Heal the World

"Promises, promises..." He laughs without really thinking too hard about what they're saying (just guys being dudes, right?), walking a couple steps around the other's back and whistling at ease with which the redhead proceeds to hoist and handle the tire like it's weightless - which, Jason knows from just having rolled it over to him that it isn't. Not bad, honestly, even if it looks a little strange to see the guy bouncing it around without that weird ooze-armour-suit-thing on, which'd at least given the appearance of the other having a bit more padding on him.

Not that there was anything wrong with the amount of meat Harry did have on him. Obviously he was fine. Like, he looked fine. Good, even. Kinda soft. Which is a normal and totally not weird thing to think about your bro while you're out in the junkyard smashing rubber together. Jesus, where the hell is he going with this--

"Windmills, scorpions, giant golfball that rolls after you down the course if you take too damn long--" He snorts humoredly at the look the Osborn gives him, trailing off his own series of suggestions before finishing with a proverbial nudge in Harry's direction, bringing them from speculating over potentially lucrative business ventures (or reminiscing about the past) and back at the experiment at hand.

"Oh I like that last one." Harry teases with rapt imagination, a childish glee emerging in him at how wild they were making this whole train of thought for themselves. Indiana Jones style, making obstacle courses out of mundane sports— sounds like something the new and modern Jay would get a kick out of, and something the new and modern him could now join in on too.

With the way everything was looking on the up for him, he wanted to get his teeth into just about every extreme sport out there. And well, wasn't he in just the right company for that impulse.

"Alright alright, here goes." He lugs the tire up to shoulder height, then with a mischievous glance shot across to his old buddy, he lets a few obsidian tendrils spring forth from his arm to help him lob this object wholesale across the junkyard stretched out in front of them.

This one crashes headlong into the flank of a large mountain of abandoned refuse, crushing an old TV set and near on embedding itself within a forced embrace discarded tech.

Hm. Perhaps not so familiar after all. The boy-- Harry appears visibly taken aback by the revelation, enough to cue a considering if not rather somewhat curious look from the giant, who lifts a subtle raise of brows at the breath which seemed to involuntarily escape his guide. Indeed, any other of them may have deigned to handle information such as this with certain delicacy, dressing it up in an evasive, flowery tongue or with some convoluted puzzle - but he has little patience, and little experience in being the one to whom the lot falls to explain. Far better yet to just be out with it.

Though he gains a hunch that the remainder of their tour has now been put on hold.

"... Kinda."

Jormun had been honest with him, so even in the aftershock of his surprise the least Harry felt he could do is be honest with him in turn. He meant all that he could with the ambiguity of that word: not really, like he's not feeling like 'Oh my God, I need to get away from this person' or anything, obviously. Actually he's still in the throes of 'I just wasn't expecting that', but the more he examines the feeling the less it makes sense to him. He'd already thought Jormun was some kind of... creature. By some definition, it's probably weirder to expect him to have aged within a human lifespan.

Alright. Let's try absorbing that logic, then.

"Sorry, it's not um. It's not a perturb kind of thing, more like a uh... I just hadn't assumed, but then why would I assume..." His hand comes up and starts flailing uselessly in Jormun's vague direction, not really serving any purpose by way of indication. Oh he was really embarrassing himself out here. Full marks in inter-species communication, Harry.

"Yeah. Yeah it's flattery. Basically." Flattery, definitely close enough to 'impressive' which was one thought that was crossing his mind back and forth. He's glad Jormun just gave him that word for free, while his brain is still stalling in sludge. Suddenly, he catches up to something else he'd said—

Or maybe he was just overthinking it. Maybe Thorne just liked the attention. Maybe he'd been all sorts of things, and he'd just have to keep poking and prodding him for those little glimpses of all these lives he'd had before him.

The thought percolates in a small impish smile, further grown when he catches his reflection in the mirror— wow, like he was straight off the movie set. Wouldn't be hard to get his hands on an accurate costume or suit of some kind— should he look for any Regency Balls happening in New York? Would Thorne want to come? Or, would that feel weird for him? He's curious enough to get the question going here.

