Recommended listening: "We Used To Be Friends" by The Dandy Warhols

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2
That Certain Something
Das besondere etwas

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Roderich Edelstein, resident bespectacled Austrian senior architect at the gayest architecture office on the East Coast as verified by dezeen just last month (and in Roderich's opinion, also the blondest architecture office on the East Coast) was not in the habit of rushing. He never had been, he didn't usually feel that he should be, and quite frankly, he—and his Italian-made leather loafers and his Luca Faloni shirt and his vintage Armani blazer and his meticulously-styled hair—liked it just fine that way.

But not today. Today, calfskin and cashmere and hair spray and all, Roderich was making a mad dash down to the third floor of 171 Duane Street, frantically trying to figure out why the Fedex hadn't arrived at ten o'clock that morning like it was supposed to, and like it always fucking did. And he was also trying to figure out where his studio manager and dearest friend Francis had gone, because he wasn't up on the fifth floor, where he should have been, and where he always fucking was.

Roderich stuck his head into the modeling studio to interrogate his fabricator, Alfred (who was gay and blond), about whether he'd seen the delivery or Francis (also gay—well, actually, he didn't discriminate—and also blond). In doing so, he missed by seconds his other boss and longtime friend, Ludwig (again, gay and blonde) enter the office.

The not-quite-blond-but-not-quite-not-blond kid at the front desk, Raivis (and Roderich wasn't certain, but the guy looked like a twink) shouted back to him that the Priority Overnight van was pulling up to their building, so instead of heading back up to his desk on the fourth floor Roderich bolted down to harass the person unloading the packages.

Raivis sat back down at his desk, Alfred went back to the 3D printer recalibration Roderich had interrupted, and none of them had any idea just how close Roderich had brushed with yet another gay, blond man who he—in no exaggerated sense—was expecting to see less on this dizzyingly hectic and utterly random Tuesday morning than any other person, gay or blond or otherwise, on the entire planet.

If Roderich had been aware of what he'd missed in his desperate chase for the two most important F-words in his life in that moment, he might have made more of an effort to regain his composure, try to still his panic and prepare some version of detached nonchalance with which to take the whole thing in. If Roderich had been aware of who had just walked into his office at nearly the precise moment he'd exited it, he might have taken off the Armani blazer. It was still pretty warm out for September, and standing on the sidewalk, yelling at (and being yelled at by) the Fedex delivery driver as he made the poor man dig through his entire van to get Roderich his package first—"I need it first! I needed it an hour ago—look, here—here's twenty, does that help?"—he could feel himself starting to break a sweat. Ugh.

He was not aware, though, and so with the mantra Fedex, Francis, Fedex, Francis pounding through him like a second heartbeat, Roderich took the stairs two at a time from the street back up to the fourth floor, and he burst into the architecture studio with his precious bribery-obtained tube of papers clutched safely in his grasp. And yes, he was red in the face and, yes, completely winded, and looking, probably, a bit deranged—but time was of the essence, here, more than dignity.

Roderich Edelstein should have known better than to sacrifice dignity to save time, and typically he did. But he had to get on the phone with those inept French contractors right fucking now, and the Fedex was so fucking late—and where the hell was Francis, anyway?—so he just had to do what he had to do, okay?

Thankfully, the two people he needed to see most urgently were standing there on the fourth floor, backs turned, and he identified them peripherally as his coworkers because they were both fucking blond.

For the love of God, it was like a uniform, honestly.

"Ludwig, Francis—" He was still bounding up the last few stairs as he called out, trying simultaneously to smooth back his hair with his free hand and adjust his glasses with his not-free hand and catch his breath because he was really not in the mood to be made fun of right now. "The Fedex just arrived—" Okay, it's definitely time to start getting in shape. "Let's please look at these revisions before—"

And then Ludwig and Francis turned around, and they were actually not Ludwig and Francis at all.

