Recommended listening: "Sowieso - Radio Version" by Mark Forster

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3
The Center of the Universe
Das Zentrum des Universums

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Vash had officially lived in New York City for three weeks—well, give or take some hours, probably—and was pretty sure he'd already experienced enough for a lifetime.

The plane had taxied into John F Kennedy International Airport mid-morning, not much later than they'd departed from Rotterdam, and despite his best efforts, Vash hadn't gotten any sleep through the flight whatsoever. Stepping off the jet bridge and into the terminal, he could almost imagine that, in the haze of the past seven hours, he and Lilli hadn't really gone anywhere at all.

Then they got into the cab and drove into the city.

There was the general urban chaos, sure. That was to be expected. The rat-sized toy dogs on Park Avenue (and, Vash would later discover, the dog-sized rats beneath Park Avenue). The flip-flopping, I Heart NYC shirt-wearing throngs of tourists that blocked entire sections of the sidewalk. The grubby food carts in front of designer pop-up shops, and the seemingly inescapable traffic congestion.

In that regard, Vash supposed he could have been more prepared, somehow, maybe read up a little more on which tourist traps to avoid, or perhaps invested in a pair of noise-cancelling headphones or new running shoes.

But when the cab dropped them off in front of the pied-a-terre he'd booked online, a little brick building squashed between two concrete high-rises and nearly invisible save for an awning that stuck out over the sidewalk, Vash and Lilli stood on the street corner, suitcases in hand, and looked to the left.

And then to the right.

And forward, and behind, and when they realized that the city extended well beyond the horizon in every direction, streets cutting narrow asphalt canyons into blocks upon blocks of concrete and brick and steel and glass—in that moment, Vash wasn't really convinced that any amount of preparation could have fully accounted for the sheer mass of the city they had landed right in the middle of.

Vash's first week in New York City was a blur of jet lag and culture shock and appointments at the Swiss consulate, and searching in vain for reasonably priced coffee to tide it all over. The second week ushered in a concerted effort to navigate the subway system, and the welcome challenge of carving out a route for his morning jog that balanced minimal risk of running someone over and being run over.

So it wasn't really until the third week, after two particularly uninspiring job interviews and a close brush with an errant flock of pigeons, that the initial logistical mayhem had settled enough for Vash to begin revisiting his motives for moving to New York City at all.

It had seemed like a logical choice from the standpoint of their flat in Rotterdam, a healthy change of pace and a sensible next step in his career. The opportunities across the Atlantic certainly seemed to be available, anyway—though the more leads Vash was investigating, the more he was realizing that the existence of raw opportunity didn't necessarily equate to desirable opportunity. If the first three weeks were anything to go by, New York City was a place for exactly two types of people: those who had never developed a healthy work-life balance, and those who were wealthy enough that they'd never needed to.

Presumably, he'd have to count himself among the former.

And Rotterdam was... well, it was fine, really. Objectively, there wasn't all that much to complain about. They'd had socialized healthcare—which Americans apparently disagreed with on principle—and Vash could commute by bicycle virtually everywhere he needed.

(Any hope he could continue doing so in Manhattan was thoroughly squashed with that first ride into the city, when the cab driver pulled into the right-hand lane to pass another car and then slammed on the brakes to avoid running down two cyclists. Lilli screamed. The cab driver swore. Vash began mentally calculating how much he could get for a used Bianchi.)

Universities were cheaper in Holland, too; the American ones ignited this whole mess of financial aid and student loans and scholarship dispersals, which had cost Vash enough headaches and terse email exchanges with the NYU admissions counselor to feel like a surcharge on the tuition itself.

On the other hand, Vash couldn't help but suppose that he owed it to his sister—even if it would put him in debt until after he retired—to let her live in a place she actually wanted to, given that she hadn't had much of a say in any of their prior relocations. And while she was technically old enough to move to New York City by herself…

Well…

Well, it wasn't like Vash had anything better to do than follow her here. Living together was more cost-efficient, anyway. It just made the most sense.

In the mix of it all, reaching out to Ludwig Beilschmidt had been a rather perfunctory gesture. Vash had sent him an email on one of those first groggy, sleep-deprived nights, lying awake on the lumpy futon serving as his bed. The thought of sleeping on it crossed his mind, of waiting until he could look with a little more care and deliberation. But sleep didn't seem to be forthcoming any time soon.

And to be honest—squinting into the blue light of his phone as he reread the draft a third time and finally hit send—he wasn't really expecting a reply anyway.

Much less was he expecting one in the affirmative, but that's exactly what he'd received. So that was how, about three weeks after landing in New York City, Vash now found himself sitting beside two very old friends in a very new place, in a restaurant called—he looked around again—El Tomate Verde, in, erm, Tribeca? Right?

Right. Vash glanced over as the two people next to him talked through that earlier call with some incompetent-sounding French contractors, and mentally counted off the things he'd learned so far today.

The article he'd read about Beilschmidt & Bonnefoy Architects—"The Gayest Architecture Office on the East Coast"—was indeed clickbait-y, but nevertheless informative. A feature-length profile written under the pretense of an up-and-coming studio angling toward fast success, the details revealed that although the business was still young and the portfolio modest, the projects themselves reflected a consistently highbrow sensibility and impressive clientele. The studio's output was heavily modernist, and, in Vash's opinion, enviably indulgent. Whatever their strategy was, his initial impressions seemed to corroborate the article: it was clearly working.

