A/N: OH- OH DEAR GOD, I'M SORRY. You can flog me if you want. I mean if it will make you feel better. Do you remember me? I'm going to go reply to all of the reviews and everything right now I'm a horrible person I have excuses but they're boring also this chapter is long and boring but I AM GETTING BACK INTO THE SWING OF THINGS, GOODBYE.
WAIT NOT GOODBYE. KEEP MOVING YOUR EYES DOWNWARD AND PROCESSING THE MEANINGS OF THE WORDS. THEN - THEN GOODBYE.
Days passed. Long days, with beginnings and endings. You didn't just fall asleep – you went to bed, got into pajamas and under the covers and all that good stuff.
It was funny, though. They went up and down with the sun, and got plenty of rest, even if they shared a bed. But the dark circles under his eyes never went away. Hayner would see them in his reflection in the window, or the crusty bathroom mirror – sunken purple crescents. He slept and he slept, but they wouldn't go away.
He asked Vexen about it. Vexen seemed like the kind of person to know these things.
"Really? How have you been sleeping at night?"
Hayner blinked. "...on my back, mostly."
"Please take me seriously," said Vexen, setting down a glass jar on his dresser. It was full of brown water, with bits of dead plant floating in it; Hayner wondered if it was actually for anything.
"What?"
"How have you been sleeping at night?"
He snorted and sat down on Vexen's workbench, careful not to knock anything over. "Alright, I guess. I wake up in the middle of it sometimes, but I usually just go back to sleep, I guess."
"Usually?"
"We-ell, I have nightmares, but that's normal, isn't it?" There was a quiet, hidden little search in the question. That's normal – right? I'm not the only one who dreams about - .
"Yes. I suppose it is...maybe it's a matter of daily activity." He sighed and glanced out the window, where Seifer was stacking up rocks around the vegetable garden to discourage rabbits. Seifer had taken of his shirt; the muscles under his skin moved like pulsing snakes. "I'm sorry I can't be of more help, Hayner," Vexen said, bringing his attention back to the room, "The human body was never really an interest of mine."
"Uhh. Yeah. It's fine."
His hair shifted in the light when Vexen leaned forward a little and put his hands on his knees. Hayner felt funny, being the butt of all that concentration.
Sometimes, Vexen would go very quiet. If Hayner had to come and find him for whatever reason, he'd first check the office, then the kitchen, then look around outside for a while. Sometimes he found Vexen sitting in front of a window, holding a plastic cup full of hot, tasteless tea in both hands, staring out at the world. He wondered what Vexen thought about. Maybe his life, beforehand – Hayner wondered if he'd been married, or lonely, or alone but happy. Maybe Vexen thought about the big flying boat.
It made Hayner uneasy to see this stranger in such private moments, so usually he'd sneak back out and go bother Seifer for something to do.
"Hayner?" Vexen narrowed his eyes. "Is everything all right?"
"Yup. Fine. I just said so."
"Have you and Seifer been getting along?"
"As...much as usual, I guess."
Vexen nodded. "That doesn't mean much." Then, "Which is a real shame. The way you two are with each other – I can't help but wonder."
"Wonder what?" Bristling, Hayner felt himself go on edge, just a little. Careful, careful. Seifer had enough caution in his boots to make a general wary of his footsteps, and Hayner envied him that. Walking down a hallway like he still had something precious to lose.
"...hm. Never mind. It's...not my place."
The word 'codependent' hung in the air, strung out on an invisible line between their heads. Vexen wouldn't be the first grown up to come to that conclusion, either. Hayner had to fight the reflex of "I'm sorry," but he did it; Seifer had seen him from outside and started giving him funny looks.
"I should...go," said Hayner.
"Fair enough. Dinner should be ready in an hour or two."
Outside was beautiful, so beautiful, when you were inside most of the time. But it began to lose its charms soon enough.
"Hey," said Hayner. Seifer had taken a break from hauling rocks.
"What's up? Geezer send you out here to help me?"
"Naw. I came out of the kindness of my heart. It hurts me to see you in pain."
"Har-har."
"I try."
The sun was ugly. Sunsets were ugly. There; he'd said it. It was like a toddler had come through with a bucket of orange paint and just tripped. None of them were the same because nobody knew what they were doing – the sun was shouting and tired, giving up everything it had left so it could be alone for the next twelve hours. Take it. Take my light and my energy and all my other shit. I'm done. Sunsets were awful.
Hayner didn't actually have anything to say to Seifer. He was just sort of...there. He sat down on the half-finished rock wall, kicking his legs back and forth, staring out at the forest. "Vexen said dinner's in an hour or two," he told Seifer, who sat down next to him. Not too close.
"Mmkay. Anything we have to do?"
"I don't think so. Except for the usual stuff. You know, pump some water, weed the garden, make sure nothing's broken..."
"Get the eggs from the adorable chicken coop and go on adventure with Fabulous Mister Fox..."
Hayner snorted. "Shut up. We're fuckin' farmers now."
Seifer blinked his tired eyes. "Oh."
"Yup. Communing with the land. Building boats. Talking to the...crows."
"I don't think you know what a farmer is."
They shared a funny moment of eye contact before laughing. "No. Hey. Say something farmer-y," said Hayner.
"Uh. Looks like rain," said Seifer, pointing to the clear sunset sky.
"You're a moron," said Hayner. He must have come out here with some clear intention – to probe the waters, to make sure he and Seifer were still...them. He didn't have to now. They were okay. They always were, in the end.
That night, Hayner was only just getting ready for bed when damn if it didn't start to rain. A hard, determined sort of rain, a clear-your-head rain, but nothing harmful. A turn-your-coat-up rain, but not a seek-shelter rain; it thudded, dull and purposeful, against the windows and the roof.
And while he was tugging on pajama pants, and looking for a decent shirt, Hayner realized he wanted to be in it. Some bizarre whim – he wanted to stand out in the rain, hands in his pockets, on the steps to the porch, until the annoying fuzzy points of his bangs were wet and dripping. He wanted that slow feeling when a drop condensed between his eyebrows, traced its way to the point of his nose and collected on his lip before the tickling became too much and he licked it away. The glorious sensation of soft-water clumping together his eyelashes and the damp, clean smell and the paths that rivered down his arms.
