-Harley-"And he thinks I'm a slut," Harley grumbled. His companion patted his back.
"My nose could tell him otherwise," Tybalt said a bit ruefully, but with just the right amount of sympathy. "Did he really say that?"
"He meant it," Harley said, his face sinking even lower into his hands. The irony of being here complaining about his ex to his ex's ex was not entirely lost on him, but Tybalt was being really... surprisingly... nice.
It wasn't at all what he had expected. He had been walking back to Aurora's place from the cafe and seen the bouquet on her doorstep, glowing white in the early evening dim. As he got closer he realized it was small cluster of calla lilies in a glass vase. There was a pale yellow ribbon around the neck of the vase, and the whole thing screamed "standard funeral arrangement".
Harley stopped on the bottom step and stared at the bouquet. Was it some kind of sick joke? Was someone genuinely trying to console him in his "mourning" over Mik? The perky yellow spikes amid the waxy petals had seemed to mock him with their eager uprightness. Harley snarled, stomped up the stairs, and stepped around the bouquet.
Unexpected color caught in the corner of his eye and he realized that, carefully placed at the back of the bunch where he hadn't seen it from the steps, was a white anthurium with a bright red spadix. He had been shocked by that lewd red amid all the funerary white and yellow; the sight of the slender red member curving out from the flower had sent thoughts racing through his head entirely disproportionate to the little spike.
Catching his breath, he had reached for the card also tied to the back of the bouquet. "Losses can hold surprises," it had read. And a phone number. And "Tybalt".
Harley had carried the flowers inside and sat down, bemused. It was tacky. Really tacky. But it was also clever, and almost... sweet? Not sweet exactly, but there was something appealing about the *effort* that really did compare favorably with being coldly dismissed...
He had dialed the number and Tybalt had picked him up and here they were, sitting on Tybalt's couch eating Korean takeout. He didn't think a breakup pity party had really been what either of them had had in mind for the evening, but when Tybalt had asked him how he was doing his little mutters had gathered momentum into a small avalanche of resentments.
Tybalt had patted his back, and winced and nodded in the right places, and murmured vague questions that gave him permission to keep talking. In a corner of his mind, Harley suspected that Tybalt was expert at picking up men with crises, in much the same way that some dogs were trained to find people buried in rubble. Or maybe the way sharks went for the bleeding ones. But expertise meant it wasn't awkward, and Harley found he couldn't bring himself to care.
When Tybalt kissed him, he let him, and when Tybalt led him to his bedroom, he followed, and when Tybalt blew him, he wrapped his hands in the long red hair and remembered not to moan Mik's name.
***
-Mik-He had opened the door expecting it to be Tabitha or Cyanide back to lecture him again, or possibly Skids for variety and that "heartfelt innocence" touch, but it was not.
Tybalt leaned forward and lounged in the doorway as Mik instinctively stepped back.
His hair was down and loose and his eyes were very bright. He smirked at Mik.
"Did you want something?" Mik snapped.
"A beer would be great, thanks," Tybalt said, brushing past Mik and sauntering inside. "Unless you wanted to mix up some White Russians?" he added to Mik's immobile back.
Mik turned slowly and glared.
"Or you could kick me out," Tybalt went on. "I understand you're all about that these days."
"Do you have some set *duration* for your gloating?" Mik ground out with an effort. "Or do I just wait for your whim to leave?"
"As flattered as I am to think of you counting the minutes," Tybalt said coyly, "People generally do that in anticipation of my arrival, not my departure. But I'm really not here to gloat. I heard... well, heard is the wrong word... the truth is, I was out clubbing and saw Harley dancing, um, very close with someone, and... I wanted to see if you were okay."
His voice had dropped the affectation and sounded almost sincere.
"He was *what*?" Mik said. His eyes flashed black. "And... wait, what? You wanted to see if I was okay?"
"Well, no," Tybalt admitted, "Actually I overheard him telling the guy he had just walked out on his last boyfriend, and I was curious."
Mik was furious - Harley was out telling random strangers about their breakup? He couldn't share things with Mik, but he could spill his guts in a club? At the same time, his anger felt like it was distant, off in that club, and the part of him that was here couldn't help but smile a little over Tybalt's admission of curiosity.
At the hint of smile, Tybalt reached past Mik and closed the door, then headed for the kitchen, catching Mik's eye and dragging him along despite himself.
In the kitchen, Tybalt opened cupboards without hesitation, pulling out glasses, the Kahlua, and the good vodka.
"If you're not going to tell me, then I'll have to guess," he said over his shoulder. "You finally noticed how much Harley flirts with other guys, you objected, and he got all self-righteous and left. Maybe -" opening the refrigerator " - there was some kind of secret in there that he hadn't been telling you and you felt betrayed. Now, you miss him and you're thinking you want him back even if he is screwing around on you, is that about right?" He handed Mik one of the glasses. Reaching for the other, he paused, put his finger up in a "wait" gesture, and put the milk back in the refrigerator, pointing at Mik and nodding as the door swung shut.
Mik frowned absently and sipped his White Russian. It was, rather annoyingly, just the way he liked them.
"So I'm right," Tybalt said. He didn't sound smug, and Mik knew it was because he still took for granted that he understood Mik that well. Like putting the milk away right away.
He finally thought about Tybalt's words instead of his tone, and the far-away anger surged in without warning and he threw his drink at the far wall, splashing it across the kitchen and shattering the glass.
"It's him," he yelled incoherently. Tybalt raised one manicured eyebrow and Mik spun and glared at him.
"He thinks he can have it all his way," he spat out. "If he wants a PlayStation or pet spiders or let his friends steal my credit card or the cute brunet at the register, it's all the same because he, Harley Goldman, deserves whatever he wants." He stopped, made a fist, looked at it, let it go. "And he'll get it, too, because I can't say no."
Tybalt smiled. "But you can say yes," he said. "Give him a bit of his own back." He walked up to Mik, slipped to one side, talking in his ear. "He's out there right now screwing around... do you think he's going to tell you about it when he walks back in here tomorrow?" He licked Mik's earlobe, who didn't pull away. "It's only fair."
Mik snarled and turned to Tybalt. They fucked there on the kitchen floor.
***
-Tybalt-He had found tiny shards of glass in his hair the next morning. They had been lucky not to get cut.
He had picked them out with the same thoughtfulness with which he had picked Harley's pubic hairs from his sheets.
He was ignorant of the details of Mik and Harley's inevitable reconciliation; he had received neither death threats nor a fruit basket and counted it a good deal.
They had both looked the same when they looked at him after with that look that said "you're not what I want; I know what I want and you're not it".
He thought if you asked him if he was a scavenger or a salvager, he wouldn't be able to tell you.
::End::
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