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Perth considers the handle of the broom he has in his hands – he curls his fingers tighter around it for a moment, then loosens them. Again and again he does this, furrowing his brow, pursing his lips together. His tomato plants seem to be waving at him in the wind, wondering why the hell he hasn't just gotten over there and watered them already, but it's just...
Perth starts considering calling the police again. The police would handle this situation probably way better than the handle of his broom ever could. That would be the smart thing to do. A smart, intelligent person would contact the authorities and have this individual arrested ASAP, because although the balcony is technically outside of his apartment, it's still private property.
Right.
Here's the deal. There's a kid on his balcony. And not kid as in a toddler or even a ten year old who's clearly lost their way and looking for their mother, but a kid as in a youth. One of those obnoxious ones that wave their student ID's around in the air at the bar on Wednesday nights and get twenty baht off all their drinks, one of the annoying ones that drive past Perth's apartment complex blasting Top 40 so loud he can hear it all the way at the tippy-fucking-top of his building. One of those kids. Perth's really only four or five years older than the college generation, but it's very hard for him to look at any of them and think peers.
He really, really doesn't like people younger than him. They annoy. If this were any other situation, any other person, any other fucking college fuck-off that's somehow managed to weasel their way up onto his balcony, he'd have called the police.
The problem is, this kid looks particularly out of sorts. Like, worst night ever out of sorts.
He's wearing jeans and a flannel, one shoe, and he's sprawled out face first with his cheek pressed into the brick of the balcony, a small pool of drool collecting by his mouth as he breathes in and out steadily through sleep. There's a patch of something damp near Perth's carrots, which he thinks might be vomit but doesn't feel like inspecting, Jesus Christ, and an empty bottle of Singha Beer curled in between the kid's long fingers like a teddy bear.
Most striking of all, is the purple-blue bruise he has in a ring around the eye that Perth can see from his angle. Perth frowns at it.
This is not what he thought he'd be spending his morning doing, but here he is.
He's right smack dab in between Perth and the tomato plants, right there, sprawled out with limbs just long enough to make it physically impossible for Perth to even try to step over him without somehow stepping on one of his fingers or calves or forearms. With a deep breath, he grips the handle of the broom tighter, and shakes his head. He should really call the cops.
Instead, he pokes the end of the broom into the kid's side, once, twice, three times. “Hey.”
A stutter in his breath, a snort, a twitch of his fingers. But other than that, he remains immobile.
“Hey,” Perth tries again, pressing the broom into his hip harder. “Hey, buddy.”
Eyes blink open, fluttering long eyelashes, and then he's squinting against the harsh early morning sunlight. Perth watches with a frown as the intruder smacks his lips together, probably tastes something horrible in his mouth if his facial expression of absolute disgust is anything to judge by, and slowly raises his head. He glares blearily around himself for a moment.
First, he looks at the bricks. Squints at them like he's looking at a math problem. Then, it's the plants. Those, he must think are some kind of alien life forms, because he stares at them as though they contain the mysteries of the galaxy, blinking every couple of seconds, his mouth agape with a string of saliva connecting it down to the bricks underneath him.
Perth pokes him with the broom again. “This is private property,” he puts on his adult voice, narrowing his eyes.
Finally, the attention of whoever-the-hell is set firmly on Perth. His eyes, even though they're bloodshot and only half open, are startling in the sunlight. Doe, whiskey, honey, a dozen other poetic descriptors, and Perth loses a bit of his righteous anger for a moment as this person looks directly at him. Carefully, he drops his palms onto the ground, hoists himself up until he's almost on his knees, and then gives up. He flops backwards onto his ass with a pained grunt, the empty bottle of liquor ting-tinging against the ground, and goes back to staring around himself, disoriented.
“Hey,” Perth starts again, waving the broom stick in the air like he's going to poke him in the face with it again. “You – you've gotta leave.”
Again, the eyes are on him. And Perth thinks that the look this person is giving him right now, this angry-confused-baffled-scared-annoyed-what-the-fuck look, is completely unjustified. If anyone should have that look on their face right now, it's Perth. For all he knows, this person is about to pull a gun out from his skinny jeans and start open firing on him.
It's unlikely, given the fit, that any sort of weapon whatsoever is inside those pants, but a person who breaks onto an 18th story balcony in the middle of the night is clearly not stable. It's best to be prepared. Which is why Perth grips the handle of the broom tighter, thickening his resolve.
“Are you alive in there?” He prompts, and is met with stony silence. “I said – are. You. Alive -”
“Can you -” a hand is held out in his direction to silence him, and Perth gapes at it, aghast. “...like, not scream?” His voice sounds like it's been run through a meat grinder several times over before getting shoved back into his throat in a hamburger surprise type capacity.
“I'm not screaming,” Perth says evenly, and the kid winces, like he is. “That's probably the alcohol. Now can you please -”
“Did we meet -” a pause. He puts his fist to his mouth and closes his round eyes for a second, like any moment he's about to start blowing chunks all over Perth's plants, and Perth braces himself. Then, he drops the fist down, swallowing heavily, and continues. “...at the bar, last night? Did we – um...” he squints his eyes off in another direction, color rising to his cheeks like he's ashamed.
Perth looks at him like he's just grown about sixteen extra heads. Because, seriously? Does this situation look anything like a we-hooked-up-last-night situation? The two of them, both fully clothed, outside on a balcony, a pile of vomit two feet away? “What? No!”
“Oh God,” he hisses, slapping a hand over one of his ears. “Nails on a fucking chalkboard.”
That just about does it. “Listen,” Perth takes one step forward, and the kid doesn't even flinch. Just sits there blinking at him with a face of pure and total disgust. “...I don't know who the hell you are, or how the actual hell you managed to scale the building up to my balcony -”
“I used the stairs,” he points his hand off in a vague direction, frowning at nothing. “Like a person.”
“...but you need to go, now. All right?”
With legs that look like they're made of jelly he drags his knees up like he's about to try and stand again, and then lets out a breath and shakes his head. Not happening. For a moment, he blinks at the ground, hungover beyond all belief, it looks like, and then he flicks his striking eyes right back up to look at Perth, the beginnings of a smirk crossing his mouth. “I need two seconds.”