"This looks amazing, were you a hairdresser in a previous life?" His grin is wide in his mirror's reflection, and it takes a whole wealth of resistance to stop himself from twisting his head to look up at Thorne again to see if he enjoyed his little joke. He does at least flick his eyes upwards to watch those fixing fingers work in his peripheral vision, though.

"We're due a break from recording and press stuff in Spring. Maybe we could go somewhere together, or you could come over." The demon tentatively suggests, almost a little nervous to see how Harry would react to the invitation. They seemed to always meet for short flings, either 'family' events or weekend getaways, but maybe a longer stretch of days would do them good and give Thorne a chance to fan his bard allegations with some eccentric storytelling.

He's still not immune to that velveteen touch of Harry's lips to his open palm, deliciously ticklish, and retrieves his hand with a strained hum of buried pleasure. He tucks the bag of sweets into the side door and unbuckles his seatbelt as they pull up to the pump. The place looks entirely deserted bar the person manning the register.

"I'd love that. Really love that."

Maybe that's why he was so tense? Maybe.

He's determined to not let it bother him so much, especially during this short stretch right here where he has Thorne all to himself. Gotta make the most of it, right? The thought induces a spring in his step as he follows the musician's lead on into the store, grinning into his enveloping embrace and instinctively drawing in close as they go. Back to looking up at him like he hung the stars themselves, worries deafened by the relentless fizz and pop of his affection. His jokes and natural-born charisma. That dirty offering at the end there gets a full flush in his cheeks, a string of feather-light laughter and delight that feels sweet on his tongue.

"If you lean any more on me, maybe."

It feels like their dirty little secret right before they hit the door, Thorne opening it for him like a gentleman before they break off to go seek out their treasures of choice. He goes to the guy at the register first, just to get paying for gas out of the way— relieved to find that this guy's around his age and has an English-language magazine propped up in his hands, saves the whole language barrier dance. After getting that all sorted he leans up from the counter and looks around, expectant for Thorne to swoop in with gifts and as ever desirous to pay for him.

"Got everything you want?" He calls over to him, not meaning to rush him but more just curious as to anything else interesting he'd sniffed out in here. Harry had been so focused on long-lasting, dry food and energy bars that he hadn't really given the local snacks a once over yet. Somehow he had a feeling Thorne had a better eye for that than he did, at least in a place new to the both of them.

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So the boy isn't uncomfortable. But he feels displaced. Thorne blinks slowly, waiting to see if Harry would elaborate. What did he mean by that? "Well, yeah, that... happens, right? Different friend groups. We don't mean to make you feel excluded, honey, and I'm happy to tell you all these stories." If Harry wanted to hear them, and they had the time. Sure, maybe the tiefling would take creative liberty with some of them, cut out details he hadn't been too proud of and didn't need immortalised in print...

He tries to tell himself that it's not that dramatic. That he's being unreasonable, even a little selfish; but the more he tries to cover the clamor of his own feelings the more he can feel them seep and pour between the gaps of his fingers. Water running through skin, blanching beneath the pressure. If he thinks about it too much, he'll begin to drown. If he remembers what it feels like to drown, his head will slip beneath the surface and never come back up again.

"And you know I'd love to hear 'em." Harry expresses with buoyant interest in reference to those stories of his, turning the wheel and guiding their car into a smooth right-hand into the exit for the gas station. Thorne had said he wanted juice, and filling up the tank gives him an excuse to stand around breathing in the outside air for a minute or two. Everyone's a winner here.

As if to top this cake with a bright red cherry he's promptly called pretty, then presented with another truffle while they glide towards the pumps hung up outside the station— one he leans over and happily takes whole into his mouth, pursing his lips sweetly against Thorne's warming palm in the same motion. Popping back up again with an impish little beam he turns back to the fore and focuses on them in alongside one of the pumps safely.

"Thanks, for saying that. It means a lot." Harry expresses with earnest appreciation upon his subsequent chew and swallow of the velvet melting treat on his tongue, switching the engine off and letting his features slip into another tug of a smile as he turned to look at Thorne. "Speaking as a human, it's nice to feel like an exception."

