A/N: YAAAY plot.
I've never tamed a wild horse. I've been to wild horse auctions, so I know how they act to some degree, but the most I've been able to do concerning some of the topics in here is look up shit on Google and make my own theories based on the little I know about horse mentality. SO, if you give a shit, and know what I've done wrong, please tell me.
You'll notice some similarities between the things happening and things that occur in this one video game...
This is how life should be, Amarant decides, nodding his head along with Lani's favorite Cake CD. Windows down, middle of nowhere highway, with no buildings or city around and just the dry-grass half-desert to watch.
Lani is in the passenger seat, talking animatedly with Kuja, who's smiling at her with that same meaningless smile from a few nights ago but with feeling in his eyes. Amarant usually doesn't focus so much on one person's expression, preferring the whole picture to the individual pieces, but Kuja is one of those people where if you see him, you have to really look, or else you won't get the true meaning of the things he says or does.
Lani laughs loudly and pokes Amarant. "You look so serious! Come on, Red, smile or something."
He grimaces and she laughs again. Kuja leans in and looks at the redhead. "I'm only going to ask once – did my brother put you up to kidnapping me?"
The truth is that Amarant didn't kidnap the other at all. He suggesting that he should come out with him and Lani, and Lani had found out the next day, and had promptly convinced the other to come. He had just put it out there, because he "didn't want to take his girlfriend away."
"...Maybe a little," Amarant admits.
"I knew it. If I come back and my apartment's trashed, that little jerk is going to get it." He pokes the driver, "And you too. I should call the police tonight and have them check."
"I don't think it'll make a difference, Kuj'," Lani sighs. "Your brother will get away with it. He's got Ruby's number on speed-dial and she knows how to get anyone out of anything."
Kuja pouts and flops back into his seat. "How much longer?" he asks, not anxious but just curious.
"Mm... Half an hour," Amarant responds dully, putting an arm out the window. "How'd you two get out of classes?"
"I wasn't going to go, anyways," Lani waves a hand, "Set isn't my thing."
"Hilda is a very laid back professor and I only have her class this week," Kuja yawns. "She lets you leave for weeks on end if you need 'fashion experience.' I just told her I was going to New York – you know, fashion-central? She gave me her blessing."
"That's real underhanded," the redhead drawls, "I wouldn't expect it from someone like you."
"Someone like me? Don't I look innocent enough?"
The silver-haired male bats his eyes and Amarant rolls his, "You look insane."
"You can't be innocent and insane?"
"Kuja," Lani grins, "You couldn't pull off innocent if you tried."
The other sighs, "I know. It's a shame I'm so damned evil."
Amarant snorts and flips to the next track. He likes this – not necessarily everything about it but he likes the atmosphere they're creating between them. Lani's always been close and Kuja seems okay with taking second place to her, sliding easily into the groove Amarant and the girl have created over the years. Maybe they're all just too alike not to get along.
Kuja sits back and closes his eyes, looking to be asleep, and when Lani times his breathing to find that he is, at least, napping, she leans over to Amarant and asks, "I thought Kuja didn't make you gay?"
"What? He didn't." Amarant glances to her.
"Then why are you being so nice to him? I mean, I know you. You're never this cool with strangers."
Amarant looks back at Kuja and then shrugs. "I don't know. I just... He doesn't feel strange. He... I don't know, Lani, why the hell are you asking me deep questions?"
"It doesn't have to be deep, babe," Lani stretches, "This desert always makes me tired. How much longer?"
"Like I said, half an hour... less, now."
"I hope Cid isn't going to mind us being there."
"Probably not. You know he loves the idea of a pretty girl hanging around the ranch. Kuja will just be a bonus."
The CD ends and goes to the next one in the disc-changer. Oasis flows through the desert and the truck and Lani rolls her window down, leaning her head against the doorframe and closing her eyes against the warm wind. Amarant affords her a soft look – he doesn't normally feel so fuzzy around the girl but today has been the exception.