Well, one of them was Ludwig, but the other was…

Roderich skidded to a halt. The hand working at his hair jerked sideways, registering vaguely that he'd probably just made it worse, and the other hand went completely slack. He heard his coveted tube hit the floor, and there was nothing he could do to stop any of it. What—

"Morning," Ludwig greeted him briskly, as if time was moving at a completely normal meter instead of slowing to a crawl. "Where's Francis? Don't you two have a call in a few minutes?"

Roderich didn't quite comprehend the words that had come out of his colleague's mouth, his attention all at once ensnared by the person who was standing next to Ludwig, who looked just exactly like—but no, no way…

"I—" he forced himself to speak "—I'm looking for Francis. The Fedex was so late—fuck—"

Judging by the way Ludwig stared, Roderich was sure he was making an absolute buffoon of himself as he gestured at nothing, and then remembered he had dropped the tube, and hurried to retrieve it. He swayed slightly as he straightened up, because this day was already wreaking havoc on his blood pressure, and when the man next to Ludwig spoke quietly, sounding a little embarrassed on Roderich's own behalf, there was absolutely no question of who he was.

"Yeah, the traffic was pretty bad out there…"

Roderich blinked and wondered vaguely if this was all some very casual coup, with everyone acting infuriatingly calm, like he had any time for this, like this was fucking normal—

"I'm sorry, but what the hell is going on?" But no, time was beginning to move again, he had to—"No—wait, I have to find Francis"—and he'd only taken one step back when another person strode into the space from behind him.

"Settle down, Roderich, I'm right here. You have the Fedex? Here—"

In one fluid motion, Francis Bonnefoy (whose long, blond hair was tied back, unlike the hair he'd just mistaken for it) snatched the package from his arms and pushed a lidded paper cup into his hands. "I think you could use this."

He glanced back as he made his way to the cutting table. "Nice jacket, by the way. Armani, right?"

Roderich recovered only enough to not drop the coffee that had been thrust upon him, lip curling distastefully as he sipped it and realized it was Francis's favored form of sacrilege: Starbucks. But he didn't stop drinking, even as it scalded his tongue and burned the back of his throat, because the caffeine began to pile mercifully onto the three cups he'd already had that morning, setting his brain alight with a renewed manic buzz. Refocusing with a little shake of his head, he rushed past the two people who had just completely thrown off his careening momentum to help Francis unfurl the prints from the tube over the cutting table. He swore as he scanned the pages of plans, once clean but now marked-up in red.

"Shit, Francis, look at this—they've completely fucked up the South elevation."

As he bemoaned the incompetence of the French—Parisian superior taking it with patient amusement and conceding just enough to keep his Viennese architect satisfied—Roderich did not catch the exchange between the two people behind him, who he was actually quite intent on putting out of his mind for the moment.

"So you can probably see why we're trying to hire another person," Ludwig murmured as he watched on, a little surprised at just how unhinged Roderich had been acting.

"He does seem sort of overwhelmed," Vash replied, looking mildly shell-shocked himself.

"Well." Ludwig turned toward him. "Like I said earlier, we've been trying to hire someone for two months now, so it's really his own fault he's still doing this to himself."

And then, hardly a minute before he was meant to start his call, Roderich finally gave an exasperated sigh, slumped down on one of the stools next to the table, and put his head in his hands. Francis turned back toward the people he'd previously ignored, forgoing the effort to placate his colleague, and smiled amicably. Ludwig frowned.

"I think that coffee may have been a bad idea," he commented, craning his neck past Francis toward where his senior architect was sitting. "There is such a thing as too much, you know."

"Ah, maybe." Francis glanced back at Roderich too, smile turning more toward the apologetic. "Sorry—Ludwig, can we do introductions later, please? As you know, we're under a very strict non-disclosure—"

"Say no more." Ludwig threw his hands up in surrender. "When will you be done?"

"Not more than an hour, I'm sure."

"Okay—Vash," Ludwig addressed the only person in the room that Francis didn't know. "I don't want to make you wait—"

"I don't mind, I get it," the man interjected.

