"Con-my-man! Glad you're here," Before Conrad can even finish knocking on the door, Hanna has swept him through it (literally, swept, by the elbows no less) and deposited him in a desk chair that had seen better days. Better, duct tape free days. "So, before you start, I got good news and bad news."
A despondent sigh, though Conrad is finding it hard to summon the usual irritation Hanna's enthusiasms ought to have produced. "Bad news first, if you'd be so kind."
"Right." The smile fell off that freckled face and Conrad wondered if it was haircut season in the city 'cos the usual array of red curls had been shorn down to something, almost, well, professional. Hanna actually looked every year of his twenty-four, regardless of how his ears stuck out like a taxi driving down the street with its doors open. The sobriety with which he delivered the next news solidified this facade of maturity. "People are dying. Again. It's kinda up to me and Flobottomus here to stop it, again. We kinda might need a four-man-or-woman team on this one, and I can't get ahold of Toni, again. So we're going stag, again."
"'We'?"
"Now for the good news!" Hanna straightens. "You aren't gay."
"Uh,"
"...You aren't gay, right?"
"No!"
"Good! Then you're not in love with me. You love me like a bro, y'know?"
Conrad's face pinches up as he digests this latest bit of rapid-fire profundity. "I... I do?"
"Well, yeah." A shrug, palms held up. "Unless you totally wanna make out with me right now or somethin', pretty sure we're okay and totally not cursed with like, some real heinous romantic drama magic right now."
"I most certainly do not want to make out with you, Hanna."
"Right, that's what I said. There an echo in here? Sheesh."
Conrad glares across the room, trying to puzzle out just what it was that he felt toward Hanna, if not some crocked-up affection. Well, affection certainly enough, but to what degree...? To the kind of degree he'd forgive the man his quirks. Maybe even find some solace in his company.
"Dude," Hanna snorts, and Conrad never again wants to be on the receiving end of one of those sympathetic gazes. "It's called friendship. It won't break you. Er," a retraction; "Unless we do some dangerous limb-snapping stunts together on a dudely bro whim, in which case it might actually break some of you. But not as badly as it might, metaphysically, were you stricken in a non-bro, romantic way! Heh!"
"Stop." Conrad grumbles, just because he'd rather grumble than smile, which he was dangerously close to doing, because, fuck, he actually liked Hanna and was immensely relieved that it didn't have to be weird between them. Conrad sighs through his nose and is about to ask Hanna if he wants to go grocery shopping before this big people-are-dying case, but then;
"So, okay, now you'll wanna know how to kinda, like, weaken the influence of the other arrow, right?"
"Um."
"The, ah," Hanna taps his fingertips together. "The one that hit Worth?"
Conrad straightens like he'd been pinched. "GFFFF. YES. YES, HANNA. I would like that. To know it. Immediately."
"Okay, sheesh! Barack?" The dead man drifts from the cluttered scenery, another piece of furniture simply come to life. He sets a heavy book in Conrad's lap and wanders back to the kitchen, showing more sensitivity to Conrad's embarrassment than anyone else involved in the fiasco. Hanna flourishes. "Page eight. Vagaries of Romance. To summarize; love is like a flower. It can't wilt until it blooms. You leave it as a bud, and a bud it'll always remain, getting bigger and bigger over the years until it presumably, eh... consumes you in madness? Heh."
"Er, right..." Conrad peruses the aged yellow pages, turning a leaf carefully between thumb and forefinger. "Why don't we just burn this hypothetical flower bud? Tear it out and destroy it?"
"Dude. Put the kerosene away. Love ain't like that. It's pretty much invincible, even to a guy as bitter and caustic as Lucian freaking Worth."
"Hold, hold, hold on," Conrad's got both hands up in supplication. "I thought this was just 'dudely bromance'. Worth isn't gay."
Hanna turns to Conrad, stance wide and arms held up in exasperation. "Have you seen his coat?"
Conrad's entire expression puckers. "Not recently."