"Thanks," she mumbles, "I'm glad we're still friends."
"We're always going to be friends," Amarant sighs, "It's my punishment for being an asshole."
"Ha, ha."
The ranch isn't particularly large. It's fair sized for it's purpose – horses – and it's in a prime spot because of the town just a few dozen miles beyond it. People who come to the ranch – Madain Sari – usually come to buy one of the wild horses that people like Amarant come to tame. The redhead never understood why people would want to buy some of the rowdiest, easily-spooked horses the country has to offer, but he doesn't mind because it just means one less for him to worry about.
They pull up into the parking lot – which isn't really a parking lot at all, just gravel with white pebbles poured into somewhat straight lines for parking spots – and Amarant swings into one of the haphazard spots.
He gets out and the two follow quickly.
"Hey! Yer gonna hurt yourself!"
Amarant turns to see one of the large trucks carrying bales of hay parked just beyond the lot, and a few hands starting to unload. One of them – a redhead with deeply tanned skin – is pulling off two at a time. A third bale – on top of one the redhead is trying to remove – starts tumbling down towards the hand, earning a startled swear and a leap back. All three bales crash to the ground, one splitting apart.
"Fucking hell," Amarant growls, "I'll be right back."
He stalks over to the other hand and smacks him upside the head. "You moron, stop showing off," he snaps, grabbing the two unbroken bales. "Goddamn, Gilgamesh. Leave the heavy work to me and just do what your scrawny arms chan handle."
"Hey," Gilgamesh drawls, "I didn't know you were coming out this week. What's up – hey," he grins now, "You brought Lani! And...?"
The other hand's face goes blank – that purposeful blank that people put on when they don't want to show any emotion – and Amarant looks over his shoulder. Lani and Kuja are talking, and Lani's pointing out towards the stables, probably telling him what, exactly, is going on.
"What? You know him?" Amarant asks, turning back to Gilgamesh.
"Uh... yeah, I know him," he mutters, crossing his arms.
"Stop being a dick," the older hand growls, and carries the two bales to the silo.
He comes back and now Lani is standing off to the side, with Kuja and Gilgamesh talking. Gilgamesh looks really forcefully at ease, and Kuja looks so uncomfortable...
"What's up?" he asks Lani once he reaches her.
"...I forgot Gil was here." She looks at Amarant sideways, "...He and Gilgamesh had a thing."
"Really?" The redhead smirks, "I didn't know he was gay."
"He isn't, that's the thing. It -"
Kuja turns to them and Amarant's surprised to see Kuja look so relieved to see him. He quickly steps beside them and smiles forcefully at Gilgamesh. "It's nice to see you," he says.
Gilgamesh shrugs and Amarant rolls his eyes. "Go finish unloading the truck, you fool."
"Yes sir. Jeez, you order me around too much," the other grumbles, trudging off to do what he's been asked.
Amarant turns to the two. "I gotta go see Cid, but then we can go to the cabins. We might have to share."
"No problem," Lani waves a hand. Kuja's looking over at Gilgamesh with this really... defeated kind of look. Lani sees it and puts a hand on his shoulder, earning a quick smile and a nod.
"Sounds alright with me."
The three walk to the long main house – "That's Cid's place," Lani tells Kuja, who nods – and Amarant effectively kicks the door open.
"Who in the – Amarant, what'd you know."
Cid is a thin, old man with black-streaked gray hair and a large, bushy mustache – he vaguely resembles a frog, but only because of his facial structure. He stands and Amarant grins to see he's still wearing his suit.
"Just get back?" he asks, reaching over to shake the old man's hand.
"Nah," the other shakes his head, "I just haven't gotten a chance to change. Been around for almost a day." He finally sees the other two and smiles, "Ah, you brought Lani! And...?"
"Oh," Amarant mumbles, "This is Kuja."