"Alright, then." Ludwig began to turn back toward the stairs they'd originally come from. "I'll introduce you to the rest of the staff."

When they left, Francis turned back to Roderich, who had raised his head again, looking disproportionately defeated for a Tuesday morning. He'd looked disproportionately defeated for a while now, actually, and Francis put a sympathetic hand on his Armani-clad shoulder even though it was really his own fault—rejecting the eleventh candidate to relieve some of the overwhelm just the day before.

"I didn't realize we had another interview scheduled today. It's not on the calendar, is it?"

"We don't. That was—" Roderich's cell phone interrupted his explanation, and the caller I.D. flashed a French number. "Shit, I'll tell you after we speak with these morons. Brace yourself."

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"So, who is visiting our office today," Francis began, his tone light and conversational as he leafed through his notes, "that upset you so much?"

"I'm not upset." Roderich's reply was equally mild, thankfully having found some equanimity over the course of the call. He peered over at the notepad. "Just too busy. God, why can't you write those in English so I can actually read them?"

"Why can't you learn French?" Francis teased. "And you didn't answer my question."

Roderich sniffed at the suggestion, but smiled back from one side of his mouth. "Because French pronunciation is for sociopaths, and I do not have time for that. I mean, it's not the atrocity that is the English language, but why can't you learn German?"

Francis laughed out loud. "Maybe if we were working with German contractors like this, I would. But you know, I'm beginning to think you're avoiding my question."

"If we were working with German contractors I would be doing this myself, instead of having you take notes for me that I can't read anyway." The brunet glanced over, too aware of his colleague's pointed gaze. "We also wouldn't need to do this so often, because Germans aren't completely incompetent in construction," he muttered.

Roderich pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose so that the tops of the rounded tortoiseshell frames weren't obstructing his field of view, and he let his eyes roam back over the plans spread before them. He sighed.

"Fine. He went to school with Ludwig and I, in Stuttgart. We've been out of touch for a long time. I didn't realize Ludwig still kept up with him."

Francis pursed his lips coyly, like he always did when he wanted to pry. "That sounds… complicated?"

Roderich rolled his eyes, like he always did when Francis wanted to pry. "You think everything is complicated. It just surprised me a little."

Francis hummed. "So, does he have a name? Oh, no, I think Ludwig said it..."

"It's Vash. Vash Zwingli."

If the name sounded odd in Roderich's head, then it was completely alien on his tongue. It could have been of a dead language; it referred to a part of his life that he made a concentrated effort not to dwell on, a bastion of memories he had long since committed to burying deep in the ground of the past and leaving there for good: university. Because although Roderich's years in university had been, yes, an instrumental foundation for his promising career, had been about as wild and raucous as any young adult could hope for, and had been the source of some of the closest friendships he'd ever had—and he wouldn't trade any of that for the world—those years had also been a time of immense repression, a repression so deep it had nearly destroyed him.

Despite his dark hair, Roderich did take after the majority of the staff of B&B in that he was a gay man. Very gay, actually, and he had been forever—he could identify in hindsight—before he'd even had a word to put to it. But Roderich was also of a family with views that skewed steeply toward the conservative, and expectations that skewed steeply toward the demanding.

During their frequent absences, equally for business as for leisure, his parents left him in the care of various housekeepers and nannies and nagged from afar about schoolwork and piano practice and what was allowed on the television and what were appropriate outfits for a growing boy to wear to Mass. They were impossible to satisfy even when they were around for the recitals and top marks and über-becoming behavior, and they expressed to him from a young age little else than their desire for their only son to grow up, marry a good woman from a good family, and continue on the Edelstein bloodline as so many generations had done before him. Roderich could recall a variety of situations along the lines of being eight years old and his father threatening to shut his fingers in the cellar door if he was caught playing with his mother's lipstick again, and thus he learned from an early age to stifle any impulse which might upset that tenuous balance in which he did as they wanted and earned their approval in return.

