"We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding."
― Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed
-ooo-
During those first weeks of their acquaintance, when everything had been new and they'd been so uncertain of each other, of the fragile partnership they'd formed, they'd rarely spent much time together outside of what was necessary.
After the business of the day was done, it had seemed only natural that they would each retire to separate spaces, to the quiet of their own thoughts, their lives as neatly segregated as those rooms that had yet to become home to either of them.
They had still been strangers, after all.
Strangers with similar goals even if eventually he'd discovered that their true aims and purposes and motivations had been, in truth, quite different and put them at odds as often as not.
Strangers with their own ghosts and demons and precious little in common despite all the demands they made of each other.
So they'd kept to themselves, more often than not.
During those early days, only Murr had traversed the boundaries between them, wandering as he liked in the way of cats everywhere.
He'd dug his claws into his trunk and Vanitas' boots and greedily demanded attention from them both at the most inopportune moments.
Each morning, he would emerge from his room to find Murr sprawled on the settee in the main room, purring and content, determined to claim that piece of furniture as his own primarily by virtue of shedding all over it.
And, except for that single commonality, each day had been different which, in and of itself, might not have been extraordinary for someone else, but for him...
Prior to boarding that airship to Paris each day had seemed to blend perfectly with the last with very little besides the occasional letter to distinguish one from the next. Domi had rarely been able to visit at all and, for all the letters he sent, his teacher had rarely been present after that day.
So, the fact that each day with Vanitas had been filled with new challenges, new cases, new horrors and truths and lies, with exhilaration and loss, had felt extraordinary... even on their darkest days.
And having someone at his side, even someone he didn't particularly like, had been rather different as well.
Had made him feel different in ways he hadn't been able to begin to understand.
That their partnership, such as it was, had seemed to begin and end with the action and the fall out from whatever great deeds or blunders they had most recently been engaged in had seemed of little significance at first. When they returned to that hotel, they'd gone their separate ways and he'd been glad of it. Glad of the chance to catch his breath and get his bearings before another adventure began.
Only... it hadn't stayed that way.
When he looked back on those days of change and turmoil, he could never say for certain why it was precisely that they had begun to gravitate towards each other, only that they had.
Change never happened all at once.
It wasn't any one thing, but a series of small turns that led to something much larger.
Change itself was subtle, pervasive.
It slipped in when your back is turned and hid in the shadows and settled beneath your skin, crept silently into all the places you'd never think to look. It only becomes obvious that change has arrived when it's ready for you to take notice. Usually when it had already made itself quite at home in your space and was wearing your shirt and tracking mud across your floor and leaving crumbs in your bed.
What he was certain of, in retrospect, was that Vanitas had been the one who had set the wheels in motion, even if it might not have been his original intention to do so.
He imagined that things might have gone quite differently for them if Vanitas hadn't poked his head into his room that morning and summoned him to breakfast on the rooftop.
Though, even if he hadn't been able to link the change in their relationship to that particular event, he'd still have known it was Vanitas who started it.
It was always Vanitas' fault.
Vanitas was always the one to the start the fires, even when he didn't mean to.
The invitation itself might have seemed a simple gesture, easily dismissed, but for how quickly it had become an almost daily affair.
At the time, of course, it had been easy to excuse it away as something done purely for the sake of efficiency.
It allowed them to start their day with the breaking dawn, gave them the benefit of full bellies with which to better face whatever new madness and revelations the day would bring.
He'd even found Vanitas' company could be almost enjoyable in the morning when his mouth was full of bread and he was too busy basking in the warmth of the rising sun and the subtle chill of the morning breeze to offer much in the way of conversation.
And, as abrasive as Vanitas could be at times, it had been nice not to be alone.
Though he would never tell him that anymore than he would have told him that, in spending those quiet mornings in his company, he had begun to understand why Vanitas so favored the roof to the rooms below and he found, after several mornings and the occasional evening sprawled across those tiles, he quite liked it as well.
And so when the idea of having their supper up there had occurred to him it had seemed a perfectly reasonable extension of this trend.
And, quite obviously, entirely Vanitas' fault as well.
Eating up there in the evening had seemed as if it would be efficient and comfortable and far more appealing than eating alone in his room or in one of the too crowded restaurants below.
