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Evan was starting to get bored. It wasn’t Dorcas’ fault or anything. She was over at his place watching a movie tonight while Marlene was with one of her other friends.
Their movie nights like this had kind of become a rarity. Dorcas was always with Marlene, so they had movie nights with her, who would bring her friends, including James who would be with Regulus, who would bring Barty and him and Evan hadn’t been on speaking terms for almost two weeks now. Which meant split movie nights.
So Dorcas and Pan stayed at Evan’s, Barty probably stayed with Regulus and who knows what the fuck everyone else did. It usually worked fine when Evan and Barty broke up. Their friends might be sick of it but Dorcas had once called it ‘like a regularly scheduled best mates retreat’, time for just their little group to catch up alone. But Pan wasn’t there tonight, working on a commission instead and Evan found himself getting bored.
So, unsurprisingly yet completely subconsciously, Evan found his finger hovering over Barty’s contact information.
More specifically a contact now labeled “ABSOLUTELY NOT” courtesy of Marlene, who’d stolen his phone when he was pissed drunk at her and Dorcas’ place only hours after him and Barty actually broke up.
She hadn’t changed the profile photo though.
It wasn’t the classiest one Evan had ever used for Barty. It USED to be a photo of Barty holding a random cat he’d lured into Evan’s apartment and kept for three days before Evan saw a missing poster on the apartment notice board and made Barty give it back. A very cute, sweet photo, where Barty was smiling and managed to look much more innocent than a cunt like him should be capable of.
NOW it was a selfie Barty had taken and changed it too himself, while he had still been flushed and debauched from a particularly drawn out few hours of blissfully passionate sex.
Barty was slumped against Evan’s headboard with a much less innocent grin, phone angled down in a way that caught his collarbones, the hickeys on his neck and the beginning of his torso. Evan’s head was slightly in frame, resting against him, sleeping.
Barty had made it both of Evan’s lock screens as well, but Evan had to change that within days because it was definitely not decent and more importantly, riled Evan up way too much when he was just trying to read a text from a mate.
In the tiny profile with the low lighting it wasn’t clear enough to make out all the details Evan had already memorised, which he supposed was the reason Marlene hadn’t changed it back to the photo of a raccoon like she did a few break ups ago
“Uh uh.”
Dorcas’ voice interrupted his wandering mind and Evan glanced up at the tv, some new horror flick he didn’t care for, and back to Dorcas. She was giving him the look.
The one eyebrow raised, reprimanding, vaguely mum-like look that had Evan instinctively cowering before he caught himself and sat back up straight.
“What?!” Yeah that definitely sounded too defensive.
Another look. “I know that fucking look bitch, don’t even try to deny it. You’re thinking about Barty again.”
Evan resisted the urge to squirm under her gaze. Denial wouldn’t help his case, she could see right through him. And no way in hell would she believe him if he tried to play it casual because everyone fucking knew him and Barty didn’t do casual. They were all or nothing, but apparently their version of all of nothing was ‘explosive’ and ‘unhealthy’ instead of romantic. Evan disagreed. Shit, why had he even broken up with Barty this time.
“Evan!” Jesus, she sounded fuckin exasperated.
“What!”
“Are you fucking kidding me? Do you not remember the fact not two weeks ago we had to call a tow truck because he slashed one of your goddamn tyres?”
Evan paused. He had actually forgotten that. Fuck, he’d been pissed about that. That had been the day after the break up, when he’d been hungover as fuck and ended up leaving an embarrassing amount of angry voice messages on Barty’s phone.
Although, to be fair he had smashed Barty’s phone the night before.
Right, that’s why they broke up. Sometimes all the different reasons blurred together and he forgot which time was which.
Barty had been doing what Barty always fucking did and flirting with the annoyingly upbeat chick serving him drinks. A regular argument for them because Barty was the biggest attention whore on the planet and Evan was… he could get jealous. Very jealous. Nothing angered him more than seeing Barty, his Barty showing any interest in someone other than Evan. Even worse seeing someone touch Barty and Barty had let her grab his hand over the bar for about 3 seconds too long. It had made him fume.
Just like it did every goddamn time Barty did that shit.
It had him burning. Like it always did. Normally Barty would come back to him fast though, reassure him he was Evan’s because Barty was well aware of how much it pissed him off. He took advantage of it, called an uber in advance to get them home so Evan could fuck him on the bed, over the table, one particularly memorable time against the glass balcony door.
Yet that night, Barty had been in a particularly bitchy mood, and didn’t stop batting his eyelashes at her all night. All fucking night. So when the time came to leave, Evan wasn’t horny and frustrated, he was fucking mad and sick of Barty’s shit. Like, so sick of his shit he’d started thinking about boundaries and all the stuff he vaguely remembered from various lectures from various people and that one therapist a few years back.
