Tapendra was annoyed. And more so than annoyed, he was worried, and those two emotions were never good to have at the same time. Darian’s last letter hadn’t been the curiosity-stopper Darian might have hoped it was. No, instead it was rather making this all worse, especially if this danger was so great as to require Darian keep it this quiet.

He’d decided there was nothing for it; he’d have to see the man in person, and settle his own quiet worry that the person answering the letters might not be Darian at all. It was paranoia, he was aware – but with the situation as foggy as it was, he couldn’t dismiss the idea, either. Darian didn’t seem the sort to make powerful enemies on purpose.

 He left Hogwarts early in the morning, dressed simply but professionally – slacks, waistcoat, tie. The form of ensemble was beginning to feel almost t-shirt like, with how often he found himself in the things.

This time of morning Diagon was actually remarkably quiet, and he half-jogged from the Leaky Cauldron down the cobbled street towards the golden LL sign, pulling his cloak down as he did. The shop’s hours hadn’t really occurred to him, but with what Misa had said, Darian would be in regardless of the time. As he stepped into the reception room, a clock was ringing 9:30.

Misa wasn’t there, though he could hear the patter of footsteps as the shop’s bell summoned her. He ignored the propriety that demanded he wait and walked towards the curtain, pulling it aside and sweeping into the showroom. Darian wasn’t there, either, which  didn’t surprise him. He was most likely in the backroom, he surmised.

Misa emerged from said backroom, looking at him in surprise for a moment before she smiled. The smile just a little bit too much a mix of relief and amusement to be professional. He nodded as he walked towards her down the showroom’s central aisle. “Good morning,” he said, looking past her to the backroom’s door. “I’m assuming your boss is in there?”

“As he’s been most of the week, yes,” she said, and Tapendra shook his head. “Mind if I give him a shakedown, then?” He asked. She just smiled slightly.

“By all means.”

With that he went through the door, pulling his cloak off and draping it over his arm, an eyebrow raised.  Darian was lounging in the expansive space, the smell of coffee in the air. Tapendra approached with a rather unreadably neutral look, an eyebrow quirking as he reached him, arms crossed.

“For a man so gifted at talking, your letters leave something to be desired, you know,” he said, looking at the backroom. The fact it was a bit different than his last visit was fairly evident; a giveaway that Darian and half moved in.

It had been so far a peaceful morning, which was how Darian preferred his mornings to be. He had spent the last week at Libertine and had greatly restricted his nightly roaming; as such, he'd gotten enough extra sleep that even living in his workplace had begun to take on an unexpected air of vacation and relaxation. Eventually, it would stifle. For now, he ignored Misa's little comments, took on half a dozen new projects for his next line, and courted the casual morning customers with great charm and finesse. It was a satisfying enough alternative to his usual lifestyle. Already he'd made a killing with the browsing crowd who were unused to having the dazzling proprietor's attention sans an afternoon appointment.

He was mostly dressed, having been briefly woken by Misa when she first came in at 8 and then more thoroughly prodded out of bed at 9. His blazer for the day was slung under the back of his chair for when he did choose to emerge into the public eye, but he had yet to transfigure back his bed into the sofa which usually sat in the middle of the room or even button his shirt where it hung open over the undershirt he'd slept in. At the small round table he lounged, eyes heavy-lidded in self-indulgent stupor. His fingers curled on the crinkly papers of breakfast that Misa had brought in that morning from a cafe outside of Diagon. They drank coffee companionably together, Misa watching under her lashes as he took leisurely bites of his croissant.

Distantly the bell over the front door chimed, and without a word she rose to greet their first customer of the day. Darian licked sweet almond paste from his thumb and tipped his head back so that his hair fell in curls towards the floor. He was not listening to the faint sound of voices from the show room. He was preoccupied with inner musings on the suit jacket he'd been working on before he fell asleep the night before.