“You've got zero,” Perth snaps. “Zero. You're lucky I'm not calling -”
“Oh, please, do,” he waves his hand in the air, “please call the cops. My dad will love this story. He'll frame the incident report up on the wall, right next to my high school diploma.” He's got all this arrogance, and this smugness in him, and even Perth can tell that, while maybe sometimes this person might be so cocky, this, right now? Is put upon. Forced. The words ring false, like a robot response instead of a genuine one.
It's too soon for him to tell, and perhaps half of this is just the hangover that's making it seem this way, but he looks - sad.
Perth doesn't understand – none of this is making very much sense whatsoever. It doesn't make sense how he got up here, it doesn't make sense why he's still here, it doesn't make sense why he's – so attractive – and it doesn't fucking compute. None of it. He appraises this person again, from head to toe, and shakes his head incredulously. “Do you even live in this apartment building?”
“Um -” he squints, looks around himself – like he's not fucking sure. “...I live in a house.”
“Great.”
“I'm – I don't normally -” a bashful look crosses his features – when ten seconds earlier, he was all cocky and smirking. “...I'm having a weird night.”
“It's the morning,” Perth clarifies brusquely, shaking his head.
“Yeah.” There's a couple of seconds of silence. Perth clutching his broom like he's getting ready to wield it at any second, the stranger staring down at the muddy old sneaker on one foot and the white ankle sock on the other with his lips puckered. The bruise on his face, now that the sun is fully across it and Perth can get a good look at it, is a nasty one. Someone really clocked this kid as hard as physically possible – or, he somehow managed to clock himself at some point while he climbed his way up here.
Right as Perth is starting to consider maybe asking him if he's okay, the question gets answered.
He starts crying. Right there, on Perth's balcony, surrounded by greenery and a set of wind chimes, an absolute stranger starts sobbing hysterically. He cradles his empty bottle closer to his stomach like it's a comfort to him, puts one hand on his forehead, and weeps.
Perth just – stares. He's never been particularly great with displays of emotion, even for people he actually knows. Most of the time, he just mutters something about needing to make a phone call and excuses himself from the room before he has to try to deal with it. What's he supposed to say, or do? Pat him on the back and go there, there? He doesn't even know what the problem is.
There must be a lot of them.
“I'm so -” his shoulders sag, and he heaves in a breath, “-so sorry, so sorry, I'm just -” another breath, a hiccup, “I'm having the worst night.”
Perth palms his forehead. He should've called the cops. Now look at what he's saddled with.
Abruptly, a pale palm is slapping against the brick beneath their feet and is being used to push the lanky form of the kid up into a semi-stand. He gets into a crouch, still crying, and then forces himself up all the way to his full height. Only a couple of inches shorter than Perth, if that. He still has the bottle cradled in his arm, almost like he's forgotten it's there, and swipes furiously at the dampness on his face with his other, free hand, lowering his eyes to the ground and shielding the bruised side of his face from Perth's view.
“This is embarrassing,” he moans, staggering forwards like a baby deer just learning to use its legs. “I should – go. I -” he moves forwards again, and Perth, on instinct, steps back to permit some space for him to walk. “This is so, so humiliating...”
“Er -” Perth stutters, as he moves back into his apartment through the wide open sliding glass door. The handle of the broom smacks against the outside wall and Perth startles, having forgotten he even had that thing in his hands at all. “...it – yeah.” Yeah? Jesus Christ, Perth.
The kid sniffles, wiping at his eyes again, and follows Perth into the apartment without even asking. Just waltzes right in. Perth guesses that he sort of has to, to get the hell out of here, because there's very, very little chance that he remembers the other way that he managed to get up to the balcony last night. All the same, it's weird to see this person in his place.
This kid is all scruffy, awkward, loud colors, clashing against Perth's well-kept, high-strung, dull apartment. He looks – bizarre. And that's not just because he's still crying and carrying an empty bottle of beer like it's his baby.
“Door?” He asks quietly, not even looking for it himself. Perth runs a hand down his face, looks at the person standing in front of him, and sighs.
“It -” he points, one tan finger in the general direction of his front door, and then hesitates for a moment. He drops the broom down to his side to hang limply in his fingers, and as the stranger starts shuffling towards the front door without another word, Perth pipes up. For reasons unknown to him, he fucking pipes up. “...are you – all right?”
There's no pause in movement. He keeps shuffling along, sniffling and huffing. “No,” he says.
“Is there – do you – I can call someone,” he tries again. He doesn't know why, but it feels absolutely and positively terrible to just send this poor creature out into the world, crying with his baby-liquor and only one shoe, all by himself to stumble his way home. Perth just feels bad for him, all right?
The fact that his hips look just about the right size for Perth to fit his fingers around comfortably has absolutely nothing to do with it. Because, let's be honest – having a thought like that, that nasty and that salacious, about a person who's crying...is gross. And weird.
Perth clears his throat again. “I can -”
“That's fine,” he mutters, still moving towards the door. There's only a handful of steps left until he's there, until he's pulling the door open and vanishing out into the hallway – where Perth's nosy neighbor Mrs. Jan will snort and roll her eyes and gossip with all the other ladies on their floor about Perth's bedraggled possible bedmate – and Perth reaches a hand out to catch him on the upper arm.
He turns, eyes finally wide instead of squinted shut, and Perth swallows. Holy. Shit, he thinks. Those fucking eyes.
As if he's been burned, Perth pulls his fingers away from the cloth of his shirt, and clears his throat again. “Who -” he waves his fingers to his own face, “who hit you?”
Blinking. Then, a gasp of surprise or realization, and long fingers at prodding at the bruising – he winces. “I – nobody. I'm just – I gotta go.”
Perth opens his mouth to say something else, to offer a ride home or another phone call to someone or an extra shoe or something, but already the door is being pulled open, and then slamming closed, without another word exchanged between them.