When she gave Barty their receipt with her number on it Evan had finally snapped and dragged him outside.
The drinks he’d ordered steadily over the night distorted his memory a little but he remembered the gist of it. “I’m fucking sick of you flirting with everybody” “Do you have any respect for our relationship?” “Why d’you have to be such a goddamn attention whore” “I’m sick of having the same conversation over and over” ect ect.
Barty started on deny deny deny but quickly regressed to “Baby please you know I don’t give a shit about her, it’s only you” “You know i’ve never meant anything by it” “Jesus Christ it wouldn’t be a fucking problem if you weren’t such a jealous freak all the time” “We wouldn’t be HAVING this conversation if you weren’t so insecure, acting like you don’t know I LOVE you” and then when he realised Evan was REALLY pissed “I was fucking doing it for you, to get your ass free drinks so you’re fucking welcome”
It wasn’t that Evan didn’t believe him, he knew Barty’s type inside out, knew practically every person he’d ever fucked after sharing a dorm room for years and she wasn’t it but he was just so fucking sick of it. How goddamn infuriating Barty could be.
So he wasn’t interested in Barty trying to play it off with flirty smiles and a hand snaking around his waist and face.
When Barty tried to feel him up, distract him with sex like he always fuckin did when an argument wasn’t going the way he wanted, Evan had grabbed his phone from his back pocket instead and stepped away.
“Why don’t you just call that bitch from the resteraunt? Did you put her number in? Probably, can never resist someone feeding your goddamn ego.” He’d sneered.
Like that Barty’a placating, flirty mask dropped and Evan saw the anger sneaking into his expression like it always did. “Fuck off Evan, give me the fucking phone back, let’s just go home and you can have your goddamn tantrum there.”
“No, Seriously Bee, why don’t you just give her a call? Get on your knees for her instead, you seemed pretty fucking eager before.”
“Fuck off Evan! Just fucking give it back!”
“Why? You got something to hide?”
Evan spun around, facing the wall and shielding the phone from Barty. The photo of him in the background didn’t do much to calm him down.
He’d tried to log into the phone and when he realised Barty had changed the password he’d gone a little batshit.
They were both screaming, Barty shouting about how he changed it the month before on their break and forgot to tell him, but Evan wasn’t in much of a listening mood and told him he was a fucking liar because “how can I trust you when you say every fucking time you won’t do it again and then flirt with everything with legs” and Barty had reverted to shouting at him about being controlling and paranoid, and Evan threw the phone on the ground, and there was more screaming and then a “FUCK YOU I’M DONE” before Evan commandeered their uber and went to Dorcas and Marlene’s.
Yeah, not one of their calmest breakups. And of course the next morning Evan had gone back to the bar to pick up his car and found a tyre slashed to top it all off.
No doubt Dorcas brought up the memory in an attempt to knock some sense into Evan, remind him of the embarrassing hysterical ranting he’d kept up the whole night and while paying for the tow truck, and the next day, and a lot of days.
Honestly it gave him mixed feelings. A reminder Barty was a frustrating dickhead who brought out the worst in him not just the best lay of his life, but it also twinged Evan’s jealousy. He missed Barty. He hated the idea Barty was out right now, with someone else, touching god knows who instead of next to Evan right now, safe where he can see him. Worship him properly like he deserved (most of the time).
And it’s not like their relationship was just fights.
Barty could be soft and sweet and equally possessive which always made Evan melt. He would go on little rants about whatever topic he happened to read about that day, sometimes a scientific theory and sometimes an analysis on one of the stars of “Love is blind” which Evan found absolutely adorable, how passionate Barty could get over small things, and he’d listen to every word, no matter the topic. And, he was the best lay of his life. Like, seriously, best lay of his life. Fuckin lovey dovy soft shit, angry sex after an argument, testing new limits, going at it for fuckin hours, swapping between top and bottom and domming and subbing, no one had ever done any of it better than Barty. They just fuckin worked.
Evan bit his lip, finger a centimetre away from the call button.
“Are you fucking serious?” Dorcas huffed, pausing the movie on a frame of someone running around without an eye (? Evan had not been paying attention) and looking over at him. He met her eyes, and then Barty’s in the profile.
“What?!” he said defensively for the third time in ten minutes. “He’s like my fucking soulmate ok? I still love him! And I haven’t had sex for two weeks now I feel like a fuckin nun. Or a monk I guess.”
Dorcas mouth dropped in a way that could truly only be described as incredulous. “God you are fucking unbelievable. You really just getting back with him cuz you’re horny? Just go fuck the first hot motherfucker on the street, I bet he’s already done it ten times over by now.”
Evan scowled at her. “No he hasn’t.”
