The day came, the day arose, a dull ache in Lancer's bones. As the covers eased into his body, the day soaked into him, the realization that it was morning came, and the notion he was still lying on the throne floor ended. He opened his eyes, a breath heaving its delightful path from his chest when he realized he'd been transferred to his bedroom in the middle of the night. A cold shadow dawned upon him, the shadow of mourning morning.
Still in the same castle.
He shuffled his way to the drawer, still smiling when he rummaged to his MP3, found that it was still on, its battery not quite depleted yet. The concealers, the foundation, the makeup all rolled to the end of the dresser, thunking against the edge of mahogany wood that would have enchanted even Louis XIV. He started with his leg, starting with a tissue, soaking all of the icky red away. The same icky red he'd threatened to turn the Lightners into. Every touch made him wince, but it was worth it. It was worth not being questioned by his friends, Rouxls, the castle workers. He then started with the foundation, biting the inside of both of his cheeks as the cut protested to the makeup, but as the redness faded to perfect white, so did the pain.
That was the easy part. Turning on the first song in his playlist, listening to the acoustics fading into Stairway to Heaven, he peeled off the 5,000- dollar, custom- ordered, royal shirt to see if he could look at his torso. If things went wrong, it may end up flying as he played in childish delight with Susie and Sans. That would be the most embarrassing thing Lancer could think of!
One look was all it took.
It was all Lancer could do to focus on the music, to listen to the recorders following Stairway to Heaven's guitar, There was something wrong this time, something wrong. Lancer knew this more than the Father, the priest at the royal cathedral knew that "Mary was the mediatrix" or "the infallibility of transubstantiation.." And those terms had been drilled into Lancer's mind far beyond what he could remember from his childhood. Something was wrong; there was an aberration. His stomach wasn't supposed to look like this… this filthy, hideous, swollen purple spider. It wasn't supposed to feel like a real, genuine lance was stabbing him with every beat of his heart, waving between the beats. This wasn't anything any douse of twenty- dollar foundation could fix, not in a lifetime. Neither could a 5,000 dollar, custom-ordered royal shirt.
There weren't many times in his life where the past night left him like this, but there were a few. A few he wouldn't dream to forget.
Lancer swallowed, thought of a joke, tucked his shirt into his pants, and prayed to whoever happened to be up above that his shirt would stay put. He stared at himself in the mirror and found himself at the opposite of dissociation. He was smacked. He was painfully brought to reality, as painful as his stomach was swelling. God, he was so fat. No wonder he wasn't allowed to eat. He'd gotten fatter than yesterday, much fatter….
Susie. Sans. Everyone in the gang, the gang he had just tormented. He'd be able to apologize, surely. They would be able to take him as he was, take him like this. Surely.
Maybe.
The shirt stretching, hanging over in a tight, taut ship's- mast over him, he made his way to Steed. Rouxls had left and was tending to his duchy, but his father wasn't even awake to tell Lancer not to go there. The air hit him when he was riding, hit him in a hurricane- smack. He had to backpedal, loop around the neighboring duchy again and again just to relish the feeling, to revel in how it felt. It got better each time, and what he would have given to stay all day! He didn't care whether people thought there were pollutants in the air or how many people shrunk away as soon as they saw the prince, the Crown Prince, riding in mad, dashing circles around town. He didn't care. Whoever in the world needed to care when the wind shook their mind, shook their innermost feelings like this?
But the wind couldn't last too long. A troupe of people came walking by, the girls posing for social media pictures and strutting to the rhythm of their hearts. They were all coming in Lancer's field of vision too fast for him to do anything other than stop, no matter how many times he'd been told how hard that was on Steed's brakes. No matter; he had the knowhow to fix it in twenty minutes, tops.
He drifted there in that half- paradise at idle speed, watching the group of friends laugh, joke about times they had when they were children together, dance in the streets in abandon that Rouxls would scoff at. He cut off Steed even farther, tried to mull the sound of his engine down to a cat's purring. That matched their voices. They kept on laughing, swearing a little, punching each other playfully-
There was no time. No time to stay. Lancer wrenched up his handlebar, rose Steed to a hell's- pitch, and sped off before the troupe even had time to say "prince".
Lancer looked around, darting his eyes back and forth, juggling in a second- nature scoff the road in front of him and the road around him, looking for a trace of purple hair here, a pink scarf flying in the wind there, a blue suit here, a blue hoodie there. He was almost distracted by a man wandering, perhaps back to the duchy, because of the man's scarf having an almost- red color.
Sans. Where was he? Where was he? A quick trip back to the hotel told Lancer that he was wrong, that there was no trace of him. So where did he go in days such as this? He couldn't just up and disappear into the Upper World; a chance to do that would make Lancer do anything. Where did this all- powerful son of God go? He couldn't have ascended back to Heaven.
If he did, then Lancer didn't know what he would do.
