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Harlequin drags himself back to his tent. He undoes part of his uniform, hands shakily clutching at the wound near his neck. He needed to fix this before anyone noticed. He needed to clean the blood from his clothes. It had been another altercation with Pierrot, more of his blood spilled. It was only natural for them to fight from time to time, but this time it had gone too far. He had said too much. Words that were too heavy. With a bucket of water, dripping blood and a lot of defeat, he sits against the wall of his tent, and grimaces in pain when he presses down a damp cloth against the wound.
He hears the tent's curtains open and fall back into place. When he sees Pierrot emerge, hesitant and unsure, he bares his teeth but doesn't hiss. He didn't need Pierrot in his tent. Not now. Not after everything that happened. The only time he approached his tent was when he was trying to take his human back. It's not like he was interested in seeing him. But Pierrot comes closer and Harlequin does not protest his presence.
"Don't tell me to visit Doctor," Harlequin turns away, lowering the now red cloth into the water. He watches the blood swirl through it. But when he reaches for it again, Pierrot is behind him and his hand retrieves it instead. Tensing, Harlequin grits out. "What are you doing? There's nothing for you to do in here—I didn't even mean anything I said—"
"Would you shut up?" he cuts Harlequin off, no longer burdened by the art of silence now that the circus had closed. He squeezes out the excess water, before dabbing the wound he had left at Harlequin's collarbone. "I won't make you visit Doctor for a bit. Do you think I want to get in trouble with Jester?"
Harlequin flinches from the pain. Maybe from Pierrot's touch. "That hurts."
Pierrot pauses, then cleans his wound more gently. "Well, you should have thought that through before you crashed my show and acted like that in front of my human."
"Oh, right," Harlequin bares his teeth again. "Your human. Wouldn't your human hate to see you like this? With me? Close and cleaning my blood?"
"They're nice enough to understand that you might need my help because you're that much of a fool," Pierrot remarks, his eyes narrowed at the mention of his human.
"Maybe I should go to Doctor now and maybe I should just endure a good lecture from both Jester and Ticket Taker—so that I don't have to put up with you," Harlequin tries to stand, his body sore and legs unstable. He scowls as Pierrot pulls him back down, a hand grasping his shoulders, another turning his face to his.
"Like I said, I don't want to get in trouble with Jester—or Ticket Taker, now that you've mentioned him," Pierrot explains, then recalls the situation from not too long ago. "You know—you really have caused me some grief with Ticket Taker, taking my human into your green tent like that."
"Stop mentioning them," Harlequin struggles under his grasp, trying to push the hand against his face away. "And—good—I hope that Ticket Taker also comes by to lecture you again."
"Would you stop struggling?" Pierrot frowns, raising the cloth again. "The sooner I tend to you the sooner we can go our separate ways."
Harlequin tenses, glancing at the scratch marks on his face, the bite mark on his neck. He reaches out and then pulls away, all before he could touch Pierrot's face. He looks down. Anywhere that was not Pierrot's eyes. He does not like that he broke Pierrot's skin. He does not like Pierrot's assumption that he wants to be away from him.
"You know I can handle some blood," Pierrot remarks, studying Harlequin's features. "It's why my uniform is red. But you, on the other hand, are wearing green."
"I know I'm wearing green," Harlequin turns back to him, uneasy under Pierrot's hands and gaze, but petty enough to respond to an obvious comment.
"Got you," Pierrot grins at him, holding the side of his face in one hand and then cleaning him with another.
Harlequin's eyes widen as Pierrot rubs the damp cloth against his bloody nose, then down to his lips. When he frowns, lips parting, Pierrot glances at his teeth, noting that nothing was out of place. Harlequin watches the precision in his eyes, how they shift with focus and care, studying everything wrong with him. The longer he remains under Pierrot's hands, his gaze, the more he feels himself become undone. It's not like he was completely starved of physical affection. There were nights when he would fuck the fools in the other tents. But as Pierrot continues to hold him, he feels like he had missed out on everything for decades. Because he has. He feels his vision blur again, but this time his tears spill. They fall against the slope of his cheeks. He feels Pierrot's fingers graze over them, wiping them from existence. He closes his eyes, tilts into the touch, and hopes that Pierrot would spare some of his pride.
Pierrot stares down at his rival, feeling the weight of acceptance in his hands. How had it come to this? There had been a time when they were children. Good friends. The only ones who had each other. He might have met Jester, Doctor, Ticket Taker and Columbina—but throughout it all, good and bad, it had been Harlequin. Spiteful and frustrating Harlequin. Cunning and complicated Harlequin. The person who was crying and being held by him was the same boy he knew all that time ago. He feels the ache of the bite mark on his neck. Not just a bite mark. Something Harlequin planted with his teeth and then a kiss—maybe to spite him, maybe to state something—the latter made something inside of him ache. Something he did not know how to handle or choose, not when he had his human.