"Nice to meet you," Kuja smiles.
Cid nods, still smiling, "A pleasure. You know you gotta share the cabin with these two, Amarant?"
"Sure," the redhead waves a hand, "No big deal."
Cid nods again and reaches over, grabbing a key off of a rack, "Here you go." He tosses Amarant the key and the younger man catches it easily. "Go show them to the cabin and then help Gilgamesh with upkeep. The damned kid has no idea what he's doing."
"I saw that. He overshot himself again." Cid groans and Amarant smirks, "I'll go keep watch in a minute. Thanks, Cid."
"No problem, Coral. Just don't hurt him too badly. He's the only consistent hand I've got."
Amarant shrugs and leads the two back out. Lani tells him that Cid looks just like the professor Cid she has, and that she didn't really notice it until he saw Kuja and gave that weird smile. Kuja supplies that maybe they're related and this wouldn't be so far-fetched.
They reach the cabins and Amarant unlocks the one furthest from everything, pushing the door open and letting the other two go in before him.
"It's not dusty!" Lani observes, "They must've just cleaned."
"Nice," Amarant nods.
"There's only one bed?" Kuja asks, mildly confused.
"Yeah," the redhead shrugs, "Cid doesn't give doubles out to hands, especially me."
"What, Kuj', you're not excited that you get both of us in bed with you?" Lani asks, grinning.
The silver-haired man rolls his eyes and immediately turns to Amarant. "You're okay with that?"
"I don't care," he responds, "It's not a big deal. I hate sharing Lani," he chuckles, "But I think I can trust you."
"No you can't!" Lani exclaims, "He's going to ravish me!"
"You'll need to give me a lot more alcohol to get me to do anything of the sort," Kuja tells her, dead serious, before laughing, "Go do work, would you? That Cid is going to yell at us."
"Nah," Amarant shrugs, going to the door anyways, "He doesn't yell. Make yourselves comfortable, alright? I'll see you later."
"Can we go to the stables, or are they off limits this time?" Lani asks, flopping onto the bed.
"...I dunno. Probably. Just don't touch any of the horses, would you? It took forever to calm that last one down..."
"I can't help if my wild and adventurous spirit makes the horses yearn for freedom!"
"Right. Just don't touch anything." Amarant leaves the two alone and tries to figure out how, exactly, he's going to last a week sharing a room – a bed – with the other two.
Amarant always works longer than almost all of the other hands – because he doesn't get a chance to come out nearly as much as he wants, and so he doesn't get a lot of money for working regular shifts. So he pulls overtime and by the time he's done filling water barrels and calming down some of the tamer horses for the night, the sun has set and the dark blue from the upper sky is slowly coming down towards the ground. The stars are a lot brighter out here and the redhead takes a long while walking back, watching the night above him and listening to the shouting in the distance from the permanent hands in the middle of poker or something.
The cabins all have long, wide porches and Amarant climbs the stairs slowly, back already starting to complain. He's been away for too long.
A glance to his side and he sees Kuja leaning against the wall, with Gilgamesh standing close – too close for a guy who always talks about his latest girls – in front of him, talking to him in a quiet, white-noise kind of voice. Kuja catches Amarant's eye and almost moves to go to him, but Gilgamesh chuckles and says, "He isn't going to do anything with you, so you don't try or he might punch you," in a low voice and Kuja flinches slightly before leaning back against the wall again.
Something about Kuja's expression sets Amarant on edge and he goes into the cabin, closing the door and looking at Lani, who's laying on the bed and watching basic cable.
"Are they still out there?" she asks.
"Yeah," he nods, going to the bed and laying down next to her. "What's their thing?"
"...They had a... a messy break up. Kuja..." Lani frowns, "Kuja has a lot of issues, you know? And I don't mean anything bad by it, but... he has problems with relationships and attachment, ever since his parents got divorced." She shakes her head, "No, from before then. Zidane says he was worse before he and I were friends."
