Staying Straight

Author Notes: My apologies for the delay! Other stories, full time job, all that silly nonsense.

Disclaimer: The original characters of Saiyuki are not mine.

2: Harley and his Split Mask

"Joel Sha?" Harley's lower lip didn't seem to want to close on its own, and hung just open as he read the finished information sheet. Jo had never seen a man gut a computer so quickly and easily, and now sat slackjawed deliberately in awe. He'd labeled each part and hooked them up to little black boxes Jo couldn't even name. The clean desk was now a mass of wires and blinking, flashing lights, and yet, there was a certain amount of order to the chaos. "I don't often hear Joel shortened- let me note your preferred name down."

"Well, Joel's kind of a dork name." Jo picked his jaw up and spun the chair back towards Harley again. "Not that there's anythin' wrong with dorks, I just-" He frowned when he saw what Harley had written. "Jo, Jay-Oh. No E."

"Oh?" Harley's lips thinned, but he scratched out the "E" in "Joe." "They're homophones, you know."

"Hama-what?"

"They sound the same." Harley tapped the paper. "Either Joe."

"Joe with an E is a redneck name. I ain't a damn country boy." Jo clicked his teeth together, a little gesture of disgust. "I mean, most folks don't know the difference, but I do, and that's kinda all that matters." He kicked back in the chair, rocking towards the wall again. Harley chuckled.

"Joseph is quite a common name, and Joel is much the same. There are Joes in every walk of life-"

"Yeah, well, they ain't me!" Jo folded his arms. "This Jo grew up listening to that stupid 'Cotton-Eye Joe' song at every grade school dance I got left at, and since I already went by Jo, every single asshole in my class asked me if I had cotton eyes. I mean, come on, how about you?" He flung a hand up towards Harley. "Name like Harley, didn't you get a shitload of, 'Where's your motorcycle, Harley? Can I get a ride?'"He held his fists out and rocked them forward to rev his engines, and Harley laughed, airy but humorless.

"I suppose such a thing would be so. But I didn't use the name Harley as a child."

"Oh." Jo settled in the chair. He'd heard of guys changing their names after prison, and figured it wouldn't be too nice to poke at it any further. Not with someone he just met. "So, uh, when did you get out?"

"I was released-" Harley paused to count, then tapped a few buttons keys on a portable keyboard hooked up to what looked like a hardened, flattened square of chunky green salsa. "Ah. I suppose it was thirty-seven days ago." He unplugged the keyboard and moved to the next apparatus, to a nod from Jo.

"Fresh out. You must still be in that honeymoon afterglow of the real goddamned world." Jo grinned, and gave his hair another wring. "So-"

"And how long have you been out?" Harley smiled over his shoulder, then moved his keyboard to the next little green board. His lithe fingers untwisted and twined the thin wires with ease; it was fun to watch. "You seem relaxed in the real, er, goddamned world."

"Heh, well, I relax wherever." Jo grinned, and kicked his feet up onto the desk again. "I've been out for three years. I mean, it's not like the day I got out anymore. I was just runnin' around aimlessly, looking for someone to fuck or fight or-" He heard Harley click his tongue, then giggle. "What, what'd you do your first day out?"

"After meeting with my parole officer, going to the pharmacy, and visiting a therapist, I volunteered at a shelter for the homeless."

"Ho-lee-shit." Jo laughed, a sonorous, rolling noise that echoed on the walls. "Model fuckin' prisoner, you."

"I'm not so sure what makes it holy." Harley scooted his chair to what looked like a hamster wheel under solid steel and attached his little keyboard to it. Jo rolled the conversation back, then laughed again.

"Yeah, me neither!" He laughed again, and Harley giggled too, then started to type on the keyboard again.

"Forgive my pitiful humor; I'm just of the opinion that swears and pejoratives are something of a waste of air, and meaningless. If one can't carry a conversation without them, then there surely aren't enough other words in his head."

Jo snorted and flicked one of his stray strands of hair back behind his ear. "Well, that's me in a nutshell. Real pretty head with nothin' inside of it." Harley paused, fingers hovered over the flat keyboard.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that way."

"What?" Jo smiled. "I know I ain't that bright."