Special as that had made him feel, his subconscious train of thought was still tending in another direction. He was now imagining with idle fixation what it must be like to be on the other side of that equation, to share not just one lifetime with someone you loved, but a multitude of them over and over again for hundreds of years at a time.

To become so close to another that you come to know them like your own skin. ร๏ ςɭ๏รє ץ๏ย ςคภ ภ๏ ɭ๏ภﻮєг ๔เรςєгภ Շђє ɭเภєร ๒єՇฬєєภ.

His expression lifts with an emergent serenity.

"Worrying about that twink boyfriend of yours might give you greys before your job does..." He teases in return, which buys him some time to reflect on a subject he particularly loathes: the frailty and brevity of human lives, namely the ones he cares for. He discovers he hates the thought of Harry ageing right before his eyes, and simultaneously that it would be a privilege to watch time flow through him. Well, if the dad was any point of reference, he sure would have a fabulous head of hair well into his fifties so nothing to worry there.

There was also the matter of the company they'd be joining up in the mountain. It had never occurred to him that Harry might feel... left out, or out of place, when surrounded by freakish relics like them. He could sit there and reassure him to the moon that everyone was happy to have him there and nobody thought any less of him for only getting the standard human package at birth. He was cherished, precious beyond...

Harry lifts his palms from the wheel, then lays them down again. He wishes that signal would go green already, so that he could focus on something else. It gets to the point where he's almost sure Thorne is thinking about things he's not putting out in front of the class, and just like that anxiety begins to curdle knots in his stomach. He's dreading the question. He's dreading the conversations they have yet to have. Thorne had already revealed so much to him, and meanwhile...

And there it is. The question.

Harry raises his head and glances Thorne's way, brow knitted with the same hesitation he hears in his lover's voice. He gets the feeling neither of them are built for talks like these, and that they're both going to have to force themselves to voice the thoughts that are now rearing in them.

"It's not that I'm uncomfortable..." He shifts slightly in his seat as he tries to find his own way around words, relieved when the lights change and he can finally go back to occupying his limbs rather than leaving them idle in their restlessness. "I just feel like you'd have a lot of in-jokes I wouldn't get, or references that would go over my head."

There was no easy way to say that he didn't like being reminded of that fact that he was fairly destined to be a blip in Thorne's life. That he would never be able to know him the way that others do. He was jealous of his other friends and lovers in ways that he would never be able to remedy, and that knowledge coiled in Harry a kind of frustration he wasn't proud of, but nevertheless could not help himself from feeling all the same.

It was a pit of envy, born from the desire to have Thorne all to himself. Knowing as much didn't make him want to speak to it, nor give it the power of a name.

"...younger."

He observes the boy seeming to preen under his prior comment, such sparse praise as though he offers to the youth's endeavour. "Mh. Vast, they are." He continues to muse as he follows the line of Harry's conversation and lets his gaze sweep slowly further over their surroundings. The tiering floors, this, small oasis at the center of the building but a respite from man-made facilities and their machines. There is a curiosity, mingled with a trenched and unavoidable ringing of skepticism to it all. The boy's apparent earnesty almost but making him wish as to believe him, whilst a nagging at the recess of his mind recalls that sweetened promises are rather too similar to ones he's heard before--

"A thou-..." It escapes him as almost a breathless whisper, incredulity mixing with confusion (and maybe a dash of apprehension) to forge a look of utmost incomprehension across his features. Had he just heard him right? Yeah, yeah he had except. Whoa. Wait, seriously? It's not like he was unaware that there were some people and creatures that looked like people in the world who lived for centuries, Pete had run across a handful of them in his line of work back home. It's just. He'd never... expected to actually ever be in the same room as one of them.

He entertains, for a very brief second, the possibility that Jormun's pulling his leg— no he's not. Look at him. In general, he's not the kinda guy to pull anything like this. Harry just about catches something about Thorne being younger and he has to blink several times, the way he'd just said that... And they were friends... No, now he's really imagining something here. Let's put that aside for now and just focus on what Jormun's trying to say to him.

"Uh... Sure..." Had he said he'd show him something? Probably, but he's completely not there anymore. He's still on a thousand and a half years old. Wasn't that the Dark Ages or something?

