Summary: A string of stories about lonely men in love. ASGCZ
Midsummer Blues
Chapter One
The first time I saw him was on a clear day in June. He was strumming his guitar and singing so soft it was as if he wasn't singing at all.
I was sitting in a crowded cafe when it happened: just one glance, one coincidental glance out the window and it was all over for me. He was there, squeezed between a bench and a Coke vending machine, strumming and singing and staring at something I couldn't see. And I was done for, smitten to my bones.
I hadn't known his name and for that matter, I have never known, and perhaps now that I look back on such days, I realize that I never wanted to know. That first day I saw him, was, maybe, the only day I had ever truly laid eyes on him. During the rest of that summer haze, I saw nothing but that Beatles t-shirt, old jeans, and bright eyes staring and staring at some place far away.
I was entranced. A desperate curiosity and yearning had beaten its way into me and stood stubborn and immobile, intangible and all-powerful. It was love, I believed, or perhaps something more dangerous.
Life had never been grand for me.
Or, at least, not as grand as everyone else supposed it was.
I am an orphan. My mother died during childbirth and my father is a nameless enigma whose identity God has blessedly hidden from me. If somehow in the course of my life I had gained knowledge of my father's name, I'm sure I would have killed him. Not so much because I hated him, but because inside of me, I harbor detest for myself—or perhaps not so much detest as a simple dissatisfaction. I'm sure if I knew who he was it would be so much easier to blame him for the person I've cultivated over the years.
Again, life had never been grand for me.
I was raised by a man named Hojo, a splendid human example of what's wrong with the damn world. He was vile, malicious, jealous, and self-important-but he raised me fine. Sure, there was no love but no extreme abuse either. Maybe that's why I find my life so lackluster. Maybe if he had at least loathed me and thrown his hands on me, struck at me and scarred me, my childhood would still exist. Instead, it's faded; lost somewhere in the antagonism of my current day-to-days, my nonchalance.
My monotonous upbringing has haunted me all my life. I did well in school but it meant nothing to me. I was athletic, intuitive, progressive, but that, too, meant nothing to me. My whole life was filled with success but I held no ambition. I wanted nothing, desired nothing, needed nothing, and in return, I was not wanted, desired, or needed by anyone else.
My existence was singular. It started and ended with me.
No doubt, that's why I was so swept off my feet on that day at that moment by that man. Love or not, suddenly I had found something that I craved. My body, mind, heart and soul desired. And suddenly I felt whole, realizing that all this time, I had been empty.
The next day, I returned to my perch at that cafe. I sat and waited stoically, fingers too anxious to occupy themselves with coffee or sandwiches. For better or worse, my patience won out and he appeared. At the same corner, at that same cramped niche between the bench and the vending machine, he diligently extracted his guitar from its case, threw the strap over his shoulder, tuned the instrument, and began to sing. Just as determinedly, I sat and watched.
In this second encounter, I worshipped more effectively. The initial impact which had thrown me off my feet had settled, and now I was floating in midair, letting the wind run up and around and into every piece of me. Dazed yet hyperaware, I stared at his dirty blond hair and his ratty old sneakers. I imagined the tenure of his voice and the callouses on his fingertips, envied the faint summer breeze and how it tousled carelessly with the tips of his messy spikes and the edge of his plain black t-shirt.
As I saw and impressed meticulous detail after detail into my mind, time flew—past the lunch hour, past the office blur, past drinking with old friends—until I finally lay in the silent solace of my messy one-room apartment. I was half-drunk with alcohol and half-intoxicated with thoughts of him.
Lying heavily on my bed, I tried masturbating to his image. With the strokes of a tired hand, I imagined him standing alone across the street singing to passing pedestrians who heard nothing. I imagined his voice and how wonderful it must be. At the thought, I hardened beneath my palm but suddenly stopped.
Horror struck me. The act felt horribly, horribly wrong. It was as if I was desecrating a god, a saint, and instantaneously I felt repulsed at myself for tainting his image with something so base. That night, I took a cold shower, took myself out of reverie, but continued grumbling in that drunken stupor. I dreamt dreams about him and how his voice must sound.