"No, no, I'm certain you're wonderful; but-" Harley's eyes skimmed over him. "You can't have been more than a child when you were arrested if you're already three years out of jail. It was cruel of them to pull you out of school." Jo snorted, but tossed some of the loose hair beside his face back over his shoulder.

"I was fifteen, but I was out of school way before that. Look, I'm not looking for pity. Hell, I'm pretty impressed you're, uh, doin' what you're doin." Jo twirled a finger at the collection of angular parts that made up the inside of the computer tower. "What the hell are you doin', anyway?"

"Ah." Harley looked back over at the scattered mess of parts. "I'm individually testing the responses of each of your major components that could cause the sort of failure you described."

"What?"

"Take, for example, the graphics card." Harley held up one indiscernible hunk of motherboard. "If this fails, or if there's a bad connection, then even if everything else is operating, you will see nothing on the screen. Then again," he started to move to the next chunk of computer guts, but Jo held up a hand.

"It's magic! It's magic. I get it." Jo laughed uneasily. "I don't think I ever saw Dougie use one of those, though." He nodded to Harley's little keyboard.

"Oh, this?" Harley smiled, this one a sly, catlike, hell, Jo would hazard proud little grin. "This is a device of my own invention. A few spare parts, a bit of programming, and it's my own magic little tricorder."

"Tricorder?"

"Star Trek?"

"It's all geek to me." Jo grinned. "You pick that up behind bars?"

"Oh, I've always been something of a tinkerer. I enjoy taking things apart." Harley moved along with his work. "It's interesting, understanding how things work, and the best way to do so is to see inside." He giggled to himself, and tapped a few more keys. "Putting them back together is the hard part- Ah." His free hand grasped out without turning away from the part on the desk in front of him, and he reached into a drawer for a small, funnel-shaped glass, pushed his glasses up and put the glass over his right eye. In a blink, the little keyboard was pushed aside and Harley had the piece in his hand and up close to his face. "Oh, my, my, my."

"What's wrong?" Jo stuffed his hands into his pockets and leaned forward. "You figure it out?"

"These terminals are all fried." He squinted into the little glass cone. "This piece- ah, er, this piece essentially transfers data from the tower to the monitor." He turned it slightly to get a different angle, and clicked his tongue with pity. "Oh, my my, even the redundancies. There must have been some sort of huge surge. Is this computer on a circuit breaker?" Jo shrugged, and Harley sighed into his palm. "Without these connections, there is no communication between the box and the screen. If they can't communicate, then they can't be friends at all, I'm afraid."

Jo basically understood the last part. "Well, shit. What do we do?"

"Nothing, just yet. I'll see if I have spare parts for this model, but for the moment, allow me to test the rest of these pieces." Harley set the glass down and away. "It's very likely that if one piece was shorted out in a surge, several others may have been affected too. While you may be assisting in your own rush charge by offering to go to my suppliers, I'd rather not send you away for one piece if I then find more that needs replacing. Not in this awful weather." He made a few quick notes on the tag attached to the piece, then moved to the next.

Jo watched for a minute as he started with the keyboard again. "Damn. You're a real sleuth, huh?" He grinned, and couldn't help but be impressed. Doug had been a good tech, but never quite so quick and efficient, and he lacked Harley's entertaining, prim quirks. Watching was almost kind of fun. "So, that little tube you were using-"

"A jeweler's glass. I've some rather severe nerve damage to my right eye. My distance vision is null, and even things up close can be, well, fuzzy. The glass helps me to focus."

"Righty's fucked, huh? I was gonna ask about the glasses, but-" Jo tapped under his right eye, and Harley mirrored it.

"My glasses?" He put the keyboard down and took them off, and squinted at the lens. Jo noticed only his left eye could focus, and a red mark under the right that he hadn't seen before. "Oh. Oh, it's- oh." He bit his lower lip, then put his glasses back on and his smile right back with it. "I can't see it at all with them on." He laughed to himself, though Jo could see nothing funny. "I'd worry more about getting them fixed if it would make a difference."

"Honestly, kinda threw me off." Jo smiled a little; it was contagious. "Makes you look kinda, y'know, weird."

Harley giggled, genuinely. "Perhaps eccentricity suits me. I am, after all, a computer geek." He took up his keyboard again, and Jo shook his head, then relaxed back into the seat back again.