Despite its suggestive title, the article did little to prepare Vash to meet the staff of the business, though he wasn't sure any amount of reading could have really captured the eclectic group of people Ludwig had amassed around himself. There was Francis Bonnefoy, first—the company's other namesake—who seemed to occupy some intersection between 'too flirtatious for anyone's good' and 'suave enough that it didn't matter.' There was Alfred, who seemed to grin incessantly and managed all model-making for the architects. There was Raivis, a jumpy guy at the front desk who didn't look much older than Lilli; the on-site IT tech Eduard, whose office was illuminated only by computer light (by choice, Ludwig had assured him later); and Toris, the newly-hired research assistant Ludwig had mentioned at coffee earlier.

According to Ludwig, Vash hadn't yet met the architectural engineer, the interior architect, nor the third partner of the business—well, Vash had met Gilbert once before, actually. But from what Ludwig was saying, now-Gilbert was rather more, erm, stable than past-Gilbert.

Vash also had yet to meet the other tenants of the building: on the second floor, Ludwig's ultra-rich fiancé, Feliciano, and his twin brother. And finally Antonio, who'd apparently befriended Gilbert and Francis in the process of opening a restaurant on the first floor just a few years after the establishment of the architecture practice above. That also happened to be the restaurant Vash was sitting in right now.

Vash was beginning to get the idea that Beilschmidt & Bonnefoy Architects and all those adjacent were a bit like a nebulous family, and for Ludwig to have cultivated something so human in such a non-human-scaled metropolis was altogether pretty impressive. It was kind of charming, actually.

And then there was Roderich.

Vash knew that Roderich had moved to New York City at the same time as Ludwig, of course, and it had occurred to him that moving to the same place—and certainly getting in touch with Ludwig—could have him venturing a little too close into his former roommate's circles for anyone's comfort. But the city was very large, and it was populated by very many people, and Vash had counted on the statistical probability of not running into him at random to be well enough in his favor.

He had decidedly not counted on the chain of events that had turned meeting Ludwig for coffee into a potential employment opportunity.

And in that regard, Vash supposed he should have been more prepared, somehow, maybe made a polite excuse about meeting Lilli after her morning classes, or having a couple other job interviews already lined up.

Instead, he'd had the span of a taxi ride to grapple with the newfound likelihood that he was about to land himself directly in the path of the one person he'd just sort of taken for granted he'd never see again.

And it had been seven years, and Vash was sure he would never forget that face—short of blunt trauma to the head, maybe. But although it definitely was Roderich Edelstein who had come bursting into the office that morning, it was also kind of… not.

The Roderich that Vash had gone to school with was a product of the starched-and-powdered bourgeoise, born to the kind of old-world money and status that had caused the first Republic of Austria to outlaw the name 'von' in 1919—and the kind of family that, after nearly a century, was probably still very upset about it. Roderich could play at least three musical instruments, had an informed opinion on the German ambassador's daughter's taste in vintage rosé, and had never once cleaned a room in the first eighteen years of his life. Roderich was the kind of wealthy that involved never learning how to use a laundry machine, simply because someone else had always done it for him. Vash had taught him how it worked in one of those early days of school, reminding him with absolute incredulity that being able to wash clothes at all in their tiny, university-issued apartment was several steps beyond a divine blessing.

Despite all that, though, and despite plenty of initial reservations (as well as several speculative conversations between himself and Ludwig about the possibility of Habsburg lineage), Vash had actually found Roderich to be a remarkably down-to-earth person—even so far as frugal, on occasion. If anything, Vash's Austrian roommate seemed perfectly content to blend in at a German state school where no one knew or cared about his material circumstances, even if his expectations were sometimes colored by said material circumstances.

And then, the Roderich he'd gone to school with was extraordinarily unhappy, too, which Vash had known right away. It was just so obvious—his stiff reserve, his anxious vanity—and Vash spent the five years they were living and studying together making little incremental efforts here and there to unravel it. Because, if anything, watching someone so deeply in denial try to insist they had nothing to hide was actually kind of annoying, and Vash had always found a bit of satisfaction in poking at the thing he was convinced was roiling around beneath the surface, whether it achieved results or not.

It didn't. The efforts had been in vain, ultimately, and as they were preparing to graduate, Roderich had gone and done something way more stupid than Vash had actually believed him capable of: he'd gotten engaged. To a woman. And—

—Vash had no desire to recall exactly where that had led, just now.

So, if his old roommate had been more than a little repressed, the Roderich sitting beside Ludwig today looked… well, there was really just one way of putting it.

Roderich looked gay.

Really, outwardly gay.

Vash had never bought into the idea of "gaydar," or whatever, but he wouldn't have needed it anyway. It was evident in the silhouette of Roderich's shoes, in the cut of his apparently-designer jacket (so, okay, still rich, too), and in the deep coif of his hair (which was kind of the same as it had always been, but now, like, fluffier, or something). But far more than any of that, it was just there—in his gait and posture and disposition and voice—all so indescribably natural, unpracticed and unrestrained in some way Vash wasn't sure he could have even imagined before that moment. So, altogether, Roderich looked…

Looked…

Yeah. Just really gay.

The appearance of a bowl of paella finally shook Vash from his internal monologue.