The next day, I did the same. And the next and the next. He, this mystery man, began to consume my life.
Every day since our first one-sided encounter, I made it a ritualistic habit to drive straight from the office to that café and sit by the window through which he would appear. Anxiously, I would wait for him to sidle the sidewalk and complete my day. For the entirety of his performances I would sit and watch. Sometimes it was a mere thirty minutes, sometimes hours. Regardless, I wouldn't budge until he, himself disappeared into the crowd of strangers through which he came.
The consequences of my careless devotion were quick to take effect. By the fourth consecutive day I arrived back late at the office—a full hour after my lunch break ended—I was called to my superior's desk with the foreboding of hushed whispers and curious glances. It was, after all, an odd occurrence. My boss had never once had to speak to me concerning my behavior—my work was, before now, impeccable.
Our meeting did not take long. Director Lazard had eyed me through his narrow spectacles, interrogated me swiftly and I answered with my usual matter-of-fact replies. Though, admittedly, I did hide my recent infatuation.
"Sephiroth," he said. "How are you?"
"I'm fine."
"Good, that's good. Is something the matter? You've been arriving to the office late these past few days."
"Nothing is wrong."
"Really, now. I'm glad to hear that. Care to explain why you've been so tardy, then?"
"I've been…distracted. I apologize for the inconvenience."
"Hm." Lazard, I knew, was not stupid. He could see through my roundabouts, my ambiguity. "Indeed. Well, Sephiroth, you're one our best—if not the best—employees. I do hope you deal with whatever's been distracting you soon. I would hate to resort to disciplinary measures."
"I understand."
"Of course you do." He gave me one more pointed look from behind his lenses and then waved a hand. "You may leave."
"Thank you."
But two weeks later, my participation with my previous reality only continued to deteriorate. I was more distracted than I thought I'd be.
As usual I spent all my lunch breaks at that café, waiting and watching for the blonde man to appear with his guitar, although I did try my best to tear myself away before the hour ended, I hardly ever succeeded. Lazard called me into his office one more time and it ended much the same as the previous confrontation—with no answers and half-empty threats. The allure of this man, however, continued to infest every inch of me and I even found my weekends preoccupied with him. Saturdays, I perched at the café's countertop waiting entire days for a single moment of him. On Sundays, I came to realize, he never appeared. And on those days when I could catch no gratifying glimpse of him, I locked myself up in my apartment, wasting away time in droves simply thinking incoherent thoughts about him.
The first Sunday since I had seen him was also the first day I did not find him. Sunday morning I had awoken in a daze, having merely lied down on my bed the day before, staring at the ceiling until I could not define the lines between conscious contemplation and unconscious dreaming. I woke around noon and sat in bed for another hour before gathering the will and strength to remove myself from my bed. Quickly showering and performing the usual hygiene routine, I boarded my sedan and drove towards the café in hopes of seeing the guitar-playing blonde.
But he was not there.
I stayed for hours and still, he did not appear. It was a single day, simply one day where I did not catch the sight of him and still, I had felt my stomach cave in on itself and my heart pulse dangerously. Withdrawal symptoms, perhaps. Waiting and waiting fruitlessly that day, I could have sworn that the raging emptiness inside my body would tear open my skin and, like a black hole, would suck in all of me. But it did not.
It instead left me there in the physical world to mope and mourn and yearn. It was in this miserable daze that, almost without my knowing, I stood up and drifted out the door of that café, across the intersection, and found myself on that street corner that I had burned into my eyes for so many days. He, though, was not there. In some haze, I stepped forward towards the bench where he usually placed his guitar and sat.
I seated myself at the other end, the end nearest to the vending machine, and I sat and sat and sat, thinking and not thinking, seeing and not seeing. I imagined his presence next to me, the sound of his music and song and what he might have been wearing earlier today if he had even been here at all. Then my imagination grew ambitious and I formulated scenarios, little events that might have occurred to him, things he might have whispered to himself, songs he might have sung. For hours I sat there, pondering and muttering beneath my breath like a madman. Although not euphoric with the physicality of him, I became content with the simple thought of him. It was as if I could soak up the residue of his existence simply by sitting where he usually stood. I thought that, and suddenly, I didn't miss him so much.