He couldn't get it out of his head. He wanted to stand in the rain, cold and soaked through, then come back inside knowing he could towel off and get into warm, dry clothes and a warm, dry bed.
Seifer had already collapsed on the bed, shirtless though it was barely early spring. Hayner figured nobody would notice.
So he went.
He stood outside, and tucked his hands into his pockets. He looked up: a drop ghosted across his nose, then another over his forehead, and another and another, until he felt them dance on his face. The rain got harder, and he felt his clothes begin sticking to his skin.
And it was wonderful, the standing and not doing anything with his hands in his pockets, content with how he could go inside and be warm as soon as he wanted. But it was good to be so cold. The coldness crawled down into his belly, and cracked, drilled itself into his bones, frozen there. He sucked in a big, shaky breath and shivered.
"What are you doing, Hayner," he muttered to himself. "You'll catch your death out here! You'll get all sick and have to stay home from school."
He sighed.
In little patches of moonlight allowed by the trees, he could see the rain. Heavy and shining like good rain did. He licked his lips. Rain was one of those things that didn't change, no matter whose city you were hiding in that night. It was soft and clean and ran down his chest, and all the rest of his depraved self.
Open-mouthed, he faced up. He closed his eyes to let a thousand tiny marbles plink onto his eyelids. He didn't think at all.
He stood there for a long, long time, feeling the water. He thought about Seifer's thumb across his temple when he'd thrown up. This can't become a thing.
Petrichor.
Vexen had told him about it, last time, staring out the window. That soft-water smell in the air after rain: petrichor. He'd said something about its origins, but Hayner hadn't cared; petrichor sounded like the name of an ancient beast that turned you to stone at will.
"You'll get an awful cold," he said. "You're just a boy. Stop trying to make nature seem so great." Stopping himself here, before he went completely off, seemed like a good idea; he stepped inside and toweled off his face before clattering upstairs.
He crawled carefully into the bed, which was nothing to be sneezed at, since the mattress squeaked like a cornered mouse. Somehow that didn't wake Seifer up – or at least, not enough to get him to turn around, still hunched on one side with his bare back protecting his insides.
Hayner sprawled out and let the rain tickle him. Down the slowly waning curves of his ribs, the stringy muscles connecting his neck to his shoulders, down his eyes and over his cheeks.
"Way to get the bed wet for no reason," Seifer groused.
Oops. So, not all that asleep after all.
"Man up. Just water."
Sighing, Seifer made a big show of turning around where he lay to face Hayner, and propped his face up on his palm. "Why did you do that?" he asked.
"Do what?"
"Go out there. I saw you. You just stood there." It was almost an accusation, the way he said it.
"I just...wanted to. I don't know. Christ, what's the big deal?" said Hayner.
A slight pause drifted from Seifer's mouth, like there were so many things to say and finding words was too hopeless for trying.
"Just thought we'd been rained on enough lately," said Seifer, getting all quiet again and sucking the fight out of the conversation.
Hayner didn't have anything to say to that, so he kept silent. An awful lot of things happened around Seifer, but this wasn't usually one of them – the silence, when they were both awake and staring at each other, not distracted by anything else. Hayner wondered how it was in five years he'd never really, properly looked at Seifer when Seifer was looking back, because it was one of the most peaceful things in the world. Sometimes he'd ask himself why they stuck together. Seifer was hateful.
Maybe this was why.
Cold, wet, petrichor drifting through the windows like the air had been scrubbed with leaves. Hayner felt dust settle on his belly and arms. Seifer wasn't anything but some pale blue shadows, darkness, and the whites of his eyes. But he seemed to know that this wasn't a talking time. He inched closer to Hayner, and flopped out an arm to settle on Hayner's chest, and put his head on Hayner's hand.
"...it would be nice," he said. "If we could solve all our problems this way."
"What way?" Hayner whispered.
Seifer shook his head. The fine locks of his hair brushed against Hayner's hand, making something jump low in his belly. "Just...this way," he muttered. It was more of a vibration than a sentence.
Hayner rolled over onto his side to face Seifer, eyes to eyes like a string kept them attached. His face was so close, his mouth was so close.
From somewhere dark and cold bubbled a foreign urge, rising up his throat and spreading to his whole head, starting at his lips. He buzzed with it.
A certain majesty, a forbidden quality, hung around Seifer. He was just...Seifer. No touching. Seifer wasn't human; you couldn't look at him objectively no matter how you tried. He was just...there. A fact of life, an inevitability like moving on and raining and those little tan moths that always found windows in the summer.
So, Hayner quashed the urge. He didn't think he'd be rejected but – but he couldn't, not to Seifer. The universe would implode.
He huffed and closed his eyes to break the moment. The rain had just put him in a funny mood, that was all. It would go away by morning. By morning, he would not wonder what it was like to be rolled underneath someone and have the rain licked off his eyelids.
He was right.
Hayner woke up and saw this:
He was about twenty years old, and eleven years ago he'd had to leave home because there was no more food being imported, or trash being taken away. Five years ago, he and Seifer were alone together, so they'd paired up without talking about it. And they'd putzed around in cities, under the noses of angry smiling men, for as long as they could until one man smelled them and chased them away. And now they were here.
Okay.
Okay.
Now what?
Well, his mouth tasted like dry paste, so he should go gargle some water and see what they had in the way of breakfast food. They couldn't even manage something as simple as bread with what they had, but you could find all manner of seeds and nuts when you had somebody like Vexen telling you what to look for – nuts sounded pretty good for now, and then he'd probably get forced into something dull like chopping firewood or fixing the hole a mouse had chewed through a cabinet.
When he peeled off his shirt, stiff after drying from the rain, he felt an uncomfortable wave of self-consciousness. He'd never been shy before: nakedness was a fact of life, just like tan lines were, and they'd never once had one of those awful junior high moments like "wow, I'm seeing him naked and he's not even my cousin or anything."
It would be nice...if we could solve all our problems this way.
Last night they'd been stupid words, pretty fucking stupid words, but in the daylight they seem to have found an accidental beauty: wouldn't it, though? If we could build a boat with wings, and then life would be wonderful. Hayner thought about that. He thought about being all up above the things, but not a falling dream. An actual, real thing that he could sit and stand and walk around on.
"Hayner?"
It was a quiet voice.
"What?" he said, just as soft.