"I mean, c'mon guy, it's pretty obvious he took a shine to you right off the bat. Heh."
"You ever make a pun about my death again and I'll gut you, broship or no."
"Eesh you're cranky when it comes to the Doc, aren't ya?"
"The man's heinous and I despise everything he stands for."
"… Free healthcare?"
"Just tell me how to break the curse, Hanna. I can't deal with facing that every time I have to eat." The book is snapped shut and Conrad stands. Maybe he was being a little harsh, and recently Worth had even been tolerable company, in so much as his ribald insults had been turned into ribald compliments and oh god it was just so much easier when he could punch the guy and walk away. 'Ya got nice eyes, I like red' wasn't exactly grounds for physical violence.
"Okay, so, this is going to sound a little counter-intuitive, but trust me for a minute. We'll even do a practice so you know what you're doing."
"Oh Christ, Hanna, I don't have to kiss anybody to break any spells, do I?"
Hanna's face screws up to mirror Conrad's horror. "What? No! No, just listen." He takes a deep breath. "Repeat after me:" Conrad leans in to better hear, ready to memorize the spell or incant or whatever it was. "I love you, man."
"What?"
"Ugh, just say it! You think I LIKE doing this kinda stuff? Please, rip the bandaid off fast and it'll hurt less. Okay?"
"Er," Conrad has broken out in a cold sweat (he didn't even know he could still sweat). He looks down at Hanna, wonders to himself if it's just that easy, if they really are just words like those in a spell. "I – " Well, he did love Hanna, sort of. Not that he would ever bring himself to admitting anything of the sort.
"It's just practice, guy. You might even feel less of an attachment to me once you get it out there - "
"I love you, Hanna. I love you I love you I love you."
"That... was the worst..." Hanna is trying not to laugh. "Okay. I love you too, broseph. Feel better?"
Conrad looks as if Hanna has just farted. "No."
"Eh, it'll take some time. That's all you really need; just get Worth to say it out loud, tell him it can't really be that way with you, and let time run its course. He'll be kinda pissed off, but then again he's always kinda pissed off. Least he'll stop pining."
"There isn't really any guarantee this will work, then?"
"No no, it's in the clause. It'll work, otherwise everybody ever in a relationship would be all stalker mode 24/7 and divorces would all end in murder. And, I mean, you're not gay so that puts a pretty big stamp of approval for the romantic veto." Hanna scratches a rib and Conrad doesn't deign to agree nor argue. "Like, okay, so sometimes straight guys fall for gay chicks, you know? Or is that straight chicks fall for... anyway! They get over it. They wouldn't be able to move on and get struck again if they didn't." A one-shoulder shrug. "It all seems kinda chaotic and aimless but it's actually a carefully attenuated mechanization of fate. Neat, huh?"
Conrad hums in the back of his throat. "So how do I get Worth to admit it aloud?"
"You could ask him? I can't imagine he's having too good a t – no, nevermind, he's probably getting a huge kick out of this. Uhh. Wow, heh, I have no idea how to make Worth cooperate! His loss if he doesn't. You could always move to Mexico. I hear it's nice for vampires down there."
Conrad sucks in a slow, sharp breath, breathing out in a huff; "Fffffine! I'll give it my best shot next time I see him. Would it be considered a hate crime if I tried to beat it out of him?"
Hanna nearly drops the book Conrad has handed him. "Nooo... but I wouldn't DO that, on principle."
Conrad snorts. "Please, anybody deserves a good thrashing, it's Worth."
"Yeah, normally I'd agree buuut... hegetsoffonit? Probably how you caught his, er, attention in the first place?"
To this, Conrad had no comprehensible response. Norway/Bethany/Django pokes his head from the kitchenette to make sure they aren't being attacked, and retreats with a ghost of a smile. During Hanna and Conrad's conversation, he'd been trying to get a hold of Toni Ipres through a series of well-researched phonecalls; genuinely worried to find that her friends had no idea where she'd disappeared to and jotting a note down that, perhaps, they had another case in the works.