If opting to attend a German state school—rather than remaining in Vienna and languishing under an army of private tutors and female suitors and society personalities and the like—had been the first act of material rebellion he'd ever pulled on his mother and father, it could not be said that the attitude that had emboldened his decision actually followed him to Stuttgart. Despite ever-growing doubts as to his preference for said female suitors, he had no misconceptions as to the consequences of voicing those preferences aloud—much less acting on them—and so, for lack of a more palatable option, he simply accepted that he was going to have to ignore any doubts he may have had uncompromisingly, and trust (and ensure, if by nothing other than sheer force of will) that everything would be just fine that way.

So he pushed it all down, scolded and denied and berated himself when needed, and set off for ABK Stuttgart at eighteen years of age only to find that a statistically significant handful of his peers, including his two closest friends, made all of this scolding and denying and berating much more difficult for him by living their openly homosexual lives around him as he had to watch. The worse he felt about it all, the more he dug his heels in, and the more he dug his heels in the worse he felt—

Until it all came to a head, when, among plans to move to New York City and help Ludwig build his new business venture, he made what seemed like a perfectly justifiable decision, at the time: he got married. To a woman.

She was a lovely woman, really, a shrewd and politically-minded woman with endless wit and enough charm and ferocity alike to ward off the rainiest of days. They got along well, and she was approved of by his parents, which is why he'd had any hope at all that he could make the whole thing work. But it only took one year in the United States—a year of exponential professional growth, of burying himself in the immense workload of keeping a brand new business afloat, and of using and abusing a selection of carefully crafted heterosexual social cues—for the whole thing to finally fall apart catastrophically before him.

And it had been quite catastrophic, indeed.

So Roderich did his best not to think about all of that, and he was generally reasonably successful in his efforts. He didn't want to look back, because his life had improved in leaps and bounds since then: now, at thirty-going-on-thirty-one years old, he had an iPhone 4, had been divorced and disowned, had discovered the fantastic spectacle of a Greenwich Village drag show, and had become well-acquainted with the finer points of having a cock up his ass.

But the person who walked into Beilschmidt & Bonnefoy today was a forceful reminder of all that history, of how much of his youth he'd squandered in a desperately long-winded attempt to preserve a façade that was doomed from the start, and that shook him more deeply than he cared to admit.

So yes, okay, Francis was right—it was maybe a little complicated.

Not that he was going to concede to it.

"So…" Francis said, eyeing Roderich curiously as he waded up past his ears in his thoughts. "Shall we go down and see what he's doing in our office?"

Roderich wasn't quite convinced that the answer was 'yes,' but at that moment the answer was decided for him when Ludwig addressed them from across the room.

"Are you two done with your call?"

Francis swiveled in his seat to see the two men from earlier on the landing. Roderich lurched in his.

"We're done," Francis answered. "Apologies for the wait. Let's introduce ourselves properly." He stood to meet the others in the center of the space, and Roderich followed suit, not quite sure if he should be more thankful or irritated that his colleague was perceptive enough to take the lead.

Francis stepped out to shake the hand of Vash Zwingli—living, breathing, in-the-flesh Vash Zwingli, right there in front of him—and Roderich wondered suddenly if this whole 'blond' thing hadn't followed him around longer than he'd really realized.

"Enchanté," was Francis's introduction of choice—never one to miss an opportunity to flaunt whatever je ne sais quoi he thought he had. "Francis Bonnefoy. I'm Ludwig's business partner and the studio manager here."

Vash nodded, returning the handshake. "Pareillement. Vash Zwingli."

"Ooh," Francis nearly swooned, eyes lighting up, in Roderich's opinion, rather dangerously. "Parlez-vous français?"

Ludwig turned to face the recipient of Francis's attention. "Right. Swiss. How many languages do you speak, again?"

Vash suddenly looked a little bashful under the collective attention, and his eyes darted toward Roderich's for a moment, lingering briefly before he looked away.

To Roderich's dismay, those eyes were just as green as they'd always been.

