The Boys Club

Intro the Bar, Scene 1

Dedicated to HappyMinion, who gets this as a gift for getting me through Spider-Man 2.

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"I don't get it," Harry frowned, grabbing another shot and clutching at it like a lifeline. "And he defends this super-monstrosity that killed my father, saying we're best friends and I should just let it go. And see," he said, in a slurred tone of unconcealed annoyance, after finishing another shot and slamming it down on the counter. "He has these secrets."

"Lemme guess," his companion replied, smoothly with one of those voices that wraps around a person and pulls them. His fingers were toying with the rim of a still-full shot glass at the end of a long row of filled one between them. He picked it up and studied it, finding his reflection in the glass; deep piercing eyes and a shiny hairless head. "He cares and he wishes he could, but he just can't tell you about them?"

He gulped the shot and set the tiny glass down softer than his companion had, shaking his head and trying not to laugh. Though he was sure it wasn't supposed to be funny. "I got one like that, too."

"Sucks, don't it?" Harry replied flippantly. "I mean, they're supposed to be your best friend. Best friends- Well, we never had any secrets as kids, in school, growing up. And suddenly it's all different. There's just so much between us, so much he keeps from me no matter what I," he stopped, his lips moving, trying to find words, dark brown eyes glazed with fire.

"And even when you try to let them talk, they don't. They just say they want you to be there for them. That their grateful your there for them when they fall down, but they just don't have the time of day for you at any other point really," the man beside him started, breaking into the silence the drunken rant had left between them. He tapped his fingers on the counter as if that might have stopped what suddenly came out of his mouth. "Which wouldn't matter so much if you weren't in love with them all at the same time."

"You really do know, don't you?" Harry said, eyes finding the man next to him, like a rock in the middle of a storm. He eyed the pressed nice suite, a mimic to almost everyone else here and laughed; though not quite sure why. Maybe a bottle ago he would have known why, but it didn't really matter now. "What was your name again?"

"Mine?" The man asked himself, finishing off a another of the shot glasses he'd lined up between them three times now. His vision was slightly blurry and his head was filled a pair of bright blue eyes and soft pink lips he couldn't touch anymore. So his voice was smooth and quiet, with an undertone of irony when he spoke. "Well, my father likes to call me his failure of an heir, but my friends -when I have any- call me Lex."