"No shame in being a computer geek; it's cool, y'know? Where'd you learn all this, anyway? You said puttin' stuff back together was harder than takin' it apart, so-"

"Ah, I took a correspondence course through the library, through Sojourner University." He smiled. "It was something to do with my hands during free periods, I could read in my cell, and unlike some of my co-patients, I was lucid enough to enjoy intellectual pursuits. I'm trying to get back into college now-"

"Wait, did you say co-patients?" Jo's ears perked- he'd almost forgotten just how curious he was about Harley's crime. Harley seemed to have been counting on that, and turned to face Jo, slouched over.

"Erm. Yes. I suppose I was not in jail, per se." He lifted two fingers on each hand to make air-quotes, head slumped between slouching shoulders. "'Not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.'" He lifted both hands up in a shrug. "I spent three years in an asylum, deemed sane enough to return to the outside world, and here I am." Harley dropped his hands. "It's precisely as simple as that."

Jo was starting to see why Harley had changed his name to that- the way he could shift so quickly between happy and miserable reminded him of those old clown masks that were split right down the middle the same way. It made the guy impossible to read, but it didn't make Jo want to stop trying. Harley seemed to study Jo's half-open mouth, until Jo broke into a broad grin and changed the subject to try and give the poor guy a break. "Temporary insanity. Wish I'd thought'a that. They caught my ass red handed-"

"Wouldn't that be red-cheeked?" Harley giggled and turned back to his work, and Jo quickly was.

"You gonna give me shit every time I swear?"

"Well, that would be awfully messy, wouldn't it?"

"You're damn right it-" Jo considered it, and winced. "Goddammit!" Harley laughed, and it almost made up for him laughing at his own jokes. When he was genuinely laughing, it was a nice noise, light and pleasant, if a bit hollow. Jo sniffed to himself, as Harley caught his breath to continue.

"So, what were you caught red-handed at?"

"Robbery job." Jo started to rock in the chair. It creaked under him as he slowly swayed back to the wall, then released forward. "Buddy of mine asked me to watch the door while he went for the safe. Shit went sour, cops showed up. I could'a ran, but, well, that's just now how I work."

"You'd rather fight on the off chance that you'd win than turn your back."

"Hell, I ain't that stupid." Jo pushed the chair all the way into the back wall. "No, my buddies were still inside. I was hoping to get 'em out."

"Ah." Harley nodded, then pulled the wires off his miniature keyboard loose from the chunk of computer he'd been working at. "The reception terminals are ruined on this, too."

"Shit," Jo groaned, as Harley made a few notes on a nearby pad. "So, uh, what'd you-"

"I suppose you felt justified in staying to save your friends, but why were you conducting a robbery in the first place?"

"Uh." Boy, he changed subjects fast. One judgmental look over the emptied computer case, and Jo clicked his teeth together and answered, "Well, I owed the guy a favor. He helped me out when I was in a pinch here and there, so I kinda owed it to him. He said I'd just have to stand there and keep watch. He messed up, and it got messy. We'd done a lot of stuff like this before- I was the muscle, and he did the dirty work."

"The brains of the operation, I suppose?"

"Hah! If you could call Benny the brains. Guy was dumber than a box of retarded kittens."

"The whole box, you say?"

"Well, he wasn't totally useless." Jo shrugged, and sat forward in the chair. His ears were starting to burn from talking about Benny. "So, you know my whole story, when do I get a turn? Or is this a goddamned interview?"

"Hm." Harley set another hunk of computer chips aside and made a few more notes. "Have I made you talk too much? I'm sorry." Jo rolled his eyes, and Harley didn't notice. "I suppose it's nice to have someone else to talk to, rather than listen to the sound of my own voice all day." He lifted a finger, in a way that made Jo think of an elementary school teacher trying to draw attention. "I'm also rather interested in voices, and accents, and I can't place your origins from your speech patterns." He smiled; Jo could see it from the shift in his cheekbones even with his back turned. "I have to keep you talking so I can keep trying. It's frustrating, but amusing."

"Pfft. Amusing. Like I'm some fucking court jester." Jo spun in the chair once. "Alright, Emperor Prospero, your turn."