Perth feels weird. Not angry, anymore. Not annoyed. Not like he wishes he had called the cops after all, but just...weird. Something like a hollowed out sensation, as if he's just made a mistake. Let something slip through the tips of his fingers, maybe. It's not something he particularly wants to think about or consider, because how fucking weird is it to be half hang up on a person whose name he doesn't even know, who he poked with the end of a broom because he had passed out after throwing up all over Perth's fucking balcony?
Later, as Perth is leaning over to water his plants, he catches sight of a bright red converse shoe hanging by a lace from the fire escape.
----
Perth is standing outside on a busy sidewalk, basking in the summer time sun. He sips at his coffee, people watches, and waits for Emi to come down from work so they can go on their planned lunch date. This is a normal thing, and a normal day. The sheer number of times that Perth has stood on this exact stretch of sidewalk, underneath this exact tree, drinking coffee from this exact coffee place – it's astronomical. It's comfortable. It's expected.
It's the exact kind of thing Perth likes. The expected. He hates surprise parties, surprise visits, surprise presents, surprises in general. Mostly, he just likes to know things so that he can plan ahead – look himself in the mirror and plot out exactly how he's going to respond after opening up a present at Christmas time so that his reaction isn't so forced or stilted. He's a planner.
When things don't go as he planned them to go, he gets a little freaked out.
Halfway through his cup of coffee, right as he's checking the time on his phone, he hears a twig snap above his head. A bright green leaf flutters down towards the ground around Perth's feet, and Perth blinks at it for a second. When he looks up, he expects to see a cat or a rat, maybe even a bird tweeting around up there building a nest.
Instead, he cranes his neck back and spots a very, very familiar set of eyes blinking down at him owlishly. Which is fitting – considering the fucking tree he's sitting in. They lock eyes with one another, and recognition is immediately flashing across the kid's face as clear as day. There's a silence, just for a second, neither one of them knowing what to say as they both bask in the knowledge that they know exactly who the other is and exactly why they recognize each other, and then a throat clears.
“Hi,” comes his voice, a little muted from the distance between them and the foliage blocking some of its passage.
Perth had more or less forgotten about this. True, it's really only been a few days since The Incident, but he's been forcing himself to focus on other things. Because, those first hours following one of the most interesting things that's ever happened to him, he thought about it way, way too much. And, not in a holy shit this is going to be a great dinner party story way – because he wasn't thinking about the actual event. He wasn't thinking about just the fact that he found a kid passed out on his balcony at nine o'clock in the morning.
He was thinking, specifically, about the kid, himself. That kid. The one currently hovering fifteen or so feet above Perth's head in a tree branch. That just wasn't working for Perth. Not at all. It was weird, first of all, to think about him like that when they didn't even know each other's names, and it was weird second of all because – Jesus. It's amazing Perth has to explain this to himself.
The kid was passed out on his balcony. There's nothing attractive or endearing about that. The term human disaster comes to mind.
The point is that Perth has deliberately tried to wash this person out of his mind, and as a result, he had kind of been hoping and expecting that he would never, ever in his life, see him again. He never saw him before, and he was never going to see him again. That was case closed.
So, he never really thought about what he would say if he did run into him again.
Perth swallows, palms his face for a second, and says the absolute very first thing that comes to mind, like word vomit. “I have your shoe.” It's so stupid – it's not even on topic, but what else is he supposed to say to him?
There's a shuffling from above him, and the branch he's sitting on creaks. Like it's about to snap at any second. “Can you do me a big favor?” He pauses for a moment, furrowing his brow. “A bigger favor than holding onto my shoe for me.” A second pause. “And a bigger favor than not calling the police on me.”
Seeing no other options in front of him, feeling like he's suddenly being taken on the ride of his life, Perth nods yes.
Perth expects help me get down from here I'm stuck or give me back my fucking shoe you absolute creep or – something within the realm of reason as Perth has come to understand it. Instead, he opens his mouth, and says, “can you tell me when the guy over there -” a long finger points off in some vague direction, and Perth follows it with is eyes to the chicken seller stand some twenty odd feet away, “..is gone?”
“The guy selling the chicken? Uh – I think he's here until five...”
“Not him,” he corrects mildly, pointing his finger a little bit more forcefully in the same direction. “Yellow t-shirt.”
A second glance at the chicken stand, and Perth does see a guy milling around in a yellow shirt, eating a chicken satay and talking to a girl. Perth observes him for a few moments, watches as he finishes off the last couple of bites of his chicken, wads up the paper it came on into a ball and tosses it into the nearby trash.
“What's he doing?”
“Uh – talking to a girl.”
A beat of silence. Then, dejected, “oh.”
This is literally the most innocuous person that Perth has ever laid eye on in his life. Perth wouldn't glance twice at him if he were walking past him on the street, because he's just a guy.
And, yet, there's someone up in a tree above Perth's head hiding from him. Huh.
Perth scratches at his face, and realizes that a good twenty seconds have passed in dead silence between him and his treed companion. “I think he's getting ready to leave, now.”
“Really?” He sounds a little too excited to hear this. “Oh, thank God. A bird up here has been eyeing me like it's getting ready to peck my eyes out.”
More seconds of silence, Perth watching the guy in the yellow shirt because apparently he's invested in this shit, now, until, finally, yellow-shirt is walking off down the sidewalk in the opposite direction with the same girl he was talking with, getting ready to vanish around a corner and be gone from the block altogether. “Okay,” he says, glancing upwards into the leaves. “He's – er – gone.”
Long legs swing above his head, and then one of them is reaching downwards to step onto the nearest branch. Perth can't help but notice he's wearing different shoes, and, of course he would be. It wouldn't do to walk around with mismatched shoes, would it? He doesn't know why he thinks about this, but he does.
More twigs snap, more leaves flutter, and there are a couple curses muttered as he makes his way down the tree and back onto solid ground. Perth can't do much except stand there and watch, while pretending very pointedly like he's not watching. This is an awkward situation, he decides. This is fucking painful.
Once he reaches the lowest branch that won't collapse underneath his weight, he leaps down and lands on the balls of his feet, nearly topples backwards onto his ass but catches himself with a palm and a wince. Perth stands there, holding onto his almost empty coffee cup, and doesn't know what to say or do. Part of him feels like he should still be incredibly annoyed at this stranger for breaking onto his balcony, puking, and then crying all over the place pathetically before fleeing the scene without so much as an explanation, but, for whatever reason, Perth can't really work up the agitation about it. He just – maybe thinks it's all a little funny.