"...um," said Seifer. He rolled over to face Hayner, still lying on the bed, with his arms tucked around his middle and careful neutrality on his face. Briefly, he met Hayner's eyes, but he must not have liked what he saw because he glued his gaze to the pillows after. There was something very pitiful about him. Seifer had curled up on himself, keeping all of his insides in by binding his arms over his stomach. This was the man who yesterday strained in the sun, clean hard lines and a relentless persistence. The guy who spat in the face of gang leaders and called Hayner a dumbass every day, and who had to decry everything as pointless before he'd accept it. And here he was, sad and soft in grey morning light.
Hayner couldn't help it: he sat down on the edge of the bed, facing Seifer, and scooted over to lie next to him. "What is it?" he asked.
"Don't you ever get scared?"
Oh.
It was such a quiet, sweet sentence that Hayner almost didn't know what to do with it. What could prompt Seifer of all people to ask it? Nothing particularly scary had happened to them in the last few weeks. Seifer was scared, and that terrified Hayner: he'd operated under the willful misinformation that Seifer never got scared or lonely. Because it was easier to believe in somebody who never got scared or lonely. If Seifer got that way, how could Hayner honestly think he knew what was best?
He slid his hand across the covers and took Seifer's fingers, prying them gently away from his chest. "Scared of what?"
"That we'll...we won't get past this. You and me. Make all these fancy future plans and then we'll die without getting there."
Things stopped for a while. He tangled their fingers together so they couldn't tell whose were whose.
"Yes," he said.
"What're we going to do Hayner? Jesus. What are we going to do?"
Hayner had a thousand answers for that, and they all sounded pretty good. We'll keep going, we'll do what we've always done, we'll stick together, we'll build a boat and let Vexen lead the way.
But he didn't believe it.
Vexen would probably kick them out. Or die. They'd bitch about it for a while, about all the lost opportunity, then they'd move on and find a new city and live day to day, never thinking of becoming anything more. And then one of them would die, and the other would – break, and he'd die soon after. That was just how they were.
"I don't know," he said.
"I love you," Seifer said.
Hayner stayed quiet, playing with their fingers for a few minutes. When the sun was high enough in the sky to warm the room a little bit, he gave Seifer's hand another squeeze, then got out of bed and finished getting dressed.
Seifer would feel better. He'd get fixed up, if Hayner gave him an hour or two. He'd be back to normal and either he'd never mention this morning again, or he'd crack an awful joke about it. "Haha! I can't believe you didn't just punch me in the face this morning. Swear to God, if I ever start acting like a whiny bitch again, just punch me the the fucking nose. You're such a goddamn bleeding heart."
Vexen had a proposition for them at breakfast.
"Nothing major," he prefaced it with. "I'm not asking you to trek up a mountain and bring me back a rare flower or something, of course, but it would take you several days there and back. I imagine you two would be well-suited to it – I mean, you must be getting bored being here all the time. Monotonous."
He poked at the roasted potato on his plate, scowled, and looked across the kitchen table at the two blond boys. They had identically deadpan eyes.
"Um," said Vexen. "A response would be appreciated here."
"You haven't told us what it is."
"Yes. Getting to that part."
Hayner licked his lips and started to tap his fingers against the table, breakfast untouched. "We don't have to...slay anything, do we?"
"What? No," said Vexen, raising his eyebrows. He glanced at Seifer, who only shrugged and admitted, "You did kind of make it sound like a quest."
"Well, it's not. Not that sort of quest, anyway. Just a run to the city to get some things I can't make out of scraps and pebbles," he set his fingers on the map which lay innocuously on the table by his plate, "It shouldn't be very difficult. Just a little time-consuming. And it's good for you to know where the city is, just in case."
In case of what, nobody asked.
He slid the map across the table, gave it a flick to turn it around when it reached Seifer's hands.
As maps went, it was awful. It wasn't yellowed with age; the ink wasn't a faded black; there were no drawings of forests or mountains or tall buildings. It must have been traced from a roadmap, the kind that had confused Hayner when his parents consulted them in the front seat of the car, and it was drawn on white computer paper with blue ballpoint pen. Hayner certainly hoped Seifer knew how to read a map, because he'd sure as hell never been taught how to do it.
"This is a temporary little thing. I've only drawn the path you need to take to get to and from the city, no extra stops on the way. Oh, I drew in the river – that wide band off to your left, where I sort of scribbled it in? The scribbled bit is the river."
Seifer pinched his lips and looked over it, without a glance in Hayner's direction. He was grateful, for once, not to have those eyes on him – especially not after this morning.
I love you.
Fuck fuck fuckety fuck fuck. He'd sounded like a scared little kid.
"So...we're going where, exactly?"
"The area circled in black ink, labeled 'city'. You – you did say you could read, didn't you?" Vexen looked suddenly apprehensive, like they'd mentioned they couldn't and he'd offended them now.
"Oh, yeah," said Hayner. "Yeah, we can read that much at least. I'm guessing we're the place labeled 'home' with a little house on it." It was a nice little house, a square with a triangle on top and a chimney with a black curl of smoke. That about did him in, the little house with the smoke, and everything. He felt a sudden rush of – protection, of affection from the other side of the table that wasn't entirely misplaced. This man had drawn them their little map, traced it from a road map and left out all the roads, and then he'd gone and drawn a little house for them near the river between a couple of rounded mountains. He hadn't had to. He could've just made a circle and labeled it "here". But he'd drawn a house with chimney smoke and called it home.
He must have had kids, this guy. Or nieces and nephews. Something.
Seifer hadn't said anything yet, to him or to the man across from them.
"Seif?" He made eye contact. "What do you think?"
He licked his lips and shifted between Hayner and the map. "...didn't know there was a city a few days' walk from here," he said eventually.
"Well. It's in the opposite direction from where you said you'd come. I suppose I'd forgotten to mention it – I mostly keep to myself, don't see the need to visit it. But, still."
"Right." Shit. Seifer had that look about him, a disbelieving glance to his eyes, a smirk where he leaned back in his chair a little and got this inkling of kingly authority that made Hayner wonder, would he be a Marluxia if I let him go, and he laughed between his words: "And you thought we didn't need to know that if we'd walked two more days, we wouldn't have had to stay here at all."
Vexen seemed – honestly surprised. As if it hadn't occurred to him at all that maybe they'd prefer a city to his house. Hayner could hardly blame him. If this city was anything like the one they'd come from – he'd hardly blame him.