Which was how he'd come to the decision, after a long day of chasing Vanitas' newest patient around Paris, to pick up food from one of the restaurants that lined the street below and clamor out onto the roof with a basket balanced precariously in his arms... only to find the roof deserted and Vanitas nowhere to be found.
If he'd felt disappointed, it had only been because it had seemed a waste of the effort and money to climb all the way up there with more food than he could possibly eat himself.
It certainly wasn't as if he wished to spend time with him.
He spent more than enough time with him as it was.
And, in those days, he'd still spent nearly as much time fighting the desire to toss Vanitas across any given room as he had speaking with him.
No, if he was disappointed it was only because he'd imagined that the peaceful atmosphere of the roof might make eating there pleasant enough to offset Vanitas' presence.
And he hadn't been wrong about that at least.
Eating his supper there, the wind tousling his hair, far above the lamp-lit streets of Paris listening to music drift up from the performers that lingered on the busy evening streets had been very pleasant… especially so without Vanitas there to spoil the atmosphere.
And if sometimes, as he'd sat there that night listening to the soft, indistinguishable murmur of people speaking and laughing below, he felt a bit out of place... it was still far preferable to the silence of their empty rooms.
Which was why he'd lingered there long after he'd finished his meal. Why he'd lain back against the tiles with his eyes shut listening to the sound of that distant laughter and wondering in a vague, purposeless way what they might be laughing about.
Why he'd still been lying there when Vanitas had returned.
"Awful stupid of you to fall asleep up here."
He'd heard him arrive, of course, but there hadn't seemed much point to engaging with someone who hadn't bothered to greet him. Who had instead merely flopped down and beside him and set about pawing through what remained of the food he'd brought as if he knew he'd brought it for him.
Rude.
It was no small wonder he didn't like him.
He turned his head to find that Vanitas wasn't even looking at him at all.
He was far too engrossed in glaring down at the bread in his hands as if the bread had done something to personally offend him. The way he had then set about tearing the offending baguette into rough pieces and shoving them in his mouth with quick, jerky movements just seemed to confirm his analysis.
It had certainly wasn't outside of the realm of possibilities, at any rate.
Vanitas had always found offense and humor in the oddest things.
"I wasn't sleeping," he'd informed him after a few moments of watching him assault the innocent baked good in his hands as crumbs cascaded down to cover his pants only to be dusted roughly off onto the roof tiles.
The pigeons would feast come morning with as much bread as he was wasting with that nonsense.
"Anything could have happened to you," Vanitas had continued, ignoring his response, the syllables of his speech garbled and strange as he offered them around a mouthful of bread. "It's just selfish, Noé. Think of all the time that I'd have to waste finding a replacement bodyguard."
"I'll keep that in mind," he'd replied, though he'd had no intention of doing any such thing. "Though I'm not your bodyguard."
"Then what good are you?"
"You're helping me, remember?"
"I don't recall agreeing to any such thing. Perhaps my frail human body is affecting my frail human memory."
"Well, your brain has always been your weakest aspect. And if I were your bodyguard, it'd be pretty stupid for you to just leave me behind so you could wander the streets alone. If you're in such a hurry to die, you could have just asked, I might well have chosen to oblige your request. I still don't like you very much."
"Well, I don't like you either. And I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself, thank you. Though I was hardly wandering the streets and I most certainly wasn't doing so alone," Vanitas replied, offering him that ridiculous, lecherous grin that always seemed more bravado than joy, more snarl than smile.
As if he hadn't already known where Vanitas had been and with whom.
Jeanne's perfume always lingered on his skin as if it were another mark of her claim upon him. It was as unmistakable an indicator of how he'd spent his evening as the faint sweet scent of his blood in the air or the way he favored that side of his neck after, canting his head every so slightly, as if to keep his high collar from brushing over whatever fresh wounds lay beneath.
And if knowing any of that bothered him, it was only because it had been a while since he'd had any blood at all.
Or perhaps it was merely that old jealousy that other vampires were free to take blood where they liked without fear of what they might see.
Whatever it was, it had nothing in particular to do with Vanitas at all.
Though his blood always had smelled unreasonably delicious.
"An excellent point," he'd replied briskly, climbing to his feet, retrieving his hat from where he'd left it on a cold chimney. "Then I suppose you should do as you like and so will I."