"Sorry, I uh... Didn't realize you were that old."

"Did you wear a wig?" Harry questions as that trend comes up in reference, full on twisting around at the waist to direct his mischievous little smile up at Thorne. Not for long though, he knows he should be facing forward so that his stylist could continue his craft uninterrupted. He totally agreed on that periodization for the ladies, that whole Great Gatsby-ish era was seriously rich in looks overall. When asked for his opinion though, he finds himself drawing back... a little further?

"I said, what's been your favorite decade for haircuts? Like, any century?"

It's true, he'd been busy. He's also not surprised to hear that Harry's been busy too, and favouring work over play – was there any clearer sign of the tiefling's absence from his life lately than that? Though revelling in the burst of velvety flavours of roasted cocoa and caramelised hazelnut that flood his mouth, he still tuts to express firm disapproval: "We gotta fix that."

Thorne rolls the foil wrapper into a tiny ball and drops it into one of the cupholders, then lifts the bag again and dangles it in Harry's general direction, offering him some (which he would lovingly unwrap and feed--). "You know me, isn't that en–" It takes him an embarrassing second. The bag of candy returns to his lap as he brings a very offended hand to his chest instead, neck bobbing at an odd angle as he twists to look at the ginger. Thing is, he can't even be upset. The average age up there must be around 400 or something.

Catching sight of Thorne dangling the gift bag of truffles in open offer out of his peripheral vision, Harry's expression breaks into a bashful grin that seems at first as though he might defer with a blush. Something about distracting the driver on the mind, but his eagerness to play gets the better of him and he glances at his passenger again mid-encroaching grin and inclines over towards him: hit him up, was the signal at hand here.

You couldn't have scripted better comedy, with the way he leans in and opens his mouth just as Thorne drops the bag again between thighs— quite literally leaving his jaw hanging. Uh oh, he can see that twisting turn in his direction.

"Oh don't worry, I'm still getting gray hairs before you do." Harry humorously leans upright again and tries to keep his eyes on the road, slowing to a stop at a red light; which only gives him the chance to glance Thorne's way again and promptly split his face with the way this entire rockstar is looking at him.

"Long as you buy me breakfast in the morning, I'm all yours, big guy." He shoots back with a half-scoffed chuckle, thinking little of it but offering the redhead another clap against his shoulder - a gesture emblematic of support in the universal language of male friendship, all the whilst rolling the second tire over to its ceremonious sacrifice.

Standing back (a little further, this time), he does wince a bit internally at where the conversation goes, though he tries not to let it show. It doesn't need to be a buzzkill. At least, Jason knows that's not the way the other means it.

"That's a big offer— I might hold you to it." They're just kidding around, right? Sometimes he's not so sure... but he's not really had the chance to broach that whole conversation with Jay yet, and to be honest he's kinda scared to. Not because he doesn't think he'd be cool about it, genuinely not anything like that.

More like, he's worried it might... spook him off, or something. In the way that sometimes Harry felt the more he tried to close the distance between them, bring it more in line with where they left off and maybe a little further, the more it felt like he was testing some pretty thin ice with Jason's newly accustomed wandering nature.

For one thing, it had taken everything in his power to convince him to stick around, even accept a salary for him in the interest of supernatural-relating protective services that weren't even relevant anymore. He was lucky enough that Jay hadn't melted into the shadows again right after they'd dealt with that vampire cult.

To suddenly jump him with that kind of deeply personal conversation...

"Hey if it had been crazy golf, totally different ball game." Harry defended his tween-age self with a laugh, hauling the tire Jay'd given him towards himself and turning to face the littered expanse stretched out before them. He gives the hefty ring of rubber a few test lifts, still marveling at how he could flex like this without even needing the exo-suit to emerge from his body.

So, it's kinda like every other night of the year for him, barring the faux cat ears and collar. Those are new. But never let it be said he doesn't try and keep things spicy.