"I..." He drew in on himself, tucking hair behind his ear, fiddling with the rims of his glasses and keeping his eyes on the table. "No. I hadn't thought of that. I'm sorry. I had assumed – "
"Big damn leap, assuming that about people you hardly know," Seifer said, tilting his proud chin.
"Yes," Vexen said. "It was." He lifted his head and set his eyes on Seifer, patient and coiled.
"Dunno about my – about Hayner here, but you sure as fuck had me convinced – "
"Yes. And I've apologized. I think we'd be a lot more productive if we could just move on, Seifer," he tacked his name on there almost like an afterthought. What a proper teacher this guy would've been, with guilt trips and everything. I'm very disappointed in you. This is not what this institution is about.
"Right, yeah, and I'm asking you to fucking listen to us for once instead of coming in with your mystical magical save-the-world bullshit, okay, buddy? I'm just saying you always made it sound like you were totally cut off from everything and actually we're like two days away from what you say is a city. And I don't know about Hayner but to me it sure seems like you didn't show us the whole picture in case we decided to fuck off."
Something hard and cold and ugly blurred Vexen's eyes, a dangerous snake thing when he sat up straight and put his hand on the table. "Would it have made a difference," he asked, "If I had told you about it?"
Hayner had watched Seifer's arguments spiral out of control before, because he didn't know when to shut up and stop spitting in the face of a very big man with a gun, and he didn't want to watch this devolve. "I doubt it," he said, quietly as he could. "We left the last city for a reason. We would've run into the same problems in the next one, I guess. At least here we sleep in the same place every night."
Seifer snorted at that, but true to form his stiffness faded and he relaxed into his chair, leaning back. Their eyes met: all right, said Seifer's face, set and firm but not hard, I'll let you have this one.
"Well, I'm glad to hear it," Vexen sighed. "For a moment I thought I'd been wrong about you two, and you'd been looking for whatever work paid best when you found me."
With a laugh, Seifer twirled the map around on the table. "What, you mean like thugs or drug mules? Hayner would suck at that, lemme tell you. He would go up to threaten somebody and just be like 'but only if you don't mind because I wouldn't want to inconvenience you or something' and then he'd wuss out and probably give them his gun as an apology. You totally would."
Hayner thought about it for a second, and figured that, yes, Seifer was trying to fix things with the strange old man across the table, even if he did have to step on Hayner's pride to do it. So, okay. "Pfft," he said. "I like that you think they'd even let me have a gun in the first place."
Vexen laughed. "I'm sure he'd nick one for you," he said, gesturing at Seifer.
"Are you kidding? He'd probably shoot his face off trying to load it."
Before they'd been sent on their way, Hayner'd had the good sense to ask this: "What if we get, um. Lost."
To which Vexen had said: "Yes?"
"Well, if we get lost and can't find our way anywhere, what do we do?"
"The usual suggestion is to become un-lost as quickly as possible."
"Vexen, I'm serious! Don't you..."
He'd leveled Hayner with expectant eyes. "Don't I what?"
"Have...something for that? A GPS machine or something?"
Then Vexen had given him one of those looks, the kind he got when Hayner made an After Generation mistake like not understanding that pasta came from a wheat plant, not a pasta plant, or thinking that plastic came from melting rubber and letting it harden in a mold in a different shape. The looks were a funny mix of pity and disappointment. Poor Hayner, growing up in a cut-throat world that never taught you anything but survival, thinking "GPS machines" were as easy to make as compasses.
"A GPS navigator requires electricity, not to mention a lot of sophisticated equipment used in a sterile environment. And I know you asked if this was a quest, but that doesn't mean I've got a magical stone which glows when you're pointed in the right direction, yes? You'll have to do it the old-fashioned way."
Hayner sighed. "Which is?"
"Trial and error." He grinned and thumped Hayner on the back, right above his backpack. "But I think you two'll manage, don't you?"
"You're in a good mood," Hayner accused him.
"Of course. Always am, when I feel the air's been cleared a little."
Hayner had just fixed him with a withering glare and run to catch up to Seifer.
The forest was hardly different at all from what Hayner remembered, not that it would be. There were still fucking trees everywhere. It didn't take long for him to dodge scratchy, shin-high bushes on automatic, or to begin his caterpillar motion of slowing down to check out a funky mushroom and running like a madman to get caught up with Seifer again.
He stuck his hands in his pockets, glancing next to him and shifting the weight of his camp pack. It felt weird to be carrying things in a pack again.
"So," he said. "How's life?"
Seifer hitched his thumbs around his backpack straps and stepped over a fallen tree. "What, in general?"
"Well. I mean, for you."
"You should know, you fucking live it with me."
A mysterious hole in the ground distracted Hayner briefly, though this time Seifer stopped and waited for him to finish. Hayner knew it belonged to a mouse or a rat or a mole or something, but there was something very endearing about a burrow full of furry things. He couldn't see two inches down it before it bent, and anyways a maple sapling got in the way and kept brushing his face with tender green leaves, so he stood up again. "Just...making conversation," he said.
"Hn. Weird way to do it," said Seifer, setting off again.
"I figured I'd build up to the good stuff," said Hayner.
"And what stuff would that be?"
They were skirting a mountain, now; Hayner had to scrabble over a long expanse of warm rock before jumping down onto the soil again and almost letting Seifer's question go. Instead, when he jumped off, he turned around to give Seifer a hand and looked up at him. He let that do the talking. This morning. Yesterday. The rain.
They didn't say much after that for a few hours.
Holy shit, though. It was a fairytale forest. The tree trunks were so big that Hayner's arms would probably only reach halfway around them, if that. And the smell, jeez, the smell which was probably made of dead leaves and dead squirrels and decomposing branches but was still so warm, brown, and solid that he didn't mind it. The place was riddled with wonderful things. A little orange newt underneath a rock, a beetle nestled in the bark swiveling its antenna in meditation, a spattering of bell-shaped white mushrooms on a fallen log. Not that Vexen's house didn't have wonderful things, but they were usually pickled, or in books, and everything just sort of ran together in his mind as a fermented tan blur.
But, here. It had – it had never seemed this big before. Maybe he'd spent too much time indoors.
