A/N: Listen. I have this thing where whenever it starts raining, I start writing. Sets a good mood, have to stay inside, timing's out of my control so I can't reason myself into stopping when it gets hard. You know. Harmless buffoon logic!
Except it has been raining for nine fucking hours. I think I wrote, like, 70 percent of the chapter in that time span, if not more. So...those are the parts that make no sense.
You're gonna get mad at meeeeee
With silence favor me.
(Favete Linguis)
- Horace (65 BC - 8 BC)
Most of the things Vexen had to do today didn't require being outside – they probably didn't require leaving the second floor of the house. After the usual chores of watering the plants, cleaning out the gutters and checking on the rat situation (improving), all he really planned to do was take apart some of the old clothing at the seams. Any small scraps of fabric would help, and it was weirdly soothing to snip away at the threads of a shirt seam until it was deconstructed into its component parts. So at about noon, Vexen settled himself in a lawn chair underneath a tree, and set on a pair of enormous jeans with his thread scissors.
In the four days since Hayner and Seifer had left to get more supplies, Vexen had more or less given up on maintaining mental appearances.
"I should fill that aquarium today," he said to an errant chickadee, pecking forlornly at the ground. "Just with river water, some stones. There's no hope for the filter, of course, without electricity, but it's not as if it's a permanent habitat. And I could always use it for turtles."
The chickadee failed to respond.
"Hm. Some company you are," Vexen told it.
He scowled and went back to the jeans, not for the first time thinking about the size of the blimp. He may have been overly ambitious – he'd definitely been overambitious. After all, he didn't have any experience with full-scale dirigibles. It would be better to start off with something smaller, maybe holding two or three people and some cargo, just to find his feet. All they really needed to do, at this point, was make contact with other organizations trying to rebuild. With luck he might even get some of the landlords to listen. And with more resources could come bigger ships.
He probably wouldn't live to see it go much of anywhere, he realized, but still, it was worth it – at the very least it was something to do. And getting it started would probably be the hardest part, stitching the Western hemisphere back together. He just had to get enough leaders in one place, and the lot of them could start to sort things out.
"And then we'll all go for ice cream," Vexen told the chickadee with great conviction. It froze, cocked its head at him, and fluttered up onto the porch railing farthest from him to pick at his breakfast crumbs.
He sighed. A pattern was forming here. Still, he was making good progress on the jeans. He worked the lower fork of the scissors underneath a loop of yellow thread and pulled it out, getting a frayed edge for his trouble. The shade of the tree sometimes obscured his view, so he squinted and pulled the seam closer to his face.
He jumped a little when he heard a "Vexen?" from somewhere back in the woods behind him. How quickly he could forget he no longer lived alone, when they left for only a few days.
"That was fast," Vexen said offhandedly. "Though I suppose you can walk faster than I can." It usually took two days just to get to the city, if he remembered right. They'd had enough time to walk to and from the city without more than a few hours there. Had something gone wrong?
"Vexen." He cleared his throat. Hayner, then; Hayner was the only one who hesitated when he spoke. "I – I...are you..."
He faltered and closed the scissors, setting them down on the arm of the chair. But emerging from the woods was neither Hayner nor Seifer. He was ragged, his shirt stiff with dirt and his pants splashed dark up to the shins. He held his hands carefully at his sides, and scraps from a paper grocery bag wrapped around most of his fingers, smudged with blood.
His jaw was quivering. His eyes were large and red and wet. His clothing was too big for his body.
"Zexion?" Vexen said, not moving any closer. It had to be him – nobody else had that hair – but God, he'd changed. He was taller and thinner, his eyes cased in shadows.
"I. I, I'm sorry. I remembered – when we passed by this house – I mean it was ages ago but I thought maybe you'd – "
"What's happened?" Vexen asked, taking a step closer. Zexion didn't move. "It's all right. It's fine. I'm not mad."
Zexion's chest heaved in and out, like a sob that reached up his neck and stopped there. He choked a little and staggered forward a few feet.
"It's all right, Zexion," Vexen said, and extended a clean arm. "Just tell me what happened."
Zexion closed the gap, stepping into the shade and holding his dirty hands up like he was waiting for a free sink in the bathroom. "I don't want – "
"Please." Vexen snorted and pulled him close, wrapping his arms around him and indifferent to the stains on his shirt. "Please, as if I've ever cared."
He made the noise he'd choked back before, a dry sob through a torn paper bag, and pressed his face to Vexen's shoulder and clawed at his back, twisting his hands in the clean brown shirt. He started to rack with muffled sobs.
"Oh, Zexion," Vexen said, as gently as he could manage. He smoothed his hands down his back, though the motion was stuttered by all the grime in the folds of the shirt. "Look at you. You're shaking like a wet dog."
He laughed a little at that, but it broke halfway through and he gulped in air instead, keeping his nose buried in Vexen's shirt. "It kept...Vexen, it didn't –" he hiccupped. "It didn't work, I kept trying and – but I couldn't go back."
"I know." He didn't, but that didn't matter for Zexion right now. "It's all right."
"I have to tell – "
"You haven't got to do a thing right now," Vexen said, cradling the back of his head. "You take all the time in the world." He laughed to himself a little and rubbed a big oval on Zexion's back. "God, you were always the calm one, too. Whenever something was wrong I could rely on you to be all right. I can't imagine what's got you this shaken."
For his part, Zexion just seemed glad to have someone to cling to. He just nodded a little and kept his head down, shivering. Vexen didn't make a move; he kept rubbing circles over his back and not asking questions.
His behavior must have been a little disconcerting for Zexion, who'd only ever known Vexen at his worst. Finding a patient man taking apart jeans in a backyard wearing Vexen's face had to be surprising when the version he knew scowled and hissed and belittled. The open air did wonders for a man: removed from his pack, Vexen had indulged the professor in him, and forgotten the meanness which let him survive before. He didn't even have to compete for funding out here, much less a place to sleep. He had the time and the will to cradle Zexion as if he were a child.
"Oh, god," Zexion said at length, breathing in Vexen's smell, which he hadn't missed at all until now.
"I know," Vexen said quietly.
Zexion took one last quiet sob, sniffed, and withdrew. He swallowed again and again to get the lump out of his throat, and his face kept sliding back into a childish grimace to let the sobs out, but he'd improved enough to talk.
"You," he said. "You're here."
"You must have headed in this direction for a reason?" Vexen was fine to stay in a safe topic for now. If Zexion didn't want to explain the blood, or the bags under his eyes, or the mud up to his knees, Vexen would talk about the house. He was in shock himself at seeing a familiar face, haggard as it was.
"It's just...on the river. And I remembered...when...a long time ago, when we came by here, and you mentioned you'd like to live in a place like this. I hadn't...thought you'd be here, but I remembered the house, and I'd hoped it would be...empty." He sniffed and wiped his nose on his sleeve.
"Sorry to disappoint," Vexen said gently.