"Sorry, Vash—" Ludwig turned toward him after thanking the waitress. "We don't mean to ignore you. Tell us how you're liking New York so far. You've never been, right?"

"Uh. Right." Vash skewered a shrimp on the end of his fork, coaxed some rice on top, and tried to recall what he had been doing these past few weeks. "I like it, I think. It's really…" He shrugged, failing to find the correct adjective in the correct language. "Just really, uh, American. I guess."

Ludwig nodded, a hint of a smile on his face. "You could say that. I think there's always an adjustment when someone moves here, even from—"

He was cut off by a sputtering to his left; Roderich had apparently aspirated his first mouthful of food, and he gave several violent coughs trying to clear the obstruction in his windpipe. Ludwig clapped him sharply on the back, until finally, eyes watering behind his glasses, Roderich spoke.

"Christ, pardon—moving? You're moving?" He clutched one hand to his chest and coughed once more into the other. "Here?"

"Uh." Vash tried to communicate to Ludwig with only his eyes that this information probably could have been delivered more gently. "Yes?"

Roderich stared at him as if he were staring at a severed limb, then took a long drink of water.

"Ah. Well, that's…" He cleared his throat once more, clapped his hands together, and wrung them until his knuckles were white. "Um—"

Finally, he turned toward Ludwig—who shrugged, looking a bit put-on-the-spot—and then back toward Vash as he pasted a disturbingly magnanimous smile on his face.

"That is so interesting to hear," he said, "congratulations on the move." He looked back at Ludwig, switching from English to rapid German. "Although I would have appreciated some warning, you know—" The smile, still present, now grated badly against the words. "—considering that the last time he was around, he—"

Roderich glanced back at Vash and suddenly snapped his mouth shut, eyes wide.

Vash didn't feel it was particularly incumbent upon him to respond to that, so he dug around for another shrimp in his bowl instead, doing his best not to make eye contact with either of his lunch companions.

"Uh, he just—" Ludwig broke first, so painfully, when Roderich proved either unable or unwilling to himself. "Sorry, no—" Both his and Roderich's complexions were becoming quite red, though Vash assumed his own was as well. "He's—we're just used to the people we get lunch with—"

"Yeah, not knowing German. I get it." It would've been rude whether or not Vash knew German, by his own estimate, but it wasn't as if he could have expected Roderich to react differently, really.

It wasn't as if Roderich hadn't voiced the thing all three of them were probably thinking, anyway.

"Well," Roderich said after a moment, apparently now under the impression that his faux pas indicated equal responsibility to recover the situation. "So-o…" It was desperately awkward, watching him try to decide how to proceed. He blinked and shook his head slightly. "Wh-where are you living, then?"

Ah, good, they were pretending like nothing happened. A little voice in Vash's brain pointed out that this was probably fitting, for Roderich—and he muffled it quickly, feeling a twinge of guilt for even being able to harbor something like that anymore.

"Well, I'm not exactly sure yet. Lilli and I are staying at a place on Thirty-Seventh and Lexington right now, but we're looking for something more permanent."

Roderich wrinkled his nose at the window. "Midtown?"

He made a second attempt with his lunch, and was only one bite further when he looked back, suddenly inspired.

"Actually, I think Francis has a friend who's trying to rent a place in Gramercy Park. Maybe you'd be interested? I mean, it would be a bit of a walk for Lilli if she's going to the NYU campus, and it depends on where you're working, obviously—" His expression shifted slightly. "Where are you working?"

By now, Vash was rather prepared to discard the entire job opportunity that had brought him into this situation to begin with. "Well, I've got a couple—"

"Actually," Ludwig said at the same time, "I was thinking maybe—"

They both stopped short. Roderich looked between them with a raised brow.

"You were thinking maybe…?"

For his own part, Vash had no idea what the hell Ludwig was thinking, despite knowing exactly what he was about to say, but Ludwig continued:

"Yes, well, I was thinking that Vash could be a logical choice for, you know, for our open position, given…"

It was probably lucky that Roderich wasn't in the middle of a mouthful of food that time, or he might well have suffocated. Instead, Vash watched his expression go blank as he realized what Ludwig was suggesting, watched him chew on the inside of his cheek for a moment, watched his fingers curl and uncurl once, and then again.

"Oh." He looked at Vash. "I mean, I guess I can see what you're—" He looked at Ludwig. "But I think—just let me—" He stood up. "Sorry, I actually have a—have to get on a conference call in a few minutes—Ludwig, I'll pay you back—"

Ludwig blanched. "Roderich, wait—"

But Roderich was already disappearing through the door.

The weight of his departure pressed down upon the remaining two for a very long moment.

"Uh." Vash hoped his cringe was coming across as good-natured rather than put-out. "I think I will not cancel the other interviews I scheduled for this week, then."

Ludwig shrugged, though he still looked slightly mortified. "To be honest, that's probably the most positive reaction he's had to anyone so far. Usually it's an immediate 'no.'"

Well, it had kind of seemed like an immediate no.

"I mean," Ludwig continued, "I think we'll need to have an interview, just to, you know, formalize things. But otherwise I don't see why you wouldn't be a natural fit."

Vash still didn't understand how Ludwig could miss the several painfully apparent contradictions to that sentiment. "Erm, you're sure that you don't want to..."