Not only did my performance at work worsen, but my relationships began to suffer as well. I spoke to no one, listened to no one, was so wrapped up in my fantasies that I could not see or hear the world even if I had wanted to.
The tension hit a breaking point when one day, at the office, I did something I had never done in the entirety of my life: I lost control.
It was five minutes before my lunch break was due to begin and shutting down my computer and packing up my brief case, I was preparing to head out to that café for my daily ritual. Genesis, however, a long time co-worker and I suppose someone I could have called a friend, confronted me.
He had walked over to my desk and invited me out to lunch with him and Angeal, another co-worker and amiable acquaintance of mine.
I immediately declined.
Genesis, though, was never a man to keep his cool—although I found him agreeable, I believed the red-haired man to be rather self-absorbed and childish. The moment I refused his offer, Genesis began to seethe. He accused me of acting unusual, ignoring all of them, behaving as if I were better than them and that they were not worthy of my time.
To his passionate, furious spiel, I merely replied that I simply recently possessed no desire to spend my time with them.
This only proceeded to infuriate him further.
"Will you stop acting as if you're so high-and-mighty and better than the rest of us, you stuck-up bastard!" I resisted the urge to inform Genesis that he was, actually, describing himself. "Seriously, what is up with you recently? Every time we invite you out, you turn us down and we never see you anymore. What is it-You hate us, now? Or do you have some deadly secret you're hiding? The yakuza? Loan sharks? A woman?"
I must have visibly stiffened because Genesis's eyes widened and, instantly, he pounced.
"Oh Goddess, you do! The almighty Sephiroth has a woman. So that's it? You're ignoring your friends now for some stupid bitch? What kind of—"
Before I could comprehend the unbearable burning in my own veins, my arms were acting of their own accord. I watched as the impact sent Genesis slamming into the desk behind him. A thin trail of blood leaked from his nose and a grim satisfaction began to swell inside my chest.
This spontaneous act of violence, of course, did not bode well with Lazard.
The resounding crash of Genesis's body hitting the desk's side had drawn in workers from the rest of the office and before I had the chance to dig my fist into Genesis's face one more time, Angeal was on me, holding me back with those damned massive arms of his. The rest of the employees merely gawked. Genesis uncharacteristically said nothing and simply stayed where he had landed, crumpled on the floor.
Lazard confronted me immediately. In his office, he attempted once more to interrogate me. But in my obscure rage my answers were yet more elusive, albeit more scathing. Exasperated, Director Lazard, saying he no longer had a choice in the matter, imposed upon me my sentence. I was to be suspended from work for a week and after that, placed on probation.
"Hopefully by then," he said. "You'll have cooled your damn head."
I did not speak back or attempt to defend myself or my reputation. Returning to my desk, ignoring the intrusive stares and whispers of my colleagues, I grabbed my belongings, turned away, and left the building. Violently, I shoved my keys into my car and sped down to that café.
The red shade had yet to leave my eyes. I was angry, angrier than I could ever remember, angrier than I'd ever been before—than I'd ever been able to be. The rawness of the emotion burned through my veins like sandpaper. It filled every piece of me.
I felt so high strung, pulled so horribly tight across my bones as if I would rip from my temple down to my nose. In that fit of vehemence and some crazed emotion, I stared down the street with narrowed eyes. For the first time, I felt uncontained and disgustingly ravenous. For the first time, I wanted to possess him and devour him—he became human in my eyes—and in all that infuriated thoughtlessness, I fought my way across the street with the final conviction to make so many of my idolizing dreams a reality. I would make him mine.
Green eyes narrowed, I forced my way through the crowd of passerbys, surging towards what I deemed then as my fate and my responsibility. In a matter of seconds, I reached that all too familiar street corner, nothing but a few meager yards separated me from him.