"No – a, aha – no, this is...better. I think." Zexion blinked some of the redness out of his eyes and stared at him. "I mean, if you don't want – "
"Of course I do." He put a palm against Zexion's face and tried as caring a smile as he could manage. "You're safe here, Zexion. Whatever he's done to you, or whatever you've done on your own, you can leave it at the doorstep."
Zexion smiled back a little. He'd gotten taller in the last few years, but he'd lost weight. Vexen ached just looking at him.
"Come on," he said. "Let's get you inside and cleaned up. Maybe you can tell me where you got all those cuts on your fingers when I get them some proper bandages."
Hayner had been all too glad to get out of that shop, but now that they were out and with two days to kill he had no idea where to go.
"Well, fuck. What now?" Seifer echoed his thoughts, eyeing a tall man in a trench coat and a beard across the road.
Hayner giggled. "Seifer."
"What?"
"I think we're tourists."
"Oh, god. What the fuck." He hooked his elbow around Hayner's and headed for the main street, ignoring the other stores with clothes and paper and weaponry. "Why the fuck not. Let's go do tourist things."
They turned at the crossroads, and keep going where they'd come off before, away from the city entrance and toward the center of the city. Hayner had no idea what sorts of things they'd find there – rich man parties, streets full of orphan beggars, movies, the robots Vexen said the place was famous for. He figured that it might be a stupid idea, especially with no real way of getting out of trouble they found their way into, but hey. The advantage of never joining any groups was that you didn't make nearly so many enemies.
"I don't know what tourist things means," he said at length, sticking his hands in his coat pockets. For all that Seifer said he looked girly in it, the black coat was plenty warm.
"I think we wear awful clothing and ask stupid questions," Seifer said.
"We always do that."
"See? Shouldn't be a problem."
While they were talking, they emerged from the dredges of the city as quickly as they'd entered them: this part of the town wasn't beautiful, sure, but the graffiti here was more colorful and a lot more PG than back there. They were coming up on what might even have been a restaurant, or at least a watering hole, with chairs and tables outside leading to a friendly glass-front building.
"You hungry?" Seifer asked him, gazing at it indifferently.
"I don't think we should waste money," Hayner said, wary of blowing what they had too soon. These people probably dealt in trades like everyone else, and Hayner imagined that the fruit preserves in his pack would make decent payment, especially here, but what if they needed it to get out of trouble later, or to buy a place to sleep, or to get information? They didn't know how much the Highwind place would charge, even if they threw in Vexen's favors as a discount.
"Good. Just thought I'd ask," Seifer said.
He blew air out threw his mouth in a halfhearted sigh and kept walking, hands stuffed in his pockets. Hayner eyed the steaming soup being served to a couple of women outside, but he ran to catch up soon enough; Seifer was leaning forward and trying to see something behind the buildings.
"What is it?" Hayner asked.
"Park."
"Really?" Not that he didn't believe Seifer, because he'd sure been shown up about that last time, but it seemed strange that there'd still be a park instead of just more space for stalls.
"Think so," Seifer said, standing on his toes. "It's overgrown. But I can see a fence around it for sure."
Hayner did the same, peering over his shoulder. True enough, wild vines burst through a chain-link fence behind a couple of apartment buildings, and behind them trees reached proudly for the sky. "Go figure," he said. "Wanna go look at it?"
"For two days?" Seifer wrinkled his nose.
"For now, I mean."
"Oh." He stared at it, licked his lips and put his hands in his pockets. Seifer's shirts fit him properly now, instead of coming up over his belly. It made him look more like a grown-up. "Yeah, all right, but I might wanna leave soon."
"Cool."
They made their way between the buildings, not stopping to look at the man in two torn coats begging for food, and hopped over the fence with the practiced ease of the post-urban. And, like they'd grown to expect from badly tended front yards and abandoned gardens, the park looked like it had started off all right and was now straining at the seams. Some of the trees had widened so much that their trunks bulged and folded over the fences; grass flowers stood tall and straight through the slats of the benches. Hayner had finally realized some time last year that life was hungry, and for all the Earth Day spiels he got in elementary school about the destructive powers of Man, plants had no problem eating away at their careful landscape planning.
Hayner could just about make out a path, rolling quietly and unobtrusively underneath the vegetation, humming silent apologies for interrupting their photosynthesis. He itched to follow it, at least a little, because this place had better lighting, and more songbirds, and fewer disgruntled badgers.
"Hey, it's pretty nice here," Seifer said. The smallest smile, the vague upturns of the points of his mouth, but it was there nonetheless. Hayner broke out a full grin.
"I like it," he declared, lacing his fingers behind his head.
"You like everything that doesn't try to shoot you," Seifer said.
"I don't like you," Hayner said, slanting toward the path and shoving aside a maple sapling.
"Shut up. Yes you do." Seifer's voice sounded farther and farther away the further Hayner climbed into the forest; he didn't sound like he was even trying to follow him. That stung just a little, because Hayner knew he'd follow for fear of being left behind, but he didn't do anything about it.
"Where are you going?" Seifer called. Hayner had found a tree trunk uprooted, draped over the path, soft with years of rot. It was huge; its roots swerved out in big, twisting curls.
"I'm exploring," he said. "Come on."
"Exploring," he said, crashing his way toward Hayner but avoiding sprouts. "I'd have thought we'd had enough freakin' exploring to last us a lifetime."
"Hm." He kicked at the trunk experimentally, because nobody had ever told him to grow up and stop looking for gross wiggly things under rocks, but it wouldn't budge. "Nope. Wrong again. Honestly, Seifer, you have no sense of adventure." Planting one foot on the top of the tree, he swung himself over it and stomped onto the other side.
"You're in a good mood," Seifer said, stepping easily over the trunk to stand behind him. He kept pace with Hayner, a couple of steps behind, while they went further in. Hayner didn't know what he was looking for – if he was looking for anything – but he wanted to get the whole park down pat, because it was so much smaller than a real forest. It didn't feel like a real forest. The trees were too far apart; grass still plucked up in between their roots; park benches and pieces of park benches slowly decayed on either side of the path.
"Yeah. I guess so," he said absently.
"Should I be worried? You high or something?" Seifer laughed, clapping him on the back with a firm hand. A dull, warm sort of feeling stayed there, permeating the thick black coat and the thin green shirt underneath it.
"I am high on life. I don't need drugs to have a good time. I just need my friends!" he crowed and skipped forward a few paces. Through the trees he could see an open area, maybe an old baseball diamond or something. Sunlight drifted over the late-afternoon moisture, and made the grass glitter. He started to crash his way toward it, cutting away from the path – but he didn't want to seem...overeager. He stumbled backward and kept to the pavement.
"That's it. You're ridiculous. I'm breaking up with you."
That did funny things to Hayner's stomach, both the thought of having anything real, a relationship or a friendship or something good like that to break up and the idea, even the joke, that Seifer would just – anyway. The weird thing, though, was how he didn't even really care at that moment. He took it the way he thought he should always take it but couldn't: it was a freakin' joke. It meant as much coming from Seifer as it would coming from him: maybe quietly loaded with meaning, outwardly just a peace offering.