Ludwig grimaced. "We've interviewed so many perfectly good candidates for this position, to be honest. We really need to onboard someone else before this big new project kicks off in October, but Roderich refuses to find a redeeming quality in anyone, no matter how overqualified they are. I honestly don't know what else to do, at this point."

Vash resented the little twinge of sympathy that evoked in him, even as he thought through what he was about to say.

"I guess…" he sighed. "I mean, I guess if Roderich is open to it, I could at least—"

"I'm sure he'll come around," Ludwig said quickly, suddenly pulling out his phone. "This week is a bit packed for us, as you've probably gathered, but maybe we could talk again… Friday afternoon? Four o'clock?"

And apparently that was that. After paying for their food and getting up to leave, they exchanged a handshake; Vash thanked God it didn't turn into another weird hug like it had that morning.

Ludwig headed back up to his office, while Vash triangulated, trying to decide if it was better to take Broadway or West Broadway to get to Washington Square Park, trying to remember what the difference was in the first place.

As the building that housed Beilschmidt & Bonnefoy Architects receded into the distance behind him, Vash couldn't quite decide whether leaving it behind was a small disappointment, or an immense relief.

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Vash ended up keeping the other interviews he'd scheduled for that week, despite Ludwig's confidence in the one he was heading toward now, that Friday afternoon. As he walked along Duane Street, he thought that he'd maybe pinned a bit of extra hope on finding one of the offices particularly inspiring, or one of the executives unusually engaging. But as he approached the building that housed Beilschmidt & Bonnefoy Architects, he found himself struggling to remember what he'd talked about and who he'd met, and which redeeming qualities set each opportunity apart from any other he'd looked into in the past three weeks.

Buzzing up to the third floor, Vash thought, not for the first time, that for someone who supposedly had a world of opportunity open to him, he was having a hell of a time finding it.

The lock clicked open, and Vash entered 171 Duane Street for the second time that week.

Up two flights of stairs and on the left, the office was accessible via a frosted glass door. An appliqué of the company's logotype was set at eye-level in a clean, modern font. It was rational, tasteful—not a door Vash would mind seeing on a regular basis, if he were being preemptive about the whole thing.

The space itself didn't fail to impress, even seeing it a second time. It was bright and industrial, and gave a bit of a cavernous impression upon entering. The front was accented by three rows of windows and striking double-vaulted ceilings; the back was partitioned by the two upper floors, which were connected by a stylish staircase of steel and glass. Vash was aware from his first visit earlier in the week that it boasted an excellent view.

"Oh—I remember you!"

Directly past the door was a desk behind which Raivis, the young secretary, sat, conveniently able to monitor everything and everyone who passed through.

"Hello," Vash said back. "Yeah—I'm here to see Ludwig again. At four."

"Mmhmm…" Raivis trained his attention back on his monitor. "It looks like Ludwig and Francis were in a meeting uptown earlier, but I'm not sure that they're back quite yet—"

"They're not." A familiar voice sounded from above them, and Vash turned to see Roderich Edelstein descending the staircase.

It seemed that since Tuesday, Roderich had recovered some of his characteristic dignity. With a thick swatchbook tucked under one arm and a practiced poise in his step, he didn't look particularly self-conscious over the prospect of intruding on the exchange at the front desk.

"Ludwig just texted me and said traffic is horrible, but they're on the way," he elaborated, and offered a small wave in Vash's direction. Neither quite managed a smile. "Fifteen minutes, maybe."

Without further ado, Roderich made his way toward the back of the third floor and disappeared into one of the offices. Vash glanced at his watch—4:53—and when he looked back up, Raivis gave an apologetic frown.

"Well, sorry about—"

"It's fine," Vash rushed to say as Raivis gestured toward the Miesian-looking seating arrangements behind the desk. "I know I'm early, anyway."

The front half of the space was well-appointed to entertain, Vash had to concede as he sat down. Scale models of projects were showcased on pedestals and a set of large archival prints adorned the far wall, flattered by the abundant natural light. Picking a book from the coffee table in front of him, Vash pretended to read while trying to imagine how much a space like this had to cost. It would have to be a lot—obscene, most likely—if the residential market in less fashionable parts of the city was anything to go by.

Eventually, the faces of Ludwig Beilschmidt and Francis Bonnefoy finally appeared through the door. Twelve minutes behind schedule they made their way upstairs, in a flurry of lamentations over the meeting running late and rush hour traffic—"and the taxi driver would just not hurry! I mean, honestly—"

It was well enough, anyway, absolving Vash of the responsibility to make any dreaded small talk.

Gilbert Beilschmidt joined them in Ludwig's office, and Vash was reminded that his memories of the elder Beilschmidt brother were indeed outdated. Gilbert still looked kind of crazy, just by virtue of his albinism (and yes, Vash did realize that was not a polite thing to think about someone) but the overall level of it was definitely tempered by the button-down and slacks. Probably also by the fact that he didn't look like he was high, which could not have been said for the first time they'd met.

Francis turned his attention to Vash. "So, you've spoken with Constance by now, yes?"

Per Roderich's tip-off, Vash had received an email on Tuesday night from Francis Bonnefoy himself, sending the contact information of an acquaintance looking for someone to occupy a condominium she owned in Gramercy Park.

"Yeah, the apartment is nice." Vash ran a hand across the back of his neck and thought about the early 20th-century architectural detailing and the well-preserved ceramic tiling through the building. He tried not to think about the price tag. "We're signing all the paperwork tomorrow and moving in on Sunday."

