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Tango is drunk.
Not blackout, he’s pretty sure, but a ways past pleasantly buzzed, definitely. The room lurches a little when he lies back on the counter, his elbow bumping against his half-empty bottle. It teeters, but doesn’t tip over.
“I’m drunk,” Ghoul says from somewhere to his left. Oh, yeah. He’s drinking with Fun Ghoul. Jet Star and Party Poison are out on some sort of important late night mission the details of which the rest of them are apparently not privy to, Kobra Kid is asleep in the back room, and Tango is drinking with Fun Ghoul. He figures it’s gotta be somewhere around 2 AM by now.
“That’s just what I was thinking,” Tango responds, when he remembers that’s what he’s supposed to do. “That I’m drunk. Not you. But you are too.”
Ghoul cranes his neck back to look at him, all skeptical and squinty-eyed. It’s how he used to always look at him, back when Tango first showed up, like he was actually Korse disguised as a 5’7” dumbass with tangled, red-streaked hair and a busted ray gun. It took weeks, if not months, for that look to let up.
But now he’s doing it again, and for no apparent reason either. “What.” Tango doesn’t mean to sound as snappy as he thinks he does. He can’t muster up the voice to try again.
“What,” Ghoul echoes back.
“You’re looking at me weird,” Tango mutters. “Like I’m doing something wrong. Or I’m gonna do something wrong. I’m not.” He sounds petulant even to himself, but he’s just too far past the point of caring.
Ghoul blinks, scratches the side of his leg absently. Then, after a while, he says, “Why are you even here, dude?”
That’s a rude question. Maybe. Tango’s not sure. Ghoul doesn’t seem sure either. “Like, here? Or like—” Tango waves an arm around in some vague indication of the great big fuckin’ universe “—here here?”
“Here,” Ghoul replies shortly. “As in, showing up out of nowhere and deciding to stick around with us in this stupid fucking diner for months here.” He sounds—not angry, but something like it—but doesn’t look it. He just looks weird and suspicious, and wasted.
“Because I wanna be?” Tango rolls onto his stomach to be able to meet Ghoul’s eyes without giving himself a headache. He’ll have enough of that to deal with in the morning. “Why, you got a problem with me being here?”
A frustrated sound huffs out of Ghoul as he shakes his head. “No, I just—I dunno. Don’t you have anywhere else to be? Somewhere you’re from? It’s not like we’re the sweetest bunch around here.”
Tango’s headache gets worse. “You know I don’t know where I’m from,” he says, and it comes out soft and a little lost. Ghoul’s nose twitches in that way it does when he feels bad about bringing something up. “And I like it here. I like you guys, or whatever.” There’s a lot hanging in that whatever, tossed up from Mad Gear pits and shootouts on Route Guano, from lying in the cooling sand and tracing patterns in the stars next to a warm body and a shock of red hair, from bickering over cans of Power Pup, from talking for hours trying to remember something and anything, from, from, from.
From the way Ghoul’s expression shifts, it’s clear he picked up on it. Not all of it, probably, but enough for the corner of his mouth to twist, pulling his scar up. He’s never been particularly good at keeping his emotions off his face, not like Kobra’s perpetual poker face.
In any case, Ghoul’s mouth twists up and his brows furrow for a moment, before he drops his gaze and turns minutely away. Then, “You like Poison.” Not a question, not an accusation. Just a statement.
Suddenly Tango’s not nearly drunk enough. He says, “Yeah,” before he can really think about it. Not that there would have been any use denying it anyways.
He doesn’t know what he expects from Ghoul in response, but whatever it is, it’s not the way relief floods into his expression at the confirmation, the way his shoulders drop. “Okay,” he says. “I—alright. Okay.” Then he doesn’t say anything more, for what feels like a long time. Tango turns onto his back again and stares up at the dirty ceiling, and tries to imagine what the sky looks like on the other side of it.
“He’s in love with you,” he murmurs upwards into space. He doesn’t need to look to sense how Ghoul stiffens at that.
“He is,” Ghoul agrees, haltingly, then falls silent again.
Tango raises himself up on his elbows and tries not to glare at him. “That’s it?”
“What do you mean,” Ghoul mutters. He’s staring intently at the floor.
“Poison’s in love with you and you just. You don’t—” Tango stops himself with a breath that surprises him with how it shudders. “I don’t get it. He’s heads-over-ass in love with you and you don’t do anything about it. You like him, don’t you?”
Ghoul’s “yeah, I do,” is so quiet it’s almost inaudible.
“Then why don’t you do something about it?”
