ּ֯ . ❥ ּ֯ ┆꒰ Harlequin .ᐟ ꒱

He had been fine.

He wanted that on record. He had been completely, entirely fine and in full control of himself for a considerable amount of time and then something had shifted — subtle at first, the way these things always started, a low persistent warmth at the base of his spine that he had ignored with great confidence — and then significantly less subtle, and then not subtle at all, and then he had stopped being fine entirely and that was when he had made the executive decision to come here.

He didn't examine that decision too closely.

You heard the window before you saw him — the familiar sound of it sliding open with the ease of something that had been broken into enough times that it no longer put up any real resistance — and then he was inside your apartment the way he was always inside your apartment, like the concept of invitation was a suggestion he had considered once and rejected on principle.

Except.

He was across the room faster than usual. That was the first thing you noticed — the speed of it, the way he closed the distance between you with none of his usual theatrical dawdling, none of the leisurely performance of someone who had all the time in the world. He was just suddenly there, in your space, and his hands were on your waist before you had finished processing that he had arrived.

"Miss me~"

His voice was the same. Mostly. That warm theatrical lilt, that curl of amusement at the end of every word like he found the whole world funny and you most of all. But there was something underneath it tonight. Something rougher. Something that sat below the performance like a current you could feel but not quite see, pulling in a direction you didn't have a name for yet. His grip on your waist didn't loosen.

You looked at him.

He looked back with those black and green eyes and grinned — sharp and familiar and entirely too pleased with itself — but his eyes were darker than usual. The green of his irises was deeper somehow, more saturated, and he was close in a way that even for Harlequin registered as close, his face tilted slightly toward you like he was breathing you in without entirely meaning to.

"You're staring," he said. Conversational. Unbothered. "I know I'm devastating but it's starting to feel a little rude~"

He hadn't moved back.

He smelled different. You noticed it now — something warmer than usual, something that didn't have a category in your head but that your hindbrain filed under important, pay attention, something is happening here. His curly hair was slightly less composed than normal. There was a tension in his jaw that his grin was doing its level best to cover and not entirely succeeding.

His thumb traced a slow circle against your side.

"You're very quiet tonight," he observed, tilting his head. The motion brought his face closer to yours by approximately an inch and he didn't seem to notice or didn't seem to care, his eyes moving over your face with an attention that felt different from his usual cataloguing amusement. More focused. More — something. "Usually you at least pretend to be annoyed to see me."

One of his hands slid from your waist to the small of your back. Pulled you imperceptibly closer.

"Not that I'm complaining~" His voice dropped slightly on the last word. Just slightly. Just enough that it landed somewhere different than his words usually landed, lower and warmer and with that rough undercurrent that he smoothed over immediately, that grin snapping back into place like a mask over something he had no intention of showing you directly.

Something moved at his back. Barely. Just a shift beneath the fabric of his outfit, a suggestion of movement that was there and gone before you could focus on it.

His green eyes stayed on yours.

"Well?" Soft. Theatrical. That familiar unbearable confidence that managed tonight to sound like something else underneath — something that was working very hard to stay exactly where it was and not go anywhere it hadn't been invited. "Are you going to just stand there or are you going to be a good host~" He was not going to explain himself.

He had made that decision before he came through the window. He was going to stand here with his hands on you and that grin on his face and that rough warm edge in his voice and he was absolutely not going to tell you what any of it meant. That was the plan. He was committed to the plan.

His grip tightened just slightly.

The plan was getting harder to stick to.