And then I heard it. I heard it.
At first it was nothing but a soft buzzing wafting around the bodies of pedestrians, but as I struggled my way closer it became yet clearer. A melody, chords, and then, a voice.
Above the din of footsteps and mangled conversations, above the whistling of wind dashing along cars on the street behind me, I heard it. His voice.
It had been that sound of him that was powerful enough to strike the insolent fury out of my body and now, looking back, I know that it had done much more, so much more.
It moved me. Struck me.
Although I stood paralyzed for a long while, I felt a surge, a tidal wave of things intangible crash inside me as the waves of my turbulent heart beat violently against its shore. It was as if I had been stranded at sea, in an ocean of an antagonistic world and an endless loneliness all my life, without my even knowing it. Now that voice, and that song, was a line graciously tossed out to me to bring me back to land where the earth was warm and infinite with possibility. I was being saved when I hadn't even realized that I needed to be.
It was renewal and rebirth, a wake-up call to a dead man.
In that instant, I came to realize something that made me only fall deeper into this pit of rose-colored obsession.
This man, with his dirty blonde spikes and bright, bright blue eyes looking at some place I could not see, he did not separate his labor and his passion, did not divide his identity nor pitter-patter over a soul-vacuuming sociability. He was himself, he was his guitar, he was his passion. He was so much more than I had ever been.
And in that moment, I came to understand what it was I must do.
That day, I did not traverse those few extra yards. Instead, I returned to my car. I extracted my laptop from where it lay dormant in my leather briefcase, opened up a document, and wrote my letter of resignation. The same day, I returned to the office unannounced, much to the chagrin of my still disturbed co-workers, and presented to Director Lazard my newly found conviction.
"I am resigning," I told him.
He looked at me for a moment, startled, but quickly composed himself. "I hope this isn't because of your suspension, Sephiroth?"
"It's not."
"Then why this all of a sudden?"
"I," For a moment I paused, trying to find the right words. "I realized something."
Lazard was unimpressed. For a long while he stared at me as if he thought that through the window of my eyes he could extract the information he wanted and come to comprehend the dilemma before him. It, however, did not work.
"I will keep this." He lifted up the paper I'd presented to him. "But do, reconsider, Sephiroth. You're a great asset to our company; we would hate to lose you. You should take a break and come back when you're ready."
Out of respect for the man, I stayed and listened diligently but discarded his words the moment I stepped out of his office. He spoke as if I were making a mistake I would regret in due time and I refused to recognize the possibility.
Walking towards the elevator, my silent hopes to avoid yet another confrontation that day were dashed as Angeal stepped in beside me. Too much in one day, I silently commented, too much.
"Hello, Sephiroth," he stated.
"Hello, Angeal."
Forty-nine floors, I thought disdainfully. For the first couple floors he said nothing but the moment the tell-tale sound of Angeal swallowing air into his lungs entered the silence of that metal compartment, I knew I was in for it.
"I've been friends with Genesis since I was a child. I've known him for a long time and would like to believe that I know and understand him best. And I of all people will be the first to admit that Genesis has his flaws. He's headstrong, rude and often times egotistical." During his spiel Angeal did not turn to face me, instead he leveled his eyes straight ahead. "But as obnoxious as Genesis can sometimes be, I want to know what could have possibly warranted a broken nose. From you, especially."
From the corner of my eyes, I observed Angeal. The three of us, Angeal, Genesis and I, had all joined the Shinra Company at about the same time. Somehow we came to acquaint ourselves with one another and although often morally impenetrable, I held a profound respect for Angeal. He was calm, kind-hearted, honest, and as he often emphasized, a man with the utmost honor. He was so different from his friend. It was a question that many asked: why did someone down-to-earth like Angeal befriend someone as conceited as Genesis? But the more I saw of Angeal in that small, enclosed space, the more I saw how his fists clenched and trembled, the way his eyes narrowed minutes and brows scrunched up together, his lips tighten into a stiff frown. The more I saw, the more I began to realize why.
