Chapter Text
It could never be said that Thomas Barrow was an adventurous man. He lived in a small town in Yorkshire, managed a small outlet of a bookshop chain, and the highlight of his day was taking his Golden Retriever, Lady, for a walk across the moors.
Thomas was, however, a romantic, and secretly derived great joy from making his partners happy. It was for this reason that he had booked a week away in sunny San Francisco for himself and his partner Phillip. Phillip's parents were rich and old-fashioned. After Phillip came out to them, they had told him that if he didn't give up such ridiculous ideas, he would be disinherited. Phillip had carried on dating men in secret, but it was a strain on his well-being, and Thomas felt that valentine's week away from them in an exceptionally gay-friendly city could only be a good thing.
Unfortunately, all had not proceeded according to plan. The very day that Thomas had planned to tell Phillip about the trip, Phillip had broken up with him. It wouldn't have been so bad if Phillip had not used the phrase it's just not worth it, but he had, and Thomas had seen red for a while and he... well, he had threatened to show Phillip's parents evidence of the two of them sexting and chatting. He had never entirely empathised with Phillip's struggle - having been thrown out by his own parents when he doggedly refused to pretend to be straight, part of him felt that Phillip should stand his ground and if his parents didn't like it, so be it.
It turned out, Phillip knew him rather too well. Before dumping Thomas, he had got into Thomas's phone and deleted anything that looked the slightest bit un-platonic between them. Which left Thomas single, lonely, without any reminder of the good times and with a spare ticket to San Francisco that none of his friends could afford with only two weeks notice. Thomas decided to go by himself, not wanting to waste the holiday now he had paid for it and thinking he might tour the gay bars for a few rebound shags.
Thomas arrived in the afternoon and, after checking into his hotel, headed out to the Castro district where all the gay folk hung out. He spent much of the first three days drinking, dancing, sleeping late and having sex. He fucked a twink, got fucked by an extremely muscular trans guy, and had oral sex in a club's bathroom only to immediately go back to the dancefloor and pull someone else. For someone used to being The Only Gay In The Village, it was a rather overwhelming experience.
On his third morning in San Francisco, Thomas awoke at 11:30 and decided it was time to see some of the sights. Casual sex was all well and good, but he ought to see a bit of the city he was in, apart from just clubs and other men's bedrooms. After a bit of googling, courtesy of the hotel's free wifi, he concluded that the most efficient and most hangover-friendly way to do this was to get on a tour bus. It happened that there was a company selling tickets from pretty much opposite Thomas's hotel, so it seemed an obvious choice to buy a three-day pass from them. The leaflet proclaimed: "hop on - hop off! Live tour guides!"
The first stop on the city tour route was just around the corner, so Thomas ambled over, vaping contentedly, and saw that a bus was already waiting there. He showed his ticket to the driver and climbed aboard, going up the stairs to the open top deck despite the drizzle that had started. He sat on the left hand side at the very front of the bus, so that he would get a good view when the tour started.
Over the next few minutes, a handful of other people got on the bus, but all of them stayed down below in the dry.
"Morning everyone, my name's Jimmy, I'll be your tour guide," Thomas heard from the bottom deck. He had been distracted by looking around at the buildings, and had not noticed the tour guide arriving. "Where are you from?" the male, American-accented voice continued. It was rather a nice voice.
The reply was too quiet for Thomas to catch, so he just idly listened to Jimmy-the-tour-guide's side of the conversation until he heard footsteps on the bus stairs behind him.
"Aha!" said Jimmy. "Someone's braving the weather, then."
Thomas turned in his seat to see Jimmy's truly dazzling smile. Fuck, he thought faintly.
"I bet you're Australian," Jimmy went on, brushing a stray lock of his unruly golden hair out of his face. "Yeah? Or from New Zealand? When there's someone up here in the rain, they're usually from one of those places."
"Sorry, neither," Thomas replied, managing to recover his equilibrium in the face of extreme handsomeness. "Yorkshire, actually."
"England?"
"Yeah," Thomas confirmed. "So this is practically summer for me. At least it's warm."
Jimmy laughed easily. "Glad we're not disappointing for you. We don't get much rain here - it'll probably clear up in a few minutes."
"Great," was all Thomas managed to say before the bus's engine started and Jimmy picked up his microphone to begin the tour.
"We're in the tourist area now," Jimmy said after a brief introductory spiel. Thomas settled back to listen and look around as Jimmy narrated from the top of the stairs a few seats behind. "Lots of places to buy souvenirs; if you want to get ripped off, that is. And here's our first stop - anyone for Pier 39 and the sea lions? Just give the driver a shout." The bus continued on without stopping. "No one? Man, I hope this means you've already seen 'em 'cause you can't come to San Francisco without seeing the sea lions. Alright, we'll move on now, away from overly expensive Fisherman's Wharf. You've saved yourselves 40% just by leaving, congratulations."
Thomas snorted, craning his head to glimpse the sea between the piers. Traffic trundled past in both directions, a mix of cars, buses, trams and trolley buses. There was a lot of choice of public transport here, even more so when Jimmy pointed out the cable car lines.