Francis nodded, pleased. "Excellent. All she told me was that a very cute Swissman and his very cute sister looked at the place, and so that left me guessing which cute Swissman"—he winked—"she could possibly be referring to."

Before Vash could decide what the hell that meant, Gilbert smacked Francis on the arm and grinned. Ludwig just rolled his eyes, sliding a pair of reading glasses onto his nose and scanning a copy of Vash's CV.

"Alright, alright—let's start with... can you tell us about what you were doing for your PhD?"

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An hour and a half later, Vash stepped out of Ludwig's office and closed the door with a sigh. Unsolicited flirtation aside, things had gone smoothly, as far as he could tell. There'd been much back-and-forth about what kind of work he'd been up to since school, naturally, and nearly as much about the trajectory of Beilschmidt & Bonnefoy over the same period. They'd made light conversation about which star-chitects were most obnoxious, then settled with rapid consensus on Philip Johnson—which Vash figured was satisfactorily consistent with the studio's modernist ethos.

While the conversation flowed easily and the priorities seemed to align, Vash felt a little uncertain about the whole thing, and his uncertainty might have stemmed from the one answer he hadn't quite gotten—the one question he wasn't quite willing to ask—though the instruction he'd been sent out with did allow for a guess.

Vash made his way back down to the fourth floor, feeling vaguely like this was the most testing portion of the day so far. He stuck his head around a wall of bookshelves which separated the majority of the floor from three desks: one occupied by the resident senior architect, another by a tall blond man who Vash assumed was probably the architectural engineer, and a vacant third which may or may not imminently belong to himself.

"Uh, Roderich…" Even as he tried to lower it, his voice felt terribly loud against the silent working atmosphere. Both of the people sitting there looked up when he spoke. Roderich pulled an earbud out of one ear.

"Do they want me upstairs?" he asked, before turning back to his computer and continuing to type. Vash gave a word of confirmation to the back of his head.

"Okay, let me just…" he murmured distractedly, still facing his computer. "Because half my job these days is writing these damn emails…"

Vash watched him finish what he was doing, and at the same moment Roderich's finger connected with the computer mouse to hit 'send', the telephone on each of the occupied desks rang. Roderich jumped a little in his chair before looking over at it. He sighed.

"Berwald, I forgot to call him back earlier. Can you tell him to text me if it's urgent?"

The blond man—Berwald, apparently—nodded as he picked up the phone, and answered in a deep baritone.

"'Lo, Yao."

Roderich disappeared around the corner, leaving Vash with the sudden realization that he had no idea what he was supposed to do while he waited. He glanced around for a moment, standing there, and while Berwald spoke with the person on the phone, Vash's attention wandered toward the absent subject of the other desk.

He hadn't given much thought to whether Roderich might be amenable to this whole 'working together' thing beyond their unfortunate lunch the other day, and he realized that maybe he should have. Like, was this weird, being in the space that Roderich worked? Particularly given that the last time he'd been in Roderich's workspace it had also been his, and also their shared home? And that they hadn't been speaking for a week and that they had never actually said goodbye to one another?

Okay, obviously it was weird when put like that, yes. But it had been seven years, right? That was plenty of time to… well, it wasn't quite the ideal word choice, but plenty of time to, um, move on.

Right?

Anyway, there wasn't much to be done at this point, and he'd been instructed to wait while Roderich was upstairs, so here he was—standing awkwardly behind Berwald, trying to keep his mind occupied with anything other than the memories that being in this space was bringing up, and trying to look at anything other than the content of the computers.

There were NDAs to consider, after all.

Aside from the computers, there wasn't much to look at other than the desks. Roderich's was bare of anything that might be considered 'sentimental', but it did have a healthy level of presumably work-related clutter, including three used-looking coffee mugs. Berwald's was quite tidy, with only a notepad, pen, and framed picture of something Vash couldn't see without leaning in for a better look—

Berwald hung up the phone, jotted a few words down onto the notepad, then swiveled his chair around to level two stern eyes at Vash himself.

"Need somethin'?"

It wasn't a particularly warm welcome, but then, Vash was in his workspace.

"Uh, no. I was just told to wait while they talked to Roderich upstairs." The explanation somehow felt painfully inadequate for the circumstance, but Berwald nodded and gestured to the empty chair at Roderich's desk.

"Then sit down, if y'want." His accent was very thick, and the intonation of his voice completely flat, which made it difficult to tell what he might have actually been thinking.

But if one thing was certain, it was that Vash was emphatically not interested in sitting down in Roderich's desk chair.

"Uh, no, it's fine. I think I'll sit out by the cutting table."

Berwald didn't say anything. Damn, was he offended? He looked like he maybe could be, but it was hard to tell, actually—had his expression changed at all since he'd turned around?

Vash backed away anyway, rounded the corner and sat on the stool Roderich might've been sitting on the other day, and he tried to distract himself from that fact and from everything else by getting a better look at the fourth floor.

On the other side of the fourth floor, across from the architects' desks and bookshelves they sat behind, Vash remembered Ludwig pointing out the conference room, enclosed in walls of frosted glass. The staircases leading to the upper and lower floors hit right in the middle of the space, which also housed a cutting table, printer, and flat files. Vash thought the mechanics of the space weren't entirely ideal in that particular aspect—a bit of a collision hazard, probably—though he couldn't envision a better solution off the top of his head, given the constraints of the building.