"Dunno--" Jason starts, opting to lean closer over Harry as he speaks rather than try n' raise his voice over the bop of New York's nightlife. "But I'm pretty sure I saw a hotdog cart half a block back from the car. Want me to dip down and grab a pack of ketchup as a backup?" There's a humored note present in the taller's tone that makes it onto his face in the form of a sidedrawn smile and half-lidded gleam in his eye, one leather clad upper arm briefly bumping with that of the dolled up ginger's shoulder, aided by the shifting movement of the horde around them - not like that weren't squeezed together like a can of freaky sardines waiting to be let in to begin with.

Eventually they make it to the ticket office, which is really just two college students getting some cash for the night by working the doors for this party: Harry flashes the tickets for the occasion, just the two as on request he'd gifted forward the spares from Pete and MJ, and upon verification they're ushered on inside. That rhythmic hum they'd been experiencing outside the venue now begins to rise in crescendo into a pulse-pounding beat, moving through the floors and thrumming in their ears with club-like resonance. Alright, now this was a party.

Following a small gathering of other guests into the main room, the paper bat-hung hallway with its atmospheric, ghostly lantern lights breaks out into the vast dance room: a dimly lit space that nonetheless managed to be crowded for all the other people here, mingling and laughing amid the spill of drinks and bobble of various spooky-themed head accessories.

The entire hall is cast in the shadows of a warm orange hue emanating from various wall-lining, pumpkin-shaped light fixtures contorted in a range of haunting expressions. More paper bats dangle in long strings suspended in the air across the room, while prop skeletons and ghost cut-outs hang loosely from the ceiling apparatus: every now and then a guest is tempted to knock one like a piñata with a fake scythe or witch's broom, leaving them to twist dolefully in place.

"Why didn't you tell me you were missing me that much?" There is a gentle furrow of his brow as his fingers accommodate his lover's in between them, stroking him over the knee and the gentle dome of his quad. "Could have done something, just the two of us." Admittedly, the devil is one to get often caught up in his many stirring pots, and the band had been keeping him occupied since. There was, of course, also the matter of the new album due in Spring, and a very particular song in it... one he'd kept a secret.

"You seemed busy, what with the recording and show listings..." His expression grows wistfully pensive as he prepares for the turn out of the parking lot, seemingly contemplating his own recollection as much as his road checks. "Then I got busy... It's been a whole month, honestly I think I kinda lapsed on the work hard-play hard balance."

He's not proud of it, actually he's a little embarrassed and it shows in the confession present in his intonation: Thorne's right, he should've at least said something as opposed to delaying and leaving himself to pine pathetically. Well, he could've still been left doing that depending on their schedule, but at least Thorne could've replied with an eggplant emoji or something and made him laugh.

"Damn. Got something you wanna talk about, there, bud?"

With a firm if somewhat distracted hand Jason claps the redhead on the shoulder - a concillatory double pat - all the while his sights remain fixed and lightly quirked with a mix of astonishment and tempered surprise in the direction of Osborn's accidental carnage. Pretty mean punch - didn't think the guy had it in him. 'Least they had a lot of test subjects and no audience collateral within the splashzone. Well, other than him. But he reckons he could take it.

"Depends. You got all night?"

Grinning softly into his own self-deprecating joke, Harry turns his head and finds himself relishing in the look of genuine shock crossing Jay's face at that demonstration he'd just put out: Yeah, he was surprising himself out here too. Buzzing with the idea that he could maybe even keep pace with his bigger pal's superhuman feats of strength, he shakes his hands out to loosen them up in advance of the next tire headed his way

A few seconds later he withdraws a ribbon-tied sack of chocolate truffles he'd picked up from Duty Free on his way to the gate back in JFK, plopping it into Thorne's unoccupied hand with a thoroughly satisfied smile before pouring his newly freed fingers into the spaces between the devil's upon his own thigh. Enough for a returned squeeze of his own, a stroke of his thumb's petal soft pad across Thorne's phalanges while he gets the car warm.

"We can pick some up, I need to get gas anyway." His tank was fairly healthy, but he wasn't gonna take any chances on that long circling coastal road when a six hour drive lay ahead of them. Another spirited smile broadens his freckled, rouging features at Thorne's declaration, pearly teeth shining from between his lips as he met the musician's gaze and chimed lyrically.