"That's fine by me," Vanitas called after him as he'd slipped through the window back into his room, leaving the roof and the leftover food behind.
"Liar," he'd called back, slamming the window shut between them before Vanitas could summon a reply.
Contending with the stuffiness of his room that night had been well-worth the satisfaction of having the last word.
The next morning he'd woken sweaty and uncomfortable to Vanitas tapping on the window, a bag from one of the shops below dangling from his fist.
It hadn't been an apology.
Which was for the best as he'd had no intention of offering anything of the sort himself.
Fortunately, contentious nights such as those remained the exception rather than the rule.
After that, Vanitas had instead made it a point of announcing, loudly, when he was going out and on those nights he'd made a point of going out himself or turning in early.
He had no desire for unnecessary conflict.
But on the nights when they were both staying it, they'd often taken their supper to the rooftops, to eat in companionable silence.
Not, he imagined, because they hadn't had anything to say, but more in an attempt to avoid ruining the fragile peace of those moments.
For him, it had been enough to simply exist in the same space.
He couldn't bear to hazard a guess at Vanitas' reasoning.
Vanitas, in those quiet moments between crisis, between arguments, had always seemed like a passing star, distant and unknowable.
At times, if he hadn't known it was Vanitas beside him, he might have thought it someone else entirely.
It was irritating.
He was irritating.
But, for all his strange silences and sober expressions, he had still preferred being in Vanitas' company to being alone.
And Vanitas, for his part, had never left, had never made up an excuse to be elsewhere and never seemed bothered by his presence.
Perhaps the quiet simplicity of companionship as the people of Paris moved about their lives far below, completely oblivious to their existence, to all they had done and would do, had been enough for both of them.
Or perhaps he had always simply been waiting for him to walk away.
After all, Vanitas was always still be sitting there gazing out over the drowsy city when he gave in to exhaustion and retreated to his bed for the night, leaving the roof and the night to his companion's continued inspection.
He had never called out anything by way of farewell, but then neither did he.
Having someone to bid a good night to once again had still been too strange a prospect then.
As time passed, the silence of those nights had eased somewhat and, on occasion, they'd made attempts at filling that silence with something new. A slow, uneasy dose of conversation that lacked the blunt, sharp-edged barbs of their days. Those rooftop conversations were slow and stilted as if they were both attempting to learn to navigate the labyrinthine field of unknowns between them by stepping around the half-truths and unseen injuries instead of merrily barreling through them without a care as they so often did in other aspects of their lives.
On the rooftop, they rarely spoke of the past.
Of all the knowns and and unknowns, the mysteries and tragedies of their lives.
At least not then.
Not yet.
During those strange quiet moments they'd let the dead stay buried, for good or ill, and, gradually, some great unseen barrier that had always existed between them had begun to crumble to make for for something else, something new.
Vanitas had always brought out the worst in him.
And while he wouldn't have said then that he liked Vanitas any better from one day to the next, it wouldn't have been difficult to admit that he'd grown accustomed to him, at ease in his presence, in a way he'd never been with anyone else.
Not his teacher.
Or Domi.
Or Louis.
During the days, the tiles of the rooftop were often too warm to be comfortable, but at day's end they were pleasantly cool and the moon was often bright overhead, only occasionally obscured by passing clouds. It was peaceful there and perhaps it had only been a matter of time before some combination of exhaustion and the peaceful familiarity of those nights had finally lulled him into relaxing enough to fall asleep there.
The first time it happened, he'd startled awake, confused and panicked, flailing out with one hand with enough force to dent one of the nearby chimney stacks.
Vanitas had laughed so hard at the sight that he'd almost fallen off the rooftop.
And as Vanitas flailed for a handhold and cursed at him for not helping, he'd found himself laughing as well, burying a smile against his knees as tears of mirth blurred his vision.
After a while he'd stopped being surprised when he occasionally drifted off and woke to find the sky darker or lighter than it had been.
To blink back into wakefulness minutes or hours after closing his eyes to find Vanitas curled into a ball against one of those chimney stacks as if he were seeking warmth or something firm to hold to.
Occasionally he'd wake to find Vanitas' booted feet jammed uncomfortably against the small of his back.