"Emperor Prospero?" Harley didn't miss a beat, and was now hooking some of the pieces of the computer back together.

"Masque of the Red Death. One of my favorites." Jo glanced to the window. It was still raining- a dark and stormy night, he thought with a small smirk, even though the display on his cellphone said "11:47 am." Harley glanced over his shoulder and quirked an eyebrow up.

"You've read Poe?"

"Who's Poe?"

"The author." Harley fixed Jo with a level, wary stare, the kind you'd give someone who just beamed down from a spaceship. "Of the short story."

"You mean that movie came from a book?"

"I suppose you learn something new every day." Harley giggled again. "But no, tell me about the movie. I rather liked the story, when I read it."

"There's no way some stupid book is better than this movie!"

"And what about it fascinates you so?" Harley continued his work, and Jo grinned.

"This is gonna blow your mind, man."

It was strange- someone who just wanted to listen to him talk. Who would've thought he'd get that from a wiry nerd with a set-in-stone smile?

All told, it took Harley half an hour to pull apart, examine, and partially reassemble the computer tower, and he kept Jo talking through most of it. He got Jo to talk about the movies he liked- and there were a lot- and even showed marginal interest in the Birds' score from the previous night and the awesome double-play in the eighth inning- "Just sucks they were already down by six, y'know?" Once he was finished with the computer, though, he was all business again.

"The connection ports on the graphics driver are beyond repair. I will need those replaced. I'll be able to solder some of these-" He gestured at a handful of chips on the table- "back into working order, but it may take some time."

"Hrm." Jo scratched his head. "Look, you know a lot more about it than me, so I have to take your word for it. You ain't rippin' me off, are ya?"

"I should be offended, but from what little I've heard about this Douglas Go, I don't blame you." Harley glanced down to the floor. "Not to mention what I've seen in Mr. Zack."

"Eh. Crows. What're ya gonna do?" Jo shrugged. Harley seemed to stiffen at the gang's name, but gave his head a shake and met Jo's eyes.

"You can trust me. I'm an honest man, especially when it comes to my work." He cocked his head and pressed his fingers to his lips, a soft giggle barely suppressed. "I'm honest in most things, perhaps too much so. For example, I could charge for the diagnostic process, though it's against policy, because I don't think anyone reads the whole bill; or I could pick out a few more parts that could use upgrades but don't require attention, and tell you they're ruined, and you'd be none the wiser, but for this computer to operate, I just need everything on this list." He held out a piece of paper with stark, neat handwriting, covered in words Jo couldn't even begin to decode.

"Huh." He looked it over, and grinned at Harley. "Wonder how many times Dougie pulled one over on me in just the ways you described." He whipped out his cellphone. "Ain't my money, but it's nice that you ain't stealin' it from me."

Harley watched Jo send a few texts with unusually quick fingers, then dialed a number from his contacts list and started reading off the manifest he'd given him. He looked away as he started to stumble over "reception port," and Jo noticed him lift the cover over the dome at the end of the desk just enough to expose thin wire bars and poured water in through the wires from his water bottle. Jo didn't seem to pay attention as he grumbled out a credit card number rote. He hung up, and Harley had finished with the dome in the corner and plugged in a handheld soldering iron. "They've got it all in stock. I'll be back."

"Just, one last thing before you go." Harley glanced up. "You know of Zack's affiliation?"

"Huh?" Jo paused. "Wait, like, with the gangs? It's not like he keeps it a secret." He shrugged, but couldn't help but notice Harley stiffen further, even as he went on. "He's not a Crow, not a full member, he just does side work for them."

"And how do you know all that?"

"Used to do some work for 'em myself." Jo set his shoulders back, as Harley seemed to turn to stone in front of him.

"I see." He straightened up slowly and faced Jo, and Jo watched any reality slip from his polite, retail-trained smile. "I think you'd best go." All the stiffness in his posture had joined with his voice, and Jo felt like a wall had come up.

"Yeah. 'M goin'. I'll be back soon." He turned and fled. He couldn't help but feel like Harley had wanted to jump him on the spot, and not in the sexy way (though both threw Jo off a little bit, coming from a dude.) The guy was hot and cold, like hell (depending on who you asked), but it only really made Jo more curious. What the hell even was this Harley guy?