Tappy's entrance surprised him greatly. His head jolted and instantly the front two legs of his chair hit the ground. "Tapendra," he said, astonished. It was nearly unthinkable for the other man to come to Libertine without invitation or reason, especially at this time of the morning. Historically any interaction between the two had to be prompted by Darian - badgered, begged, blackmailed into - and was rarely a result of Tappy's own design. Thus his sudden presence could not have been any more unexpected. He hadn't even sent ahead... an owl... oh, Merlin.

He even had his arms crossed. Darian sensed a scolding. Unfair.

"It was late when I wrote them," he said, and peered past Tappy towards the curtained exit to the shop. Misa was out there, he knew, but rescue was probably futile. She must have been the one to let him in in the first place. Unsettled he toyed with necklace around his throat, running the pad of his thumb along the cord. He hadn't too much of his own things here - just one table, shoved against the wall - and all his extra clothing he could beg off as stock. But the bed was damning. Tapendra wouldn't miss that. "...Coffee?"

It was a bit odd to see Darian genuinely surprised. The man usually had a rather flamboyant sort of control of himself, one that Tapendra rather admired. But to watch his eyes grow wide and his red curls bounce as the font legs of his hair hit the floor left Tapendra with a strangely satisfying smugness. Darian hadn't expected him. Showed him how well he knew him, he supposed.

He followed Darian's eyes to the bed, silent about that. Misa's letter had damned any pretense there - he had more reasons to believe the poor girl than he did to believe any smiles and reassurances from Darian.

Still, he couldn't deny one thing. Dropping his cloak over the back of the spare chair, he unfolded his arms, a slight smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Coffee would be good," he said, watching Darian carefully.

"I'm surprised you didn't bring more with you," he said, the quip a genuine observation; he'd have thought Darian 'living out of his shop' would be a bit more...well, set up about it. He'd let himself imagine some corner of the backroom converted into a miniature but stylish flat. Apparently, Darian hadn't even thought to do that - worrying.

He looked back to Darian. "How are you getting on, then? You look..." He tried to find a word, and settled for, "Out of sorts."

Fortunately, Tapendra was quick to unfold his arms and sit. Instantly more hopeful about the nature of the scolding he was about to receive - or just more confident of his ability to slither out of it - Darian directed with his wand the steaming silver coffeepot to pour a fresh stream into another cup. The sugar and milk he pushed over himself while the coffee poured with a gracious little flourish that meant: fix it as you like.

He gave Tappy a brief sideways look, careless as a cat but internally wary. "What do you mean?" he asked. This recent habit of living at Libertine was not something he'd revealed to Tappy in their brief exchange of owls. The bed, though obvious for this last one, did not reveal the number of nights he'd spent.

The next observation he took umbrage to - or pretended to - with a gradual warming up of his usual theatrical flair. "What a thing to say!" he cried softly, eyes narrowed and mouth wounded over his own cup. "If I were a woman I'd have to slap you for that. I don't have the excuse of make up to put on, but it is early. Don't be so cruel." It was just waffling, as he was a little wrong-footed by first the unexpected visit and now the unexpected questions. Darian wasn't good at cutting to the chase; on the contrary, he liked the shimmering mazes and complicated designs one could make entirely of words, darting here, changing there, he had never been straightforward. That quality in Tappy that he usually cooed over and admired (as one might admire a talented puppy's tricks) had never before been in a position to be turned upon himself. Oh, he could weave a web around Tappy again as he usually did, but Tappy had more information than usual and the advantage of surprise as well. And as he'd said, it was early. Darian scrambled to draw around himself his usual whimsical airs.

He took the cup and busied himself with the details of preparing it easily enough, the caffeine welcome. As he did so he watched Darian, eyebrows rising slightly as the man floundered his way through airs. For anyone else, it would be smooth; but for Darian, the struggle seemed keener when the man was so silver-tongued.

"No, I suppose not," he said, sipping the coffee when he'd put enough sugar and cream in to make it palpable. He didn't look at Darian then, as he considered his words for a moment. Darian was a slippery thing; trying to corner him with words was not a battle Tapendra could win, he knew. But he'd damned well try.