The hope that Sans would turn up somewhere nagging at the back of his mind, Lancer shoved Steed forward. An hour or two, and Steed started to complain, started to sputter up. Lancer ended up on the side of the street, gasing up in tense, panting, painful breaths. He pushed money into the machine as soon as he could, summoning one single, sumptuous spade by his side just in case.
The gas nozzle choked to a stop, and so did Lancer's breathing for the tiniest of increments, and so did Led Zeppelin, singing songs of love and stairways to heaven. There- in the corner! His peripheral vision had caught it in time, perhaps the result of too much time in training with Rouxls. Maybe this was the "hypervigilance" Rouxls kept talking about. He caught a blue hoodie.
"Hey, Sahn, wait up!"
God, he was never going to get his name right.
Lancer perked Steed to life once again, rip roaring around the corner and almost plummeting into a poor woman with fiery- red hair crossing the street. The space where the blue hoodie had come from didn't stop, didn't dart into the bushes the way anyone would if they saw a child dashing in, recklessly hopeless, hopelessly reckless, on a bike. He stayed, motionless as a lamp atop a dresser.
"Jeez, Sahn, I haven't seen you in so long-"
The blue wasn't just a hoodie, but an entire set of armor. A red sword dragged across the royal road, nearly making a whole in it. But the swordbearer didn't seem to care. Kris. He was just as kind as he was silent, a special kind of silent. So Sans wasn't really here… Lancer let his lip droop just a little, although he turned away first. He cut off Steed, who choked a little in protest before being shut off. Ralsei hovered beside Kris.
"Hey, guys!" Lancer commanded his bike to stop squealing. "How're you all doing? Where's Susie?"
He smiled, but the pain in his stomach added a few crinkles to the edges. Lancer looked towards Ralsei, who was stifling his laughter, as he did so often because of his childish nature, but Kris stayed off to the side, shuffling a little to the trees.
"What's so funn-"
"RAAAAAH!"
Lancer was interrupted by a weight, huge, and in an instant, he was toppling to the road. It hit him with the force of an airplane, and he would scream in play, but that would have revealed him, surely, to what was digging into his bones. Susie laughed, even screamed a little in her glee, but nobody seemed to react. Either that or they were too afraid to. How would they be afraid to in play such as this? They were all children, and that was universal. Maybe Ralsei and Kris just needed to live a little- pain. Pain coursed through him again, the force of the road screaming through his stomach. He clenched his teeth, Susie still on top of him, managing a clenched, "Get off, haha…" The laugh trailed, died off, with half the light of humor and half the dark of pain.
Lancer had to lean on Ralsei as he got up again. Ralsei only had the slightest look of confusion on his face, but Lancer stopped himself from having to stare at it by running towards Susie, hoping halfway to return the favor, halfway to play as a child, to truly act his age. Not like in the palace, oh, no, not in the palace. In the palace, he was expected to act as an elder as soon as he turned into a teenager. How was that any way to live?
Susie laughed, shoved Lancer's weight off of her as if she was buzzing away a fly. A final laugh left Lancer and he deflated, lounging against the tree. Kris and Ralsei followed suit.
"Ah, Jesus," Susie muttered. "Look what you did, Lancer." She smiled, the sharpened edges to her voices coming back, edges of laughter and play, per the norm when rambunctiousness took over. "I'm gonna need a new belt after this!"
Sure enough, a sequin had broke off, once again, from her studded belt. She picked up the fallen sequin from the dew- dropped grass, seemed to be slightly hypnotized with it as it dangled in the sunlight, reflected off of the dew. The wanton daylight seemed to echo in her eyes for a moment before she put it down. "Wish I had some glue." Her hands clutched the end of her belt as if to roll it up and carry in her pocket, but what a traitor she was! She folded it in half as if to cut it with scissors, to dice it. Her hands moved toward each other, a wave burgeoning in the middle of her belt.
The snap forced his feet into a run.
The forest greeted his left foot, his right, his left, his right, sprinting, sprinting, sprinting. Voices called behind him, phantom voices, calling for him to come back. But he didn't hear. He didn't hear. It was even hard to see. The world was blurry, blurry…. he was swallowing his own heartbeats in a spasm down to his pain- filled stomach… oh, God. He was panicking. The lovechild of hypervigilance.
There were voices behind him. Were they real? What was real? Whatwasrealwhatwasrealwhatwasreal? Calm down, calm down, it's just Susie, it's nobody else. Collapsing on a tree root. The voices were gone. Alone now, alone now. He felt feverish. Inhalexhaleinhalexhaleinhalexhaleinhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. His stomach was burning. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale, inhale- BREATHE. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
He was alright now. He was fine. He was tired. He was exhausted.
He slumped on the edge of the tree, not moving when the leaves were stirred, when Susie came back with her belt, still not fixed...
He was exhausted.