He pulls himself into a standing position, and Perth watches as he brushes some tree bark dust off his shirt, picks a small leaf out of his brown-almost red? hair to flick down at the ground. “Thanks, man,” he says earnestly, glancing briefly in the direction of the chicken seller stand as if to make sure yellow-shirt is really gone. “That's the second time you've done me a favor.”
“Well -” Perth starts, then doesn't finish it.
With a small, somewhat bashful smile, the kid holds his hand out in Perth's direction and says, “I'm Santa.”
Because it's the normal, polite thing to do, no other reason whatsoever, not thinking about how he's actually about to touch those long fingers, Perth takes his hand. “Perth.”
“Perth,” Santa repeats, and Perth pretends like the sound of his name off of his tongue doesn't just – do things to his brain. After a moment, too short a moment, Santa pulls his hand back and rubs at the back of his head, turning to squint off in a random direction as though he's about to say something he doesn't want to make eye contact about. “Okay, so – I'm not normally – you know. I don't do things like this often.”
Perth raises his eyebrows, and he doesn't even have to explain what that facial expression is supposed to translate as. Because Santa immediately gets it, if the reddish tint that the tips of his ears take on has anything to go by. This is the second time that Perth has encountered this kid, Santa, in a less than proud situation, doing something bizarre and out-there and, frankly, embarrassing. That's two first impressions. Perth's formed a judgment, and Santa knows that.
The issue is, that Perth doesn't know what impression it is he's formed. Can't make up his mind, just yet.
“I'm going through a break-up,” he announces in a rush. “When I break up with people, I tend to – well. It's just not my proudest moments.”
“Okay.”
“That guy -” he points back to the chicken seller stand, even though yellow-shirt is long gone, now, “ex-boyfriend.”
Because Santa still has the fading bruise around his eye, and because Perth has absolutely zero fucking tact whatsoever, and because he didn't have the time to plan this conversation, he just blurts it out. “Is he the one that did that to you?”
Santa scrunches his face up like huh?, before realization dawns across his face and his fingers immediately reach up to prod at the purpling skin. “Oh – no.” He laughs briefly, and Perth feels relieved. “I sort of...got smacked in the eye with a basketball because I tried to throw it through his window but it hit the side of the house instead and bounced back and -” he trails off, waving his hand to the bruise again like thus, this bruise.
Perth barely manages to stifle a laugh at the imagery.
“I'm not usually like this,” he says again, more forcefully. Perth wonders why his opinion on what Santa is or isn't normally like matters at all to Santa. “Look, let's just get it all out in the open. Let's just – cards on the table.” He gestures widely with his hands, long fingers out on display, and Perth follows the movement with his eyes almost like they're magnetized to follow Santa's hands wherever they go. “...I am, genuinely, super sorry I got onto your balcony.”
Honestly, Perth says, “no big deal.”
“And, also, super sorry that I – um – had phase one of my emotional breakdown on said balcony.”
“We don't have to go over every detail,” Perth insists, looking away before he starts laughing. “Blanket statement, I accept the apology.”
For a moment, Santa just stands there looking at Perth. It's not a stare, not exactly, but it is a look. Calculating and sure, sweeping across every part of Perth as though he thinks he can somehow figure him out. This is radically different from the still half-drunk glazed teary-eyed looks that Santa had given Perth the last time they saw each other, and Perth feels somewhat put on display in a glass case, uncomfortable under the gaze. “I'm really embarrassed.”
“You said as much.”
“That was one of the top five most embarrassing moments of my life.” He admits this with a head nod, as though he's done the math, ran the tests, laid out a pie chart and come to this conclusion.
“And where does this rank?” Perth gestures to the tree, and Santa grimaces.
“Eh. Top ten, maybe. It's funny, or maybe not really, but pretty much all ten of those have happened in the past week and a half,” a short laugh bursts out of his throat, but Perth wouldn't call it particularly humorous. It's more forced. Choppy. Sad.
Perth tightens his grip on his coffee cup for a moment, and then releases the grip. Just for something to do with his hands, just to feel somewhat in control of something, if he can't be in control of the conversation or the words that are coming out of his mouth. “Uh – so it's been a bad break-up, huh?”
“Bad.” Santa repeats the word like it's infantile, shaking his head somewhat bitterly. “I just climbed up a tree in broad daylight so I wouldn't have to see or talk to him – bad doesn't even begin to cover it.” He rubs the back of his head again, maybe his go-to anxious move, before letting out a long sigh. “Thanks for that. Seriously.”
“It's no problem,” Perth says back. Truthfully, it's not. “Uh – like I said before. I still have your shoe, so...”
“Right,” Santa makes a finger-gun at him, nodding his head. “I'll be needing that back. Most likely. Right now I've gotta -” he glances at his phone, widens his eyes at the time, and starts backing away. “I've gotta go, like, ten minutes ago. Nice to -” he stutters for a second, glancing over his shoulder at Perth and squinting his eyes like he doesn't even know how to finish that sentence, and settles with, “...encounter you. Again.”
He's off like a shot, moving through the moderately busy sidewalk while muttering excuse me's to everyone he passes. Perth stands there with his empty coffee cup, lips parted, feeling like he just lived through an experience.
Emi clacks up to him with a drawling hey, pulling her purse up higher on her shoulder. She follows Perth's eye line, raises one eyebrow as she watches the lanky form of Santa vanishing around a corner. “Who's that?”
----
The third time that Perth runs into Santa, it might be under better circumstances. Although, Perth is very quickly learning that better circumstances is sort of a subjective term, where Santa is concerned.
Emi has dragged him out to the bar, purring something about girl's night out, in spite of the fact that it's just her and Perth. For her part, she's in her element. There's nothing that Emi likes more than getting dolled up and having people look at her for an entire three hours, pursing her red lips at anyone who gets too close and laughing in the face of any guy who tries too hard to come onto her. Perth sits back and drinks, mostly. If anyone comes up to him, he matches their eyes with a death glare, shaking his head back and forth. Maybe they think that he and Emi are a thing, after all, or maybe they think he's just a fucking asshole. Either way, it works.