"Ah, well, German, Swiss and Hoch—er, standard—and English, obviously. And enough French." He furrowed his brow in thought. "I never bothered with Italian, though recently I picked up just enough Dutch to either buy a drink or tell someone to fuck off—"

Francis and Ludwig laughed genially, and the wheels of Roderich's brain spun without gaining traction. Dutch? When did that happen—

"But of course," Francis said again, "don't let me keep you from catching up with your old friends, Vash. I have to go translate these notes—" he raised his notepad "—for my colleagues who don't speak French."

With a wink, Francis sauntered off to the stairs that led up to his office on the fifth floor.

Roderich blanched as Vash turned toward him, because he still had no idea how they were supposed to actually greet one another.

"Um. Hi," he said. Fuck, that's stupid. "Um, sorry about earlier. Things are a bit busy at the moment."

That was not much better, but at least it was something.

"Hi." Vash cocked his head a bit, and Roderich couldn't tell if it was intended to be mocking. "It's fine, I—"

Ludwig's phone rang abruptly from his pocket, and he frowned apologetically when he checked the ID. "Sorry," he sighed, "I need to take this. Give me five minutes?" He raised a pointed eyebrow in Roderich's direction, no less incriminating than Francis's earlier one, and then turned away.

Roderich hoped whatever face he made back didn't look as desperate as he felt, left with the person who may or may not have been a mere figment of his over-caffeinated imagination.

"Sorry," Vash said to him, and Roderich was accosted by the sudden desire to run, as fast as he could, to anywhere that wasn't here. 'Desire' and 'run' were not two words Roderich would have ever imagined himself using in the same sentence before that moment. "I realize that you're sort of overbooked. Don't push your schedule on my account."

Vash shifted his weight on his feet and glanced down at the floor, and Roderich wondered vaguely if he still ran. He kind of looked like he did; his turtleneck fit snug and athletic on his torso, and he kind of looked like he could run up four flights of stairs without even being winded.

For some reason, the thought made Roderich's mouth dry.

"No, no—" he wasn't sure why he didn't take the escape that was offered to him. "I'll be here until midnight anyway, I'm sure, so it doesn't matter."

They stared at each other for a moment.

"Uhm," Roderich said for what felt like the millionth time, "I didn't realize you and Ludwig kept in touch."

"We didn't." Vash shook his head quickly. "I saw, you know, that write-up in dezeen, and I was going to be around so I thought I would, erm, reach out."

"Oh, that." Roderich forced a laugh at the mention of the article, feeling awfully self-conscious for the… fifth? Tenth?—well, it was probably more like one continuous time, today. The laugh caught halfway in his throat. "Yes, that was kind of just—I mean, not exactly—well, it was just kind of clickbait, I guess, in my opinion. I mean, just—well, all I mean is that we've had more serious press…" Midway through the sentence it was actually palpable, the utter idiocy of each word coming out of his mouth, but he'd apparently lost all ability to make a graceful recovery. "…i-is all."

Vash just looked at him.

"Right."

Roderich considered, briefly, the plausibility of simply walking over to the bannister and throwing himself over the side. Rallying a compromise between each side of his brain, he elected to try speaking once more.

"So, why are you here—" Fuck, that was rude. He rushed to correct himself: "—i-in New York, I mean, what brings you here?"

Rudeness aside, Vash only looked relieved to have a solid topic to work with. "Ah, for Lilli, actually, if you remember—she just started at NYU, so—"

"Lilli's in college?" Roderich interrupted. "My God, the last time I saw her she was, what, ten? Eleven?"

"I know," Vash agreed. "It's honestly amazing, how much she's grown." He smiled, finally, and some small thing came loose in Roderich's chest and rattled around.

Fearing it might actually be audible, he elected to drown it out by asking, "So, what is she studying, then?"