Once, only once, the last time he'd allowed himself to fall asleep on the roof, he'd woken to find Vanitas beside him, a hand curled over his hip, his body close enough behind him that he could smell the scent of sweat on his skin, feel his breath ghosting against the back of his neck.
It had been years since he'd slept so close to anyone.
It had been… disconcerting.
"You're such a baby," Louis had told him as they lay in the dark together.
Not always in those words, but always with a beleaguered sigh. Yet for all the complaints he'd uttered during their relatively brief time together, he'd never actually pushed him away. Had instead let him curl close to him, as if he needed the reassurance that there was someone else there with him in the dark as badly as he had.
Every memory of those halcyon days was edged with the pain of knowing the darkness that had lingered beneath the surface.
How ignorant his joy had been of Louis' pain, of all the things it had later seemed he must have been screaming into the silence between all his carefully curated words.
It made even the remembered taste of his blood seem sour against his tongue, made feel of Louis' lips and teeth and tongue against his fingertips tug at a heart that might always ache for all he'd been blind to, all the things he'd wished he'd known.
And yet those moments still seemed so warm in his memory.
He still seemed so warm.
The hand at his waist shifted and he was back in the present once more with the cool of tile beneath him and the grey of the night sky above, the rumble of distant thunder.
There was an odd moment of vertigo as the lingering memory of curling up against Louis' back in the dark was juxtaposed against the feel of Vanitas' pressed in so close against his own. Soon enough though, that brief remembered warmth had faded leaving him with only the unfamiliar oddity of the present and the feel of Vanitas' gloved fingers sliding beneath his loose shirt to poke almost painfully against the bare expanse of his belly.
And it had been, quite suddenly and for no obvious reason, very difficult to breathe.
"Noé?" Vanitas had murmured, his lips brushing over the back of his neck as he spoke. "Who's Louis?"
He'd jammed an elbow backwards, catching Vanitas hard in the stomach.
Or at least that's what would have happened if Vanitas hadn't rolled out of the way, laughing, having clearly already been anticipating the blow.
By the time he'd turned about and gained his feet, Vanitas had already been up and well away, backed up against one of the larger chimneys, yanking at his coat sleeves as if doing so might pull the wrinkles from them.
His grin had been wide and false, teeth bright even within the chimney's shadow, his eyes hidden beneath the fall of his hair.
His voice, laughing and careless and nothing close to real, rang out between them continuing his one-sided conversation as if he'd responded to the unexpected cut of that question. "Fine, fine, don't tell me. It isn't as if it matters to me anyway who you spend your time with."
"You're lying."
The words had tumbled from his lips as they often did: without hesitation, without thought as to how they would make his shoulders stiffen, his fingers tense.
"Am I?" He answered softly, a tone that demanded response and cautioned against it all at once. "About what precisely?"
Vanitas had lied so often and about so many things to so many people that it had always seemed a impossible task to set about ferreting out which lies were important and which were offered for fun, for profit.
To determine which mattered and which didn't.
He doubted even Vanitas truly knew sometimes whether what he said was true or merely wished it to be.
After all, Vanitas had never lied to anyone the way he lied to himself.
And even if he hadn't known any of that in those early days, he'd still been able to sense the lies all the same.
Could almost smell the way they curdled the air he breathed, the way they weighed down his steps and darkened his expression.
It made him think of Louis.
The scrap of his blade across wood.
His brittle smile as he carved him stake after stake and called them gifts.
"I don't know," he'd answered, plainly, honestly.
Because he hadn't.
Not then and rarely afterwards.
Vanitas had finally raised his head to look at him then, startled, his eyes impossibly wide, his expression open and unguarded.
And then he'd laughed.
Actually, it had probably been closer to a chuckle than a true laugh, but, laugh or chuckle, it had been soft and fragile and real, a sound as different as night from day when compared to his usual boisterous cackle, that laugh that had always felt like a lie, as if he'd engineered the sound specifically to make others think him mad.
Thunder had crashed overhead as the first drops of rain began to fall, soaking into their hair, their clothes.
"You're ridiculous," Vanitas had offered, his smile crooked and new.
"So are you," he'd replied plainly, because that was true too.
By the time they'd slipped back through the windows into their respective rooms, they'd both been dripping wet and smiling, the strange, brittle intimacy of those waking moments had been all but forgotten.