tangled up in weeds; youthful dreams; change scenes { michael }

The beginnings of a smug look disappeared. Hah, thought Tony, meanly. Michael defended his hookup with altogether too much effort. "Ms. Potiphar, whatever," Tony said, leaning too hard into the z sound in Ms. What the hell is Potiphar, asked Michael. "What kind of Methodist are you?" Tony retorted, barely able to stop himself from adding read a book, Michael, good Lord to the question. They were regressing, which was embarrassing even without an audience. Tony glanced to Zach, just to make sure he wasn't making popcorn or something that would make him feel like a idiot. He wasn't, yet. But, unlike Terry, Tony thought that Zach would possibly let the two of them actually destroy each other for the entertainment.

It was stupid of him to bring up bad choices, though, because G-d dammit, Michael was right. Tony had never in his life been shy about making his opinion on Michael's choices known, save for the One big choice wherein Tony had shut all the way up for a week after. Every other? Tony was right there to rag on his best friend until they were both worn out from arguing. Did he want it equal? Of course he didn't -- the whole point was that the moral high ground was supposed to be where Tony was!

He couldn't say that, of course. "Well, this is equal, then, I suppose. Complete with inane bickering."

Michael crossed his arms back at him, blew back up at 'dance card' of all things. Does he even respect you? "Fuck if I know," Tony said, voice dropping to a lower volume but dripping in bitterness. "But he sure wouldn't be the only one." He was feeling pretty disrespected at the moment, but generally, Tony didn't even respect himself. He sure didn't now, just as he hadn't the morning after Kai was last here. It was a moot point.

"Not like I invited him back here today, did I? Not like I'm going to see him again." Tony shrugged. "This is stupid -- I don't want to see him again either. We're on the same bloody page, so lay off."

What kind of Methodist was he? “What?” said Michael, more frustrated now that Anthony had picked a reference he didn’t get than he was that Anthony was poking fun at him. Was this from the Bible? He straightened his back and puffed up a little; he had little to no recourse in this particular line of questioning but was not about to admit it.

He squinted, and noted with satisfaction that Anthony seemed to be questioning his choice to start dragging up Michael’s bad decisions and Tony’s reactions to them, which had generally been spluttery, offensive, and immediate. At least Michael was more or less articulate, for now. (Anthony was digging too deep into topics Michael had intended to leave alone, which had caught him off guard.)

But he was a point up, if he was doing the math right – Anthony knew this was his fault, Anthony had admitted to lying about how often he’d seen Kimura, Anthony knew he deserved Michael’s ire, and they had moved on from Ms. Potiphar, and God willing, they weren’t going to go any further down the Michael’s-Myriad-Mistakes rabbit hole. He was feeling moderately better about Anthony having marched him up here to yell at him like some kind of cop. “No, this is ane bickering,” he insisted, even though it wasn’t and they both knew it and ane probably wasn’t even a word.

Anthony seemed like he wanted to wrap this up, which was perhaps the greatest indicator of how inane it was. Michael suspected he had the longest tolerance for inane bickering of this sort, especially when it wasn’t him it was deriding. He deflated slightly, though he didn’t let his guard down quite yet – he was pretty sure his friend was still mad about his small-talking Kai Kimura on his doorstep. “Alright,” he said, “Well! – alright – fine – mistake – whatever.” He blew out his breath, added, in a last-ditch effort to eschew blame, “He should have left first, you know.”

Perhaps it was a low blow – Tony was, generally, the most religious wizard he knew. Right after, in order, his mother and his second cousin who was a rabbi in America. It stood to reason Michael didn't have the name of every character in Genesis memorized. Tony's lip curled up anyway, pleased to know something that Michael didn't.

This was the way of their friendship when they were at each other's throats and aggravated with each other. To grandstand, to show up to each other with righteousness or intelligence, or, ideally, both. Unfortunately, Tony appeared to be losing. No, this is ane bickering, Michael said. Never mind. They were tied again for points, since Michael just used what Tony was positive wasn't a word.

The door to his bedroom clicked closed – at some point, likely while they were arguing about Biblical figures, Zach had escaped. Well, he couldn't blame him. Tony felt another bit of splotch forming on his jaw. Would they talk about this later? Or would it be left unsaid? They had done all their arguing about Kai months ago. Tony didn't feel like having the same argument with two men today.

At this rate, it was only a matter of time until Terry showed up to chide him.

Michael deflated a little bit, which was a relief. They had made it through the bickering to something a little more honest. He should have left first, you know. Tony nodded, deflated a little more himself. "Right," he said, dropping his arms and rotating his right wrist around in its socket. It had gotten stiff. It always got stiff fast, that wrist, with the layers of scar tissue pushing at the bone. He felt tired, suddenly, and went to sit at the dining table. He gestured at Michael to join him, if he felt like it.

"He gets under my skin, he does," Tony said, looking at Michael's ears more than his friend. "Should have told you. Was too embarrassed each time, though. Zach –" he nodded towards the bedroom, "– only knows because he was here." Tony grimaced in the remembering.

Anthony sat down; Michael hesitated but had a seat next to him, watched him screwing around with his crippled wrist for as long as it took him to feel uncomfortable and redirect his gaze off into the middle distance. He gets under my skin, said Anthony finally, and Michael glanced almost at his friend.

