Title: Out, Stuck, Smile, Safe. (1/1)

Series: Second in the Split World Trilogy

Author: Vera

Rating: PG-13

Disclaimer: The boys belong to Sandra. I like to borrow them for nefarious purposes.

Summary: What if the zoning committee had Cyanide and Jeff going to a different district then Skids and Harley? The entire course of BmB history would have changed.

Pairings: Did I ever tell you I started my fanfic days on a list called Unconventional Realtionshippers? :: chuckles evilly::

Archive: Sure

Feedback: Yes, please!

The world spun on. That was what truly amazed Harley. It wasn't that he was so narcissistic as to believe that someone as small as him among the billions citizens of earth should have a profound impact on the earth's axis. It was just....something should have happened!

Here he was, lying in his best friend's room. Not thinking about anything, just chilling and reading some random magazine. Typical day. Skids was a few feet away from him, also flipping the pages of some glossy text. And he had just said it. Out loud. To someone else. For the first time. And besides from Skids looking thoughtful, nothing had happened. Not even a single tiny explosion.

"When did you realize?" Skids asked finally.

"I dunno. It's kinda just always been there, ya know?"

Skids nodded and flashed him a brilliant smile. The type that makes you smile back. So Harley did. Yet.... he really had expected worse. Wasn't sure if he was pleased at the low level of shock.

"Am I obvious?" He inquired.

"Whatta ya mean?" Skids tilted his head slightly. It struck Harley, not for the first time, how puppy like his friend was. Friendly, rambunctious, slyly intelligent and generally adorable. It was an odd contrast to his school persona. In school....Skids was silent. Like something inside him died the minute he stepped into the doors. Harley chalked it up to the years of middle school abuse.

God only knows he had tried to defend his friend, but Harley had always been petit and frankly not that menacing. So, Skids had learned to cope on his own. In school he hardened his heart, wore black leather, spiked collars and stayed silent. He did well enough in written work that teachers put him in the same classes as Harley. The other kids thought he was some type of idiot savant.

Harley knew better. In private, Skids shed this skin and he was like he used to be: Puppy Skids with a wild grin and the idea that life was kind of like a rainbow, full of color, joy and promise. He had a hunch that when Skids was free of high school, everything would be a lot better.

"Did you know or maybe think that I was?"

Skids evaluated his friend for a long time.

"It never mattered. You're Harley and my best friend. That's what matters."

A warm glow infused the room. The total sense of belief that Skids placed in his words had a finalizing feeling. There was no arguing with it and it put everything neatly in place. No matter what, through Hell or high water, Skids and Harley are best friends. Harley figured that for his first out of the closet experience, that was pretty damn good. The warmth sat there for a while in his stomach until he had an epiphany.

"Skids." The brunette looked up from drawing a mustache on Tom Cruise.

"Yeah?"

"Are you...ya know...like me?"

Skids blinked at him.

"We like the same music and Buffy. We have a lot in common, but I mean, let's face it we have very different personalities..."

"You know what I meant." Harley interrupted. Added a pout as an after thought. Sly intelligence. You never knew exactly how much of Skids was an act. Layers upon layers.

"I know."

"So?"

"So, what?" Skids shot back innocently. Harley groaned in frustration.

"So are you?" Skids bit his lip.

"Ask me in three years."

"Why three?"

"I dunno... Something important...three. I'll know in three years."

Harley debated pushing the issue, but he decided to leave it alone. There was enough trauma in his everyday life that he didn't need to force the issue on his friend.

()Five years Later()

"You home?" Harley yelled into the apartment as he entered. The day was bitter, but the short hallway that led into his shared place was imbued with heat.

"In the living room." Came the muffled reply. Harley smiled and withdrew a slender envelope from his jacket before hanging it up.

The gray hallway let out into the apartment proper. Living room first, kitchen shoved to the back of it, three doors in the living room. One was the bathroom, the other two were bedrooms. Small to be sure, but for first year grad students with part-time jobs, it was pretty impressive. More then that. It was home.

Harley entered this humble abode and was greeted by the sight of his roommate draped in a bean bag chair, hat pushed over his eyes, a drawing pad laying face down on his chest and a charcoal held limply in one hand.

"Caught you napping?"

"Mmmm....." The chair blob moved slightly, the sound of adjusting foam bits crunched through the air. " I ate dinner already, the rest is in the fridge."

"Sorry for being late, but you know how my boss is." Harley couldn't keep the smile out of his voice.

