hate - @sunkiller-microfics - wc: 1.1k
As a fun fact, you can thank having "We Don't talk anymore" - Charlie Puth on repeat for this one.
James doesn’t mean it.
That’s the worst part—how convincing he sounds when he does.
“I hate you,” he spits, the words sharp and fast, like if he gets them out quickly enough they won’t stick to his teeth. Like they’ll dissolve in the air before they can land.
They don’t.
They land squarely in Barty’s chest.
Barty doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t move at all, actually—just leans back against the closed front door, keys still dangling from his fingers, jacket half-zipped. He looks tired. Ink stains his hands, dark crescents under his nails, and there’s a smear of red on his wrist that might be ink or might not.
“Yeah,” Barty says, flat. Not dismissive. Not hurt. Just… there. “You said that already.”
James’s hands curl into fists. He hates that tone more than anything—the calm, the knowing. Like Barty’s memorized the script. Like this is just another loop in the same broken record.
“Maybe I mean it more this time,” James snaps, pacing now, dragging his hands through his hair hard enough to pull. “Maybe I finally realized I should’ve meant it the first hundred times.”
“Right,” Barty mutters, pushing himself off the door at last. He tosses his keys onto the side table with a clatter. “That must be it.”
“You were gone for six hours,” James continues, voice rising, words tripping over each other faster than he can filter them. “Six. Hours. You said you’d be back by four.”
“I had a client.”
“Oh, yeah? Must’ve been a really important client.”
Barty exhales slowly through his nose. He shrugs off his jacket, hangs it up with deliberate care—like if he moves too fast, something will snap.
“She wanted a full sleeve redone,” he says. “Took longer than expected.”
James laughs, sharp and humorless. “Of course she did. Let me guess—she just couldn’t let you go, right? Needed you there, touching her all day—”
“Don’t,” Barty cuts in, not loud, but firm enough that it slices clean through James’s spiral.
But James is already gone, already halfway down the slope.
“—because you’re just so good at that, aren’t you? Everyone loves you. Everyone wants you. Why wouldn’t they? You’re—” He gestures wildly, like the word is somewhere in the air and he just has to grab it. “—you. And I’m just—”
He chokes on the rest.
Barty watches him carefully now. Not cold. Not distant. Focused.
There it is.
The pivot.
It always comes—the turn from anger into something messier, something hollowed-out and aching.
“I’m just what?” Barty asks quietly.
James shakes his head hard, like he can dislodge the thought before it finishes forming. “Nothing.”
“James.”
“I said nothing!”
Silence crashes between them, heavy and buzzing.
James presses his palms into his eyes until stars burst behind them. His chest feels too tight, like his ribs are shrinking around his lungs.
“You should just go,” he mutters, voice dropping, losing all its earlier sharpness. “Honestly. I don’t know why you’re even still here.”
Barty doesn’t answer immediately. He moves instead—slow, measured steps across the room until he’s standing just a few feet away.
“Because you don’t mean it,” he says.
James lets out a broken laugh. “God, you’re so arrogant.”
“No,” Barty replies, just as steady. “I’m experienced.”
That almost gets a smile. Almost.
James drops his hands, eyes red-rimmed and too bright. “You don’t get it.”
“Then explain it to me.”
“I can’t,” James snaps, frustration flaring again. “That’s the whole problem—I can’t explain it, I can’t stop it, I can’t—” He gestures helplessly at himself. “—turn it off. One minute I’m fine and the next I just—” He swallows hard. “I get this thought stuck in my head and it won’t leave.”
Barty’s expression softens, just slightly. “What thought?”
James hesitates.
That’s new.
Usually he just deflects, lashes out, says something cruel enough to end the conversation. But tonight the words sit heavy on his tongue, demanding to be said.
“That you deserve better,” he admits finally, voice barely above a whisper. “Or that you’ve already figured that out and you’re just… waiting to leave.”
Barty’s jaw tightens.
“And tonight?” he asks.
James huffs a weak, self-deprecating breath. “Tonight it was both. You were gone too long, so obviously that meant you found someone better and just didn’t feel like telling me yet.” He shrugs, brittle. “Makes sense.”
“It doesn’t,” Barty says immediately.
“It does in my head.”
“Your head’s a liar.”
James snorts. “Yeah, well, it’s very convincing.”
Another stretch of silence. This one isn’t as sharp. Just… tired.
Barty rubs a hand over his face, smearing that streak on his wrist further. “She cried halfway through the tattoo,” he says suddenly.
James blinks. “What?”
“The client,” Barty clarifies. “Said her ex used to draw on her arm when she couldn’t sleep. She wanted me to copy the designs exactly, even though they were shit.” He huffs softly. “Took forever because she kept asking me to redo lines that were already perfect.”
James stares at him, thrown off.
“I wasn’t cheating on you,” Barty adds, quieter now. “I was stuck with a crying woman who couldn’t decide if she wanted a star or a spiral.”
A beat.
“…spiral’s better,” James mutters automatically.
“Yeah,” Barty agrees. “I know.”
The tension cracks, just a little.
James sinks onto the couch like his legs give out all at once. He drags his hands down his face, exhausted now, the manic edge burning out and leaving something duller in its wake.
“I hate this,” he says, voice small. “I hate that I do this to you.”
Barty shrugs, but it’s not dismissive this time. Just honest. “Yeah. Me too.”
James winces.
“But I also know it’s not really you,” Barty continues. “Or not all of you, anyway.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
“No,” Barty agrees. “It doesn’t.”
He steps closer, then stops—close enough to reach, far enough to give James space to pull away if he wants to.
James doesn’t.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Barty says, softer now. “Even when you try to make me.”
James lets out a shaky breath. “You say that now.”
“I say it every time.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“It does,” Barty cuts in gently. “You just don’t believe it yet.”
James looks up at him, eyes glassy. “Why?”
Barty tilts his head, considering him like it’s the simplest question in the world.
“Because I know the routine,” he says. “And I’m still here anyway.”
That does it.
James’s shoulders finally drop, tension draining out of him in a slow, uneven exhale. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, like the weight of everything is finally too much to carry standing up.
“…I don’t hate you,” he mutters.
“Yeah,” Barty says, nudging his foot lightly against James’s. “I know.”
A pause.
“…you can still be a bit of a dick, though.”
That earns a weak, real laugh.
“Shut up,” James murmurs.
Barty smirks, just a little. “Make me.”
And for the first time that night, the merry-go-round slows.