“Right,” he said, as though he understood, although he didn’t really. The list of people he thought could do that to him was just Terry and Anthony – Michael didn’t think he’d ever let himself relax enough into a new relationship to start cracking open the lockboxes of his personality, and doubted he ever would. Even with Cordelia, even though she was the first girl to know the context of his peculiarities. In the four months since they’d first really broached the topic, they hadn’t needed to do it again.

That didn’t leave him with anything helpful to say to his friend, at least nothing helpful he thought Anthony would accept. It felt rude to tell him that this was the natural consequence of letting himself get so close to strangers, and rather ruder to say so in the phrasing that had come most naturally (you’re so gay about your feelings), and Anthony didn’t take well to unsolicited advice in the first place.

He didn’t have to say so anyway; Anthony went on, and Michael fought not to twitch his mouth too obviously and said, “He was here?” That poor man. Michael had endeavored tirelessly for years not to know anything about Anthony’s sex life.

It didn’t even bear laughing about, right now, if Anthony had been so embarrassed about it; he rubbed his hand over his chin, rough now with late-afternoon stubble, and said, “Guess I understand,” even though he didn’t – he’d told Anthony about Christmas-party-Marcia about six hours after it’d happened, as soon as he’d thought it was reasonable for his friend to be awake – “I just never had a girlfriend get in my head like that, I don’t know what it’s like.” This wasn’t as overt a request that Anthony explain himself as Michael meant it to be, so he added, “I can’t follow the thought process unless you tell it to me.”

He was here? Anthony winced. It was not his proudest moment. He almost hoped Michael would push in the poker -- laugh, or tell him he was being a stupid bugger, or some terrible pun on the act of buggering -- but his best friend just rubbed his chin and frowned. Tony didn't have a comeback for that sort of thing. He frowned too, not believing Michael when he said he understood but understanding it was a friendly lie. Trying to understand, maybe.

The thing was -- Michael had never left Tony in the dark this long, and neither had Terry ever left either of them in the dark this long, it was in the charter, and there was really only one reason for it. Shame. Even now, years out of the closet, Tony still felt his mistakes were bigger because they were with men. There was an added layer of it all -- he hadn't just gone back to an ex, he had gone back to a man, and therein laid an extra layer of shame.

Can't follow the thought process unless you tell it to me, Michael said, and Tony nearly winced again. G-d, how to say this without sounding completely insufferable? He scratched at his neck with his bad hand, thinking. A girlfriend never got under his skin like that? Tony's brow furrowed. "What about Ginny?" Perhaps another low blow, and a cruel one to Michael's current girlfriend. "She got under your skin, like. Not the same way, but," he shrugged. The arguing, the disparaging of Dean Thomas (who, by the way, should Tony tell Michael man was gay now too? Or something?), the DA of it all -- it wasn't the same, but in his recollection there was an itch there that Michael kept scratching, a scab he kept peeling off.

He tried again, tried to leave Ginny out of it. "It's like -- I see him, and all the worst bits flood back, but the good parts of it all," of us was left unsaid, "flood back too, and -- it's not exactly thinking it can go back to how it was, but sort of a denial? Like for a moment, it can only be good, and I won't feel like shit in the morning." His conversation with Zach ages ago was bubbling up. Tony bit his lip. "And just because I know its going to be awful when I come back up, you think I would quit. But I don't. I don't seek him out, but." Another shrug. He wish he could use his lawyer voice, be as eloquent here as he was in court. "Presented with the option, I make the same mistake over and over. Definition of idiocy." He drummed his fingered on the wooden table, not meeting Michael's eyes.

So he didn’t have ex-girlfriends that got under his skin, but Anthony was sure worming his way there. Michael had never cared for what-abouting rhetoric. What about Christmas-Party-Marcia? What about his fair share of bad choices? What about Ginny? There weren’t that many people who knew him well enough or for long enough to have a ready selection of examples of Michael’s hypocrisy at hand, and the only solution for it was to stop being a hypocrite, which was bollocks.

But this was a false equivalency and Michael knew Tony knew it. “Right,” he said pointedly, “Not the same way – ipso facto, she didn’t get under my skin like that.” Perhaps that was needlessly nitpicky, but point Michael all the same – Ginny was no Kai Kimura (Kai Kimura was no Ginny?) and if Anthony brought up one more irrelevant Michael mistake Michael was going to scream.

(Not that Ginny didn’t get under his skin – perhaps for reasons even close to whatever was going on with Kai Kimura than Anthony realised; Michael remembered once or twice absolutely fuming on how infatuated he’d been with her when he was fifteen – but for once this was not about the war, so help him God.)

The last thing he’d expected was for Anthony to actually explain himself, so – naturally – that was exactly what Anthony did. It left Michael feeling distinctly off-kilter; he said, either as an apology or a really awkward deflection, “That’s not the definition of idiocy.” Not in the orthological sense at least; it’d still been an obviously idiotic move.

Michael didn’t really have anything more to add, though. He was fairly sure he learned from his mistakes (quite possibly his mistakes were so massive that he couldn’t help it.) “Just,” he said, unsure how to go on and not liking it at all, “well, don’t go and bunk off to America again.”