"What I mean," he said, simply, "Is that you've been here for a week at the least, and yet you haven't brought anything from your apartment." He put the cup down, with a rather pointed clink as it hit the table. Then he crossed his arms and looked at him. "And here you praised me for my Slytherin-like skills in discovering that just a few days ago, Darian."

Distractions. Distractions. What he needed was a good distraction. But, no fool he, Darian resigned himself to some of this heavy conversation first. Unless it was the most natural and subtle subject change in the world, Tappy would realize what he'd done later and attempt to bring this up with him again. He had to go along for enough time to satisfy the other man, or else have the most unpleasant morning conversation during which he wove a believable "true" story. Already he regretted his hastily-sent owls. But he had had such a hard time being on his own last week that his impetus to do so was completely explicable. He'd been powerfully unsettled and always, always, Darian needed people around him.

"Ouch," he sighed; Tapendra was too direct. "Well, you are well-informed. What traitorous help I have obviously acquired." He had set his own cup down and now he toyed with a spoon. His eyes as he glanced up at Tappy under a red fringe of lashes were a little coy. "I've been working, Tapendra. This isn't too unusual. I've been back to my flat several times this week though it's true I've usually ended up staying late here. Perhaps it's not wholly coincidence but it's not all due to those letters. Though it's good of you to have come to check on me." He had to pause at this, savoring the thought like a child would a sweet but not entirely without some small amount of puzzlement too. "I would not have expected it. But then, you are very responsible."

The things from his apartment were just that: things. Darian like any man did not need really much to live, clothes, toiletries, that was really it. Though he was surprised at Tappy's surprise, he was soon thereafter amused to realize that the sort of man most thought he was could not abide in anything but the rankest materialism. Little did people consider that Libertine was a treasure box of its very own. He could not possibly want for anything richer or lovelier to look at in his own home than what was kept here.

Darian was being somewhat evasive. Unsurprising, honestly, but Tapendra was..well, aware it was going to happen. Darian had a tongue that worked far faster than Tapendra's own ability to navigate conversation did, and he knew from the get-go that he was severely outclassed once the man got going. Maybe being blunt was the best tactic, though at the same time it might put Darian off entirely. Not a balance Tapendra was good at.

"She's just worried about you," he said. He couldn't tell, really, if Darian was telling the truth about his stays at Libertine. He suspected he wasn't, naturally. Misa's letters hadn't made it sound as if he'd been visiting his flat at all, much less gone back to it several times - but he hadn't gotten an update from her in a few days, so the possibility stood that it was true.

Still - "That's me. Dependable." He said it with a kind of mixed resignation, the voice of a man who had long ago accepted his nature for what it was. Had anyone else Darian wrote to bothered to kick his door down, or had they written the letters off as unnecessary dramatics?

"Well, if it's not all due to those letters, that's a relief," he said simply, sipping the coffee again. "I'm glad you wrote to me, but I really do wish you'd tell me what's going on," he added, rather more pointedly. "And why, exactly, you think it involves me."

Like Alexander driving his sword through the center of the Gordian knot, Tappy did not bother to chase Darian's tangled conversational ends. "She's just worried about you." Darian waved this away. Of course, he had hinted to Misa too. She did worry about him, and it endeared her to him even as he laughed her concerns off. Woe to any thug that bothered his darling Misa. Darian's wrath would be somewhere between that of someone taking a pair of shears to his beloved McQueen frock and an act of arson at Libertine.

He was feeling better now that Tappy accepted his words with little intent to argue, and he slunk back down into his chair  to wind fingers around his coffee cup. He brought it to his lips in relief and satisfaction, but his gaze as he watched Tappy flickered with curiosity at the bitter resignation in his tone. "You don't want to be dependable?" he asked, cocking his head to the side in a manner far too charming and benign to be the opening for a subject change he'd been longing for. "Oh, I can't tell you, but I really do think it's all right now. I was just unsettled, and it led to a strange little fit of paranoia that's long passed." He smiled, inviting Tappy in on the joke - what a silly thing I've been, can you even believe it.

