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"You good, man?"
"Course," Oliver snorts, swinging his shoulders, stretching the lines of his suit jacket. Tommy doesn't comment on the white-knuckled grip he's got around that untouched drink.
"Cause you're, I'm not sure how to put this…you're a shitty wingman. For real, dude, what the hell." Tommy hooks an arm around him and ignores the tightness he feels. "See that one over there?" He points.
"Brunette, red dress?"
"Redhead, red dress. You know she's an animal in the sack. And she was totally making eyes in this, uh, kind of general direction. Pop quiz: what should you have done about ten minutes ago?"
Tommy's not stupid.
"Number one: gone over to her."
"Excellent start. And then?"
"Said, I thought I saw you looking our way…"
Post-Island Ollie is not his club-hopping best friend Ollie.
"…I thought you should know..."
"Thought she should know?"
"That guy I'm with?"
"Right, right."
"He's a total dog."
What he hasn't figured out is why he's pretending to be.
"You do wrong by me man. I'm wounded, see it? Right here. You're not looking. Dude--do you see it?"
"I think so."
"Ow, man, all I'm saying. Ow. Also?"
"Mm?"
"You are so fired from wingman duty."
"I'm crushed."
"I thought you'd be."
It throws him off.
When Oliver first reappeared, Tommy had several thoughts in rapid, stumbling succession: 1) why fuck with a guy like that, 2) what, and, Oliver?, 3) oh my god, and 4) what about Laurel.
Then they were reunited, the duo restored, the band back together, and he started to worry, because Ollie was acting strange in how he was acting not-strange and totally strange. Like a body-snatcher or something. Uncanny valley, woah.
Oliver seemed to want people to forget that he'd somehow managed to survive five years on a deserted island, meanwhile all Tommy wanted to do was tell him how fucking badass he was and debate the merits of a "Most Likely to Be the Next Castaway" award in a yearbook somewhere. Also to honestly figure out how. Like, how. How did you do that.
And, five years? Alone? Tommy doesn't know if it's possible for someone to come through an experience like that without a few marbles loose, some new viewpoints. Meanwhile Ollie maintains that he wants the same things in life--in other words, nothing much. Three clubs a night and a 2pm wake up call. O.P.P., yeah you know me.
If Tom Hanks can't do it he doubts Oliver could, all he meant to say. It was weird.
Also the fact that despite all of the partying, he hasn't seen Oliver sloshed yet. He knows Ollie when he's drunk, and he knows Ollie when he's playing drunk, and if he finds out Oliver thinks he's been fooling him he might haul off and--shove him. Or something.
Because Oliver apparently became a ninja while he was expanding on his Russian language skills. Tommy had been half-aware and suffering from a sparkly-new head injury, but those thugs had been serious, and then they had been gone.
Vigilante, his fine white ass.
They've circled back to his place after bar-surfing one night, and that last shot of Don must still be in him. Draped over Oliver's shoulder like some barfly angling for it, watching him pretend to fumble his spare key into the lock, it has to be that shot that says, "You ever think it's weird that the hooded guy showed up the same time you did?"
Oliver goes stiff where they're pressed together, and Tommy thinks a little harder about theories he'd initially dismissed as all kinds of stupid.
"Or that no one else seems to have?" He presses, disguising very real curiosity in a drawl. "There some killer kool-aid I'm missing out on?"
Oliver's muscles, larger than Tommy remembers them being, grind like stone opening the door.
Curiouser and suspiciouser.
Inside the apartment he tries again. "You know I love you man. If you want to talk, I want you to talk."
Oliver doesn't say anything. He gives Tommy's calf a smack that's too stiff to be as casual as he'd intended and leaves, though the couch is ready for him like usual. Tommy rolls over on his bed, mumbling, and will think about it later.
And think about it later he does. The notion stays with him like a bad buzz after that night. Strange, buff Ollie who's not drinking even though he asks to and is spending a lot of his time not at home and not with Tommy, where's he going?
It's a mindfuck to think of him running over rooftops in a costume and--and killing people, but Oliver's not the same and he's not right and Tommy's losing ground against himself with this theory here.
And then he sees the scars.
But before that, Tommy's cracking up. "For the love of god, please don't touch anything."
They're back in his apartment. Oliver's covered in Sex on the Beach and reeks so much of Absolut that Tommy thinks the fumes are raising his blood alcohol level.
Oliver plucks at his shirt and coughs. "Towels beneath the sink?"
"Towels beneath the sink buddy," Tommy slaps his ass as he walks past.
He's making coffee for them both when Oliver calls him from the bath.
"How do you bathe without soap?" He says over the spray.
Tommy gets a new bar out for him, goes to pass it through the curtain, and freezes.
"…Oliver, man," he says when his brain restarts long moments later.
Oliver takes the soap from his limp fingers and runs it over down one arm, then the other. He shrugs.
"They're ugly, I know."
Tommy sits on the toilet because his legs are shaking.
"Ollie--please man, tell what's going on with you."
He doesn't. Oliver snorts and finishes washing without further comment. Tommy follows him dumbly from the bathroom and watches him shuffle around his own closet, coming out with in his Starling Uni t-shirt and doing up a pair of jeans. He hadn't helped himself to any of Tommy's underwear, and Tommy knows Oliver's are on the floor of the bathroom, caught in his booze-drenched pants.
There's totally nothing but Oliver in there. He'll have to remember to make a joke about going commando in another guy's Levi's on another night, when images of those scars aren't so fresh on his mind.
There was one over his heart, for chrissakes.
The next time the There's Something About Ollie series comes up, Tommy's skunk-drunk in the back of the car and unashamedly sprawled over Oliver's lap.
Then, Oliver talks to him, tells him things, but Tommy doesn't remember in the morning. Only remembers Oliver's thigh warm and twitching under his cheek, thinking to himself like a mantra don't forget Tommy please don't forget this, and the urge to cuddle the life out of his friend like they were six year old girls.
He's on his third aspirin, second bottle of water, and first coffee. It's 1pm of the next day and Tommy decides the best he can do is continue hang around, maybe push a little when Oliver's act gets particularly pathetic.
In the meantime his head is telling him he's not twenty-three anymore and that he needs to chill on the nightly shenanigans. Maybe he can drag Ollie to a movie every once and a while instead of the club. It'll be great. Tommy can get a handle on his intake and Oliver can skip pretending to intake. Everybody wins.
It won't kill him to dream about Oliver's scars and how he got them, and Oliver will talk eventually.