“I can’t.”
“Sure you fucking can. What the fuck’s the problem.” I’d give anything to have him look at me the way he looks at you, he doesn’t say.
Ghoul’s shoulders are tight against his ears by this point. “There’s not—it’s not that there’s a problem—”
“Well then fucking tell him—”
“It’s not that simple, alright?” Ghoul snaps. “I can’t just—we’re a fucking family here—this fucking family is the only thing keeping me alive, and if we—if I fuck up me and Poison, I don’t know what I’m gonna fucking do, okay?” He’s flushed with fear and frustration, and his hands keep making these abortive motions like he wants to get them in his hair but won’t let himself. “I know you don’t get that because you haven’t been here nearly as long as I have but these guys saved me from myself and showed me who I really am and I can’t fuck that up!” A ragged breath. “I can’t risk fucking it up.”
“You and Poison breaking up or something isn’t gonna—”
“You don’t know that,” Ghoul interrupts with a growl.
Tango doesn’t have any further argument, because he’s right, really. He doesn’t know shit. Instead, he just climbs off of the counter and settles down next to Ghoul on the floor, leaving a careful but small space between them.
“And.” Ghoul’s voice catches. “And—fuck—honestly?” His eyes dart momentarily to Tango, then away again. “Honestly, man? I don’t think I’m good enough for him.”
Nobody is, Tango wants to say. He keeps his mouth shut. Ghoul lets out a mirthless chuckle at his silence.
“No, it’s cool, I wasn’t expecting you to try to convince me otherwise. I get it.” He splays his hands out against his thighs, curls and uncurls his fingers against his ratty jeans. “It’s just—he’s so…”
Gorgeous? Incredible? Daring, clever, funny, determined, perfect, a fucking supernova of everything beautiful left in the entire damn universe?
“So… much. You know?” Ghoul finally actually looks at him for the first time in what feels like forever, his hair falling into his eyes and his head rolling loose on his neck as he turns it to face him. Tango just nods. “I don’t know how the hell anyone’s supposed to keep up.”
“When you figure it out, let me know.”
Ghoul keeps staring at him, his expression suddenly unreadable. “What would you do if you were me?”
Tango snorts. “Well, if I were you, I’d be you. So nothing different. Dumbass.” Ghoul swats at him with a hand that Tango bats away.
“You fucking know what I mean, dipshit. What would you do if—if he was in love with you?”
“I wouldn’t be a pussy about it, if that’s what you’re asking.” It feels a little bit like a lie.
“Fuck you,” Ghoul says without vitriol. “You’re being a pussy right now.”
“Because he’s not in love with me,” Tango retorts. He’s so caught up in arguing with Ghoul in this moment that for a second that almost doesn’t hurt to say, until it catches up with him and then it really does.
Ghoul catches the way he winces. He turns his body fully towards him, knocking their knees together. “Hey, dude, I…” He trails off, gulps before continuing, “I’m sorry. That he’s not.”
Tango raises a disbelieving brow. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Ghoul insists, his voice a little choked. Fuck, Tango is so not drunk enough anymore. “I don’t know why he isn’t—you’re an asshole and an obnoxious dick sometimes, sure—”
“Hey, thanks, man—”
“—but I am too, even worse, and you. You would at least do something. You’d have the fucking balls to do something. And you’d be good to him, ‘cause you like him so much—” Ghoul’s starting to spill into his space a little bit as he speaks, teetering forward to the point where his breath ghosts across Tango’s cheek. “You’re… you’d say something.”
“I wish I could,” Tango says, the words hushed and hovering in the mere inches between them. He meets Ghoul’s eyes, and he’s got the same fucked-up, hopelessly sad, hopelessly in love, hopelessly stuck look he knows is in his own, and Ghoul’s brows knit together like he’s thinking a million thoughts in a millisecond and then—
Ghoul’s kissing him, fierce and unrelenting, and it only takes Tango a second to realize what’s happening, even less time to kiss back. Ghoul cups his jaw with fingers that press into his skin almost too hard; Tango winds a hand into his hair in response and pulls him closer.
This is a bad idea. On so many levels, this is a bad idea. They’re just two sad motherfuckers in love with the same guy, drunk and living past the end of the world, and nothing good can come of this, and yet. And yet.
“I’m sorry,” Ghoul gasps when they break for air. His gaze is a little wild, his hair mussed where Tango had tangled his fingers into it. He’s bright red. He’s not moving any further away. “I—fuck, Tango, I’m sorry—”
Tango puts his mouth back on his, and he shuts up for a while.