"You wouldn't dare. You won't be able to find another man to support you at this age," he sniffed, straightening his shoulders.
Somewhere behind him, Seifer actually giggled, then ran to catch up. "Are you calling me fat?" he asked.
"You're sagging in your old age. You look like a manatee in that dress." Hayner spread his palm out against Seifer's arm to should him his saggy, womanly fat. Upon finding well-tanned muscle (muscles that moved like snakes, that Hayner stared at in the wee hours of the morning and wanted, on himself or for himself he didn't know), he scowled and squeezed a little. "See? You're disgusting."
"This is quickly going to a weird place."
"You're just scared of not being pretty," Hayner said. He eyed the opening to the field, maybe a dozen yards away.
"Hm," Seifer said, and flexed his bicep under Hayner's hand, which was just unfair. "You heading for that clearing?"
"I was thinking of it." He wondered what objection Seifer could possibly have to something like that, sighed when he gave up.
"Cool, okay. Is it all right if I go check out the town for like an hour? I just wanna make sure I know where stuff is, maybe scout out somewhere to spend the night." He cleared his throat and stared, bright clear eyes, at some place just behind Hayner.
"Oh. Oh, okay. Want me to come with?" Probably he sounded like a clingy little puppy, and regretted the words right when they left his mouth, but oh well.
"Nah, it's fine. Honestly, you look – you look like you could use some rest, man." Seifer slung an arm around Hayner's shoulders and shook him a little and grinned. Hayner didn't know what to make of that, exactly. He just smiled back.
"Okay. Sure, I guess. I'll just...stay here." His voice was strange, he knew, like someone had taken the center out of it, like it was just a high-quality recording. He didn't know why was the kicker; it made sense that Seifer would want to crawl around and proclaim everything stupid and broken before he could settle down, and Hayner did want to rest, and some time to himself seemed great at the moment.
"Awesome, cool, great," Seifer said, blinked a little at the sheer stupidity of his mouth (Hayner assumed), and then shook his shoulder again. "I'll see you soon."
"...yeah."
Then there was this fucking moment where he didn't take his hand off of Hayner's shoulders. Their eyes were glued together, which shouldn't have been something strange but was, somehow. Now that Hayner thought about it, they never really did meet eyes, did they? Not without a reason, like to share in an oh my god can you believe what a freak Vexen is moment. But times like this when there was nothing to groan about, suddenly eye contact seemed strange. It was some awful pointless thing to be avoided between men; it served no purpose; the etiquette was to look away when it happened. He couldn't, though, for some reason. Seifer's eyes stayed the same while the face around it got darker and harder and smiled less. In the last five years that hand, five warm, dry, dirty fingers curling around the roundness of his shoulder, had become less something to freak out about and more of a given until it had taken on another meaning entirely, buried too far deep for either of them to look. Nothing had moved in their hearts for so long, now, that Hayner didn't even know how to look for it any more, but instead relied on these tiny moments – cracks in the iceberg – to see it.
Seifer cleared his throat and dropped his hand.
"But yeah, I'll just be back that way if you need me," he said anxiously, jerking his thumb to the city.
"Okay." When Seifer only took a few steps backwards, Hayner rolled his eyes and shooed him with his hands. "Get. I'll be fine on my own for two hours, mom."
Seifer cackled, turned around, and headed off the way they'd come. His movements were strong and sure; he stepped with purpose, but not roughness, flatly unconcerned with showing off.
Then he was gone. Turned the corner and Hayner was – alone.
Shit.
Shit. He hadn't been alone for ages. Not really, really alone, not so he didn't have to worry about someone coming in to talk to him.
It was...nice, actually. Evidently he had learned nothing from after-school cartoons about the magic of friendship.
He entered the clearing and cast around for something to do. Like he'd expected, the faded orange dirt of an amateur baseball diamond still was stuck in one corner although hardier, broad-leaved weeds stuck fast in it. A boulder lay more or less in the middle exposed to the sunlight.
Hayner smiled, and climbed onto it one scrabbling step at a time until he could flop down on the top. He stretched like a happy cat, arms above his head, and savored the ache in his legs from walking too far and too long. Maybe he'd just lie here for two hours, slowly getting warmed over by the sun until he was soft and yellow and glowing inside.
"Hmm," he hummed, wiggling his back on the rock. The heat seeped through his skin.
He felt oddly vulnerable, sitting all exposed and alone, with his precious belongings cast to the side out of his reach. Anyone could come tearing onto the field, kill him and steal his shit before he could even blink. For some reason, though, ten minutes away from the streets, he just knew that couldn't happen. Not really. He could get murdered and raped in one of those alleys, sure, where dirt built up in the cracks in the walls and drained into the people. But this place had sun, and sparrows that bickered in the bushes, and grass slowly being replaced by clover flowers.
It reminded him a little bit of going to the beach. One summer, a few days before school started – was it a few days, or a couple of weeks? Something like that – anyways, they'd wanted to go to the beach. Him, and Pence, and Roxas, and Olette. It'd been the cutest thing, scraping together the money to buy tickets for it, and by the time they'd got there everyone and their mom had taken up all the good spots, so they'd gone over to the huge, slippery rocks. Hayner remembered just lying there, sunning himself while Pence tripped on his own feet trying to catch crabs.
He remembered Roxas clambering up next to him, and how they'd both made fun of the other two for getting so excited.
"Mom says the oil crisis is getting worse."
"So? People always talk about everything like it's the end of the world."
"Well yeah, I know, but she says that's why our train tickets were so expensive, that's all."
It didn't even hurt anymore. Thinking about them was kind of nice, actually, in a wistful way. But it didn't even hurt that they were all gone. Hayner thought about Roxas being fucked in a tower and getting a pat on the head for being a good boy toy at the end of it. Oh, no, sorry, Axel was different, they loved each other.
Hayner snorted.
He'd always known, on some level, that Roxas would leave. He'd even suspected it when they were kids – something about him wasn't suited to Twilight Town, and seemed above the petty squabbles with Seifer. He'd imagined Roxas would lead an exciting life with drama and intrigue and everything. Just not...this way. He was still right, though: Roxas had, intentionally or not, seduced a gorgeous redhead and been whisked away to an ivory tower, and what had happened to Hayner? Teamed up with his boyhood rival, half in love, living off of scraps, convinced he'd change the world by building a blimp and going on long walks through the forest. Stuck in limbo while Roxas was probably whispering sweet nothings to his rich lover. Prince of a world Hayner couldn't even touch.
Fuck.
Fuck, it was unfair.
He kneaded a hand into his side and trailed it across his stomach, unbuttoning his coat, lifting his shirt to warm his belly in the sun. He felt a decent, lean sort of muscle there, and drew a finger down the line of his abdomen. Hey, not bad. Not exactly a bodybuilder, not exactly Seifer, but not terrible. He hoped Roxas was fat, wherever he was.
That was funny; he hadn't even thought about the guy for weeks. Months, more like. Had he just not had time to breathe since then?