He's in the middle of his third drink, leaning back against the bar and listening with one ear as Emi explains in detail to a random guy in a button down what it is exactly that she does for work – maybe in the hopes that it'll scare him off – when he spots Santa not that great of a ways away.
This, Perth thinks, is the first time he's seen Santa doing something even in the realm of normal. Santa is literally just there, like any other person, wearing a crisp white shirt and leaning in to talk to a guy who looks vaguely familiar to Perth. He's got a drink in his hand, but it looks relatively untouched, as though he's been spending more of his time talking to whoever-the-hell than he has actually being at the bar doing bar things.
Perth lets his gaze linger for a moment, because this is the first time he's been allowed to just look at Santa without Santa being in some kind of pickle or trying to explain himself. The first thing that comes to Perth's mind is – shit, he's beautiful – and the second is – not that it matters.
Because it shouldn't matter. It really shouldn't matter at all. Moles and pale skin and wide eyes and smooth hair...none of that shit matters. What matters is that he's an emotionally unstable 20-something that climbs up trees and fire escapes and loses shoes and has some ex-boyfriend that he's more likely that not still hung up over. That feels like case closed, to Perth, when he lines up all the evidence like that. Too much trouble.
But, Perth looks. Why not?
It's as he's looking, sipping at his drink and tuning completely out of Emi's conversation, that he starts to notice that Santa isn't just talking to some random guy at the bar. From even a short distance away, he can't hear them, obviously, but body language and facial expressions say more than words really ever could. Santa is pissed off. Or sad. It's a toss up. He's pissed off / sad and leaning in closer like he's really trying to say something really important in this guy's face in spite of the loud volume of the music blaring over their heads. The guy, for his part, is just as angry, if not more so – they're fucking fighting on the dance floor on Friday night. Oblivious to the swirl of bodies moving around them, oblivious to the music, to their surroundings altogether.
Ah. And that's why Perth thinks that the guy Santa is arguing with looks so familiar. It's that guy – yellow-shirt, AKA the one Santa refers to as ex-boyfriend.
Perth looks away. This might be phase three of Santa's break-up, and that's none of his business. He might have inadvertantly gotten involved in what Santa called phase one, and he might've also gotten involved during phase two up in that tree, but that doesn't mean he's a part of any of this. He doesn't know Santa, at all. This is none of his business.
He takes another sip of his drink, but maybe he keeps watching in the corner of his eye. The same thing that kept him from calling the police, that kept him from shucking Santa out of his apartment like the near-felon he was, that got him to stand underneath a tree watching some guy eat a chicken, is the same thing that has his gaze wandering back to him. Call it intuition. Perth can just sense when something's not completely and totally all right.
So, it's not necessarily a surprise to him when ex-boyfriend grabs Santa by his wrist and tugs, harshly enough that Santa stumbles forward and drops his drink down somewhere below their feet. The music is too loud for the shattering of glass to be noticed or heard by anyone else around them, but Perth imagines that Santa's feet are crunching on the broken pieces, right now, as he struggles to free his wrist and back away from the hold.
Perth smacks his drink down onto the counter and stands up. For a moment, he's just standing, watching Santa claw at the hand on his wrist and shove his palm against the bigger man's chest fruitlessly, and the longer he watches, the more pissed the fuck off he gets.
Perth's not great at relationships. The last three he's had have ended in some pretty spectacular A-bombs of fiery, hellish proportions, and he's not good at talking about his feelings, and he's not good at saying what he wants, and he's not good at always being around or texting back or whatever it is that people want from others in committed, successful relationships.
That being said, even he, the failure of failures in romance, knows there's some things you just don't do. It doesn't matter to him that Santa as good as laughed in Perth's face when Perth insinuated that his ex-boyfriend has ever hit him before, it really doesn't. You don't lay your hands on your partner when you're angry, and when they say let go, like Santa has clearly said upwards of a dozen times by now, you let the fuck go.
This is what he's thinking about as he bridges the distance between himself and the ex-couple, leaving Emi behind and ignoring her squawks of where are you going!? He's thinking about Santa crying hungover drunk on his balcony, and Santa treeing himself just to get the hell away from this guy and -
“Would you just try to listen to me for once? I wasn't trying to hook up with her, and even if I was, what the fuck does it matter to you?”
Santa staggers back a step, only to get pulled right back in again by the unrelenting grip. “I said fucking -”
“You're the one who ruined the entire relationship by being so fucking obsessive and crazy all the time.”
Santa's face twists up in something like hurt, maybe emotional or maybe physical, Perth isn't sure, but he's close enough now that he can read the expression well enough. “...stop it, it's starting to hurt -”
Ex-boyfriend is opening up his mouth to say something else, wrapping the finger of his other hand around Santa's jaw to twist his face back to look at him, and Perth pretty much reacts on principle. This is not what any other sane person would do in this situation, but. Perth has a temper.
Perth punches him square in the jaw, and he vanishes down onto the dance floor. Santa staggers back, now free from the hold on his wrist, and he widens up his eyes. He shouts, “oh my god!” over the sound of the bass line.
Perth shakes his hand out, muttering a curse - he really, really hit that guy - and fixes his eyes on Santa, ignoring the guy he just punched on the ground altogether. “Are you okay?”
Santa blinks at him, looking between him and the pile of man on the floor, his jaw half unhinged. Like he doesn't even fucking know where to start, with this. “Holy. Shit.”
There's blood. There's blood, and security, and Emi screaming you got in a bar fight!! topped off with a cackle, and before he knows it, he's being shoved out into the alley way with Santa and Emi in tow, security slamming the door shut behind them firmly to let them know they're not going to be welcomed back in any time tonight. Or any other night, maybe.
“Oh, man,” Emi starts, eyes wide and glittering, like this is exciting for her. She paces around in her high heels, clacking on the concrete, while Santa stands back with a slightly dazed expression on his face. “I saw that whole thing. You straight knocked him out. It was like – man!” Emi's seen Perth get into fights before. Just...not since high school. No one's ever pissed him enough to get into a bar fight with since fucking high school, or maybe college.