"And here's Golden Gate Park. When they were first setting up in San Fran, they asked a Scotsman, James Stanley, to design the park. He came all the way over, ran his fingers through the soil, and said 'you'll never grow anything here.' And he went straight home. So next they asked another Scotsman, John McClaren. John McClaren came all the way over, ran his fingers through the soil, and decided he would not be defeated. Now, the soil we have here is very sandy, not very fertile. John McClaren mixed it with something there was an abundance of in San Francisco at the time - horse manure, from all those horse-drawn vehicles, and in the process basically invented potting soil."
The bus wound through the park as Jimmy spoke, passing green lawns and plenty of trees and other plants. Thomas had noticed that Jimmy seemed to value making the tourists laugh more than he valued bombarding them with facts, but given the state Thomas was in he was perfectly fine with that.
"You'll notice you can't see many statues in the park. That's because John McClaren HATED statues. He just couldn't make them grow! The council kept giving him statues to put up, which he eventually did, but he planted trees on FOUR sides of them."
Thomas couldn't help but laugh. That sounded just like something he himself might do.
"There is one exception - one statue of fellow Scotsman Robbie Burns, who McClaren must have been a fan of because he has trees planted on only THREE sides."
There was plenty more to hear about John McClaren, who was something of a character to say the least. The well-rehearsed narration was so entertaining that it stopped Thomas from getting too distracted by Jimmy's appearance, allowing him to keep his attention on the landmarks and history being described.
Despite it being a hop on, hop off tour, Thomas kept his seat all the way through until they finally looped around to the stop they had departed from.
On his way out, Thomas dropped a dollar in the tip bucket. "John McClaren's my favourite person now," he told Jimmy, who seemed to be getting off the bus too.
"He's kind of amazing," Jimmy agreed. "I'm glad I made you like him."
They stepped off the bus and paused briefly at the door. A dozen questions flitted through Thomas's mind - Are you finished now? D'you fancy getting a drink with me? Are you single? Is it stereotypical to ask an American for coffee? But the man was gorgeous and how the hell was Thomas any different to the hundreds of other tourists Jimmy would see today? He was probably straight, anyway.
The hesitation was only a second long, before Thomas said: "See you, then."
"See you," Jimmy echoed.
He probably wouldn't, though. Thomas was only here for a few more days.
After the city tour, Thomas went for a walk to Pier 39, where he bought a late lunch in the form of a dozen Dinky Donuts and an orange juice. He wondered idly what Phillip would have said to that - Phillip liked to stay in shape, and had often expressed dismay at Thomas's rarely-indulged sweet tooth.
To his own surprise, Thomas realised that he was not, in fact, missing Phillip very much. He had liked Phillip a lot, but it was nice to sit on a wooden bench by himself and not have to worry about what Phillip might say about his eating habits or whether someone who would spread the word to Phillip's parents might see them together. Thomas Barrow was not meant to hide himself away.
The sea lions were a pleasant surprise, too. Thomas had expected to see perhaps one or two, if he stayed there long enough. Instead, he found himself looking at nearly a hundred fat little bodies laid out on wooden jetties. A handful glided effortlessly between the platforms, giving their honking cries, while other tourists watched from the pier's walkway, gasping in delight and taking photographs. Thomas took a picture for a young Japanese couple, who put their arms around each other and beamed at the camera. They looked so in love. Thomas passed the camera back and couldn't quite meet their eyes as they thanked him.
After touring the shops for a little while, Thomas returned to his hotel room for a quiet read of his book and plenty of fluids to banish his lingering headache. The great thing about America was that hotel rooms always had a coffee machine. Thomas was a bit of a snob about coffee. Teabags he selected by the criteria of whatever was cheapest - as long as it was strong and milky, he wasn't fussed. Coffee, however, had to be proper beans, freshly ground. The hotel only provided coffee pods, but that was close enough. There was a sliding door in his room letting him out to a small courtyard area, which was useful when he wanted to nip out for a vape.
There was a night tour of the city setting off at 6pm which had interested Thomas, so he left the hotel in plenty of time to catch the bus. It was just beginning to get dark as he crossed the street to the stop, and the lights of the city were coming to life. Back at Thomas's home, it was much less bright. It was a fairly rural area with few sources of illumination, and the old-style sodium streetlights in the town had not yet been replaced with white lights, so Thomas thought of nighttime as a low orange glow. Here in a modern city, one could barely tell the difference between night and day.
The tour bus arrived and a short queue formed. A cute guy walked past just as Thomas reached the front, so he was briefly distracted as he held out his ticket. When he looked up, he realised that Jimmy, the tour guide from the earlier trip, was standing in front of him.
Unconsciously, Thomas smiled. "Hey." He wondered if Jimmy would remember him.
"Hey again," Jimmy replied with a smile of his own, effectively answering Thomas's unspoken question. The smile was probably just politeness, though. "What was your name again?"
Thomas had not actually told him in the first place. "Thomas," he said.
"Hey, Thomas," Jimmy replied, still smiling. "It's all dry up top for you."
"Great." Thomas lingered for a moment, but Jimmy was waving the next few people onto the bus, so he had to move out of the way. He went back to the same seat as before - at the front, left-hand side. He felt... glittery. His fingers were jumping, his hands were restless and his arms didn't seem to know what to do with themselves. He felt a bit silly, being so pleased simply that Jimmy had remembered him.
But that didn't stop him from glancing repeatedly over his shoulder when the tour began, catching Jimmy's eye and chuckling at his jokes. Sometimes, he could almost pretend that Jimmy was talking just to him.