"Hey, check the map for me?" Seifer asked, thwapping him on the shoulder.
"Uh. It's in my bag, can you get it out?" said Hayner, offering his back to Seifer. "The second-smallest pouch in the front."
"Hm." He held still while Seifer worked the zipper and pulled out the map. "Okay. So the pavement is like a dozen yards to our right," he said, "And the river is near that, and we're on the tail-end of the mountain. So that puts us like...here?" He pointed to a point on the ink line just past the jagged edges of "small mountain".
"Yeah," said Hayner, who didn't really care. "Looks like we're about a third of the way there? Maybe a little more?"
"Hn." Seifer was leaning over his shoulder, his eyes bright and focused on the paper. He was only twenty, but no trace of baby fat hung on his cheeks. He was as hallow, jaded, tired as a man twice his age, and twice as wary.
There were a few things Hayner wanted to say to this man. He and Seifer were glued at the hip but Hayner couldn't shake the feeling that Seifer just didn't give a shit about him. He could be anybody, he could be a twelve-year-old girl or a thirty-year-old man and Seifer would make the effort to protect him, because that was what you did. Hayner was Hayner but he wasn't important. Just...tagged along, being friendly to people to smooth over Seifer's surliness, but he could be anybody.
That's what he was, wasn't it. The man on the sidelines, cheering on the heroes as they flew past: go Roxas! Seduce a rich bastard, twist him around your little finger, you're set for life! Go Seifer, protect the innocents, fight the bad guys, never give up! Go Vexen, build a blimp, get your blond helpers to get you materials, you can change the world!
You'd think all these problems would seem so much smaller next to the question of survival. Maybe they were – maybe when Hayner was starving, his stomach caved in and he waited desperately for someone to take pity in a town full of people just like him, he hadn't cared whether the starving boy next to him liked him or not.
Pretty bad fucking deal just to get away from paranoia.
But still, through his mind: Oh, Seifer. You poor thing. You sad, sweet, lonely monster.
"Let's stop at sunset," said Seifer.
"Yeah. Okay."
Hayner must have done something wrong, or off-putting, because Seifer squinted at him and gave him an "...o-kay..." before slowly withdrawing the map and crumpling it back into Hayner's bag.
"What? What's wrong?" Hayner asked. He kept the thuds of his boots even with Seifer's while they trudged over roots and poisonous vines.
"You were just staring at me," said Seifer. "It was a little creepy. You're not gonna puke again, are you?"
A terrified rabbit dove into a bush by his foot. "What?" he said, distracted. "When the fuck did I puke?"
"Last time we were out here, walking to Vexen's. Remember? You just fell onto your knees and vomited." And then, almost as an afterthought, "...really freaked me out."
"Oh. I'm so terribly sorry my impending tuberculosis made you uncomfortable."
The path was narrowing now, the spaces between the trees getting smaller as they were squished into a valley, and Seifer held a branch out of his face in front of Hayner only to let it smack him in the face when Seifer released it. "Tuberculosis makes you cough up blood, you asshole," he said.
"So? Maybe my blood looks like puke."
"You're fucking foul."
Hayner just laughed.
At night, he marveled, forests could get pretty goddamn terrifying. It was all well and good to stare outside from your window and think about the moonlight hitting the tops of the trees, or the wind rustling the leaves, or the sweet mysterious animals which darted between branches and tittered at each other. It was another thing entirely to realize that you were surrounded by black, that really, sometimes when you were walking, the treetops let no light through at all. The world revealed itself inch by inch, as his night vision only gave him the vague shape of a bush before he walked into it.
Sometimes he'd walk right through cobwebs, or at least, he hoped they were cobwebs – light airy string that revealed itself more in the tickling pull than the actual substance. And even after flailing like an idiot, he knew there was probably still some on him. Which made him think: what else is out there in the trees, waiting to swoop down on me? What already has? He imagined a tall, silent, pale man appearing like a flash in the darkness. A man who'd been tracking new prey for days, who laughed at their awkward bumbling through the trees.
But even without that, the sheer possibility of the darkness in the forest was starting to get to him, desperate as he was to keep up with Seifer. He considered the ramifications of asking to stop. They wouldn't get there as quickly, maybe, but he knew they'd have to stop and sleep eventually – there was no sense in stopping from exhaustion in the daylight, and besides, they'd been walking for ages. But then, Seifer would call him a weakling, and a lamer, and ask why he had to stop every five minutes like a toddler going on a hike.
Maybe Seifer was tired too.
Maybe not and Hayner would get yelled at.
Fuck, at this point he would settle for polite conversation – anything to get the imaginary eyes of the hunting man off his back.
"Hey, Seif?" You fuckwit. 'Seif'. Called him 'Seif'. This will go over poorly.
"Yeah?" said Seifer, stopping on a tree root.
"Uh. Wanna just call it a night?"
He didn't even hesitate, and Hayner couldn't decide if that was good or bad. "Yeah. Definitely. Sure. Pick a spot."
They actually set up camp now. They didn't just fall to the ground, too exhausted to keep walking, content to lie in the grass with their wet clothing drying between them. Vexen had given them a lighter, and a book about surviving in the wild (complete with pictures of which mushrooms would kill you), and blankets. So for once in his life Hayner felt like yes, fucking finally it matched up with adventure stories. You walked all day and ate bread and cheese and then made a fire and talked.
He and Seifer didn't talk. But they did sit around the fire, which was good enough.
Crouched in front of the fire, his hands dangling between his knees, Hayner set his eyes on Seifer.
He hadn't thought about his partner this much in all the time they'd been at the house, but leave for one day and he was back to his old ways. It was worse, actually. Now that he knew they had a home to get back to, Hayner had a name for the thing he was missing; in the meantime, the only familiar thing he had was Seifer. And he wanted – maybe he just wanted to be closer. Not have Seifer on the opposite side of the fire, but right next to him, not even touching, maybe. Or, maybe touching. Shoulders. Or they'd slink arms around each other. Hayner would take Seifer in his hand and tuck him under his chin and keep him safe.
Maybe Seifer was thinking the same thing; it was impossible to tell from his face, stony and indifferent as ever. He stared at nothing at all, or some mysterious spot on Hayner's neck.
"Sorry about this morning," he said. Hayner blinked.
"What?"
"This morning," he said. "I was weird. Sorry."