The elevator dinged. Turning my eyes forward, I took the first step out of the elevator, leaving Angeal behind in all his restrained, dignified rage.
"He overstepped his boundaries."
That day, full of all its turmoil and mood swings and anxiety, still did not end there.
After my encounter with Angeal, night had already fallen on Midgar's Upper Plate. Darkness fell indiscriminately on the world around me as I drove down the crowded streets, but I did not head home, not yet. With some awry determination that had imprinted itself upon the surface of my mind, I wandered the streets until I found what I was searching for.
I did not return to my one room apartment until eight o' clock. In an exhausted daze, I fell asleep immediately—something I had not managed to do since the day I saw that blonde man.
The next morning, I didn't wake up until noon—something I had not managed to do ever. With sunlight pouring thickly through my windows and the summer heat wafting in through the thin walls, I wryly noted that for the first time in my life, I had slept in.
At first I rose from my bed, showered, brushed my teeth, and dressed myself. It was only after tightening my tie did I realize that I was not going to work today. I, after all, had quit.
Removing the tie that I had so diligently wrapped around myself, I then unbuttoned my dress-shirt, and took off my slacks. In nothing but my briefs, I wandered around my apartment when, from the corner of my eye, I caught something that had never been there before.
Ah, that's right, I remembered. Walking up to the unfamiliar object, I sat beside where it laid leaning against the coffee table and brought it into my lap.
A guitar. In that drunken haze of euphoria and passion last night, I had gone and purchase for myself a guitar. Holding it in my arms then, I admittedly felt a bit like a dunce, uncomfortable and out of place. What was I thinking? Me, Sephiroth, playing the guitar. It sounded like a bad joke.
Yet there it was and there I was, cradling its smooth mahogany silhouette in my large hands. I didn't know the first thing about a guitar, playing it or even much of music in general. Even so, it was mysterious and thrilling. An odd excitement thrummed through my veins and hesitantly, I brought the instrument closer to myself, left hand on the neck, right hand swung across the body as I had seen the man from the street corner do so often.
I involuntarily grimaced as a discordant twang echoed throughout the empty apartment. As expected, with no knowledge besides the shallow imitation of an observer, I could not play. Nevertheless, just as I had found that man beautiful and wonderful without a single grain of knowledge of who or what he was, I became enamored by the instrument.
With no work and no other obligation on a blistering Sunday afternoon, I sat in my apartment for hours, plucking and twanging and running my hands against the guitar's figure. I understand now that perhaps then, somehow, I had come to try and satiate myself with that instrument. As silly and inconsequential as it seemed, that guitar in my hands was my one and only physical connection with him. I did not know his name, his age, what it was he wanted so much out of the world, but I knew he played the guitar and was beautiful doing it. Having that guitar in my hands was my own way of trying to satisfy the growing despondency festering inside my chest. Holding that guitar, I had convinced myself, was close enough to holding him.
For a while, it worked.
I filled my aimless days with nothing but him and my guitar. At noon, I would drive out to the café, and as if nothing had changed, I would again, sit and watch him. When he disappeared, I too departed and drove back home. There, I would pass the hours fiddling with the musical contraption with minimal improvement.
After a week, I decided to finally venture outside of my new routine and returned to the music store where I had purchase the guitar. I began to take lessons. Two hours, three days a week, for the next four weeks. It was an endeavor I had initially been uncomfortable to make but I welcomed the intrusion of productivity to my then aimless life.
All my life, I'd been working. It had never been a matter of drive for me, nor principle, I worked because that was what the world expected of me and assiduously, I assumed the role that had been given me. For twenty-nine years I accepted this designation, not once revolting against it once—until now, of course. Furthermore, I was never one for luxury and with a generous savings account, I felt confident in my sudden unemployed state. Perhaps too confident.
But even so, a strange contentment settled into my bones. I began to venture yet further outside my routine. Between afternoons perched in the café and evenings in the small, cramped room where I learned guitar from a wide-eyed, excitable youth, I would spend hours outside in places I'd never before held the desire to explore. Parks, nooks-and-crannies of a city I had lived in for nearly three decades but knew nearly nothing about. I was beginning to see and hear the world around me, something I'd never the time or interest to do.