Not really. He'd just been thinking about other things. Which was good, in a way, because apparently he could think back on times with the four of them and only have the memory of the slow, sad burn in his heart. He supposed if he was obsessed with Roxas, that would be a pretty bad sign. But he didn't want revenge, and sure as hell didn't want Roxas for himself, or even in his life. Roxas was a memory. Gone. Okay.
Okay.
That was one thing down – one thing he hadn't even thought of for ages. He closed his eyes and sighed, running his hand over his abs again. He could be happy. If he tried hard enough. If he just decided, consciously, to stop being an asshole to Seifer, all this animosity would just slide away like a shameful snail.
Uh-huh. Because that had worked so fucking well in the past, extending an olive branch and all. Seifer was so clearly eager to be his pal. His fucking buddy.
His fucking buddy. There was an idea.
Hayner laughed out loud at that, because hell, sex was always the solution for characters in soap operas to sort out their feelings, so obviously it would work in real life. And he would, what? Throw himself at Seifer when they settled down for the night? Slip a hand between them and whisper "touch me" when Seifer met his lustful gaze? Stare at him and then look away blushing for two days on end until Seifer cornered him about it? Jesus Christ.
He wondered how it would happen, if it ever could. It would probably be like everything else that happened to them: sudden, underwhelming, and inevitable. Hayner would have a private little freak out that Seifer wouldn't like him anymore after that, and in the morning they'd both ignore it until they forgot it had ever happened.
He rolled his head to the side, eyes lazy and half-open to stare at the field. A rabbit was gnawing at the grass a few feet away; Hayner watched a blade slowly disappear into its busy jaws. The rabbit noticed him then, and froze in a panic - mouth, ears, nose all petrified with fear and its eyes shining bright at him. Your move, human.
Struck by the sudden urge to assure the bunny that he was an okay human, Hayner didn't move either. He blinked slowly and kept his eyes on the rabbit.
It was almost amazing, the level of stillness this stupid little thing could achieve. His movement had flicked a switch in its brain that just locked it into place, terrified and careful and barely even breathing. But Hayner kept his eyes on it and kept as quiet as he could. He'd had his share of practice with extended silences.
He had no idea why it was so important for the rabbit to stop freaking out about him. It was a stupid mammal. He wasn't exactly barring it from its only source of food - the whole park was rife with weeds and ferns and good things to eat. He just...didn't want it to be afraid of him?
Didn't want it to single him out, more like. If he were totally honest, he just...fuck. Wanted the rabbit to accept him. What the hell? Since when did he care about the opinions of small woodland animals? Since now, apparently. Since it had stared at him like he was horrifying, and he wanted to prove it wrong.
Yeah, because that made it normal.
He'd never really thought about...rabbits. This one was beautiful, as far as rabbits went. Its fur lay like a neat, smooth sheet over the whole of its body, leaning and bending with the skin. Its eyes were dark, and he could almost see thin black eyelashes around them - what a funny thought, that rabbits had eyelashes. But there was a kind of...organization to the whole animal, like you couldn't call it perfect or exceptional but it was just a prime example of rabbit, plucked from a mold somewhere. A soft brown furry thing with eyelashes.
After a long while - he wasn't keeping track, but it felt like seven or eight minutes - the rabbit started to shake off its freeze. It slowly lowered its head to the ground, keeping one eye on Hayner, and began to graze at a tenth of its former pace like a test run, waiting for the moment he leapt off the rock and pounced.
When he didn't so much as lift a finger, the rabbit inched back to steady munching and at length twitched an ear and ignored him.
Hayner felt...weirdly honored by that, actually, which was pretty incredibly stupid but still true. Maybe this was the real-life version of the test of his pure heart - whether or not a dumb animal gave a shit about what you did. He hadn't come crashing through the brush to ruin their lives; he was all right; don't worry guys, it's only Hayner. It was a terrible way to go about life but it made him happy just then.
He smiled and turned his head back up to face the sky. This place was...warm. He thought of the night he and Seifer had spent in an old hardware store, long ago looted of its merchandise, and how cold and lonely that had been. Curled up on the lower shelf, trying to ignore the shaking numbness in his bare toes and the way wind would slither up his spine through the crack between his shirt and pants. Some part of him had always been cold, or aching, sore and blistered. And there had always been these smells, like - like the whole city was rotting from the inside out.
Bodies didn't smell bad like rotting eggs. They weren't a little stinky and unfortunate, they didn't reek of body odor. The decomposition radiated a stifling heat, a smell like having your nose an inch away from your own vomit. It was heady and thick and left a taste in your mouth that made you nauseous, pushed down on the back of your tongue until you ran away or threw up. Everything pulled apart and melted down to a thick brown ooze dripping off the skeletons.
His stomach shuddered a little at the memory, but when he breathed in through his nose he got...light. On a cellular level, the plants were probably pretty busy, but from Hayner's view everything was more or less still. The air moved in little puffs and swirls of pollen, clean and sweet and scentless. This wind carried no death.
Hayner sighed, and slid into a dreamless sort of sleep in the sunlight, wondering when Seifer would be back.
If anything, going into the city alone was more terrifying than when he'd gone with Hayner. At least with someone else next to him, Seifer'd had to put on a brave front. If Hayner was scared, then Seifer had to be the one who kept pushing him on. Thinking that why may have been a little vain - acting like the Big Manly Man to show off in front of Hayner - but hey.
Somehow, when he was with someone else, someone more frightened than he was, he hadn't really thought anything bad could happen. Of course it couldn't. Because what would Hayner do then?
But with his head down watching water snake along the side of the road and into a drain, yeah. Yeah, it wasn't so hard for the scary paranoid things to become things that could actually happen. Going in with Hayner, that was like watching a horror movie and then afterwards pretending that standing in the light would keep you safe. This was more like those intense hikes where the ledges got really narrow, and the space between handholds got too long, and you started to think I could fall I could actually fall and die here. He wouldn't be randomly attacked, not him of all people for no real reason, but if he went into one of these motels and paid with food or supplies from a heavy backpack - …
He'd been on the other end of these situations. He'd gone through the reasoning: if this dipshit has so much valuable shit that he just totes lots of it around in his giant backpack, he's bound to have plenty more where that came from, and Jesus, a guy needs to eat. Asshole can just go get more from his treasure pile when he comes to.
He'd never stuck around long enough to see what happened to the guys after they were knocked unconscious, of course. Maybe everyone just assumed you were drunk and left you alone. Maybe you got raped in an alley. Either way, Seifer didn't want to find out.
Faint music was coming out the doors of a nearby restaurant, though he couldn't see much through the windows. There was a bar, some crowded tables, and what looked like a stage or a podium at the back, shrouded in a smoky haze.
When he opened the door, he was met with the stench of cigars and alcohol, so he just held a hand up to his mouth and made his way toward the bar. He'd been right about there being a stage, but though it was lit and furnished with a microphone and a stool, the music was coming from speakers in each corner of the room. They had 24-hour access to electricity, and this was what they did with it? Hook up some speakers and some crappy stage lights?
