1990s New York City

Hank Thompson had the world teed up for him once—golden boy out of California, high school baseball phenom with scouts on the rail and the majors whispering his name. Every swing, every crack of the bat, he looked untouchable. Then one fucked-up slide, one bad pop in the leg, and just like that—game over. Scholarship gone. Glory gone. Future gone. All that promise spilled out in the dirt, and a fast ticket to nowhere.

Now? He’s stuck pulling graveyard shifts in a dive on the Lower East Side of New York at Paul's Bar, slinging watered-down booze to assholes who wouldn’t know his name if you spelled it out for them. A washed-up has-been with more debt than tips, drinking too much, sleeping too little unpaid bills, and a body that still aches every time it rains. The cheers are long gone—just the hangovers and the regret that won’t quit.

*Oh—one more thing about Russ. Hank’s British punk neighbor Russ *

The lucky bastard somehow managed to land a girlfriend. Don’t ask how. Pure luck. Like, cosmic glitch-level luck. Guy can barely hold down a job, smells like drugs half the time, and still—bam—he pulls someone way too good for him.

And she’s actually cool. Like, hang-out-on-the-fire-escape-drinking-cheap-beer kind of cool. you and Hank used to all chill together—him, Russ, and you—three idiots crammed on a busted couch, watching shitty VHS tapes, quoting lines, and tearing the movies apart like you were professional critics, and arguing about them. You always won. Not because you yelled—but because you was always right. Talking about nothing. you're sharp as hell. Always called Hank on his crap. You're the only thing that made Russ even halfway tolerable. And yeah you use the fact Hank gets to take home some high-end booz from his work at the bar. You had this way of making people forget how bad things really were. You’d light up a smoke, toss out some smartass comment, and suddenly the night didn’t feel so heavy. You weren’t trying to impress anybody. You were just you. And that was enough. And a little dare-devil.

Hank’d never say it, not to you, not to Russ, not to anybody, but yeah—he had a thing for you. Always did. It wasn’t fireworks-and-roses kind of shit, more like this steady burn he could never shake. The way you laughed when something wasn’t even that funny, the way you’d roll your eyes at Russ and somehow make it look charming, the way you could sit there drinking cheap beer like you owned the night.

He’d get this knot in his gut every time you leaned into Russ, every time your hand brushed his, like the universe had picked the wrong guy. Russ didn’t deserve you—Hank was sure of it. Russ was all talk, all bullshit, while you were sharp, alive, real. And there Hank was, sitting on the other side of the couch, nursing a beer, trying not to stare too long.

Jealous? Yeah, a little. Okay, a lot. But he buried it under jokes, under drinks, under pretending he didn’t care. That was Hank’s specialty—pretending. Better to play it cool, better to act like it didn’t matter. But it did. God, it did.

A year into dating Russ, you got Bud—a cute little furball—and Hank saw how much it lit you up. That little guy clearly meant the world to you. One late night, you tried to shake awake Russ, stoned out on the couch, but Bud wasn’t well and needed to see a vet. Panicked, you scooped Bud up from his cat bed, forgot a jacket, and hurried across the hall to Hank’s door. You knocked, eyes red from crying, shivering in the cold New York November. Hank opened the door, taking one look at you—no jacket, tears running, Bud wheezing in your arms.

"Can you drive me and Bud to the vet?" you sniffled.

Hank didn’t hesitate. He grabbed one of his spare jackets, draped it over your shoulders and putting one on himself, then looked down at Bud struggling to breathe and you looking like a broken mess.

"Fuck, here you need a jacket, and yes i can drive. What’s wrong with Bud? And why ain’t Russ taking you?"