He looks at Santa, assessing him. Perth maybe expects Santa to be kind of pissed, since Perth pretty much just knocked the fuck out of his ex-boyfriend for almost no surface reason, or to maybe start yelling at him right then and there. He seems upset enough, like he might start crying again.
Instead, he's just got that same calculating look on his face from before, as he looks back at Perth. Searching. The first words he chooses to say are...interesting. “He never would've hit me, you know.”
That, to Perth, doesn't sound like someone who's positive. That sounds more like Santa has been trying to convince himself of this, every time he'd do something just like that, grab him and squeeze and yell in his face and call him names and just be a general fucking asshole. That sounds like Santa repeats it in his head, a lot. That sounds like a flat out lie. “He was being a fucking asshole,” Perth says, gesturing behind him at the wall of the outside of the bar.
“I would've clocked that guy, too,” Emi says, flipping her short hair over her shoulder. “Some guys just need to be clocked, you know?”
Santa looks at her for a moment, and then back to Perth. “I can't believe you did that.”
“Sorry,” Perth says, because he doesn't know what else to say. “I just – reacted.”
“Yeah,” Santa agrees slowly.
“I don't like that,” he clarifies, shaking his head and looking away. “I didn't – like that. You shouldn't see him again.”
Santa nods his head. “I guess I'll just keep treeing myself every time he comes around, then.”
“Might be a wise idea,” Perth agrees. “Uh – this is my friend Emi.”
They shake hands, Emi grinning at him like a bobcat that's about to eat some other tiny creature, Santa smiling tightly back at her before he rubs at the back of his head. "I probably shouldn't have even come out tonight."
Perth nods.
"He called me and I -" he trails off, shakes his head. "I should know better. He's such a fucking asshole." Perth can't really argue with that, so he just nods again.
"You know," Emi starts, leaning in a bit towards him like she's about to impart motherly wisdom, "I had a boyfriend who would treat me like that - I really wish I also had a Perth who would've done me the favor of knocking him the fuck out and putting him in his place."
Santa blinks owlishly at her, like she just blew his mind wide open and has him realizing things about his past relationship that maybe he should've realized sooner. He swallows heavily, wipes at his forehead, and huffs. “I should probably – go home,” he says after, taking a few hesitant steps down the alley towards the busy street.
“I still have your shoe,” Perth reminds him. This time, he doesn't know if that's an opening, or what he's trying to say. But he just puts it out there.
“Right. I should get that.” Santa air-guns him just like he did last time, scratches at his cheek, and then turns around to keep walking. “Next time.”
----
Perth doesn't know what he thinks about Santa. Every single impression he's gotten of him has been absolutely and completely – bizarre. He insists he's not as strange as he's seemed, but he might actually be. And he has some psycho ex-boyfriend, and he's so weirdly good looking, and -
Perth still has his fucking shoe. What the hell is he supposed to do with it if Santa never comes around to claim it? He keeps it in his closet with the rest of his own shoes, neatly lined up, and every morning when he chooses his outfit and shoes for the day, he has to look at it. And he doesn't know what he fucking thinks about it. Except that it clearly doesn't belong, clashing and standing out so brightly with the drab blacks and grays that Perth has lined up around it.
The shoe has to go. Or, maybe it has to stay. Maybe Perth should've just left it hanging from the god damn fire escape so every time Santa walked underneath Perth's building, he'd have to look up and see it holding on for dear life by a lace.
“I think he's good looking,” Emi says from Perth's couch, leaned back like she belongs there, her feet up on the coffee table. “So, I don't get what you're freaking out about.”
“He's – I don't know.” Which is as close to a true statement about Santa that Perth is likely to ever get. He's I don't know. That's all there is to it. “I really don't know him, at all.”
“And yet,” Emi gets that smirk on her face that she always gets whenever she's feeling particularly vindicated or right about something, “you literally punched another guy in the face for him.”
Knocked another guy out cold on the dance floor on a fucking Friday night before getting shoved out the door by security. Perth honestly keeps expecting to have the police banging on his door any day, now, drag him in to respond to assault charges. It's been four days since then, and still, nothing. That's probably lucky as all get out.
“I don't know why I did that,” Perth admits, running his hands down his face and shaking his head. “I really just -”
“It was so white knight of you. Honestly, if I were Santa, I'd be climbing you like a tree right about now.”
“I just didn't like that guy. Something about him -” maybe the abrasive yellow-shirt, or the cocky set of his jaw, or his stupid goes to the gym five days a week body type, or...maybe something that doesn't have anything to do with him, directly, at all. “...I'd punch him again.” That's not a lie, either. Given the opportunity, Perth would fight that guy anywhere, any time.
Emi leers at him, red lips stretching across her teeth, and Perth sighs. “Because he broke your boy's heart.”
“My -” Perth can't repeat what she just said, because color rises to his cheeks just thinking about the endearment term, “I don't know him.”
“I can't believe I have to explain this to you,” she throws her hands up in agitation, sits up and twists her body so she can fix the entirety of her knowing glare on where Perth is sitting beside her. “Within the realm of love and relationships, there are, like, phases. It's not always about being madly in love and knowing every single positive and negative quality about a person and still liking them anyway, you know. There has to be an introduction.”
Perth can't believe he's listening to this.
“Nobody said you know you want this guy to be your husband, or whatever -”
“Jesus Christ -”
“...I'm just saying that it's pretty obvious you're infatuated with him.”
Now there's a word Perth hasn't thought of yet. Emi might be onto something, here. There's love, and there's hate, there's like, and there's dislike, but infatuation is something completely different altogether. Infatuation is the thing that teenage girls get for boyband members whom they've never met (and most likely will never meet). It's being into someone or something, sometimes without any real reason, other than the surface. Looks and bare minimum information.
Perth would be willing to bet there are thousands of girls out there who would more than happily punch the face of their favorite celebrity's ex-whatever, given the opportunity. Just on principle.
