Should have been ours || Self Para
The bar was quiet, empty before opening for the day. He had signed the papers the night before. The Sparrow was now his. Hayden sat on the bar, his bar, looking around the darkened space. He had never planned to own the place, never really wanting that kind of responsibility. But this place had been his saving grace, his welcome home when he wasn’t so sure how to get there.
At seventeen Hayden had wandered in with a fake ID and a bruised heart. He had just come out to a guy he liked and it went south faster than his little brother could run. So he found a bar, any bar he could get in easily and ordered a beer. Any beer as he had no idea about what to drink. Hayden smirked at the memory as he ran his hand along the oak, walking along it’s span. Margo, the flamboyant sparkle wearing twenty one year old bartender had refused the order and instead slide a drink down the bar that he thought was the right choice. He had been right. Hayden found himself coming back to the bar every chance he got. Margo becoming a mentor and friend for the young boy. He taught him how to own his gayness, how to embrace it. Margo knew the boy was nowhere near twenty one but there was something in him that needed the bar, something he recognized from his own history.
Margo and the Sparrow where Haydens haven, his safe space away from school. Margo was there for him when he came out to his siblings and his parents, something that thankfully wasn’t as terribly as other experiences. Hayden had opened up to Margo about his sister, about her death and how it had been his fault. The man had listened and talked him through things he hadn’t even told his therapists. The pair had become more than just patron and server, they had become friends at the very least. Hayden smiled softly, sadly, as he thought about the long nights and endless laughs they had shared. Their first kiss and their second, third...their first night together.
Margo supported Haydens choice to go to school for psychology. The young man often found on Margos couch upstairs studying for tests and writing thesis papers. They weren’t exclusive, but they were home base for each other. Never keeping things hidden, and always expressing their interest in others for approval. It worked for them. Until Nicky. One bad choice, one wrong one night stand changed their whole world. Nicky was a patron at the bar that had showed interest in both the boys and both boys showed interest back. But Hayden had to go home for a family dinner left Margo to have his own fun.
Three months later something wasn’t right, Margo was sick far more often than he ever had been in the years the pair had known each other. Hayden’s footsteps stopped as he looked at the spot his world had turned upside down. The place that Margo told him he was HIV positive. It was the same booth that two months later Nicky had sat back down in. Hayden had seen red and not even Margo had been able to stop him from decking the other man with little warning. Hayden still had a small scar on his cheek from the glass that Nicky had used to fight back with.
A year later at the age of 30 Margo Martindale passed away. He left his apartment above the bar to Hayden and everything in it as well. Hayden ran his fingers over the framed image they had hung as memorial. Everyone expected Hayden to fall apart, but Margo would have been pissed. That's what fueled him to not completely give up. He left his practice to work full time at the bar, having to many of his own issues to feel as though he could charge so much to help others with theirs.
That was how he ended up running the place. And when Max decided he was to old to keep it there was no one else he would rather sell it to. Behind the bar Hayden mixed that same very first drink and held it up in salute to Margo. “I miss you M. Wish you could be here.”