Well, at least they hadn't skimped on the noise level. Whatever was playing - sounded like classic rock to Seifer, but fuck, how could he know - thudded loud enough to shake the floor just slightly, and physically hurt his ears. He felt like his eardrums were going to snap in half. BOWM BOWM BOWM BOWM BOWM underneath a crooning falsetto that descended into a growl. He shivered and swallowed, which made weird tiny shlick noises in the middle of his ear, amplified overmuch by their location. The whole thing reminded him of being on a plane when he was a kid - that weird pressure in his ears until a yawn or a jaw crack temporarily dispelled it.
"Hey. Hey!" he shouted at the bartender, who didn't seem at all bothered by the music. Nobody did in the whole place did, actually; they all sat at their tables and laughed and talked and drank like the music was a distant hum. Then again, Seifer thought, if they'd spent most of their lives in the electric city, loud music was probably a relative term.
Of course, their hearing might have suffered for it. The bartender hadn't even reacted; she was still at the other end, leaning of the bar and talking to somebody. She was kind of suspiciously hot for a bartender, he realized; her chest strained against a tight wifebeater that didn't even reach her bellybutton. Nothing else about the place suggested it was that kind of bar, but still, Seifer kept on his toes.
"Excuse me," he said when she was done at the other end. She looked up and flashed him a bright smile.
"What can I get you?"
"Um." A little part of him bristled at her...bounciness, both literal and otherwise. This was a woman well-accustomed to male admiration. "You guys got rooms I can rent for a night?"
And he swore to God, if the next thing that came out of her mouth was Not if you plan on sleeping alone followed by a gesture to a curtained back room, he would be out of there before she could blink.
"Mm, sure. Not really my area, though. If you go around to the other door you'll find the guy who takes care of those customers."
Oh. How...succinct and polite. Not really the kind of thing you'd expect from Chesty McMidriff, but okay, served him right for making assumptions.
"What's a night cost?" he asked, hooking one thumb under the strap of his backpack, because that would fucking help if somebody decided to rob him.
"Mm, usually negotiable. He doesn't take money if he can help it. Batteries, sugar, canned food...reasonable, though. How many rooms do you need?" she asked, grabbing an empty beer mug and dipping it in a soapy bucket of water.
"How many beds are in a room?"
"One. Queen."
He shrugged. Hayner was a little guy, and Seifer wasn't huge. "One, then."
"Yeah, don't worry about it. He'll take what you have."
"Right. Thanks for the help," he said, resisting the urge to cradle his ears against whatever had come on next through the speakers.
"No problem." She smiled again, and it reached her eyes, which gave Seifer a pang of something he didn't fully understand. "Hey, stick around a few more minutes and we'll get live music."
Seifer stared at the speakers. His eyes started to hurt. "Uh. Maybe later." If it was a live version of this stuff, he was pretty sure something important would pop.
Vexen led him up the steps and onto the first floor, careful not to squeeze his wrist too hard.
"We'll clean you up in the bathroom. My lab space isn't really prepared for medical work," he laughed. "It's more suited to preserving dead things than live ones."
"Okay," said Zexion, eyes on the floor. Even at the university, he'd hardly been talkative, but Vexen was almost frightened to find out where this new, heavy silence came from.
He sat Zexion down on the toilet and brushed his hair out of his face.
"How old are these cuts?" he asked, taking one shaking hand between two of his own.
"Days," Zexion said.
Vexen nodded, inwardly cursing about infection. There was no need to worry the kid about that just yet, not until he got a good look at the cuts. He slid a washcloth out of the towel rack and ran it under some cold water from the sink, wringing it out before setting on Zexion's poor hands.
He was as gentle as he could be, but the blood was thick and crusted where it had dried around the wounds. It was hard to tell what was a scab and what was a dried streak, scrubbing at the fingers until they began to turn pink. "Nn," he frowned, then reached up to the sink, plugged it, and filled it with three inches of water. On any other day this would have been a tremendous waste of resources - all that clean, filtered water when the last rain had been so short - but this, if any, was the time for an exception.
"Soak your hands in here," he urged, pulling Zexion to sit up and place his hands in the sink. "I'll be right back with some rubbing alcohol."
Zexion hadn't been attacked or wounded. He hadn't even really been hiding after the first day or so. Weeks alone in an abandoned neighborhood did things to a guy that Marluxia just...couldn't.
He looked forward to Xigbar finding him. There would be something disgustingly poetic about dying in an empty suburb, delicious and anticlimactic. A snuffed candle, rather than a glorious explosion. A whimper instead of a bang.
Xigbar didn't come, but then, of course he didn't come. It wasn't like Zexion knew anything important, or had anyone to tell it to. Of all things, really. Of all things that got to him: Marluxia didn't care. None of them cared. Hell, he'd made Xigbar and Lexaeus go drag Luxord's body back for burial, but Zexion? Pff. Leave him to rot in a forest. He could have died a thousand times and it wouldn't matter to anyone.
Vexen had been right about the water - the dried blood was softening up, turning it pink; he rubbed two fingers together and they were almost clean again.
"This'll sting a little, though I don't have to tell you that," said Vexen, coming back in with a wide glass bottle. He shook it a little and smiled at Zexion.
He didn't bother trying to return it, but kept his eyes on the alcohol and his hands in the sink. "Where do you get that now?"
"I know someone who distills it. The whole production is funded by one of those landlord types, you know," he waved his free hand around. "Makes his money off tenant farmers, medical houses. But the distiller sells the excess to whomever he pleases, and I'm happy to take it off his hands."
"Oh."
"Yes. 'Oh.'" Vexen laughed and grabbed the washcloth, uncapping the bottle and holding the cloth over the opening while he tilted it. "Here. Let's see your hands. Sit down."
It was a little nice to be taken care of, even if it was by someone like Vexen, and Zexion just plunked onto the toilet and held out his hands. He looked like a child. Right now it was all he could do to keep staring at the floor and pretending everything was better than it seemed, though, so he didn't really care. Let him look like a child. The house was warm and the ceramic toilet seat was smooth.
He ignored the sting as Vexen began rubbing at each of his fingers in turn, toweling them off. The man worked in silence for a few minutes, and Zexion marveled at his hands: quick, gentle and authoritative. They didn't seem like manipulative bastard hands. It was hard to connect them with Marluxia's sadistic fuck buddy, harder to connect that face.
"Look at me?" he said, nudging Zexion's chin up. He wet the washcloth and started to clean Zexion's face with slow, purposeful strokes. "Zexion."
He met his eyes.
"What's happened?"
Zexion stayed silent for a minute, musing. He could tell Vexen the whole story. He could be overly vague. He could lie outright, or just shake his head and say nothing.
But that wasn't - fuck, it wasn't - fair. Experience had taught him that Vexen wasn't a man to be trusted, but then, he'd been the first one to leave. "You're sick. I'm done. Come find me someday, if you want to try again, but - I'm done." Of all people, he'd be the one to get it.