It seemed silly but it was all thanks to him. I had never exchanged a single word with him and yet I felt I owed him more of me than even I could imagine. Though, why or how exactly, I could not say myself.
"So why'd you wanna learn to play the guitar?"
I looked up. In that tiny room with posters plastered haphazardly against the wall, dim yellow lights, and sheets of music scattered all over the floors, shelves, desks, and windowsills, my instructor, a young man named Zack Fair, grinned at me. As far as payments and contracts went, that night was to be my last night there. Fair had always been an inquisitive, exuberant young man, but I suppose the finality of the evening made him yet more bold in his curiosity.
"Why do you ask?"
He shrugged, and like a majority of his body language, it was over exaggerated. "Dunno. Just curious. I mean, you just don't seem like a guy who looks like he'd be interested in playin'."
I raised a brow in question.
"It's the hair." He made motions with hands, which I could only guess was meant to signify length. "All silvery and stuff. And the eyes that look like they don't care about nothing and maybe even that super pale skin that makes you look like you've never seen the light of day. Or you know the overall vibe that you're too good for stuff like this…" He suddenly caught himself and chimed in, "No offense."
"None taken."
Zack let out a good-hearted laugh and scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "Soooo…" and that grin was back, "Why?"
"Do I play?"
"Yup."
For a while, all I could do was frown. The question struck me as odd and difficult to answer. "I don't know." I struggled, wondering how much I should reveal to this Zack Fair and how much I should keep locked up inside myself. "I suppose the easiest way to explain it is I saw a man playing it one day, and then I felt the desire to learn myself."
"Aw," he laughed. "That's cool. I'm sure that dude you saw would be super happy if he found out he inspired someone."
I blinked. "Inspire?" Then I couldn't fight the small smile tugging at my own lips. In that moment I felt as if I understood something that had eluded me for a long while. "Yes. Yes, I suppose that's right."
"What a bummer that today's our last session, though. Hey I know!" And then Zack Fair was standing, guitar still gripped in his left hand as he rummaged through the mountains of waylaid papers scattered over what used to be his writing table. "Ah, got it! Here ya go."
I took the sheet of paper from his offering hand and examined it carefully. "What is it?"
"My address," he chirped.
I gave him the raised brow again.
He outstretched his hands in front of him as if to defend himself. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, Seph—" I didn't' understand why he insisted on calling me that. "Don't take it the wrong way, man. It's just Friday nights I hold jam sessions with a few other guys at my apartment. Just some bros, a little booze, and a load of good music and fun times, yeah?"
I said nothing.
"You know, you might be new at the guitar and everything but you're actually pretty damn good. You picked things up a helluva lot faster than I did, anyways. If you come over, I'm sure you'll get better in no time and pick up a few good tricks from the other guys."
Frowning, I folded the crumpled piece of paper and stuffed it into my pocket. "Thank you, Zack. I will think about it."
The younger man beamed. "No problem!"
The week after, I had actually planned to take Zack Fair up on his offer, but something occurred—something that I, in my foolish, rose-colored reverie, had somehow never anticipated.
He disappeared.
It was that same Friday afternoon I'd decided to visit Zack when it first happened. As usual, I had arrived at the café at noon and sat at the counter facing out the window and across the intersection. I waited and waited for hours, until night fell and the scheduled meet-up with Zack had long passed, and still he did not appear. More than disappointment, I felt the un-fulfillment of my then habitual expectations birth a fear inside my stomach. It was a kind of terror I had not experienced ever before in my life. A numbing kind of terror. When the café employees began to eye me suspiciously, I finally peeled myself away from my seat, stumbled to my car and drove to my apartment in a dizzy stupor. A shadow began to bury itself into my mind.
That night I did not sleep. I stayed for a while with my guitar in my lap, strumming out the chords that I'd been taught, but by midnight, it lay discarded on the floor and my head found its home in my hands. I do not remember thinking anything. All I could do was feel and fight down the rising dread in my throat.