"So why are you in here, instead of beating the shit out of Gilgamesh? Which I know you'd adore doing."
"...It's not my problem," the girl sighs, "I'm playing Sweden, you know? I don't want to make things worse – or baby him. Kuja can handle himself."
Amarant nods and kind of watches the television, trying to discern the voices outside from the ones inside.
Lani isn't joking when she says that Amarant is an animal person. He loves animals – not just dogs and horses, but lizards, snakes, insects... He has a favorite for every type of animal, but only Admes gets the title of favorite animal.
He hates leaving the dog home with his dad, but what can he do? Cid doesn't like dogs with the horses – they tend to spook easier with barking canines around – and Amarant wouldn't want to risk the dog getting his head cracked in by a pissed off horse.
Speaking of horses...
He's sitting cross-legged in the center of one of the compounds, flipping idly through one of the magazines that had been stashed in the corner of the cabin. A young palomino mustang is nervously trotting between one side of the large pen, ears switching between straining forward and falling back flat, eyeing Amarant with one of those "don't do something stupid" looks that almost all horses give him at first.
He looks up to see him starting to come closer, shrugs, and goes back to reading.
Horses are the easiest herd animals to read, in Amarant's opinion. Once you know how to look, they're worse than humans when it comes to hiding expression. This one, in particular, is a recent addition to the ranch and hasn't had time to figure out how to react to anything yet. So instead, he's reacting to everything.
Fair enough. Amarant's been able to do absolutely jack shit to a horse like this and have them all over him in less than a day. Lani called it "animal magnetism" and that really makes Amarant chuckle.
"Hey!"
The horse whinnies and jumps back from Amarant, who turns to glare at Gilgamesh.
"What?" he asks, voice quiet and even because fuck Gilgamesh, he's completely calm and not at all dangerous.
"Where's Kuja?"
"You're spooking horses trying to find Kuja?" Amarant growls, "I don't fucking know. Go away."
The other hand shrugs and crosses his arms, turning and slouching off towards the barn. The kid is always thinking with everything but his brain.
Another ten minutes pass and Amarant looks up to see the mustang less than five feet away. He smirks now, and puts the magazine in his back pocket, putting his hands on the dirt and pushing himself up, standing. The horse makes a startled noise and backs off slightly, but Amarant went slow and will keep going slow, even when-
Feet snap a few dead branches around the compound and the horse jerks its head around, looking for the source. Amarant follows his lead and spots Kuja half leaning against the railing, watching both him and the horse in quiet contemplation.
Now partially surrounded, the mustang tosses his head, looking from Amarant to Kuja and wondering which, precisely, would be the least frightening to confront.
"I'm sorry," Kuja says quickly, noticing the horse's dilemma, "I didn't mean to-"
Amarant clicks his tongue and the horse gives him that "what do you want" look, before coming just shy of his outstretched hand.
"It's okay," he tells both the horse and Kuja.
Kuja stares and the horse does the same, and then the horse shakes his head, back stepping a little but letting Amarant lean to the side and put a hand against his neck, before jerking back and trotting over to the side of the pen opposite both humans. Amarant shrugs and comes over to the fence, leaning against it and looking to Kuja.
"Gilgamesh was looking for you," he tells the other, whose face goes quietly blank.
"I'll find him later. Lani wants to know if we're going to dinner in town, or not."
"I'm staying here late, so you guys do what you want. She's got money, doesn't she?"
"I think so. I hope Zidane isn't destroying my apartment," Kuja mutters, looking annoyed.
"I doubt it. The kid's probably too busy writing emo songs about his girlfriend."
Kuja laughs. "Knowing him? It's probably not far from the truth."
Garnet looks out her window, tapping her pencil against the binding of her math notebook, pre-calculus work spread out in front of her like some kind of horrible dragon.