"I...left," he said, eyes on his hands. The cuts were so small now that they were clean; tiny raw-edged scrapes framed by ragged skin. They peppered his fingers, concentrated at the tips, but there weren't all that many of them.
"And good on you for it," Vexen laughed, rinsing off the washcloth with water and wringing it out over his head. With Zexion's hair good and wet, he started to towel him off like a dog out of a lake. "What happened when you left?"
"Xigbar."
He paused in his scrubbing, palms on either side of Zexion's head, to look him in the eyes. The barest corners of his mouth twitched down, and his eyes got a little tighter, but otherwise his expression was blank. "Marluxia sent someone after you?"
"I guess."
"But he had a gun," Vexen pointed out. "Or something to kill you with?"
"Gun," Zexion said and diverted his eyes.
He smoothed a thumb across his temple through the towel. "I'm so sorry."
That made Zexion look at him again. "Why?" he asked.
Vexen frowned and leaned back, folding the towel over the bathtub and handing Zexion a hairbrush. "Why am I sorry you were nearly shot for trying to do the right thing?" he said, mouth a thin line.
Zexion snorted and started to brush his hair in halting pulls. "Just...doesn't seem like you."
"Ah." He sat down, crossing his arms. "Does it not, then," he mumbled.
Swallowing, Zexion paused in his brushing to look at Vexen in his glass green eyes. He looked away again just as fast. "No offense."
The silence sat down on them and blocked anything else Zexion could squeeze out in apology. He would think of something - You've changed now, obviously - but when he tried to say it, some little part of his head said Don't make it worse. That instinct had saved him a thousand embarrassments before.
"Well, no matter. I've got thicker skin than that." Vexen smiled stiffly at him and rubbed the back of his neck. "How did you get back here?"
"I just...followed the river," Zexion said. Given Vexen's forgiveness, he thought he owed the man a little more: "I headed downstream, and then I remembered, passing up this way a while ago, when you'd found the house. And - like I said. I thought it...might still be here."
Vexen snorted. "Makes sense," he said. "I'm surprised more refugees from the land of Marluxia haven't ended up here already."
"Well, most people don't get out," Zexion laughed, then cursed himself for it. Vexen's dark sense of humor had probably gone with his malice. Did he want to be hated?
He smiled again, and sighed, and took the brush out of Zexion's hand when it was offered to him. "Remind me - is that the first city you encounter, traveling upstream from this house?"
Zexion frowned. "I didn't see any others on my way down, no."
Vexen didn't say or do anything at that. But he stayed sat for a while, staring at the sink where a knob was slowly coming unscrewed and the door didn't quite close all the way on the cabinet. Eventually he blinked and put that smile on again, meetin Zexion's eyes. "What is it?" Zexion asked.
"Nothing. Pet hypothesis. And it wouldn't matter either way, I don't think." He stood, holding the door open for Zexion. "Let's go get you a change of clothes."
Whatever the fuck had been playing next door didn't permeate to the motel clerk's office, because when Seifer found it and made his way inside he couldn't hear a thing. The place looked fit for a murder mystery - wooden desk, floor, walls; a little bell to call for assistance and a board heavy with room keys on hooks.
The front desk was empty, and save for a little file room in the back, there didn't seem to be any close place where somebody could be hiding.
"Hello?" Seifer said, taking a few steps into the room for a proper look around. Boots went blin, blin, blin on the clean floor. "Hello-o?"
Bing! He jumped and spun on one foot, not nearly so smooth as he would've liked. Probably looked like one of those assholes who thinks he's in an action movie. The source of the noise must've been the box next to the door, which he'd taken for a vending machine. Looking at it now, it was an awful lot more like a huge ATM, touch screen and everything.
"...hi?" he said, walking toward it.
The screen presented him with a list of languages, so he poked English and waited for the next screen to load.
Human assistance is not available at this time. Would you like to proceed with check-in?
It was in a no-nonsense font, an unobtrusive dark red against a beige background.
There were three options: 'yes,' 'no,' and 'more information.' He hit the last one and waited again.
This is a fully automated check-in system. Payment will be agreed upon via the system, and collected when a human representative returns to the establishment. The check-in system is guaranteed secure. If necessary, human assistance is available at the hours listed*:
Seifer glanced at the "hours listed" and then at the analog clock next to the machine. "Human assistance" should've been available for another two hours.
Then he followed to asterisk to its inevitable conclusion: Hours subject to change.
"Thaaaat's super," he said, hitting the back button and canceling the transaction. "Figures the first city with a regular energy source would use it to be lazy as shit."
"Is somebody there?" The call came from the tiny file room.
Seifer considered saying "No," smudging the touchscreen and leaving, but answered in the affirmative.
"Oh! Oh, well, you shoulda rang the bell." A thin man in a clean white shirt and tailored vest stepped out of the room and slid behind the desk, hitting the little bell a few times to make his point. "Sweetheart rings clear as sunshine, even back there."
"Uh-huh." Seifer, less than amused at this point, just hefted his pack further up his shoulder. What kind of an asshole didn't even stay at his post during what was probably a decent time for business? Next door, a ton of people were probably getting shit-faced and looking for beds.
"Trying to check in with Bessie?" the clerk asked.
"What?"
"Bessie." He hopped over the desk, came over and thunked the machine with his hand, as if to prove how sturdy it was. "Great, right? I programmed her myself. Nothing fancy, obviously, but she sure gets the job done. Knows how to barter, too, though I guess you didn't get that far in the process."
"...no."
"Ah. Shame. Still, better than those creepy talking bots with the faces, right?" He grinned wolfishly, and Seifer tried to bite down the voice that said he was being charmed. This guy with his jazz musician clothes and long hair was trying to charm him like an over-friendly shoe salesman. Weird.
"Wouldn't know."
"No?" He laughed and headed back behind the desk, motioning for Seifer to follow. "No, no, that's uptown, I guess. They talk to you and try to help you with every little problem you might have, so long as you'll give them money. Got stopped by one once," he said, rifling through a sheaf of papers. "Grabbed my arm and didn't let go. Glitchy, I guess. And it goes," he took on a halting, robotic tone, "'I'm not - I'm not - trying to hurt you. I am trying to - I am trying to - I am trying to help.'" On the last word, he dipped down an octave, mimicking what must've been a dying battery. He shivered, and handed Seifer a piece of paper with a set of rules for room behavior about what he was and wasn't allowed to steal, basically. "That's just wrong, dontcha think? A machine doing that to a person?"
"Guess so," said Seifer. He was more than ready just to get to the whole paying for a room and getting out of there, really.
"How many rooms do you want?"
The bartender had told him already, but he thought he'd double check. "How many beds to a room?"
"One or two. Two's a little more, and the room's a little bigger."
"Just one," he said.
"Cool cool. You new in town?" He ran his finger down a chart and tapped a square which apparently correlated with the key hooks.
"Just visiting," Seifer said.
"Hm. Know how that goes. Do yourself a favor and stay on this side of town, yeah?" The clerk plucked a set of brass keys off the wall and dangled them in front of Seifer.
A little taken aback by the advice, Seifer frowned. "Why?"