Tapendra blinked, and considered. No, he didn't mind being dependable. It wasn't really something he could mind, he decided; it felt such a basic part of his own nature that minding it seemed rather fruitless. And, well - deciding to be a lazy and selfish bastard wasn't exactly something he could see himself doing.

"Well, no," he said, looking at the coffee as his cup sat steaming, crossing his arms atop the small table. "It's just tiring sometimes, is all - hey," he stopped suddenly, looking up at Darian. That coquetting head tilt, the bounce to the curls - slippery as a fish, that one. Thankfully, Darian actually did supply an answer...of sorts. Tapendra looked at him with rather comically narrowed eyes, the same look he'd give a 5 year old to say I'm watching you.

The look remained as Darian explained, and Tapendra didn't take long to follow the logic at least somewhat. "If it's all some misunderstanding and strange fit of needless paranoia, exactly why can't you tell me what it is?" He asked, pointedly. "Did someone threaten you? Throw a molotov cocktail through the window of your flat? What?"

"It's just tiring sometimes, is all - hey."

Darian blinked at him innocently, his eyes wide to Tappy's narrowed ones. It seemed Tapendra really couldn't be put off, but he wasn't done trying yet. It wasn't even for the proper reasons - those which kept him silent in theory, the personal threats from one menacing ringmaster on the matter of keeping his mouth shut - but, needing some stimulation after this week, needing something like his normal, this was rapidly becoming a sort of game. Many of their conversations were, after all, and Darian was tired of playing it safe. It made him bored and petulant. It was much better to watch Tappy struggle to parse his torrential amounts of bullshite, a pastime that never failed to make him feel more cheerful.

He leaned in over the table. The look on his face was intent and may have given the impression that he was about to divulge a dangerous secret, but that subtle blaze of animation was actually the spark of one who'd seen his opening and was making for it. He seemed inexorable.

"What," he asked with his bright and all-consuming curiosity, "is a molotov cocktail? Is that something to be concerned about, some muggle greeting to those who've displeased you? Some dangerous mix, some poison? Through the window, hmmm. What a rude thing to do to someone's glass." His mouth worked. "I like cocktails," he admitted after a moment, though not a moment long enough to allow Tappy to cut in. He shifted in his seat from one side to the other, the long line of his back stretched to the table, and now he curled his legs up under him in the chair both to boost him closer to his companion and to hitch up his shoulders round his ears in some helpless pseudo-shrug. "I can't say they led to this need for paranoia but they may have played a role, very small, on at least one side or another. But you must be used to hearing that and I know I certainly am. You would not believe how many of my nights begin with them - or perhaps you would - and if anything I'd think you'd be happy to know I'm not out roaming but tucked in snug here at Libertine instead. Doesn't that make you happy, Tapendra? You've no reason at all to cart me out of anywhere over your back which I imagine is a huge relief at least to your chiropractor if not also to you. Unless someone throws a molotov cocktail through my window in which case I may need you to carry me to safety anyways." He smiled. "You would, wouldn't you? If it came to that." Now he cut his eyes slyly at Tappy and, already leaning so far over the crinkly paper wraps and steaming coffee, it was nothing for his hand to venture out and skate a light touch over the back of Tappy's arm. Showing his appreciation for the theoretical rescue, possibly, or just his appreciation in general - that he had such a good and handsome friend who would interrupt his breakfast time to scowl at him over the table and ask if he'd been threatened. That was Darian, all right: appreciative all over.

He was acting far too innocent, and for all of Darian's body language Tapendra was determined to keep his mind on the subject at hand. Darian was incredibly good at being distracting and by Merlin he was succeeding, too - for all his desires Tapendra was so terribly tempted to tell him what a Molotov was,  in detail, the way he was driven to explain everything.