It's been nearly four days since that disastrous "first date" with Zidane, and she can hardly think of anything but him. Steiner didn't have to punch her boyfriend – no matter how upset he was.
Her father had been lenient enough but her mother decided to ground her, and both forbade her to even speak to the blonde boy – something she had a feeling was Steiner's insistence. Why does he hate Zidane so much? Garnet thinks, biting her lip and looking at her cell phone. She had just gotten it back today, after her parents realized how much they all relied on her having a phone, and she has yet to turn it on. She wants to check it, but at the same time knows that Zidane doesn't even have the number – and she only has his home phone.
"Garnet," she sighs to herself, "When did you become so hopeless?"
With a determined scowl, she flips the phone open and pushes the power button. The welcome chime sounds, and then the phone beeps twice – she has one voice mail.
Her heart leaps even if she knows it's useless, and she pushes the send button with worried hope, listening to her generic "This is Garnet, please leave a message" answering message... with a small note tacked on that says, "Zidane I'm so sorry" before it beeps.
She dials her password to her voice mailbox and listens to the electronic voice mumble off useless numbers of the call she had missed. Then...
"Know that I will all-ways love you," Zidane sings in a static-lined voice, "Even with gray skies a-head... I will all-ways watch over-you... Even if the pizza boy takes you away."
"End of message."
Garnet stares at her phone in confusion. "Pizza boy?" She shakes her head. Zidane never takes anything seriously...
The doorbell rings and she sighs, closing her phone and then turning back to her homework. She should just give up on it. On him. Whatever works best.
"We didn't order any pizza..."
She blinks and then stands quickly, nearly knocking over her chair as she races through her room. She leans out over the balcony and sees the butler looking confused and slightly offended by the redheaded boy wearing a disheveled Pizza Hut uniform, holding a medium pizza in his hands.
"But I got the call from here..."
Suddenly, Garnet gets it, even as she calls out, "I ordered it." She comes down quickly, trying to avoid both of the gazes directed at her. "I was hungry, and we weren't having dinner tonight. I'll get it," she tells the butler, who nods and quietly walks off.
She rounds on the pizza boy, speaking in a low whisper. "What are you doing, Blank!"
"Delivering your pizza. Nice improvising, princess," he adds, grinning and handing her the box. "Have a nice night."
He turns and dashes towards the gate before she can say anything, and so she slams the door softly and heads to her room.
Once safely inside and with the door closed, she opens the box to find one cheese pizza and a Ziplock bag containing a sheet of paper.
She shakes her head and puts the pizza down, taking out the paper and unfolding it hastily.
Meet me at your window in ten minutes – and bring the pizza. I'm starving!
Garnet grins and quickly sits down to finish the last few problems in her book.
By the time she finishes two problems, it's been fifteen minutes, and she wonders if Zidane even knows what time it is. She goes over to the window and pushes it open, leaning out on her elbows and looking around.
"It sure is pretty out tonight, isn't it?"
She yelps in surprise and draws back, before leaning back out and looking to her left – Zidane is sitting on the roof beside her window, leaning back and looking up at the sky.
"Zidane!"
The blonde puts a finger to his lips and grins, "I don't think I want the old man hearing us."
"What are you doing?"
"Can't a boy come see his girlfriend to invite her to one of his shows?"
"You got a show?" the girl asks, smiling wide, "That's great! But – I can't. I'm grounded."
"Psh. Grounded? That means nothing to a delinquent such as I." He chuckles. "The show's in a week. I'm having a pre-show party, but you won't come to that. Instead, I'm gonna come here before the set and kidnap you."
He says it so easily and Garnet finds herself nodding before the magnitude of this plot hits her. "Kidnap me? Steiner will-"
"Let Honor Among Thieves worry about Steiner," Zidane yawns, waving a hand. "We'll get you out and you can see the show. Until then... How about that pizza?"
The girl gets the box and decides to leave the plotting up to the greatest thief in the world.
Fashion nugget.