The next day, I arrived at the café earlier than usual and again, I sat and waited, anticipating and hoping that he would reveal himself for at least a second. But he did not. The next day was Sunday and again, I sat alone in my apartment with my eyes looking at nothing. Monday, I returned to the café, and still, still he did not appear.
For two weeks, I forced my way to that familiar café on that familiar street for an unfamiliar sight. Not once was he there. And after two long, strenuous, draining weeks of nothing, I lost the will to venture out at all. I locked myself up in my apartment, staring at walls and the broken pieces of my guitar—by the end of the first week, I had snapped the instrument in half in a blind fury. Its corpse lay mangled where I'd discarded it.
I was, in simplest terms, a mess. My existence seemed to be caving in on itself—crumbling after losing the very thing that had become its foundation. I had invested so much of my life into this man, this damned man whose name I did not even know. He had devoured me, all of me, every piece of me, and without him I was withering.
On the hottest day of that summer, when the heat bore down on me viciously and the sunlight trickling around the edges of closed curtains seemed ominous and villainous, a knock echoed throughout the apartment.
For a while, I did not move. In my silent reverie I discarded the sound as the taunting of my own imagination. But the knocking persisted, growing angrier and more violent with every passing second.
"Open the damn door, Sephiroth! I know you're in there!"
It took me long moments to comprehend the voice and place where I had heard the voice before. After more long moments, I found myself unlocking the front door and opening it. My limbs felt exhausted. The act of standing in and of itself was an ordeal.
"What do you want, Genesis."
"Don't give me—Goddess, you look terrible."
I ignored him. "What do you want?"
Startled, the smaller man struggled for words before sneering as he was so prone to doing. "Aren't you going to at least invite me in?" Before I could say anything, he was pushing his way around me and into the apartment. Morosely, I shut the door, knowing there would be no easily solution to this.
"Goddess!" He spat. "Disgusting. What have you been doing? Living like a shut-in?"
I only looked at him with my tired eyes.
Seeing this, Genesis stiffened and took one more exaggerated sweep of the room before seating himself on the couch with what I would have called over-composure. "Well," he waved a hand. "Sit down."
Too tired to point out that this was my apartment and I did not need his permission to seat myself, I did as I was told and settled myself in the armchair next to the sofa where he sat.
"Well," Genesis said.
"Well, what."
"Well." He spoke with his nose upturned in the air as if what he was saying spoke for itself. "What have you been doing?"
"Nothing."
"Oh come on. You can't have been doing nothing for all this time."
"You'd be surprised."
Genesis made a disgruntled noise and looked away, obviously peeved. For a while, a heavy silence instilled itself between us, but I had no intention of allowing it, or him, to linger as it pleased.
"Genesis." My voice inflected a strength I did not have. "Why are you here?"
The red-haired man shifted minutely on the leather couch, glanced at me, the TV, the remnants of the guitar, then back to me.
"Answer me."
He frowned, vexed perhaps, by my unwillingness to allow him control of the conversation. "I came on behalf of Director Lazard. He wants you back at Shinra."
My face must have betrayed my disbelief.
"It's true." Genesis snapped.
"Even I know you're no lackey, Genesis."
The comment must have hit a nerve because his fidgeting began to grow more anxious, more distracting. "Well," he spoke in a voice I'd only heard once before, on a night where he had drank one beer too many. It was weak and hesitant, something Genesis was not. "Well, Lazard's not the only who wants you to return. Many people do. Angeal does and," he paused. "And I do, as well."
I frowned. I did not know what to say.
"So," he began. "What—what do you think? Will you come back? It's not as if you have another job at the moment do you? If you don't, I don't see why you wouldn't come back to Shinra. Lazard even says he'll excuse your suspension and I'm not exactly angry about what happened anymore. He might even throw in a bonus if you—"
"Genesis."
His rambling cut short, Genesis's tongue seemed to suffocate him. He, I noted, was acting unusual—even for him.
"I have no plans to return to Shinra."
