It is no great wonder if in long process of time, while fortune takes her course hither and thither, numerous coincidences should spontaneously occur.

-Plutarch, Plutarch's Lives

~ooOOoo~

He didn't know at what point the grey dirty ceiling of the San Francisco subway grew a pair of dark black eyes.

No, he didn't know when exactly, but it had happened...at some point.

Yeah.

Maybe it was sometime after those clipped and brisk footsteps had walked into the terminal, breaking the pure sweet silence of the location and setting his teeth on edge, the noise getting closer and closer before passing him for a few more frustrating steps and then stopping. Then there hadn't been a whisper of a sound afterwards for a long time and he had sighed appreciatively.

Either one: the owner was still standing there waiting for the train, or two: the person was dead.

...Whatever.

Perhaps it had been when he was forced to close his eyes sometime later to stop the dizziness which would have had him deposit the entire contents of his stomach, a destructive combination of alcohol and not much else (compliments of his 21'st birthday) onto the equally dull grey pavement beside the metal bench he was presently sprawled on, arms thrown outwards with one leg hanging precariously off the side of the cool metal surface while the other dragged along the floor. Yes, that was possible. He always tended to sit down after having one too many...or five too many. Meh. It was quite surprising that he'd actually made it to some form of sitting device rather than the closest and most available piece of wall in sight, to be honest. Well, since he was always the one to portray the perfect social image on a daily basis, it was only right that he did so. He internally snorted and shifted slightly, feeling the coolness of the seat creeping slowly into his back as he stared upwards into the ceiling's eyes.

He could feel the bare toes of his left foot, cold and partially frozen, scrape against the grainy ground and he realised, that at some point, he would need to go shopping for a new shoe. His previous one had seemed to have disappeared sometime during the night. Perhaps it had been waylaid at that last poker game he'd played at that bar with the Andorian waiters?

No, that wasn't right. He frowned. That had been his watch he'd lost then. The only one he had ever owned in his entire life. Lost within a flourish of cards, a rumpus of raucous laughter and a putrid smell of cigarettes and cheep beer.

Damn.

Could you even buy a single shoe anyway?

The eyes above didn't shift or move from his face, even when they blinked and he could do nothing but stare right back, eyebrows raised in a half hearted attempt at curiosity.

He couldn't really give a damn that the ceiling had decided to be all alive and stuff. Hell, it was a free country and it could do what it bloody well liked so long as it didn't stop him from getting on the next train outta this place and somewhere as far away from it as possible. Maybe Alaska. Or Australia.

Something beginning with A.

Or E possibly.

And anyway, he'd seen weirder things than some eyes on a wall...

...well okay, he hadn't seen weirder things, but his tongue felt like sandpaper and his mind seemed to have disjoined itself from his spinal cord and was in the process of oozing out of his head and onto the bench and swirling around to some random tune which had been stuck in his brain and was playing like a broken record player for the past ten minutes and, quite frankly, he couldn't care less.

So suck it ceiling-eyes, you don't scare me.

The annoying song continued to buzz within his head, bouncing around to some complex drum beat he had long forgotten. Maybe it was the remnants from some dance club of such and sucha name which he had paid a visit to and danced like crazy at during the late night.

Or early morning.

It was hard to tell whether it was night of day when he was stuck in the underground. Everything was always constantly lit up by that pale and sickly fluorescent lighting which made him look like an anaemic, malnourished, homeless person.

That he was, in fact, homeless, was not currently being discussed at the moment in time and he would do everything he could to never, in fact, go there. Because there wasn't anything there. Just pain, and that sort of thing seemed to lessen if you didn't think about it for awhile or just ignored it.

Which he wholesomely intended to do.

He wasn't going home. Not now, not ever. He had settled on that fact a long time ago and he wasn't one for going back on his words. Nothing could force him to. Nothing.

Home wasn't where the heart was.

Not for him.

He closed his eyes tightly once again, pressing them shut against the world as well as the beginnings of a jabbing headache at the forefront of his skull. Maybe when he opened them again everything would be back like it used to be when he was younger and during a time when everything seemed nice.

Not great, no. Just...nice. And simple, just so damn simple.

And maybe those eyes would be gone to.

"Are you in need of assistance?" a low, distinctly male voice suddenly inquired out of absolutely nowhere.

Oh yeah. He was in need of assistance all right. The special kind. Some hardcore psychology treatment with some idiot who thought the world was his oyster or some other such crap like that, and who couldn't get the freaking point that asking ' and how do you feel about that' about every stupid thing was going to get thrown out the nearest ten story building window. He'd already driven a few of those apparent "experts" up the wall already and he wasn't fazed at doing so again if need be, just to get his point across.

Or driving a few things of cliffs if it so happens.

Might as well lock him in the nearest mental facility and hide all the sharp pointy utensils.

Huh. He'd been told that his mood got rather self-deprecating when he drank a lot though it was interesting to see it in the process in all its shining yet detrimental glory, he realised blandly. That he was actually coherent enough to see such a thing occuring however, was quite a strange phenomenon. He wondered who he had to blame for that.

"Are you in need of assistance?"