It hit him- Harley knew his favorite movies, knew at least a little of his story, and seemed to bend to his personality as if he'd been inside of his head. What did he know about him?

Not a damn thing.

The rain had slowed when Jo got back to Extreme Dataflow, and wasn't surprised to find Zack with his feet up on the desk, watching a movie on a tablet that Jo was pretty sure didn't belong to him. "You fuckin' show-off, you're gonna get caught."

"Pfft, 'least I'm not fuckin' Doug." Zack glanced over his shoulder, then back to Jo. "I think Harl's upstairs, so I can totally spill the beans." He put the tablet down and pressed his elbows to the desk with a sly grin. "You wanna hear it?"

Jo groaned and looked over his shoulder as well, before rushing in close to the desk. "What'd that idiot do?"

"The dumb fuck got caught with his pants down in a movie theater." Zack snickered. "It wasn't even a porno, it was a fucking slasher flick!"

"Jesus." Jo wanted to laugh, but, well, holy shit. How long had he spent with the creep without picking up on that? "Uh, you think he's coming back?"

"It's been like a month." Zack tossed his hair back like he was a supermodel, and Jo didn't even see any women through the window. "I got Harl now. Doug ain't comin' back here."

"Yeah, lucky you." Jo chewed his lower lip, as Zack pulled a hand mirror from his shirt pocket and combed his hair. Jo didn't see the point- it was pretty heavily gelled. "So, uh, Harl-"

"Yeah, I wanted to ask, the hell, man?" Zack shoved the comb away with a flourish and grinned lewdly at Jo. "You walk in and it's like you're his best friend, but I gave his ass a job and he walks past me like I'm a doormat, and let me tell you this, Jojo, my ass is not a doormat." He cocked one hip. "Way too sexy for that."

"Oh, shut up." Jo strode past him. "Never mind. He prob'ly wouldn't'a told you if he didn't like you." He carried himself up the thin stairwell to a scoff from Zack, and knocked on the closed door to the second-floor office. "Yo, uh, Harley? I got the parts."

There was no answer, and Jo nudged the door with his toe. The radio was still playing softly from its shelf beside the door, and Harley was leaned over some of the motherboard with the soldering iron in his hands, as natural as a chunk of sidewalk chalk for a child, but with none of the joy. Both bright eyes were dim and focused on the task at hand. Jo cautiously stepped in, and fished into his jacket pocket for the brown paper bag. "Hey, man-"

"I heard you. You can give them to me and leave." Harley didn't flinch, didn't stop, and Jo slowly put the bag down, then nudged it towards him like it was a can of tuna for a scared but wild cat.

"There ya go." Jo took a step back. "Uh, look, I'm getting' the feelin' I offended you earlier, and I don't know what I-"

"I need to concentrate. Leave."

"Right." Jo took a few more steps back, watched the thin line of Harley's back and neck as he hunched over his work. Jo hesitated. The radio was audible this close to his ear:

"Gracious, goes the ghost of you-"

In a second, Harley was beside him, palm slamming onto the radio's on-off switch, close, too close to Jo. He wasn't much smaller than Jo, and he didn't look smaller with red in his cheeks and anger obvious in his brow.

"Leave. Go. Unless you insist on talking to me."

"I'm-" Jo swallowed- why did it hurt this much to be pushed out by someone he'd only just met? "Yeah. Sorry. Just- you have my number." He turned tail and scrambled back down the stairs, feeling like Harley had sucked the blood out of his skull.

Guy was definitely in full sad-clown mode, that was for sure, and he couldn't keep from being a little pissed off as he walked back past Zack spinning in his chair, who whistled softly as Jo passed. "Ooh, now you get angry Harley. I don't think I've met angry Harley," Zack drawled in a nigh smug, superior way, and Jo's lip curled. "Here I thought you had a new boyfriend!"

"Oh, shut the fuck up." Jo whipped a cigarette out of his pocket, giving absolutely no fucks about the anti-smoker laws with Zack's grin creeping down the side of his face. "What the fuck is with that guy?"

"He's, like, a BDSM dominatrix."

"Dude-" Jo's eyes went wide.

"Beats the fuck out of me!" Zack laughed hard, and Jo shuddered.