"Chemistry," Vash answered proudly. "And I always thought the math we did in school was advanced, but the things she's going to be doing are something else completely—"

Roderich finally allowed himself to exhale some of the nervous energy in his throat, relaxing a little. "Well, she was always so smart. I'm glad it's being put to good use."

"Yeah." Vash nodded. "Yeah, me too."

But the relaxation was short-lived, and with that line of conversation spent, they were hard-pressed for another. Roderich glanced around the room and tapped his fingers restlessly against his thigh, wishing he had another cup of coffee that would keep them better occupied. Where was Ludwig—had it really not been five minutes yet?

"So…" Vash began again, running a hand across the back of his neck and looking nearly as uncomfortable as Roderich felt. "How've you been?"

Well, that was a pretty loaded question.

"I've been… good," Roderich replied slowly, trying to decide how best to dodge the colossal mass of subtext barreling down on him—and then something came tumbling out of his mouth that he didn't anticipate. "I'm not married anymore, you know."

Vash blinked, seeming more surprised by the timing than the actual thing that was said.

"Right." He looked at the floor, a light crease in his brows. "Should I say sorry or congratulations?"

Roderich grimaced, too-aware that his face was now burning. "I'm sure you already know the answer to that."

Vash's eyes roamed over Roderich's Italian-made leather loafers, past his Luca Faloni shirt and his vintage Armani blazer, up to his meticulously-styled (and probably still fucked-up) hair, and then back down again.

"Yeah, I think I can guess."

Roderich felt like he might dissolve under the scrutiny. Who was Vash, anyway, to just barge into his office—his life—unannounced and uninvited? Damn it, where was Ludwig? He could be held responsible for this. And then another thing materialized on his lips that he hadn't remotely authorized.

"Do you want to get lunch?" Fuck.

"Uh—" Vash's moment of hesitation was all it took for Roderich to lose his grip entirely.

"I-I mean I just don't know when Ludwig will be done with his call and I feel a little faint after all that coffee and I should probably eat at my desk and work but if I do that another day in a row—"

"—okay—"

"—I might actually shoot myself, so—"

"—sure." Both parties winced as the last part of Roderich's sentence slid in underneath Vash's. "I… I could go for lunch."

So Roderich dashed behind the bookshelves that separated the common area from his desk, digging through his bag for his wallet while focusing on not hyperventilating over what he'd just imposed on them. As he rummaged, Ludwig's voice sounded through the space again:

"Don't tell me he's abandoned you already?"

The 'he' in question finally located the item he was looking for, took one more deep breath, and strode back to the two blond men, attempting to force on a casual attitude.

"Please, Ludwig. I may be overworked, but I'm not that rude—wait—" A welcome distraction stopped him in his tracks, making it impossible to hide the smirk that crept up into his face. "What are you wearing?"

Okay, so maybe a little rude, then.

Ludwig gave him a withering look, but shrugged. "You know, it's Feliciano. What can I say?" He sighed, and Vash shot a grin in Roderich's direction. "Vash called it 'Schutzstaffel' this morning, so I'll have to tell Feli it's not working."

That was so completely like Vash to say—some precise combination of vaguely offensive and actually hilarious that until this moment Roderich had sort of forgotten even existed—and as the grin was wiped from Vash's face and rapidly replaced with something rather mortified Roderich might have laughed, but no laugh was possible as his breath suddenly seemed to have caught in his throat.

He swallowed thickly to reset his diaphragm. "How astute. Anyway, I'm starving." He waved the hand holding his wallet. "We were getting lunch. Care to join?"

"Where to?"

It was Roderich's turn to shrug. "Hadn't decided. Dante?"

Ludwig made a face. "No, we were just there this morning."

Into his office! His life! His favorite! Restaurant! Unannounced! Uninvited! "You went to Dante without me?" he scoffed, and then turned on Vash, donning his most sardonic attitude like plate armor. "Well, I hope you enjoyed yourselves."

Ludwig scoffed back, "Like you're not already there with Sadiq all the time." And that was true, actually, but Roderich felt another little pang in his chest at the mention. He brushed it away.