"You're excited. What are you excited about?" Curious head tilted back and the base ball cap fell to the floor, leaving thick brown hair a total mess. Harley decided that if he smiled any harder, his face would split in two. He knelt down next to the patched plastic bag and threaded one hand into that tempting mop of brown.

"You know how you said that when the letter came, you wanted me to open it?"

A breath hitched, and the once limp hand started to beat the charcoal against the paper.

"I remember." Came the husky whisper.

"Well, I got the mail today and saw the return address. So I opened it in the lobby." Dramatic pause.

"Damnit! Stop teasing me and just spill!"

"It's a done deal. They're showing you're paintings in the gallery. For free."

Men really shouldn't be able to squeal. Skids could. He also could grab Harley and dance around the room with him until they both collapsed exhausted and reddened on the floor. So he did. The letter itself was safely ensconced on the refrigerator.

"I can't believe it." Skids kept saying. "My first real show..."

"It'll be great." Harley assured him. "It's a good thing you already picked out all the pieces. You did it! "

Skids smiled softly at the blonde, before crawling over, so that he was laid length wise right over him.

"We did it. Your my muse, remember?"

"Oh, yeah." They smiled at each other like to loons, before Skids lay down a gentle kiss on pink lips. Harley's hands automatically went to circle the hard muscled back, drawing his lover down to him, loving the feel of the warm weight, but craving much more contact.

How many times, he wondered, had they done this? Come together after a long day and been too impatient to make it to the bedroom? The floor was rapidly becoming, their tradition, albeit an uncomfortable one. They had made love for the first time here, amid roses and over sleeping bags, when they'd only had the apartment a week.

Skids hands made short work of their clothes as Harley let his mind wander down memory lane. Thought about that conversation so long ago. He never had asked. Just let it slid until low and behold it was three years later. Their second year of college. His own first short lived affair with a boy behind him, Harley felt empowered and curious. The girls loved Skids there, even some of the boys showed intrest, but he steadily turned them all down, favoring days spent staring at a canvas. The art teachers despaired of him because he refused to learn technical skills. He couldn't even draw very well. Everything was abstractions, but such beautiful abstractions! The ideas that laced through lines and vague suggestions of objects....Harley liked to just look at one and let his mind freefall.

Compelled by one such painting, that reminded Harley of certain naughty bits, he had turned to it's creator.

"It's been three years." He commented. Skids was lying on the floor at the time, Harley looking down at him from the bed. An omen for things to come?

"Since what?"

"Since I told you and you said in three years, you'd tell me."

Silence reigned aside from a slight fidgeting noise on the floor.

"Tell you what?"

"What you want! Girls? Boys? Sheep?" That got a quick laugh, but it faded off.

"Do you really want to know?" Skids asked finally, rising to his knees on the floor, looking eye to eye with his best friend.

"Yes. Unless you don't want to tell me." He amended, the close range made the scene more intimate all of a sudden. Like someone had sucked the air out of the room.

"You. I want you." And Skids had never sounded like that before. His voice so deep, it hurt. Rubbed raw with emotion. The eye contact added to the incredible heat, escalating it and Harley wondered if he'd ever be able to breath again. The odd angle didn't help either. Graceful, Harley slid off the bed until he was kneeling in front of Skids, keeping the intense eye contact between them, all the while making rapid decisions.

"You can have me." And his voice didn't waver one bit.

"Please, Harls...no fakes, okay? Not just to make me feel all right?" True begging, another first.

"No fakes." Harley said firmly. "No cop outs and no lies. Just us. Best friends and maybe something more."

There weren't really words to describe what happened when Harley leaned forward in that instant. Most people would call it a kiss, but it was oh! so much more. It was a promise, a gift given and a gift taken, it was love and it was the bond that went bone deep. Soul deep, if you believed in such things.

And afterwards, their lips parted for breath, their foreheads touched togethor , arms around the others neck and A Moment. The type that last forever, but somehow still end to soon.

"Earth to Harley!" The blonde looked up blinking to see Skids staring down at him frustrated.

"Sorry, I zoned for a minute." He let a sly smile dance across his lips. "I was just thinking about you."

"Normally a good excues, but not when you've got the real thing!" And now they were back to smiling. This was definitely a smiling day. And if Harley was going to have any say, all this smiling was continuing someplace more comfortable.

"Can we bring this party to the bed? My back is killing me."

"Wimp." Skids teased, rising to his feet, leaving his the rest of his clothing behind. He offered Harley his hand and together they walked into the bedroom, bare naked as to virgins, hand and hand in love.

****