"That's not even cool, dude." He slicked his hair back a few times. "No, seriously."

"Seriously, I got nothing." Zack spun back and kicked his feet up onto the wall, arms folded behind his head and leaning his head over the back of the chair. "He was referred here by his parole officer, so I thought he'd be cool, y'know? Thought he'd be one of us, yeah?" Zack glanced up over his shoulder, and Jo was starting to think Zack might be just the slightest bit afraid of Harley. He didn't blame him. "Yeah, but, it was weird. He was cool for literally an hour, but then he sees me takin' orders from one of the Bulls, he recognized their tat-"

"Duh." Jo put his a fist in his jacket pocket and took a long drag off his cigarette. "Fucking horns, man? There ain't a single fuckin' Chicago fan in this city."

"Got that shit right," Zack sniggered into his hand, then waved it off. "No, but he sees it, and he asks why I take their business. I tell him we always do, we always have, and that's when he just turned off. He must just not like toughs, or maybe he's just picky." Zack turned around, and lowered his voice to a grumble. "I'd fire the antisocial creep in a second, but he works too hard for that. He's twice the tech Dougie ever was. Does my work too, and better than I do. I do all the fun stuff, and he does all the hard stuff. He's actually learned stuff from a school, he didn't just learn code teaching himself to hack. But... that creepy smile." Zack tugged at his own cheeks. "I mean, you first think, he looks so nice, but there ain't nothing nice about that face. That smile means he don't like you- and seriously, what's not to like about me?!" Zack sniffed. "But whatever. I'm too awesome for that two-faced bullshit." He cast a hairy eyeball at Jo. "He liked you, at least I thought he did. He doesn't smile the way he smiled at you. What the fuck did you do?"

"I have no fucking clue." Jo extinguished his cigarette onto Zack's mousepad and tossed the butt into the bin behind the desk. Zack swore and quickly stomped into the bin.

"Idiot, there's paper in here! You'll burn the place down!"

"Whatever. Look, drama queen, I'm gonna see if Ken needs me to do anything else, I'll be back 'round closin' time." Jo ignored the middle finger Zack flipped at him as he stepped outside and lit up a fresh cigarette. "My rush charge is still good even if your tech hates my guts." He kicked the kickstand on his bike loose and hopped on before Zack could come up with any comeback at all, though he was sure he heard the words 'fucking idiot' out of the corner of his hearing.

Yeah, maybe he was. He had clued in on Harley- from the first, he'd figured Harley hated criminals, right down to himself, but had gotten over Jo being one for whatever reason. But- and while this was a guess, Jo figured it was a pretty good guess- Harley hated the gangs even more. And that was fine, he was entitled to hate whoever he wanted. It was none of Jo's business.

He didn't know why he still cared that he'd been shut out like that. It's not like it hadn't happened before. He should have been used to it. Maybe he wasn't as used to it as he thought.

As it turned out, Ken had another job for him when he called to check in- hand delivery to the circuit court from a law firm, which were stressful but welcome, since lawyers never balked at the price and the loads were light, but you had to get there quick and get back quicker. Lawyers were a finicky sort, too used to books and not used enough to people, and Jo hated dealing with them since they talked fast and smart and usually down at him, but their money was green. It was like the rest of his job- just something he dealt with.

Except today, it wasn't just a comfortable mediocre. Jo's body was at his work, but his mind was still in the whitewashed office on the North side and trying to puzzle out what had happened that day. The more he thought about it, the more he went from confused to angry. What the hell had he actually done to the guy? Harley could hate the gangs all he wanted, but he'd never done anything to the guy personally. He knew he had hurt people, but not Harley. Harley had no right to treat him like that- he sure as hell wasn't going to stand in Zack's defense, because Zack was kind of a prick anyway- but him? Jo wasn't a doormat either, and he wasn't the dirt on his shoe. It was hard to keep from sneering at the legal secretary who accepted the envelope from him, and he smoked all the way back to the North side with a succession of cigarettes cycling past his lips and into his lungs.