In any case, the renovations were all nice—really nice, obviously planned with a great deal of care and executed with the quality their profession demanded. And God, he found himself thinking again, how on Earth had it all been paid for? Had it even been Roderich and Ludwig overseeing the renovations? Could it have been bankrolled by Roderich's—

"—parents couldn't tell a cabernet from a zinfandel if it was literally a matter of life or death," came the voice of Roderich himself, descending the stairs. Speak of the devil, Vash thought. "I mean, they're wonderful people, don't get me wrong, but"—he emerged on the landing and glanced over toward Vash, turned heel, and kept talking as he approached.

"Look, Sonoma sounds fine, I don't think we can send them back to Napa if they went for their fifteen-year anniversary, but we'll have to figure it out later—look, this isn't why I called you, I need to—"

Vash wasn't sure why he felt the strong urge to bolt as Roderich closed in, but he gripped the sides of the chair just in case his subconscious tried to make him do something uncharacteristically rash. Roderich stood in front of him as he spoke into the phone, head dipping first to the left and then to the right like he'd rather look at anything but Vash.

Vash wondered, for his own part, if he could really see himself tolerating this level of awkwardness during the majority of his waking hours for the foreseeable future.

"—right, I'll text you in a minute, but if you could talk to one of your friends and try to—obviously, but by the windows at the front—for six-thirty, probably? Not later than seven. But look, I really have to go—okay, yes, you too—Vash, hi—"

The last words of the call, pocketing his phone, and addressing the person in question all seemed to happen in one seamless motion, and Vash was not immediately certain what sort of response that called for. Fortunately, Roderich didn't hesitate to fill the ensuing silence.

"Ludwig wants to have dinner tonight with Francis, and Berwald if he's available. Would you be interested?" He waved a hand back toward the landing. "We'd leave in a few minutes, just whenever they bother to come downstairs."

"Uh—" Vash's brain chose this convenient moment to take stock of the fact that in the seven years since they'd last seen one another, he'd never actually met anyone else who spoke quite like Roderich. His voice was still tinted with that uniquely posh Viennese lilt, the accent still placeable even in his English speech.

Vash cleared his throat and looked at the wall, which was thankfully less familiar. "Sure. I can go. I mean, I'll have to tell Lilli that I won't—"

"Lilli's welcome too, of course," Roderich said quickly. He jerked a thumb back over his shoulder, a little stiffly. "Now, if you'll excuse me…"

And he turned around and walked toward his desk.

Vash leaned into the cutting table and texted his sister.

: : :
: : :

Which, ultimately, was how Vash ended up in the West Village (according to Ludwig), at some buzzy restaurant that Francis had made a point to emphasize was the premiere spot to see celebrities in their natural habitat, if you were into that sort of thing. Vash wasn't, and he wasn't surprised when he glanced around and didn't recognize any faces, but he made the effort for Francis's sake anyway.

In the end it was just Francis, Ludwig, Roderich, and himself that had gone. Vash tried to tell himself that Berwald wasn't passing on the offer because of him, since he didn't seem terrifically social to begin with, but it was a bit of a tough sell.

Also present was Lilli, who had arrived a few minutes before them, waiting on the sidewalk as they all got out of the cab they'd crammed into.

"Your hair!" Roderich was the first one to get a word in because he'd insisted on taking the front seat, and therefore didn't have to untangle his seatbelt or his legs from anyone else's in order to make it out the door. Lilli brightened in recognition as he continued, "last time I saw you it practically went down to your knees—"

It wasn't that Vash was surprised they remembered each other. They'd lived together for five years, after all. But still, watching as they hugged warmly, lamenting the years they'd been out of touch—it was a bit, erm... well, it was a bit fond, was all.

In any case, everyone got acquainted on the sidewalk and made their way into the restaurant. They were seated at a table which, Vash noted, was indeed by the windows in the front, though he still wasn't entirely sure how that may or may not have related to Sonoma or—

"Hey!"

At the sound of a greeting Vash wouldn't have otherwise distinguished from the general din of the dinner crowd, Roderich looked up, and he cocked his head pleasantly, a small smile lighting up his features.

Vash craned his neck back to see an unfamiliar person walking toward them. The guy looked oddly casual for the establishment they were in, wearing tight jeans with a hole in one knee and a chain against the other hip, and a chunky sweatshirt (which looked intentionally oversized, if Vash could claim any expertise on the matter). Vash's first impression of the guy was that, despite blatantly disregarding the unspoken dress code of this establishment, he actually looked pretty stylish doing it. It vaguely made Vash want to loosen the tie he'd donned for the interview.

Vash sat there wondering who this hipster-looking guy coming toward them was until the guy scooted past Ludwig into the booth, sidled up next to Roderich, and—

Ah.

—kissed him squarely on the cheek.

"What's good, Roddy?" Vash's second impression of the guy was just loud. "Sorry I'm late. The L is a complete clusterfuck, signal problems or some shit. I had to walk all the way to the M instead. How was the animal factory today?"

"Completely animalistic, as ever," Roderich replied mildly as he scooted over to make room for another body and adjusted his glasses with one hand. "How was the soup kitchen?"

"Oh, wow, that's a new one—hey, Fran—"

As the guy hung off Roderich's waist and greeted each person at the table, Vash was acutely reminded of how long seven years was to be absent from someone's life.

