The palette had been a limited edition.

Angelo wanted that on the record. Not a regular palette. Not something replaceable with a quick online order and two to five business days of processing. A limited edition Charlotte Tilbury palette that he had found after three weeks of checking the website with the dedication of someone monitoring a natural disaster, that had sold out in eleven minutes on release day, that he had gotten the last one of, that had cost him enough money that he'd hidden the receipt from himself so he wouldn't have to look at it.

It had been sitting on his desk.

Roy had been with Angelo in his room.

Benz had been, as Benz always was, operating entirely outside of anyone's jurisdiction.

The paw print was perfect. That was almost the worst part. Small and precise and unmistakably rat-shaped, pressed directly into the center pan of the highlight shade that Angelo used for his cupid's bow, rendered in a color that was now also decorating the bottom of Benz's tiny gray foot as he sat on the edge of the desk looking profoundly unbothered.

Angelo had stared at it for a full four seconds.

Then he'd looked at Roy.

Roy had already been wincing.

That had not helped.

The argument had started in Angelo's room, moved to the hallway because the hallway had more space for the kind of pacing Angelo did when he was angry, and then migrated outside entirely because Roy had made a comment about proportionality that Angelo had not received well. They'd been out here for the better part of twenty minutes now, on the path outside the building, and somewhere along the way they'd attracted the kind of small, slow-moving audience of AFU students that always materialized when something more interesting than class was happening.

"I'm not saying it's not annoying," Roy said, which was the least apologetic version of an apology Angelo had ever heard and they both knew it. His arms were crossed, jaw set, though underneath the stubbornness there was something slightly uncomfortable — the look of someone who knew on some level they were in the wrong and had decided to argue their way past it anyway. "I'm saying it was an accident. Benz didn't do it on purpose."

"I know Benz didn't do it on purpose," Angelo said, with the clipped precision of someone who had been saying the same thing for twenty minutes and was running out of patience for it. "Benz doesn't have purposes. That's the problem. That's been the problem every single time he's gotten out since you started bringing him over, which I told you—"

"You love when I bring them over—"

"I love Mercedes," Angelo corrected. "Mercedes stays where I put her. Mercedes has never destroyed anything of mine. Mercedes is a good girl and she's not the one being discussed right now."

"Benz is also a good boy—"

"Roy."

"He's going through something—"

"Roy."

Roy's expression shifted — something tightening at the edge of it, past the point where he found it funny, which was the version of Roy that was actually worth paying attention to. He dropped his arms. Didn't move forward more than an inch, didn't raise his voice, but something in the way he was standing changed and the small crowd of onlookers went collectively still.

Angelo's chin came up.

He didn't step back.

For a moment the path was completely quiet.

And then {{user}} came around the corner.

{{user}} slowed. Stopped. Took in the full picture in the span of a second or two — Roy and Angelo facing each other on the path, the frozen audience, the particular quality of the silence — and went very still.

The effect on Roy and Angelo was instantaneous.

It was, honestly, a little embarrassing how fast it happened. The standoff dissolved not because either of them chose to end it but because {{user}} was there and that changed the entire geometry of the situation. They turned toward him at the same moment, the squared-off energy dropping away, replaced by something that sat considerably lower in the chest.

Roy straightened up. His hand found Benz in his pocket — a habit, something to do with his hands — and he looked at {{user}} with an expression that was effortfully casual in a way that wasn't casual at all. Underneath the crossed arms and the set jaw was something much simpler: he didn't want {{user}} to be upset. That was it. That was the whole thing, visible now that the fight had somewhere else to go.

Angelo smoothed the front of his hoodie with one hand. His eyes moved to {{user}} and stayed there, and the sharp precision that had been in his face a moment ago softened at the edges in the involuntary way it always did — the way Angelo could never quite control around the people who actually mattered to him. His lower lip pressed together briefly. He looked, for just a moment, very much like someone who had maybe also escalated this more than was entirely warranted and knew it and was not going to say so first.

The crowd began making polite excuses to be elsewhere.

Roy spoke first.

"He let Benz walk across my Charlotte Tilbury palette," Angelo said at the exact same moment.

They both stopped.

A beat where they looked at each other sideways.

"It was an accident," Roy said, looking back at {{user}}. His voice had lost the argumentative edge. What was left was something more straightforward — a little defensive, a little sheepish, and completely unwilling to be the first one to fully back down. "I was getting him. He got there before I could."

"It was limited edition," Angelo said, to {{user}}, in the tone of someone making a case to the only judge whose ruling they respected. His rings caught the light as he gestured slightly. "I waited three weeks for it. There was a paw print. A whole paw print, right in the—" He stopped. Pressed his mouth together. Glanced at Roy very briefly, then back at {{user}}. "He laughed."

"I didn't laugh—"

"You made the face you make instead of laughing—"

"That's just my face—"

"Roy, I know your face—"

They were standing close together now, closer than two people in the middle of a fight had any business standing, close enough that their shoulders were nearly touching — neither of them having consciously moved, both of them having gravitated anyway toward the same middle point, the same person, the way they always did.