He set his jaw. He wasn't falling for that, no sir -

Then Darian touched his arm and he nearly jumped, eyes darting to the man's fingers. For all his encounters with the man he always was surprised when Darian touched him, even when the man had been broadcasting his intent as he moved closer. There was a strange electricity to Darian's touch that always sent a shiver down his spine, and it showed on his face - a look of confusion mixed with surprise, neither emotion unpleasant.

"Well, yes, I would - I mean - what?" Darian's body language, touch and the smooth manner of his speech had succeeded in one thing - Tapendra had lost track of the conversation. He looked at Darian blankly, and entirely forgot to twitch away from Darian's touch or otherwise reject it. His brows drew together and he frowned.

"I carted you out of there because you were clearly being unsafe, Darian," he said. "Though I might cart you out of Libertine if you'd actually locked yourself away this long for a trivial reason, like work. I refuse to believe you could survive over a week like this without a threat of some sort hanging over your head." He'd already had his arms crossed, but now he sat back, and the slightly scolding nature of his tone made the gesture all the more obvious.  "Who is 'they', Darian?"

He watched with sly satisfaction as Tappy fell for it, hard, as he always helpfully did. Darian's words were one thing, but his touch was quite another. That Tapendra didn't skitter away from him as he once did was an improvement which the designer did not hesitate to abuse. He traced idle circles on the other man's skin until Tappy pulled back to cross both arms over his chest.

"I carted you out of there because you were clearly being unsafe, Darian. Though I might cart you out of Libertine if you'd actually locked yourself away this long for a trivial reason, like work."

"Oh, darling." He looked at Tappy, helplessly amused. "You wouldn't know, would you?" He'd spent days in Libertine before precisely for so trivial reason as work. The mad habits of the creator. For some projects, he needed neither food nor sleep. It tickled him that Tapendra thought otherwise, and it ticked him that of all the things he had honed in on in that whole spill of words, it had been the time he'd thrown Darian over his back and stomped out of the club. It seemed they both remembered it well.

"Who is 'they', Darian?"

He paused, visibly backtracking through his monologue to track down that of which the other man spoke. " 'They' " he explained. "The cocktails."

Tapendra subconsciously moved his fingers to the spot Darian had been tracing, hand covering the skin. He barely noticed the gesture, the skin Darian had been touching left with a ticklish sort of tingle to it. He drew himself up in indignation, the look genuine but the feeling rather mixed. Darian was outpacing him and he was...not really sure what to do about that.

Other than continue to be blunt, anyhow.

"No, I wouldn't," he said, rather flatly. "And you know full well who and what I meant by they, Darian. Not the molotovs. Which are a kind of alco - they're a weapon, Darian, they set things on fire and that's all I'm saying. Who threatened you?"

"They set things on fire?" Darian asked, looking properly horrified now. He recoiled, clutching his knees where he'd curled in his seat. "Muggles drink that? On purpose? I mean - " he gave a brisk, disbelieving shake of his head - "I wouldn't think their fragile stomachs could handle anything like that! Wouldn't it make their insurance go right up? I suppose if all I had to drink was something that'd light me on fire I'd throw it away, too. Still, should any young thug even think to fling one of those wicked weapons into my store window I should very definitely have to get shirty with them. These aren't the war years anymore, after all, I can only imagine anyone going about throwing cocktails around like that would soon hear from the Diagon Homeowner's Association. Setting things on fire, oh no, you should have heard the hell they gave me for having Hannah's camel about the place -"

Darian launched into a long, rather rambling outcry against alcoholic drinks that set things on fire. Tapendra, caught with a correction almost on his lips, quickly closed his mouth and pressed his lips into a firm line, annoyance open on his features. The sniveling twit was doing this on purpose. With a scoff of frustration, he picked up his cup of coffee, scowling at it as if that'd help.

"You're a bloody git, you know that?" he muttered, as Darian spoke. "I can't believe I kissed you." He didn't think much of saying it; it slipped out, too surrounded by annoyance and frustration for him to consider the ramifications of that. He then promptly downed his coffee, tilting back with the cup and swallowing as only someone who needed the boost could do.