The guy paused when his eyes landed on Vash and Lilli.

Ludwig spoke first: "This is Vash, from Basel—"

"Bern."

Everyone's attention shifted in unison as the correction was issued not from Vash's mouth, but from Roderich's. He looked over at Ludwig incredulously, but when he realized that everyone else was staring at him, he pursed his lips quickly and looked away.

Ludwig cleared his throat and continued. "Of course, sorry—and his sister, Lilli. Vash went to school with Roderich and I."

The guy stuck a hand out over the table with a sparkling grin. "Sadiq. I don't actually work at a soup kitchen, for what it's worth." He waved a hand over his shoulder. "I bartend at the sister restaurant to this place. Can I ask, though—is this table really big enough for another blond architect?"

Vash's third impression was that actually, if he were forced to have an opinion on the matter, Sadiq seemed exactly like Roderich's type.

And so it went from there. Between the first glass of wine and the arrival of their food, the conversation meandered around trivialities like the seemingly oxymoronic fact of above-ground subways—of which Vash and Lilli were not yet aware and which Sadiq assured them were not as glamorous as they sounded. They wandered around the topic of commuting on public transit, toward the pros and cons of owning a car in a city like this one.

"To be fair," Ludwig said, "Roderich thinks owning a car is stupid anywhere, because he's a terrible driver." Roderich shot him a glare while Sadiq and Francis cackled. "Do you drive, Vash?"

"Of course, yeah," Vash answered. "I had this little Peugeot in Hamburg, but I sold it when we moved to Rotterdam because we could bike everywhere. But I can still drive, obviously—I mean, it's not like I forgot." He nudged his sister and felt himself smile a little at the memory as he retold it. "I just finished teaching Lil, too. I'm not sure how many of those car shares we had to go through to get manual shifting down, but it's a good thing we left the country when we did."

Lilli grinned back. She'd been mostly quiet through the conversation—which was fine, she'd always been a bit shy—but she perked up then, adding that she and Vash were both rushing to get American driver's licenses within the window of time they had.

"How long were you living in Rotterdam, then?" Roderich asked politely, mostly to Lilli.

She answered that it had been about two years, while Vash went back to school. At the rising curiosity on Roderich's face, Ludwig intervened.

"So, he's got a PhD," he explained, "and he doesn't even want to teach."

Roderich laughed a little, though it sounded forced, and nodded in Vash's direction. "That's… somehow very like you."

Vash wasn't sure if anyone else noticed the expression that Sadiq made, then, glancing just momentarily between Vash and Roderich. Vash tried not to think too hard about it as Roderich partially succeeded in pivoting.

"Anyway, it's funny—I was in Amsterdam for work in the spring. I actually flew into The Hague, though, so that must've been sort of close."

Their eyes met briefly and Vash just as quickly tore his away, definitely not interested in considering the possibility of any close brushes.

"Well, if you were in Amsterdam, you saw the nice part, anyway," he said. "Rotterdam isn't nearly as quaint."

"Speaking of quaint," Sadiq cut in, "have you seen those protests downtown?"

"Yes, of course," Francis answered first. He turned to Vash. "It's lucky our meeting wasn't on Wednesday—traffic was jammed all the way up on Duane Street."

Ludwig nodded. "I could actually hear them when I got into work this morning. I can't imagine what It's like down by the Stock Exchange."

The name sparked something in Vash's memory.

"Actually," he said, "I think I saw something like that last week, kind of by the World Trade Center."

"Yeah, you probably did," Sadiq confirmed. "It's a bunch of, like, old hippies and college student anarchists. They've been out there for a while now, got a camp set up at Zucotti Park and everything—"

"Well, I support it," Roderich said suddenly. He shrugged into the following silence and gave an uppity sort of sniff. "I mean, you won't find me sleeping out in the street, obviously, but I think it's nice that people are taking a stand for something."

Sadiq glanced at him sideways. "You just want to stay on their good side because when they say 'eat the rich,' you know that you're the rich they're talking about."

Even Lilli had to stifle a giggle at that.

"So, Vash-from-Bern," Sadiq continued, gesturing loosely between Roderich and Ludwig, but looking pointedly at Vash himself. "It sounds like you were pretty good friends with these two in college. So I can't imagine why I've never heard of you?"

The announcement came without warning, two days before the start of their exit exams and one week before they were slated to be handed their diplomas and graduate. It came as Vash and Ludwig and Roderich sat out on the campus lawn and relished in a brief moment of relaxation before their last big push to the end, before their departure from the cradle of academia and emergence into the rest of their lives.

"I'm getting married."

It came with so little fanfare that it might have just been a spring evening's breeze, had the words not rung out clearly, unmistakably, on the precipice of the future.

The future folded like a piece of paper right in front of Vash's eyes.

"Is that why you've been acting so weird lately?" were the words he could scrape together—a question he'd been asking himself all semester, suddenly compelled to verbalize it.

"I haven't been acting weird lately," Roderich snapped, too quickly, too obviously, and Vash felt something inside of him snap too, when he realized Roderich was entirely serious.

In all honesty, Vash had never had much of a poker face.

"We, um..." Especially not for this, as he suddenly realized that he'd never once, in the better part of the past decade, needed to come up with a euphemism for this. "Well, we were—I mean, yeah, the plan had been for all three of us to..."