"Because the other one's full of fucked-up rich dudes." When his expression didn't change, the clerk elaborated. "You know. Energy hogs. Bunch of young hopeful upstarts begging to get hired on some programming job or energy project. Electric city and all."
"...oh," said Seifer. What he gleaned was: rich men needed energy to live their lives of luxury, and energy didn't come from oil anymore. So instead, they set up their reactors and windmills and solar panels. Hell, it made sense. He must have been aware of it on some level.
He felt like that was probably...news, of some kind. That people were trying to claw their way out of the energy slump, or that not everything had been irrevocably changed when it had all happened. That this period of time, half of Seifer's goddamn life, was...finite. Energy projects and windmills and nuclear reactors and all that stuff. He'd assumed they were happening somewhere, but not...not actually really happening.
Besides, would it be so bad? To stay this way for a little while longer? He and Hayner would just -
He'd been standing there for almost ten seconds, staring at the keys the clerk was holding. Now, like always, was not the time to stop and think.
"Sorry," he muttered, grabbing the keys. "Thanks."
"No problem. You sure you're all right?" The clerk looked at him strangely, so Seifer pushed out a bright smile and pointed to the stairs.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Up there, right?"
"Right." And, while Seifer was thundering up the stairs and out of his line of sight, he thought he heard the man shout something else. Didn't hear what he said, though.
Hayner was still on the rock when Seifer came and found him.
"Hey," Seifer said, keeping a few feet away. Just cause.
"Hey-o," Hayner said. Hey-o? ...okay. "Mission accomplished?"
"Found a cheap room, yeah. I just gave him a pair of pliers and some mint leaves."
"Oh," he said, and there was a funniness to his voice, pleasant and cool. "Do we have to go now?"
"We don't...have to, I guess," said Seifer, leveling his partner with a look and dumping his bag on the ground. Hayner knew he was a little strange right now, but he didn't have it in himself to care. There was a kind of...calm, here, and it was like he could feel it in his fingers and toes. Buzzing. It was something that worked its way up his neck and into his head. He imagined his brain thick with it, like a spatula had come through and slopped molasses on. Floating in a bubble of clean lemon-fresh organic everything-will-be-okay inside of his skull.
Which made it sound like he was completely fucking high, but whatever. If there was ever a good time to extend the olive branch to Seifer, it was now, when he wasn't hyperventilating in a shaft or strung out from hunger, puking water into the river.
He smiled and wiggled his toes in his boots. The lining or something must have come loose; he could feel a wrinkle along his toes and a scratchy bareness in front of them. Hayner patted a spot on the rock next to him. "Sit," he commanded.
"I want whatever it is you smoked while I was gone," Seifer said, sliding up to sit next to him. He leaned forward and put his arms around his bent knees. Hayner wished he wouldn't do that so much - curl up on himself. If you gave Seifer a confrontation he'd stand up and puff out his chest and crow as loud as anything. But the moment he didn't feel threatened, the moment he sat down or lay down, he brought his knees to his chest, or knelt, or crossed his arms. Hayner wondered why he did that. He could think of a few reasons, but none of them made any sense, not when they were applied to Seifer with his proud face and his posturing and his commanding and everything. The only possible reason was for protection, to keep his insides in, but what the hell was he afraid of sitting on a rock with Hayner?
He just...wished Seifer wouldn't do it so much. Make himself so small.
It was funny. He had spent five and a half years glued to Seifer, worrying about him and thinking about him and watching him all the time, but he'd never really - really thought about him. He'd only thought about how Seifer probably hated him. It was a-all about Hayner when it came to his thoughts.
Maybe he couldn't be expected to look at Seifer like a third-party observer, but still. It seemed like all Hayner cared about was...what Seifer thought of him. Not what he thought, generally.
Seifer was...mean, said something in Hayner's heart.
"Hey, chickenwuss! I hear you got fuckin' clobbered in the Struggle tournament. What a surprise!"
"Is there anything you don't fuck up when you try it?"
"God, who the fuck loses a knife the day he finds it? I can't believe you!"
Okay, yeah. But still - all about Hayner.
Seifer was mean. He was proud, and outgoing, and greedy and selfish. Whenever there was a mosquito buzzing around their room or their camp, he'd clap his hands and kill it in an instant, but he would always stare at the smudge after doing it before going to wash off his hands. Not like he was sad that it was dead, but more that he was curious. Something so carefully compartmentalized and organized and programmed, and he'd reduced it to this useless piece of crap, or maybe just wondering about how it was alive and now it was dead because Seifer had clapped his hands.
One time in kindergarten, Seifer and Hayner had gotten into an argument about whether purple was a cool color or a warm color on the wheel, since it had blue (cool color) and red (warm color). It got so bad the teacher had to send them out into the hall.
He wasn't disillusioned, that was for sure. If anything, he was the opposite. He was a pessimist with justification.
Now that Hayner thought of it, he and Seifer had had the exact same life for the last five years. Maybe - maybe not exactly the same, not really, but pretty damn close. They'd fought the same battles and slept in the same places and met the same people. They had so much common ground, but all of it was so trampled and dirty and dry that they didn't want to talk about it.
If everything were...fine.
If nothing had happened, back then, they'd be in college now, or they'd have jobs. Would Hayner still talk to Seifer?
No, probably not. They'd stick to their own social circles, and once they stopped seeing each other on a daily basis even the anger would fade into obscurity. Hayner would have a girlfriend, and he'd love her as well as he knew how, and probably always wonder if he was as happy as he was supposed to be and then he'd get a job and then he'd...die, he guessed.
Seifer would - probably do the same thing, though if he was anything like he was now, he'd probably go through a couple of really destructive relationships first.
"Hey," Hayner said at length, not really sure where he was going with this. It seemed like a good place to start. "Hey."
"...hi," Seifer said, keeping his eyes on the sky.
He seemed...not angry, exactly. At least, it didn't feel like he was avoiding eye contact.
Some morning, they'd wake up, and it would all be a dream, or some mass hallucination. They would enter college, and Hayner would worry about making friends and being well-liked. He would navigate social niceties, and have a drawer in his dorm that got stuck two inches out unless you pulled it at an angle and jiggled the handle. He'd get all these cool ideas for projects, try to paint his bike and end up almost ruining the gears. He'd get drunk with Roxas and have dumb conversations about life and suicide without ever having seen anything or known anything or done anything to warrant them.
That Hayner would probably be envious of this one. After all, this one went on adventures and met new people. He had life experience. He'd seen corpses. He saw a girl stare out over a bridge for an hour before falling, just falling off, as if she'd been making the decision the whole time instead of in just one jump. This Hayner had seen lesbians and people having loud sex in the back of a library. It sounded sexy and adventurous if you weren't the one stuck in the thing, sick to death of fighting quiet fights.
"Hayner? Is everything...cool?"
He thought about reaching out to touch Seifer's hand or his face, or rolling onto this side and resting his head on Seifer's chest. Words hadn't worked for them yet, and there was no reason to think they would this time. But hell, who would stick five and a half years with one person if they couldn't stand them? They must've just been...going about this whole thing the wrong way.