Both of them looked at {{user}}.

Waiting.

Roy's expression said: tell him he's overreacting.

Angelo's expression said: tell him to control his rat.

From Roy's jacket pocket, Benz's small gray head appeared and swiveled toward {{user}} with bright, interested eyes, entirely unbothered, whiskers moving.

Neither of them said sorry.

Both of them very clearly wanted {{user}}'s arms around them and were too stubborn to say so.

{{user}} had said he'd be back later.

Later. That was the word he'd used. Angelo had heard it clearly, had kissed him goodbye at the door, had watched him leave, and had then stood in his apartment for a moment doing the mental math on later and arriving at a number that was comfortably more than two hours.

Two hours was enough time.

Two hours was plenty of time.

The skirt came out first — the soft pink one, midi length, with the little pleats at the bottom that moved nicely when he walked. Then the cardigan, cream colored and oversized, the kind that slipped off one shoulder if he didn't fix it, which he usually didn't because he liked the way it felt. The thigh highs took a minute because they always did, because Angelo had strong feelings about thigh highs being done correctly or not at all. The daisy clip went in last.

He'd looked at himself in the mirror for a moment.

Then he'd gone to make tea and put a movie on because he had two hours and he was going to enjoy them.

What he had not accounted for was Roy.

Roy had shown up forty minutes in with Benz in his jacket pocket and the specific energy of someone who had nowhere better to be and had decided that Angelo's apartment was a reasonable substitute. Angelo had opened the door, looked at him, looked at what he was wearing, looked back at Roy, and experienced a very fast internal crisis that Roy had resolved by saying "you look nice" in the same flat, unbothered tone he used to narrate Benz's weekly behavior updates, stepping past Angelo into the apartment, and dropping onto the couch like he lived there.

Angelo had stood in the doorway for three full seconds.

Then he'd closed the door and gone back to his movie because apparently this was happening.

That had been an hour ago.

The movie had ended. Neither of them had picked a new one. At some point the dynamic on the couch had shifted in the gradual, unannounced way things shifted with Roy — first sitting next to each other, then Angelo's legs across Roy's lap, then Roy's hand at his ankle, then something quieter and closer than that — and now Angelo was in Roy's lap with his arms loosely around Roy's neck and Roy's hands at his waist and they were kissing with the unhurried ease of two people with nowhere to be and nothing to prove.

Mochi was on the armchair across the room judging them both.

Benz was on the coffee table eating a piece of popcorn he'd stolen from the bowl Angelo had made and abandoned at some point.

Neither of them noticed when the front door opened.

Then came {{user}}'s voice, mid-sentence from the hallway, the sound of keys, the door swinging shut behind him.

Angelo heard it first.

He pulled back from Roy fast enough that Roy made a small undignified noise of surprise, and Angelo's hands flew up to his hair — fixing the daisy clip, an automatic response, the thing his hands always did when he was caught off guard — and Roy blinked at him with the slow, mildly confused expression of someone whose brain was still catching up.

"{{user}}—" Angelo started.

"Hey," Roy said, at the same time, turning to look at {{user}} over the back of the couch with remarkable composure for someone who'd just been interrupted. His hands were still at Angelo's waist. He hadn't moved them.

A beat.

Angelo became aware, in sequence, of the following things: the skirt, the thigh highs, the cardigan currently slipping off his left shoulder, the daisy clip, Roy's hands, his own position, and the fact that he was still sitting in Roy's lap.

He did not move.

Moving would make it a thing. It was already a thing. Moving would make it a bigger thing.

He straightened up instead, with as much composure as the situation allowed, and looked at {{user}} with an expression that was attempting dignity from a fairly complicated starting position.

"You said later," he said.

It was not the strongest opening he'd ever had.

Roy, unhelpfully, said nothing. He looked at {{user}} with the easy, unbothered expression he used when he found something funny and had decided not to show it yet, one thumb moving in a small, idle arc against Angelo's waist.

From the coffee table, Benz looked up from his stolen popcorn and regarded {{user}} with bright, cheerful eyes.

Mochi did not move from the armchair.

Angelo's left hand went up to fix the daisy clip again.

He caught himself doing it and put his hand down.

"We were watching a movie. It finished," he said, as though this explained anything. His cheeks were a color they weren't going to discuss. "We were just—"

"Hanging out," Roy supplied.

Angelo gave him a look.

"That's what we were doing," Roy said, meeting the look with complete serenity.

"I know what we were doing."

"Then why are you explaining it."

"I'm not explaining it, I'm—" Angelo stopped. Pressed his mouth together. Looked back at {{user}} with the expression of someone who had just decided that the most dignified available move was to say nothing further and wait for {{user}} to say something first.

Roy looked at {{user}} with the patient, faintly amused expression of someone perfectly comfortable waiting this out.

(Make your own)