"We just drifted apart," Roderich interjected sharply, a tight smile pasted on his face.

Roderich was a far better liar than Vash, undoubtedly, but it seemed the fact of the lie was lost on no one anyway—not Ludwig nor Lilli, of course, and Francis could certainly read the room, if his expression was any indication. But it was particularly not lost on Sadiq, who looked back and forth between them again with some dangerous smile dawning on his face.

The couple at the table next to them glanced over, voyeurs to the vacuum of silence that followed the flimsy explanation.

"Well then," Sadiq finally said, a glint in his eye and a curl in his lip. "Isn't it nice that you've… drifted back together?"

Maybe he should've known this was coming.

Maybe some part of him had.

He'd known, after all, who Roderich had been spending so many hours on the phone with all year, when Vash was trying to sleep. He'd known who Roderich had spent the holidays with, and who'd been at his house all the previous summer.

And maybe Vash had already known the answer to the decision he'd been faced with for the past two weeks, too, previously impossible, but now, in the suffocating space between the sky and the lawn, brutally simple.

"The wedding is a week after we graduate—"

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

And as he walked away from his two bewildered best friends, he'd already known with crushing certainty that those were the last words he would ever say to Roderich Edelstein.

Vash nodded only because he didn't quite have an answer, didn't quite have any English word in his vocabulary to describe quite what it was like to accidentally reinsert himself into the life of the person who, seven years ago, had actually really broken his heart.

He might not have had a word for that in any language, honestly.

So it was disturbingly telepathic that Sadiq chose to continue his interrogation in precisely the same vein.

"So, you're Swiss," he said, with a nonchalance that Vash was quickly coming to distrust. "Do you speak a lot of languages? Is that just a stereotype?"

Vash figured he'd play along, if only because he really had no other choice. "Well, most Swiss people only speak one or two languages. I happened to learn a few because I grew up in a German city, so I learned that in school, and my parents taught university English and French."

"Taught?" Sadiq asked, and Roderich stiffened visibly next to him. "So they're retired—are they still in Switzerland?"

Roderich suddenly jerked in his seat, and at nearly the same moment, Sadiq flinched badly away from him with a yelp. He mouthed the word 'ow;' as he shot a glare at Roderich, who returned it from behind a clenched jaw.

Vash sighed inwardly and steeled himself to answer, because, yeah, he'd never been a good liar.

"Kind of—well, they're dead, actually."

"Oh." Sadiq blinked. He glanced at Roderich again briefly. "Uh, sorry, I—"

"Whatever." Vash waved it away. "It was a long time ago."

That finally seemed to shut Sadiq up, which Vash wanted to appreciate. But this was always the worst part, this need to have some prepared nonchalance over the fact for everyone else's comfort. Not that he was going to get upset over it, or something, because it really wasn't like that—just… it was just easier, for everyone, if it didn't come up at all.

Particularly given the way Roderich was looking at him now. If there was one person's pity he did not want right now, or ever, it was Roderich's.

Lilli grabbed his hand under the table. He gave it a squeeze, thankful that squeezing someone's hand didn't make any noise in the face of the incredible silence that stretched over the entire table.

The second worst thing, Vash thought, was the fact that now it was his responsibility to recover the mood.

"So… they're building Renzo Piano's plans for the Whitney Museum, right? Isn't that just down the street? I met him once, at a conference in Milan…."

: : :
: : :

Early Saturday afternoon, five minutes before Vash needed to begin walking down to Gramercy Park to sign a lease written in French—and the copy of it that he'd had to translate into English—his phone rang.

He recognized the number immediately, though he wasn't quite ready to elevate it to the status of 'named contact' yet. It indicated to him with very little doubt what those next five minutes were about to entail.

He thought for a moment about letting it go to voicemail.

"Vash Zwingli speaking."

"Vash, it's Ludwig. Sorry to call you on a Saturday, but I think you'll want to hear this."

Ludwig might have been projecting a bit, Vash thought, as he remembered how desperate Ludwig had sounded the other day, and how overworked Roderich had looked.

"Yes, go ahead."

He wondered what had changed Roderich's mind.

"Well, we'd like to have you at B&B—no surprises there, obviously. Can you start Monday? Gilbert will get you on the payroll and we'll set up your software licensing and everything first thing in the morning."

Vash thought about the other jobs he'd interviewed for over the past week. He thought about the projects showcased at Beilschmidt & Bonnefoy; they reminded him of the way he'd felt so many years ago, young and ambitious and visionary.

Although, those hadn't been the only things he'd felt back then, had they?

The dinner conversation from the night before nipped at his heels.

"If you need a few minutes to—"

But then, Vash thought, he would have to be absolutely stupid to pass up the starting salary they'd discussed.

Vash Zwingli was not a stupid man.

"No, that's great, Ludwig—really great, thank you. I'll be in at nine on Monday."

"Excellent," his former-friend-and-now-employer's voice said brightly. "We're all glad to have you. See you Monday."

After hanging up, Vash figured that securing an apartment and a job in New York City in the span of an hour had to be a stroke of unrepeatable luck. He just hoped it would be the good kind.

: : :
: : :
: : :

If you've made it this far, congratulations!

If you're a returning reader, you may have noticed that this chapter has been edited substantially. This is courtesy of my amazing new 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!

Now fasten your seatbelts; we've got a long way to go!