparents worked. The two of them had found their way to Bangkok maybe a year before Plan, in search of their fortunes. They wanted to make enough money to eventually get married and return to the village, though things hadn't gone as well as they had hoped.

For now, they were running a street food cart in the neighbourhood of Siam Centre.

Plan had originally hoped that he could just work with them until he found something better, but since his studies only really allowed him to work late evenings and nights, Birk had given him the business card of Gravity club instead. The owner was a friend of Birk's and had agreed to hire Plan to work two or three nights each week between Wednesday and Saturday.

Today was already his third and last night shift for the week. It had been enough for him learn to mix most of the standard drinks and get a hang of the other tasks around the bar as well.

"Hi, what can I get you?"

The question flowed automatically off his lips by now, particularly since the club had been filling up steadily.

"Plan?!"

Oh no. On no. This can't be happening.

Plan looked directly into the face of a smiling Win. He looked the same as he remembered him, agile and handsome, with a permanent smile in his eyes.

This was not supposed to happen. Win was supposed to stay in Chiang Mai.

They had made good memories together, memories for Plan to think back to in bad times, and they had agreed to part ways amicably.

Neither of them had any business being here and Plan was caught in a sudden fear that if he interacted with Win again, if they were both in Bangkok, the future would taint the past.

He couldn't handle this.

Without answering his increasingly confused ex-boyfriend, he looked over to his colleague Grit, asked her to take his customers while he stepped out for a bit and hurried away towards the backroom.

He had succeeded in losing Win in the crowd by the looks of it and headed towards the door of the staff room in relief.

"Not so fast," an unfamiliar voice behind him said.

When he turned around to see who it was, he looked directly into the angry eyes of... a well-dressed, really handsome guy he had never seen before.

"Errr... who are you? Why do you bother me on my break?"

"Don't play coy. Haven't you been running away from me just now?"

Plan looked the guy up and down again, trying to figure out why he should have run from him, but he came up with a blank.