"But why? Why? Why?" His eyes were finally meeting with mine, a violent rage writhed behind them. Anger sent a pink flush across his cheeks. He seemed ready to bite his own tongue off in all his flailing. "Sephiroth! Why? You leave without a word or a second glance and you think you can just disappear from our lives? You never say anything and we never know anything. What is it that you fucking want? Tell me, Sephiroth! Tell me! Are you still angry with me, huh? Are you mad at me? Do you want an apology is that what you want? I'm sorry, okay, I'm sorry! If you want me to get down on my knees then I'll get down on my goddamn knees for you!" Genesis panted, flustered, out of breath, and ashamed even of himself. "I'm sorry okay. Just please, please come back."
I said nothing. I did not know what to say. I had seen something I should not have seen, heard something I should not have heard.
For what seemed to be hours, we did not move. Genesis stared down at me from where he stood, face pink and only reddening more with every heave of his shaking chest. I sat, back hunched, staring down at the blankness of my palms.
"Sephir—" He cut himself short as I finally stood up. "Sephiroth, I..."
Saying nothing, I turned away from him and walked to the door. Hesitating a moment, I gripped the doorknob in my hands, twisted it, and swung the door open. "Genesis, please, leave."
He looked at me, shocked and indignant, and hurt. It was my turn to avoid his eyes.
Genesis did not move but I could feel the weight of him bearing down on me. "Sephiroth, I—" He took a step forward. "I—I, I—"
"Genesis," I repeated. "Please."
This time I raised my gaze to meet his and I regretted it immediately. Too much, I thought, too much. Too much.
And then, he left.
I watched him walk around me and down the hall. His pace was sluggish and his footsteps heavy, but he did not turn back once. Watching him, I shut the door silently.
A week later, on a Monday, I woke up at 7 AM. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, took a shower. I put on slacks, buttoned up my white shirt, tightened my tie until it laid snug beneath my collar. I got into my car and sat in morning traffic for twenty minutes.
Parking on the second floor of the designated parking garage, I took my brief case in my right hand, my suit jacket in my left, and made my way towards the main building.
And then I saw it. It happened on the street corner a block away from the imposing building I had seen for so many years. A tall man, I was used to being able to see over the heads of others and as I stood stoically, waiting with a crowd of other suited men and women for the walk sign to go green, I caught a glimpse of blonde hair from the corner of my eye.
Something inside me ached.
It was him. I know that now.
But he was not how I had remembered him. Gone was the raggy t-shirts, the worn-out jeans, the ratty old sneakers. Instead he was wearing an ensemble that mirrored my own. Almost frightened, I looked down and there, in his left hand, instead of a guitar, was a brief case.
The light must have turned green because he began to drift away, and soon was engulfed away from my eyesight. I stood, immobile among a sea of strangers clad in black-and-white. My limbs felt heavy and I could not bring myself to step forward.
I stood there, staring at the empty space he'd left behind.
A hand was on my shoulder and I awoke.
"Hey man, the light's green."
"Ah, yes. Sorry."
Diligently, I took my place among the crowd of strangers and crossed the street. My feet carried me to the front doors of the Shinra Building, but even then, I could not bring myself to enter just yet.
Standing among those hustling bodies, alone in the chasm of my mind, I looked at myself and who I was, who I'd been, who I'd become and will become.
I stared at my hands, then, with a strange urge I could not explain, I turned my head up to look at the sky.
Looking back now, I think I understand what it was he'd been looking at all this time—I think I know what it was he saw that I could not see before.
The clouds.
Aw, man. I'm really, really proud of this. I know it's not exactly your run-of-the-mill fanfiction, but I really wanted to explore something with this story. A sort of silent contemplation and subtle internalization of who we are. An introspective route, I guess. Midsummer Blues, actually, was a short story I was working but decided to write as a fanfic. I hope you guys enjoyed it. The next chapter will be from another character's perspective-someone blonde and blue-eyed-I wonder who that could be.
Thanks so much for reading! I'm not confident that this style of story-telling could gain much attention on ff . net but I'm curious as to what you guys think so drop a review!
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