Fuck it, he wasn't dealing with that shit. He wasn't going to let it bother him, but he sure as hell wasn't going to just let it sit. He was going to ask Harley straight up, get a straight answer, and move on with his goddamn life. He hauled back up across streets stained orange with the setting sun, past kids playing chicken with cars on Central Avenue or pickup basketball at the rec center, thinking only of what it'd feel like to lift that moody little nerd by his lapels and shake him until he picked a smile or a scowl and stuck with it.

Zack was turning off the light on the "Open" sign when Jo reached the door and grabbed the handle. Zack shrugged broadly. "I'm sorry, man, you'll have to come back tomorrow." Jo scowled at him, and he put his hands in front of him. "Harl said your computer was almost ready. He'll be done first thing in the morning."

"Fine. Whatever." Jo knew scowling this much would give him wrinkles, but he didn't care as he propped his bike up on the wall and lit a fresh cigarette. He didn't even care that Ken might chew his ass for not bringing the computer back, he was more interested in the geek working on it now. If the shop was closing up, Harley would be coming out, and Harley had no right to tell him to "leave" or "get out" of a goddamn public roadway. He had nothing better to do. He was going to wait.

So he did, gradually smoking cigarette after cigarette to the filter and tossing the butts into the street. He thumbed out a text to Ken updating him on the computer and signing out for the night, and ignored the chime of the reply. He instead listened to the hum of noise from inside, tapping on a calculator, then the soft rumble of Harley's voice, and Zack's response: "What? No way. You gotta go home, the boss says she ain't payin' overtime, there's no way she'll pay you for the overnight... No, I ain't gonna let you stay without gettin' paid! Jesus! Go home, you'll drive yourself nuts if you never stop working!"

Of course that was the kind of guy Harley was. Jo almost wanted to spit on the guy, except he'd been cool for a little while and really, he should have felt bad. But hey, the idiot would be out here any second... Zack emerged from the front door and locked it behind him, already yammering on the phone with what Jo guessed was a girl, wearing a big stupid grin.

"Hellllllo baby, Daddy's on his way! Why'n'ch you get your cute self an' all your cutie friends..." He passed Jo by without even a passing glance, and Jo blew a smoke ring in his wake. He distantly wondered how much Zack was paying whoever was on the other end of the line to put up with that kind of talk. Strange, though, that he locked the front door with Harley still inside. Didn't matter. He was going to come out sometime.

It was right about when Jo had that thought that he heard a loud crash from around the corner, and he didn't pay it any mind as first- probably just a stray cat knocking over a garbage can. When he heard another crash, he cursed animal control. When the noises became a little more steady, Jo pushed himself around the wall and leaned around the corner, and saw creeps in dark clothes all darting into the alleyway between the computer shop and the adjacent vacant house, and he could hear them as he approached:

"Get down here!" Jo felt that sting of fight-or-flight instinct, and he'd never been one to listen to the "flight" side of the argument. He put his smoke out and entered the alley, and saw what the crashing was- a crowd of men around his age, surrounding the back exit of the shop and the iron fire escape that hung loosely off the building. Some were shaking it, pounding it against the building, and Harley had pinned himself against the door, with that big covered dome hugged to his chest in one arm and the other hand flailing uselessly at the door handle- it wouldn't open, though, Jo had figured out the automatic deadbolt the hard way himself once. One of the thugs pushed past the others to start up the narrow stairway.

"Trapped like a fucking rat," he sneered as he closed in on Harley, and Harley, wide-eyed, kept pawing at the door. No good, and the thug seized Harley by his shirt and tossed him down the stairs. "Take your medicine!"

Harley cried out, still hugging the dome to him even as the guys surrounded and descended on him, and Jo wondered for a second why he was still standing there when he spotted a tattoo of a penny with legs on the back of one of their necks.

Cents.

And Jo was no longer standing there, he was diving into the fray. He was- still was- whipcord strong and bullwhip quick, months of hauling crates and riding his bike for hours a day making him stronger than he'd ever been as a teenager. These guys were armed only with fists and feet, and Jo tore through them like paper, especially with the element of surprise. He threw them into walls and stomped on feet and punched jaws until he was at the few crowding Harley. Harley was curled in the fetal position, still holding that damned thing as if to protect himself with it- or worse, to protect the thing itself over his own body- and Jo stumbled over him as he pushed the last three towards the wall.