Still. There's something that Perth just doesn't get about this entire thing, still, there's a piece of it that doesn't quite add up, and it's that - “he broke onto my balcony, Emi. Passed out drunk, crying, all over my tomato plants.” And, say what you will, there is nothing, nothing at all, attractive or endearing about any of that.
“Yeah,” Emi snickers, shaking her head. “I can't wait until you tell that story to the kids you guys have together.”
“Who the fuck said anything about -”
“You're looking at all of this the complete and total wrong way.” She interrupts him, flicks a stand of hair over her shoulder, and begins examining the chips in her nail polish – as though she's already checked out of this conversation and is itching to move into the next one, because to her, the issue has been solved. Perth is just too daft to get to her level, yet. “So, yeah, he's probably an emotional mess, and he's embarrassed himself in front of you two times too many, but – you still like him.”
Perth clasps his hands together in between his knees and leans forward, shaking his head. This is starting to feel more and more like the plot of a very poorly executed romantic comedy, hitting theaters sometime this summer. “How would you even know I like him, Emi?”
She lifts her eyes, grins at him, and says, “have you thrown that shoe out, yet?”
And that's it. That's the one detail of the entire situation that he can't quite spin to mean something else, that he can't back away from with an explanation that has nothing to do with Santa whatsoever. There are probably a dozen reasons why Perth should just get rid of that stupid, garish red shoe, into a Good Will bin or into the dump, or just plain out the fucking window – but he hasn't fucking done it yet.
And he most likely won't ever do it, and he keeps reminding Santa that he has it each time that he runs into the kid, because he wants Santa to come and get it himself. Perth has been waiting for it, maybe, in the part of his brain where repressed wants and desires lurk like shadows, so to have it thrust into his face like this? Christ.
“This is so fucking stupid,” Perth groans, squeezing his eyes shut and shaking his head.
Emi pats him on the back a couple of times. “Poor, obsessed Perth.”
Perth is not obsessed. Okay? He's fucking not.
He's just...fuck. It just feels too high school to admit it out loud. Maybe he is, and maybe any minute he'll start scrawling Perth <3's Santa across all his notebooks while staring dreamily out his window and fantasizing about their future life together, or whatever – but he's not going to fucking admit that. He's a grown man. Santa, infantile and spaztic as he might seem, is also mostly a grown man.
Grown men don't do shit like this. That's all there is to it.
Still. When Perth catches sight of Santa on the side of the road with the hood of a shitty proton persona pulled up as he pokes around at the innards with his mouth twisted up like he has no fucking idea what he's doing, it's really all he can do to sigh and turn on his blinker. What's the use in even trying to fight this, anymore? The universe has dragged them into this same, stupid, mess of a situation for the fourth time, now, and, obviously, Perth can't really avoid it.
Obsessed, infatuated – whatever. Perth pulls over and gets out.
When Santa squints up into the afternoon sun and sees Perth walking over to him, Perth honestly doesn't know what he expects the reaction to be. There are a million different ways that Santa could choose to react to Perth, now, after the encounters that they've had and the moments that they've shared, some of them positive, but most of them negative. Embarrassment, awkward clearing of throats, no eye contact, shifty eyes...Perth expects the whole smorgasbord of this is weird and uncomfortable to come flying his way once the two of them make eye contact.
Instead, Santa's face splits into a grin and he waves a wrench in the air in Perth's direction. Truthfully, Perth doesn't know if he's relieved by this reaction, or worried about it. Relieved because yes, Santa doesn't absolutely hate me and want nothing to do with me and worried because Perth's not yet seen Santa smile like that and it's – nice. It's a very, very nice smile. Especially when it's directed at Perth. Which is worrying because that might be the exact moment that Perth realizes he's gone. Just absolutely and completely abducted and taken by this kid.
“Have you come to rescue me again?” Santa teases, fluttering his eyelashes dramatically before dissolving into a satisfied smirk.
Perth runs his palms down the front of his jeans and looks away from Santa's bright eyes, briefly. “Uh – about that – me punching your boyfriend -”
“Ex-boyfriend,” Santa clarifies. Perth doesn't miss the way that the way Santa says it right then sounds more factual as opposed to hurt, like it had before.
“...I don't just go around punching people all the time.”
Santa looks at him for a moment, a small smile on his face as he wipes dark black gunk off his long fingers with a dirty rag. “You really think I'd be mad about that?”
“Uh – yes?”
“If I had even half the muscle mass as you,” he drops his dirty rag and leans his hip up against the front of his car, so his body is facing Perth entirely, “I'd punch him, too. It took me a while to realize that I wanted someone to punch him, since I was still stuck in that limbo period of kinda wanting to kiss him, but...” he trails off, face souring like remembering something unsavory. “You did me a favor, man. For, what? The eightieth time?”
“Third,” Perth corrects quietly, wiping his hands on his jeans again. Suddenly, he's producing an excess amount of sweat in his palms and the back of his neck.
“Fourth,” Santa gestures to his broken down car and grins. “And, I meant what I said by the way. I'm not usually passing out on balconies, climbing up trees, and fighting with people at bars – although, I am usually parked on the side of the road with a car that won't start.” He scratches at his temple with one end of the wrench, huffing. “The point is, I think phase five – moving on has finally started, so.”
Perth shifts from one foot to the other and examines the profile of Santa's face, traces the pattern of moles across his cheek. “Oh. So -”
“So, hopefully, I won't be having any more embarrassing run-ins with you.” He finally drops the wrench, throwing in the towel on trying to fix the thing himself, and reaches up to slam the hood closed.
“Can I ask you something?” Perth prompts, surprising even himself.
Santa meets his eyes and shrugs, like yeah, go ahead.
“How did you even – get up to my balcony, that night?”
“My memory is a little hazy,” he says, making sure the hood is latched firmly in place. “I don't remember why or where I thought I was going – I just climbed up the fire escape and I think I thought your balcony looked nice.”
“For a place to pass out on?”
“The plan wasn't to pass out,” Santa laughs to himself, shaking his head. “Er – I was hungry.”
Perth gapes at him. “You were going to eat my tomatoes.”
“That's a moot point! Because I didn't.”