Hayner took his sweet time in answering, playing it out in his head.
"What, you mean the gay shit with grabbing my hand and crying for your mommy?"
No. That wouldn't do. Honesty?
"I didn't...mind at all. It made you seem kinda...human."
Seifer would laugh nervously. "What? Since when have I not been human, lamer?"
"I don't know. It was just cool that I wasn't the only one who felt that way."
And then, here, Seifer would pause and they'd make eye contact and sit still for a while. "...guess we do that a lot," he'd say.
"Yeah. We do."
And then there'd be more quiet, because that's how they were, and then one of them would get the nerve to say:
"Maybe we could...do it...differently."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean when we have a problem actually say it, instead of ignoring it, like we actually rely on each other instead of just being around each other."
"I'd...yeah. That's...good. Really good."
But this was reality and Hayner just found a way to cock it up gloriously.
"What? Oh. No, that was no big deal."
Seifer gave him a funny look. "Really?"
"Yeah. It's fine. Whatever."
Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid. You're fucking it up again. He's giving you a chance and you're fucking it up again because what if he's not, and you fall flat on your face because you were an idiot.
He could see Seifer shrink back from the fire a little and run his tongue behind his lower lip. Hayner didn't know why he bothered, anymore. Their conversations always ended up this way; one of them would extend a hand and the other would burn it out of fear.
"So," Hayner said. "This...city place."
"Yeah. You still have the list of stuff?"
"Yup. Yeah, it's in my bag. Dunno what half the words mean." Vexen had given them a list in his scrawly professor handwriting, and then he'd read it out loud to them, which hadn't helped at all. He'd stopped paying attention when the man got to "hydrophobic resin." The fuck that was.
"Well, I guess we just give it to the guys and hope for the best," Seifer shrugged, shuffling around to lie down on his side a safe distance from the fire. He yawned; the pink insides of his mouth looked maroon and black in the light. "Other than that, we'll just...see when we get there."
"Right."
Because that was how they were. Ad-hoc. Making it up as they went along.
Hayner looked at Seifer, curled up, eyes just wet slits in his face which caught the fire and held it there.
I want you safe. I want to open up my ribcage and bind you inside me. I want to crawl inside your head and roll into a ball and see the world from behind your eyes where it's safe. Stop ignoring me.
It was a city, Vexen had explained, which had no name. It must have done at some point, but nobody used it anymore. Like most cities, the name changed with whoever owned it that month, but mostly when people referred to "the city" they meant whichever one was closest. Vexen said, sometimes this one goes by "electric city," because they have energy and they use it, if not very well. Robots and muggy cars. It was a place for finding mercenaries and trading your shit for more useful shit. The only people who could set up permanent shop in a place like this were the ruthless, the people who long ago had stopped at nothing to stake their claims and now defended them like wild dogs.
Hayner thought Vexen was exaggerating. Human beings didn't act like that, like territorial dogs; they banded together in groups, sure, but he'd seen that with his own eyes. This was just...silly.
They smelled it before they saw it.
"What is that?" said Seifer. "Meat?"
"Christ, I hope it's meat," said Hayner, "Because the only other thing I can think of is charred corpses."
"Well. Thanks, Mister Fucking Sunshine."
"I try."
It was like a huge ugly anthill. The city rose above the forest, surrounded by a crumbling concrete wall with a gate that had been permanently wrenched open, and they could hear shouting from inside. The shouts varied from "Handmade jewelry, found objects and natural beauty from right here in the forest, hey lady, I see you looking, feel free to browse!" to "Bullets! My favorite source recently raided an army surplus store; cases of bullets for any gun you can imagine, best price in the city!"
Then they actually got close to the gate.
Chaos was inside: men stood on tables or under hodge-podge tents, crowding on either side of a paved road where people in fading clothing pushed past each other, thin-lipped and quiet if they weren't arguing or bartering. Further down were the buildings, some tall and modern (if a little cracked), some tiny elaborate shops in brick.
They didn't attract any amount of attention at all: it was too loud, too hectic, there were too many others just like them. Seifer and Hayner stood there, on the brink of the life they'd run away from however many months ago, going into shock from the noise alone.
"Fuck-ing hell," Seifer said eventually.
"Let's just...get in and out," Hayner said.
"Right."
Seifer led the way through the street, pushing aside an old man, a stone-faced woman in a headscarf, a girl their age. Hayner hushed quick apologies to them in his wake.
"He said...down the main street – that's gotta be the main street – then the first paved road to our left..." Seifer muttered, switching his gaze back and forth. The worst of the street market seemed to be over; the shops were thinning out, giving way to men with just blankets of things spread out before them. Whores popped up now, not even trying to be subtle about it. They stood by telephone poles, at the corners of buildings with their hands in their pockets, trailing Seifer and Hayner with their eyes. Hayner couldn't remember them doing that before. They'd never been...clients.
The packs must have been a clue; only men with things of value took on the weight of a bag.
Or maybe they'd always been watched, and Hayner only noticed now because it had been so long. A barefoot woman, early thirties, with a short skirt and low-cut tank top leaned against a wall with her legs spread wide; when Hayner made eye contact she licked her lips and began to gyrate her pelvis, humping the air and waiting for his reaction. He shuddered and gulped, curling his hand around Seifer's upper arm. She stopped her motions and just sighed, giving him an "okay, if there's no point to it" smile before folding her arms over her chest.
When the din of the main street began to fade, and the smell of the meat stands with it, the road they were on started to feel a lot spookier.
It was just as brown and dingy as the one they'd come from. But the street was narrower, the bricks, maybe, a little dirtier, the alleys darker. The pavement here cracked and staggered until it melted into the dirt. It must have been the downtown of somewhere, with tall buildings and empty places in their fronts which used to hold glass, old shop windows with mannequins and display cases long robbed of their merchandise. His heart jumped into his throat and stayed there when something – moved - in the space between two tall brickfront stores. A man with smiling eyes and a broad, shiny nose called out from where he sat on the curb, fiddling with a knife.
"He-ey, gorgeous," he said. "You looking for work? Real nice, I could set you up real nice here. Could always use men of such fine caliber as yourselves."
"Don't respond," Seifer said under his breath, keeping his eyes forward.
"I know you can hear me, gorgeous. Come on. You're made of gold. We could do this, no trouble."