Another raised eyebrow.
“I’m fucking serious! We hardly ever hook up with people when we’re on a break. I wouldn’t do that to him.”
“On break? What happened to broken up??! Evan have some fucking backbone babe, no dick is worth all this.”
Evan flipped her off. “Says you, fuckin’ carpetmuncher.” he said the last bit under his breath, voice dropping at the last moment as he regretted it and sure enough he was rewarded with a hard pillow to the face.
“Oi! You can’t talk, cocksucker, at least my girlfriend didn’t break up with me because I don’t like fucking biscoff ice cream.”
This time it was Evan’s mouth that dropped open, staring at her in shock. “I told you that in confidence, how dare you just throw it back in my face like that?! And he apologised the next day, it was bareeely a break up.”
“Girl I can’t keep up with how many damn breakups y’all have, one of y’all’s just gotta tough it out and press the damn block button.”
Evan shot her a withering stare, looking back at the contact.
He missed Barty, honestly he did. Yeah they were a bit volitile and Barty pissed him off a lot like all the fucking time and vica versa but there was no one else for Evan.
They balanced each other out in a way no one else possibly could. And seriously, he was ruined for guys after Barty. Had been since he was fuckin’ 15. Half assed one night stands just didn’t do it for him anymore when he knew A dick was just a codependent call away.
Dorcas was still watching him, now with her phone out, no doubt keeping her girlfriend updated. Really, who was she to shit on his relationship when she was attatched to Marlene at the hip. Ain’t that toxic too?
“Alright, how about..”
“This’ll be good.” she murmured. Evan had an inkling she was filming him, but his mind was still at least 60% thinking about Barty which didn’t leave enough effort to care.
Evan pulled a coin from his pocket. “I’ll flip for it. Heads, I call him, tails, I’ll reconsider in the morning.” Compromise.
“You really are unbelievable. Y’all fuckin deserve each other, jesus.”
Evan just winked, balancing the coin on his thumb, ready to flick it.
“Hold up, I wasn’t done. You ain’t calling him because I know y’all just gonna end up having long ass phone sex and I’ll have to evacuate before I’m traumatised again,” a pointed look. “so you send him a text instead. And nothing slutty, because if he shows up here to kick me out and make-up fuck you again, I’ll be pissed off.”
Evan smiled at the memory. One of their best breakups really, only two days before they’d both cracked while Dorcas had been over for lunch and ended up fucking for the rest of the day. Maybe that was the issue, and they should talk more before they got back together. Evan resolved to have a proper chat with Barty this time. After he fucked the attitude out of him.
“Deal.”
He flipped the coin and showed her the result before looking himself, but he didn’t have too because her groan was answer enough. He clicked the message icon on Barty’s contact (he’d deleted all their texts when Barty refused to own up to shashing his tyre) and sent a simple “hey” text and set his phone down again after Dorcas’ pointed look, before moving over next to her and leaning on her shoulder when she put the movie back on.
It took three minutes for him to reply.
Evan 01:02
heyyy :)
ABSOLUTELY NOT 01:05
I’m coming over ;)
Evan smiled, refusing to react when Dorcas leaned over his shoulder to look and scoffed.
“Bitch I said nothing slutty!”
Evan looked at her, brown eyes wide in the picture of faux innocence. “I just said hey!”
He made Barty wait until the movie was over and Dorcas was going though, because he was a good friend like that.
When she opened the door of his flat to leave and saw Barty waiting outside the door, the look she gave him was truly scathing.
Evan’s eyes locked onto the tattoo on the side of his neck, the detailed rose he’d gotten for Evan. Then his bicep, where Evan’s name was printed in permanent ink. His mouth ticked up.
“Y’all are fucked.”
“Love you too Dorcas.” Barty grinned, looking up at Evan over her with filthy promise in his eyes and fuck if it didn’t piss Evan off a little to hear him say that to Dorcas before he was screaming it under Evan again. He returned the look over Dorcas’ head with something darker, something heated.
He wiped it off quickly when Dorcas turned back to face him, giving him a quick hug and much more smile because at the end of the day, no matter how many over the top ‘disruptive’ break ups they had and how many times they had seperately, and together been forced into fuckin’ interventions, everyone had kinda accepted it was just the way they were and neither of them were never as happy apart, for better or for worse.
And, not counting all the pauses and hitches in the road, they’d been together long before any of their mates actually go their shit together and coupled up, long before their little groups combined into one. 6 years going strong (If you wanted to be optimistic).
Dorcas waved and then she left.
And it was just him and Barty. Barty with that stupidly smug grin Evan had found himself addicted too.
Yeah. He was going to fuck Barty until the only thing that bitchy mouth could blabber was his goddamn name.