It's a moot point for more than just that, Perth thinks. Because he knows that even if Santa had gone to town and shoveled every single last one of Perth's precious tomatoes into his mouth that night, even if he'd picked each plant up and hauled them over the edge of the railing to topple down to the ground in a dirty mess, Perth would still be standing here, right now. He still would have stood underneath that tree, and he still would have punched Santa's ex-boyfriend in the face, and he still would have pulled over to be here, right now, talking to him.
That's infatuation. Plain and simple.
Out of all the balconies in Perth's building, and out of all the buildings in town, and all the streets that Santa could've wound up stumbling down, he wound up at Perth's. That's – well. Emi would call that fate.
Perth still thinks it's a coincidence. Maybe someday, that'll change.
“This thing's not gonna start,” Santa says dejectedly, rapping his knuckles against the hood of his car. “I think it's time to call it in.”
“Time of death?” Perth offers.
“No way. She doesn't die – just slips into a coma every now and again. I know someone who can get it back and running again.”
Perth glances away, just for a moment, before looking back to meet Santa's doe eyes in the sunlight. “You need a ride somewhere?”
A slow smile creeps across Santa's face, and he nods his head, before ducking it down a little bashfully – flirtatiously, Perth thinks. “That's favor number four. I owe you, like, a million favors back for all of this.”
There are just so many ways that Santa could repay those favors, that his mind almost short circuits at the endless possibilities that Santa just laid out for him without even meaning to, most likely. For now, Perth knows that he can't really ask anything of Santa, not in the way he wants to, and that's fine. He could wait.
“I still have your shoe.”
Santa doesn't finger-gun at him this time, and he doesn't say, right, I should get that sometime. Unbelievably, his face splits out into another one of those grins, and, before Perth even knows what's happening, he's leaning up to kiss Perth on the cheek. For just a second, Perth gets a whiff of Santa's cologne and deodorant, after shave, and something else that's just distinctly him. His lips are soft against Perth's skin, and it's really – nothing. In the grand scheme of all the things two people can do together, romantically or otherwise, a kiss on the cheek is nothing.
Nothing it might be, Perth blushes so fucking hard you'd think that Santa just pantsed him right there on the side of the road. It's just so simple, and sweet, and, yeah, a little bit weird, but everything with Santa is just a little bit weird.
Perth guesses he likes it that way.
Santa just got out of a bad relationship; the extent to just how bad it might have been, Perth's not sure, not yet. But he knows that kisses on the cheek and maybe a couple of hugs are as far as he's likely to get with Santa, for a while. Until around phase seven or maybe even phase eight. Of course, by then, Santa won't be referring to them as phases anymore, because he won't even be thinking about that guy – if Perth gets his way.
“Come on,” Perth says once Santa pulls back and gives him another smile. “I'll take you to your mechanic, or wherever.”
“Uh,” Santa shakes his head, smirking. “I want my shoe back, Perth. I've been missing it like a limb.”
“I almost threw it out, you know,” Perth teases as they start crunching through the pebbles on the side of the road towards where Perth's car is parked and waiting for them.
Santa gives him an indiscernible look, something crossed between awe and amusement, and then he ducks his head again. “No, you didn't.”
And, he's right. Perth would've kept that shoe for months. Just waiting.
----
They're at a bar – a different one from where Perth punched Santa's whoever-the-hell a few months back, because he got 86'd indefinitely from there, not that he fucking regrets it (regrets it less and less each day, as it would turn out) – and Perth's not having nearly as much of a miserable time as he used to when Emi would drag him out.
Santa did take some time to get to a point where he felt like he was moved on enough to start up again with someone else. Maybe three weeks of he and Perth hanging around together in a just friends capacity, going to see action movies and eating Chinese take-out on Santa's messy bedroom floor with nothing but their knees touching. During that time, Santa didn't say much about them getting together romantically. He never even really hinted at it. Perth started to think that maybe Santa really did just want a friend, someone to pal around with to help him feel okay again after his shit break-up, and the fact that Perth was just sitting there staring at his lips all the time and thinking about running his fingers along all that pale skin – Jesus.
He felt like a fucking monster. Even if he was having fun with Santa, he couldn't shake the thought that he was somehow, someway, taking advantage. It was stupid. He knows that now.
Because, one day, after the last egg roll was gone and Perth was half in a food-coma, Santa just leaned in and kissed Perth full on the lips. Almost casually, like they had done it a thousand times already at that point, and it was nothing to get worked up about. He pulled back, looked Perth in the eye, and said, “I might've eaten one tomato.”
Perth blinked up at him, mouth hanging open, before shutting it around a grin. “You were just trying to butter me up so I wouldn't get mad at you, huh?”
Instead of answering, Santa leaned down and kissed him again. So Perth took that as a yes – in spite of the fact that there was literally no way that Perth could ever be angry at Santa for much of anything, at that point.
And things have been going well. Better than well, really. Santa is smart, and witty, and he really isn't that much of a spazz when he's not reeling from a break-up, and his dad sort of scares the literal shit out of Perth even though Santa always laughs and calls him a big softy. It's well enough that Perth can't help but think about the thousand different ways that this entire situation could have turned out, if he had made different choices, gotten rid of the shoe, walked away from the tree thinking Santa was an absolute nutcase. No matter what, though, no matter what happens, Perth will never regret walking outside to find Santa passed out. Even if he did have to scrub vomit out of his bricks for ten straight minutes, cursing under his breath.
Now, they're at the bar with Emi's friends. Santa is leaning up against Perth in the booth they're all wedged into, forearm resting on Perth's shoulder while his fingers dangle down to brush against the fabric of Perth's shirt every time he moves.
Across the table, one of said friends, Bonnie, maybe, if Perth's memory serves him correctly, squints at them for a second, before pointing a finger in between the two of them and smiling. “How did you two meet, again?”
Santa nearly chokes on his drink from laughter, and Perth sighs. How many times they've joked about what they're going to say when someone asks them that question is astronomical at this point, but Santa still thinks that it's the funniest thing he's ever heard in his life.
Once he gets his wits about him again, he looks at Perth and raises his eyebrows, tilting his head just a bit. “Do you want to tell the story, or should I?”
Perth has to admit – it's a pretty good story.
--