"Don't speed up. Don't even let him know – just keep walking," he said, and set tight fingers over Hayner's wrist. He nodded and kept his head down.
Hayner realized just how vulnerable they were, and it twisted a knife in his stomach. A desperate man with a blade sneaking up behind them, whispering his scratchy stubble against their ears, "I'll be taking these." A bored mercenary in an alley waiting for a client, lifts his lazy hand, bang, "Haha, stupid kids. Probably their first time in the city."
The air around them suddenly seemed filled with weapons, poised and ready to take advantage because Hayner knew, with certainty, that there was nothing they could do if somebody decided they'd look better bleeding on the ground. There was so much empty space around them and death could come from anywhere, had he really felt like this whenever he wasn't at Vexen's, shit.
"...Hayner," Seifer said, slowing down a little as he looked down a side street. "I'm getting a little...freaked out here."
"Yeah. You're not the only one." A load of rocks was tumbling around in his ribcage. And if even Seifer was getting uneasy, then, well, shit again.
"Let's just stay close."
"Right."
Vexen had said, down the main street, the first paved road on your left, follow that until you see a sign on your right – steel, with words in blue paint: "Highwind Repairs and Trades – we take payment in all forms". So they did. And Hayner could hear his breath in his ears, he could feel the damp sweat in the crooks of Seifer's fingers.
It was clearly an autorepair shop linked up to an old gas station.
When he swung the door open, a bell rang out; he rapped his fingers against the doorframe. "Hello?" he said, looking around the shop. One thing for sure: if Vexen needed mechanical parts, this was the place to go. Shit was everywhere, on the shelves, in boxes on the floor, hanging on the walls. It was like a truck had exploded perfectly at the seams.
He couldn't see anyone, which wasn't saying much: the twists and turns of the brown dusty workings allowed plenty of places a guy could pop out from.
"You sure this is it?"
Hayner snorted and stepped forward, putting his hand on a wooden desk with a lamp. "Of course I'm sure. We need parts. This place clearly f- clearly sells them."
"Is somebody there!" cried a voice, somewhat ragged, followed by " – wait, oh shit, wait wait wait – " and then an anticlimactic clang, like a metal bowl being dropped on a kitchen floor.
"Um," said Hayner. "Yes."
"I cannot fucking deal with this right now," said the man in a back room. "One of you go deal with this."
Hayner looked around to see if he'd meant him and Seifer, but the familiar sound of boots on the floor made him realize someone was coming down the corridor for them. He figured, Vexen wouldn't send them to men who'd kill them, at least not without a reason, so that was fine, right? He danced on his feet and waited for the boots-wearer to emerge from the wreckage.
Guy sure took his sweet time doing it, but when he did show, he didn't send chills down Hayner's spine or make him feel like hiding behind Seifer. So, bonus.
"Hey," he said, coming out from behind a corner to their left. "You guys here to deal in parts?"
He stood in front of them, hands in his pockets, tired but not worn down yet. That both Seifer and Hayner had no idea what "dealing in parts" meant, because parts could mean car parts or human parts or parts of absolutely everything, seemed to escape him. He blinked and crossed his arms.
"If you came in to get out of the weather, I'll have to ask you to leave," he said.
"No, no that's not it," Hayner said, and fumbled in his pack for the list Vexen had given them. "We're here to get stuff, uh, materials and..."
"And whatever the hell a canary curtain is," Seifer said, poking at the middle of the list. The shop man laughed and leaned against a table littered with fine tools.
"Do you guys know what you're doing?" he asked them, eyes smiling and crinkling a thin silver scar between them.
"We work for somebody who does?" Hayner offered.
"Ah. Does this boss have a name?"
Names held power, sometimes; mentioning that you were Marluxia's second-hand man kept hands off you where they came from. But Hayner kind of doubted that anyone gave a shit who Vexen was. No harm there.
Seifer must've thought the same thing. "Vexen," he said. "He's a doctor or a scientist or something. He has all these schematics and shit. He just sent us to get his stuff."
"Vexen?" said the shop man, blinking a few times and running a hand through his hair. "You're kidding. Skinny guy, long hair, glasses, kinda nasal voice?"
"I guess so," said Hayner, who'd never noticed anything about Vexen's voice.
He nodded. "Wow," he said, and then nodded again. He leaned forward to shout down another one of the halls. "Hey, Cid! Vexen has minions now!"
"The fuck do I care?" came the reply. "Unless they're robot minions in need of an oil change, his ridiculousness does not concern me!"
Hayner still had to resist the urge to hide behind Seifer and wait for somebody else to do something decisive. Being called a minion barely even fazed him.
The shop man turned back to them and held out a broad hand. "Vexen used to come around here for parts all the time. He's probably the reason we managed the first six months."
Seifer, naturally, was the one who took the hand, but Hayner didn't mind at all. "Seifer," he said. "And this is Hayner."
"Nice to meet you. I'm – " and he paused here, the same sort of pause like my name, for our purposes, is Vexen, and said "...Leon."
In typical Seifer churlishness, Seifer snorted and said "Awesome. Listen, we just need to get the stuff on this list and leave. Vexen gave us some plants and herbs and books and stuff to trade you, and we want to get going pretty much ASAP." He glanced outside to the street, where it was growing darker, the shadows longer. "Because your city creeps me the fuck out and I feel like I'm going to be raped and mugged if I stay in it past sunset."
Leon gave him a proper Vexen Look at that, like mmkay silly child, this is why we fact-check things, and asked, "Do I know you?"
"Do you – what, me or Hayner?"
"You." Yeah, duh, Seifer. It was always you. It always would be. Tall proud brave stranger with dark sad eyes. Next to him, who would care about Hayner?
Seifer snorted. "Fucked if I know. I don't remember every single person I meet."
"...right," said Leon, smiling tightly. "Never mind, point taken. Can I see the list? I've never heard of a...canary curtain."
Hayner handed it over without a word and waited for Leon to give them his appraisal and tell them that they'd done something wrong. He just knew it was coming, too, like when a teacher graded your math test right in front of you. He raked his eyes down Vexen's slanted handwriting, tutting here or flicking an item there. Actually, Hayner noticed, he wasn't a bad-looking guy. There was none of that wafishness or awful girl eyes that Hayner hated when he looked at his own face. He had small, expressive eyes and a full mouth with near-invisible stubble, and his hair was unruly, thick and brown. Hayner would've expected him to be working in a camping store, selling mountain bikes and all-weather tents and looking rugged.