The voice from before had gotten louder and maybe just the slightest bit irritated. He winced as his head throbbed from the increased volume, wondering who the guy was who he would have the pleasure of strangling within a few moments if he didn't find the decency to shut the hell up. Or, well- he would try to at least. It would be something of a hard feat, especially if he intended to remain standing during the entire venture.

Maybe he could just glare at the guy really intimidating-like.

Yeah, that could work.

He opened his eyes.

Light assaulted his vision which he swore to the heavens wasn't there a second a go and he groaned loudly as his head near ripped in two with pain which had suddenly doubled. Nausea hit him and he repressed the urge to gag because damnit, he was not going to throw up here. His stomach rolled uncomfortably and he swallowed, the feel of salvia sliding down his throat into an empty stomach repulsive to say the least. There was also a sickening taste in his mouth which he was only just realising, a revolting acidic tang. He quickly identified it.

Ah. So he had already been sick.

Somewhere.

Perhaps then, he would be saved from such an experience in the so near future. Preferably until he got to somewhere which wasn't a public transport facility.

His stomach rolled dangerously.

Or not.

Fuck.

He closed his eyes, shuddering as he did so, feeling incredibly cold all of a sudden. It was likely due to a combination of lying on a freezing iron casted bench and not wearing the coat he had started out the night with. He clenched his hands tight, feeling his- not so looked after nails- dig into his palms as he did so. He was definitely not playing poker ever, ever again in his entire life without some form of supervision present.

His mind wavered as it threatened to slip once more back into sweet unconsciousness. He knew he shouldn't sleep though, that the train would be coming soon and that he had already missed countless beforehand by doing exactly that. If it was night, he didn't exactly want to get mugged, though what they would steal was way beyond him. And if it was close to morning he really didn't want to be here when the early workers began to filter through the station. He'd probably get pulled up on indecent behaviour or loitering for all he knew when the first cop happened to pass through. And spending the mandatory 24 hours in a prison cell really didn't float his boat though it did give him somewhere to crash for the night...uh...day.

Guh.

An impossibly warm hand touched his face, fingers caressing his cheek and he sighed in relief, leaning into the contact slightly as the heat quickly spread chasing the cold away. It almost tingly in its presence. He felt his mind awake suddenly, a small spark, like flint crashing intently against a stone.

Wait...what?

His eyes shot open and he flew upwards into a sitting position, fingers falling and spark extinguishing. He gasped as he did and what seemed to be a knife went straight through his head. He dropped his face into his hand, moaning. Unfortunately, the contact wasn't as soft as he anticipated and the resounding slap as flesh met skull ricocheted through him, forcing a breath out of him as he saw stars for a moment.

"Damn it!"

He unthinkingly wrenched his head up, removing the offending appendage from his forehead and then just as quickly regretted the move as everything instantly spun. He grabbed onto the bench for all it was worth, blinking as his eyes watered. If he wasn't physically swaying then he would be incredibly amazed. He momentarily tried to focus on whatever was in front of him. Those same black eyes, though now wide open, once again sought his gaze and became combined with sever and strange eyebrows, a perfect cap of black hair and really pale skin, flushed slightly green.

There was something not quite right...or different...or...

He couldn't get his stupid mind to work.

He ripped a hand off the iron bench and roughly grasped a shoulder to pull the guy in front of him closer, his shoudlers slumping forward as his back gave out from the exertion it sure could have done without for the next 48 hours or so. It cramped painfully. He winced lightly before forcing his eyes to clear, squinting them slightly and hoping he didn't look like some crazed idiot with a twitching problem in the process.

Heh. Too late.

The guy had jerked forward at his abrupt action the perfect face coming to rest mere centimetres away from his own, black eyes boring into blue with a flaming intensity. Heck, as if that didn't make his stomach squirm. A completely unnecessary reaction at the moment. But God, he could practically see the heat radiating his way, warm and comforting almost and utterly unnatural in all regards. It was more intense from the direct contact he was initiating and he looked down at his hand completely amazed.

"Wow. You're real hot," he slurred, mouth disgusting and fuzzy, patting the shoudler lightly like the dark material which covered it was some sorta small furry animal.

Which he really shouldn't have done.

Rapidly, the world was tilting and he was falling, eyes rolling upwards into his head as he apparently lost the fight of the effect of the Earth's -9.8 gravity on him. His body collapsed sideways and one leg remained still attached to the bench as the side of his face met the floor with a sickening crack, his teeth clacking against the stone pavement and arms tangled limply around his body.

Brilliant.

The floor, it seemed, was even colder than the bench.

Guh. I might have just shot myself in the foot with this. It could be great downfalling, my glorified crash and burning statue. If I manage to get past three chapters of this .Be Amazed.

This is probably counted as an AU, however me and lingo fight each night before we go to bed so I wouldn't know. Newbie, remember?

I know alot of authors may give all ye readers out there a brief outline about whats going to happen in the story but... in a past life I was annoying.

Thus, I still am annoying now. HehXD

All I'll say is that 'ceiling-eyes' is going to have his work cut out for him for awhile.

...Yes, I was in factcruel and hearltess in a past life, why do you ask?