"You gonna pick on a defenseless computer geek, or you think you can pull that shit on a fuckin' man?" Jo put himself between the thugs and Harley, cracking his knuckles and loosening the muscles in his neck with a few tips of his chin. His eyes roved them as the three traded quick looks to one another, not so stupid as to trade words out loud but not smart enough to figure Jo could read their actions. All three rushed him at once, and Jo first shoved the center attacker into the left and kicked the right into the wall, good enough to stun him. As the center recovered, Jo ducked to put a fist into his groin, and he rolled under to the left and caught him by the leg and twisted it back behind him. He felt a satisfying pop somewhere higher in the joint, and released him to deal with the guy who'd started on the right, who was recovering now. He was trembling, not strong enough to get up, not smart enough to roll away when Jo put his fist in his collar. Another Cent tattoo decorated his collarbone, and Jo pressed him into the brick. "So, what the hell did Harley ever do to you?"

Harley moaned softly from the ground, and Jo pinned the guy to the wall and turned to face him. "Conscious yet?" He shoved the guy to the wall again, making sure his head cracked against the brick, and dropped him. Most of the guys he'd dealt with had recovered enough to get up and run, and drag the worse-off with them, and the few who were left were working on the same. Harley didn't move, but opened his eyes.

"You said my name. Why... ah, how could you know?" He laughed weakly, in the saddest, emptiest way Jo could imagine, and shut his eyes again. He tried to put his right leg under him, but as soon as he tried to move the hip joint, he moaned and dropped flat. "Oh... oh dear..." Jo heard the guy behind him getting up and didn't even pay attention when he picked up his buddy and hauled him off. He instead got down beside Harley to see what had been done.

"Shit, where the hell're your glasses?" Jo patted the ground around him, not wanting to take his eyes off the guy. He was still trying to stand, but his right leg wasn't cooperating. Jo could see cuts and bruises on his face and on his chest where his buttons had been ripped off, nothing deep, but not all damage was visible. Couldn't see what had happened to his leg, anyway. He found plastic under his fingers, and quickly cleaned the lenses off on the bottom of his shirt. "Hey, here they are, and it's not like they could've gotten any worse, right?" He put them back onto Harley's face. Okay, small problem solved. Now the big problem. "So, look, I get that you don't like me, but I'm gonna get you to the ER-"

"Please, n-no." Harley pushed the dome towards the ground, carefully setting it upright. "S-sorry, Haku-"

"Haku?" Jo looked, and lifted the cover. It was a birdcage, and Jo could see a very obviously frightened white dove fluttering against the roof of the cage as if it were trying to get to Harley, shedding feathers like confetti on a parade. Jo's field of vision snapped back to Harley. "You were protecting your fucking pet?! Fucking Christ- come on, we're going to the fucking-"

"Don't take me to a hospital, I'm not that bad off." Harley shook his head. "If... if you could just get me to K-One, I'd be grateful." Jo frowned- the homeless shelter mission? Why would he- "Do you know where-"

"I've been." Jo didn't want to waste time arguing, and he wrapped one arm around Harley to lift him up onto his shoulder, then lifted the cage by some of the wires. "I'll get you there, man. It's gonna be okay." He realized that the last few thugs were gone, and an envelope had been shoved in through the bars of the cage. Jo frowned to himself- this was no random attack. He hadn't thought so, but that sealed the deal. "It's gonna be okay," he repeated without knowing what "it" was, and started to carry Harley and his bird out into the street.

He couldn't be mad at the guy anymore. He just wanted to ask what the hell sort of business he had with the Cents. Maybe that was what Harley was hiding under that mask, and with that in mind, Jo didn't care which side of the mask was facing him.

End Notes: The music on Harley's radio is "Gracious" by Ben Howard. Also, there is a full-length "Masque of the Red Death" movie, based on the Poe short story. Vincent Price stars. It has been expanded with subplots about the Emperor being a Satanist and trying to seduce a woman he kidnapped, and the dwarf jester trying to get him and his dwarf girlfriend (played by a little girl being dubbed over by an adult woman) out of the castle while getting his revenge on a man dressed in an ape costume, and... it's exactly as bad as you think it is (in my opinion.) I actually found out about it because some of the dialogue was sampled for a Theatre of Tragedy song. Next chapter will be up (hopefully) soon!