"Oh, caternary curtain," said Leon. "That makes more sense."
Seifer leaned over to whisper in Hayner's ear, arms crossed, "Why does he need a curtain?"
Hayner shrugged and blew air through his lips. He kept his eyes on Leon in case the guy decided to give them an update some time that day. Honestly, at this point, Hayner was sore and tired and had a funny ache in the back of his throat, and he wanted to go home to his bed. Back through the creepy town, which he could deal with (it was, what, a half-hour walk?), and then the creepy forest, and then he would be home and all he'd have to do in a day would be organizing an old library or helping Vexen grind stuff up for...preservation, or something.
He probably should have felt worse for getting homesick after two days away, especially for a place Seifer would probably argue wasn't home.
"Hm," said Leon at length. "Yeah. I can get this stuff, but it'll take me a couple of days at least. Can you guys wait that long?"
Seifer shifted on his feet and scowled, not at all pleased with this turn of events. He gave Leon a thorough once-over.
"If you...don't have a place to stay – "
"Christ, do we have a sign on our backs that says 'please adopt'? We can find our own beds, Leon," Seifer said.
Leon's eyes flicked to Hayner for a second, then back to Seifer. "Hey, no offense meant. Just wanted to make sure you guys were okay to wait."
The last thing Hayner wanted to do was spend a night sleeping on trash bags, jumping at every rustle when Seifer rolled over. The second-last thing he wanted to do was go into the forest at night. It was a romantic idea but the reality was a bunch of shadows that twisted into loneliness. But if Seifer wanted something, he got it.
"It's no problem," Hayner said. "We can keep to ourselves for another few days. Should we just pay you when you have the stuff?"
"Yeah, that seems fair," Leon said. "Come to us if you've got any problems. We owe Vexen a few favors."
"For supporting you?" Hayner asked.
Leon laughed, straightened out the paper between his hands, and glanced at a back room where somebody else was clamping up the hood of an old car. "That's a part of it," he said.
"Right – right," said Hayner, not understanding at all but nodding anyway, "We'll just come back in two days." He grabbed Seifer's wrist (not his hand, never his hand) and tugged him toward the door, not making eye contact with a blond who came in through the other door, wiping grease off his hands with a towel. The blond bumped Leon's shoulder with a familiar purposefulness that sparked jealousy in Hayner's throat on top of the homesickness.
That was the sort of thing he wanted with Seifer. To be able to come up behind him and bump shoulders with him, and have Seifer know it was just Hayner, and sling an arm over his shoulders in greeting. Not this tense, silent rivalry.
They left the shop, and Seifer was careful to level one last glare at Leon. When they were fully out of view Leon laughed, crossed his arms, and put his forehead on Cloud's shoulder.
"The circus is back in town," he sing-songed.
"You think?" Cloud asked, tossing the towel on a chair.
"Vexen's building a blimp. Unless you know anything else that needs a caternary curtain."
"Hm." Cloud eased out from Leon's head and jumped up to sit on the desk, taking his hand and matching up the pads of their thumbs. "He seems harmless. So do his helper elves."
"Yeah." Leon sighed and stared at their hands. "Vexen's harmless. He's just a terrible judge of character."
A hand around his neck pulls Leon's face to Cloud's, and he gives him a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "It'll be fine. For us, at least. At least these – " he snorted. "'Helper elves' don't give me the creeps."
"The little one seemed sad," Cloud remarked.
"Yeah. And the other one seemed constantly pissed off. Remind you of anyone you knew at that age?"
Cloud just laughed and looped a lazy arm around Leon's neck.
Vexen had forgotten what it was like to live alone in a house built for a family. He should have been a little more used to it, considering how long he'd done so before, but he had a careful memory. So when the boys did leave, he had to stop every few hours and remind himself that they were coming back – or at least that they had no reason not to. And there was nothing wrong with living alone, and he'd gotten on fine before, and all that good stuff.
In his twenties, Vexen had found other people...tiring. He could get along with anyone he needed to, but after a few hours he started pining for the privacy of his apartment and the book he'd left half-read on the armchair of the couch. He could spend entire weekends with almost no real social interaction, and that was fine with him until the next Monday, when he had to bashfully admit to people that he hadn't done anything in the past two days but sit alone in his house and read books and cook food. He didn't get lonely, but he got ashamed for not feeling lonely.
But then, Vexen thought about it now, that was probably conditioning. After all, he'd started off with quiet weekend because they were easier, and then they just became a habit – of course he'd rather do that than spend time discussing pop culture with unwashed coworkers in his free time. He saw enough of them in the day.
And now, he'd become accustomed to having loud young people running around his workplace again, getting things done and coming to him for confirmation. It wasn't his fault he didn't know what to do with himself now that he didn't have to feed three for a week.
He scrubbed a little harder at the glass aquarium he'd found in the basement, coated with dust and salt creep but still perfectly useable, and wished for the third time that day he hadn't decided to kill the chicken he'd found wandering in the forest a few years back. She'd made a decent few meals, but it would've been comforting to have something to talk to that could at least blink at you and peck the ground in confusion instead of sulking under a log like the pill bugs. And Vexen certainly wasn't about to go trapping a rabbit or a squirrel for something so stupid.
He sighed and tilted the aquarium, letting the filthy water drain out into the garden. It wasn't as clean as it could be, but it would do.
"No shortage of fish, at least," he muttered to himself, glancing in the direction of the river. "Though I imagine fish make lousy pets."
Three days, and he was already talking to himself. Brilliant.
He felt a little badly that he'd sent them to that city by themselves, but he knew he wouldn't have been able to do it. He'd have talked himself out of stepping foot in the place before he'd come in sight of it. They could handle themselves.
And if they couldn't, well. He'd put up two more crosses in the front yard and start talking to the fish.
A/N: I AM A BROKEN NITLON, FEEL SORRY FOR ME
I wrote this chapter in. Um. Four days? Which is why it's...the way that it is? I dunno, I'm trying to remember how to write at all.
Also I have a tumblr account, but I don't know what it's for or what to do with it. Somebody help. Okay. I'll go reply to stuff and do more writing now.
If you even just clicked on this update, you have my eternal gratitude.
Review?