"Whatever," he replied. "It's not like I have time to go all the way up to the Village anyway. Let's just go downstairs." Ludwig agreed, and Vash was at the mercy of the two people who knew the city best, so Roderich led the way.

And it was weird, Roderich thought as they walked, just so utterly fucking weird to be all three together, in one room, with no warning and no revealed reason and after—what, seven?—years of not speaking at all. Was he supposed to be happy about this? Vash used to be his friend, after all—his best friend—but it did seem a little unfair of the universe to assume it was okay to just drop all this on him, especially when he was so busy with everything else.

As the three old friends exited Beilschmidt & Bonnefoy Architects and walked down to the first floor of 171 Duane, Roderich's mind wandered back to the complications he hadn't told Francis about, that made this whole thing so delightfully, erm, complicated.

He'd been carrying the stupid ring around in his pocket since Christmas, and no one in Stuttgart knew.

It was solid gold, thick and flat and ostentatious. It weighed in Roderich's pocket like a brick, ungainly despite its small size and terribly heavy even against the exhilarating scheme that that he and Ludwig and Vash had cooked up over the course of their last year of university, between their internships and final theses and study sessions for licensure exams.

When Ludwig first floated the idea of starting a business together and made a case for the viability of doing so in New York City, Roderich had envisioned some great adventure—a triumphant, musketeer-ing extrapolation of the thing the three of them had built here in Stuttgart, transposed onto the most exciting city in the world.

But the ring in his pocket constantly reminded him that it would not be just the three of them.

And no one in Stuttgart knew. Not that he was hiding it, obviously, he had no reason to hide any of it—but it was just… well, the words hadn't quite…

Well, it just wasn't the right time, yet.

Besides, he had other things to worry about—not the least of which were his academic obligations, which Roderich was decidedly certain had hit their blistering apex after five years of steady intensification. Then there was the whole thing with their international move (though his parents were taking care of most of it, thankfully), and all of the planning for how they'd brand themselves, and what work they'd have to start off with, and whether they would visit Central Park or the Statue of Liberty or Times Square first upon arriving.

And then there was Vash.

Vash had been distant, lately, in a way Roderich neither recognized nor was able to name. Well, they'd barely seen one another all semester, there was that. Vash was in class every day Roderich was at his internship, and Roderich was in class every day Vash was at his internship; Vash had studio hours every night Roderich was home studying, and Roderich had studio hours every night Vash was home studying, but still. Still, that didn't fully account for the cool mood between them, this semester. In fact, Roderich wasn't sure there was anything that really could.

That, actually, might have been weighing on him even more heavily than the ring.

But that was the good thing about their plan: even though they'd barely spent more than an hour together in the same place all semester, that was going to change. In America, they'd be working together every day, again, and he'd get to talk to Vash all the time, again. They'd sit beside each other at their new American desks in their American studio and drink American coffee (which was just as good as Wiener melange, in Roderich's imagination). They'd talk about their projects and look at the same computer screens and drawings and—

Before Roderich could blink, the semester had whirled its way into the final week.

And that was when he realized he'd run out of time, one pristine June evening as the sun was setting over the Weißenhofsiedlung, as he sat out on the campus lawn, relishing in a brief moment of stillness before the last big push to the end, before his departure from the cradle of academia and emergence into the rest of his life.

He looked at Vash, and Lilli on her brother's lap, and Ludwig beside them, all sitting in the same place for the first time in over a week. In front of them, he suddenly felt numb, and they all looked strangely small, there, as if reflections of some perspectival illusion in which his eyes were watching from a very different place than body was sitting.

A breeze ruffled his hair, tickling the back of his neck and lifting goosebumps along his spine.

"I'm getting married."

Roderich turned instinctively, thoughtlessly toward Vash as he said it, trying to gauge the reception of the words he'd repeated in his head so many times that they felt alien on his tongue.

Vash pulled up a fistful of grass from the ground beside him, face oddly blank.

"Is that why you've been acting so weird lately?" he asked after a long, silent moment.

"I haven't been acting weird lately," Roderich retorted reflexively, too quickly. He looked toward Ludwig, whose expression was even more inscrutable than Vash's. He laughed a little, chest suddenly the wrong size for his lungs. "Aren't you going to congratulate me?"

"You're—" Vash laughed too, but it was strangled and humorless. "What do you—to who?"

"Well, to Elizabeta, obviously," Roderich said. "At the end of the month." He looked toward Ludwig again and felt his heart beating behind his teeth, waiting for any affirmation that this decision he'd been carrying around with him for six months was as correct as it was necessary.

"You can't do that," Vash said, voice suddenly sharp as a knife through the sweet summer air. "You can't think that's a good idea—"

"It won't change anything," Roderich insisted. "We'll still—"

"—like you can't just keep fucking lying to yourself—"

"Watch your language, Vash," Ludwig warned with an eye toward Lilli, and Vash turned to face him, expression grave.

"Lud, he can't—I mean how can you act like this is—"

"It's not your life, Vash, you can't just—"

"Well, someone needs to do something about—"

"It isn't your decision to make!" Ludwig raised his voice to cut over Vash's. "And it's not mine, either." He glanced sideways at Roderich, who now felt vaguely like he was intruding, but his hands and legs were glued to the ground where he sat.

Vash stood up abruptly, upsetting his sister's position on his lap, and stepped back from the circle they'd been sitting in.

"I—" He looked between Roderich and Ludwig for a moment, mouth hanging open, something unidentifiable in his eyes. "I got that job at IDA. In Hamburg. So—so good luck with your life, I guess."

The future folded like a piece of paper around the ring in Roderich's pocket.

"Is that why you've been acting so weird lately?" he asked, but Vash didn't acknowledge it at all.

Ludwig straightened. "Wait, hey, we had a plan—"

"Well I'm not just gonna sit here and fucking enable—"

"I said watch your language—so you're just going to up and abandon everything we've—"

"You know what, we did have a plan, yeah!" Vash yelled, his tone suddenly explosive and destructive, and he pointed an accusing finger in Roderich's direction even as Roderich fell further back from the brewing argument. "And this wasn't part of it—"

"It's not like everything is going to change—"

"—because we agreed that it would be—"

"—and it isn't your decision, you can't just—"

"—and if he actually thinks that he can—"

"Oh my God—" Ludwig finally shouted. "Why do you care so much, anyway?!"

Vash seemed to choke on the way the question silenced the entire night around them.

Watching his life unravel before his eyes, feeling suddenly, inexplicably tiny, smothered between the lawn and the rest of the universe, Roderich spoke.

"The wedding is a week after we graduate."

Vash finally looked over. His expression was contorted into something Roderich had never seen before, something he couldn't name.

"Well, I'm leaving the day after we graduate."

He gathered Lilli into his arms and walked away from his two bewildered best friends.

Roderich only realized in hindsight that those were the last words that Vash would ever say to him.

So… right. Roderich glanced back toward Vash. Just a little complicated.

And, oh—

There was one other thing.

One slightly-possibly-significant other thing.

Roderich knew it wasn't fair, okay, and he knew it probably wasn't true, either. But some less generous side of him felt he might have successfully gotten away with pretending to be straight for the rest of his life—not happily, per se, but reasonably alright—if it hadn't been for one specific person from his years in school: his unsociable Swiss roommate with a gruff exterior, a hidden soft side, and absolutely the most exquisite fucking body and brain Roderich had ever laid his eyes on.

And that was Vash Zwingli, and God damn it all—if anything, he looked even more gorgeous now than Roderich remembered.

: : :
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The plot thickens (a little).

Huge shoutout to my beta, peach_oolong_tea (AO3), who has been a huge help in wrangling in this project and smoothing out its wrinkles. They're a fantastic writer and y'all should definitely go read their work!

Stay tuned for Vash's take on all of this!