I want to open up my ribcage and bind you inside me.
I want to wrap you up in paper and beat the fight out of you.
He had never seen Seifer cry. Never. Not for opportunities lost, not for the people he surely missed. He'd never seen Seifer cry, or break down, or fall in love. The man never even looked like he wanted anything.
"Everything's cool." Lie. Duh. "I just...I don't know. Don't you ever...?" Want to get out of here, want to leave me and go off on your own, want to stand in the rain, want to kiss me with lips that have never touched a boy?
Don't you ever get scared?
Yes; he knew the answer to that one. That morning almost a week ago when Seifer had grabbed him and said I love you like a fucking death sentence. They were really pitiful, weren't they? Pfft. Oh, God, they were really fucking pitiful.
"Do you remember," he said suddenly. "I don't know if you remember but I had a puppy I got from the pound like three months before it happened."
"I remember you bragging about it like a retard," Seifer laughed. Hayner laughed, too, and tried not to overanalyze.
"She ran away like two weeks before. I guess I kind of...forgot about that. But yeah, she ran away like two weeks before the crash." How could he have forgotten? Until that point in his life, it'd been the most traumatic thing ever to happen to him. There was a thing and he was responsible for it and he failed.
Then again, it had gone by so close to the crash that his mind had probably squeezed it out. Who needed runaway puppies for emotional baggage when you had your best friend dying of infection a year later?
(Infection. Fucking infection! The thing antibiotic ointment ads showed as little wiggly lines under a microscope.)
"So? Why's it matter anymore?"
Hayner paused. Do you think she might've survived? Maybe she went and had puppies and they're running around right now in forests catching squirrels and wagging their tails.
"Never mind. I just..." Fuck it. What was Seifer going to do, leave? "Do you give a shit about worms?"
"What?"
"Worms. D'you give a shit about them?"
"Worms? What the hell?"
"Like..." Hayner frowned and stared at the soil. He ran his hand across the bumps of the rock, though he'd memorized them an hour ago. "If you were going down the sidewalk and you saw a worm on the sidewalk, and it'll get stepped on if it stays on the sidewalk. Would you move the worm or would you ignore it?" He wasn't particularly invested in the answer, but here:
He and Seifer didn't really have conversations, did they? They joked, sometimes. But he didn't know what Seifer thought of the world.
"I...I dunno, guess I've never...had to deal with - what the fuck, Hayner?" Seifer turned to face him, one hand on the boulder. He stared down into Hayner's eyes with a tight face and a down turned mouth.
Seifer was...pretty. Maybe not by conventional standards. His face was a little too hollow for his build; stubble darkened his chin, the blond so light it disappeared in the shadows. His eyes didn't belong in his face. It was as if somebody had come along and carved out two eye sockets, a little too sunken and worldsick, and put bright teal marbles in them. If it was weird for Hayner to stare at him so unabashedly, well, blame the dying sun and the trees and the rabbit that grazed for two hours before loping off. He needed to do something. They couldn't stay like this, they just - couldn't.
"What if it was a bird or a mouse?"
"On the sidewalk?"
"Yeah."
Seifer frowned. "I guess I'd move it."
"Why the mouse but not the worm?"
"I dunno. Mouse is smarter."
"Why's that matter?"
"Who fucking cares?" Seifer huffed and flopped down next to him, staring up again with his arms over his stomach. "We've got a hard enough time keeping ourselves off the sidewalks. Don't need to deal with a damn bird or a worm or whatever."
"Yeah. I guess," he shrugged and slid his fingers over a coat button, around the shining plastic rim and down the bottom to the threads holding it onto the fabric, coarse and thick.
As a kid, he'd made it his personal mission in life to rescue worms off of busy roads or sidewalks. Other things too, of course, but mostly it was worms who were the victims. They sludged up out of their dark dirt when it rained, eyeless against a world that had filled with cars and indifferent pedestrians since they had last evolved. Hayner would always nudge them onto the nearest patch of dirt, just because. They looked so sad, flailing obliviously on the pavement. They had no idea what they'd gotten themselves into. And then the day after, Hayner would be walking and he'd see a dead, shriveled up worm and not feel sad, exactly, but just annoyed that - that it was dead because there was a sidewalk.
Now, though. He wasn't so sure he could care about a worm or a bird or a mouse. He had seen so many things die already, and the only thing that held on was Seifer, sweet, cruel, beautiful Seifer.
Hayner wanted to care about worms on the sidewalk. It just...wasn't in him anymore. It was gone. He felt a little tiny piece of it today, here, but - it was slipping away again.
"Maybe that's what happens," he said, mostly to himself, "When you're like us. You start off trying to do right by everything and and it ends up being enough just to live to see tomorrow."
Seifer rolled up onto his side again, leaning on his elbow, and looked at Hayner. "What's wrong with you?" he asked. "Why are you being like this?"
Hayner didn't know, was the short answer. Any other day, any other moment or location or situation and he would've died of embarrassment long before this, terrified of what Seifer must think of him.
"I'm sorry," he said, though he didn't sound it.
"Ain't no sorry," Seifer said. "I'm just...worried."
He put the back of his hand to Hayner's forehead, like checking for a fever, but then he didn't move it off. Not on purpose, Hayner didn't think: it was like he put it there and forgot about it.
As he'd said. Touching worked better than words did, for them.
He wanted to kiss Seifer and get it over with. It was bound to happen at some point, so why not now, when everything was calm? Before they pissed someone else off, or before Marluxia sent a goon after them for daring to escape from his clutches. They still had a home and a bed, they had fresh clothing and a man with answers.
If they didn't finish it soon, Hayner knew just how it would happen, too. Like all mistakes, in the heat of a moment they'd neither of them seen coming. With luck, something happy, but more likely in a sad time. Somebody would die, one of them would nearly die or be on the verge of it, and they'd finally say fuck it and talk like human beings and seek comfort out of desperation.
Given the male libido, Hayner was kind of astounded neither of them had spent a night with a prostitute yet.
But here they were. Seifer staring down at him, hope eyes and all. And Hayner in this strange, funny mood from his worms and birds and shit.
Seifer was so...solid. Skin, then muscle, then a thin little membrane holding together his organs, and bones which held his heart and his head. He was the only thing that hadn't changed. He was still here, for whatever reason. He was still tolerating Hayner and Hayner didn't even understand why.
He curled a hand around Seifer's neck, eyes to eyes the whole time. Stop me. Please, stop me. Tell me to get off of you and I will.
Seifer breathed, haa, haa, out through his mouth, but he didn't move.
So Hayner brought him down.
It was slow and wet, and didn't fix anything. He closed his eyes and ignored the humming in his lungs to focus on the feeling of that thick hair across the soft sides of his fingers, the awkward way their mouths didn't quite fit together but they kept trying. There was no love in it, or at least, none of the romantic kind. This would wake no sleeping beauties. But Hayner felt it as strong and he felt the man on top of him, the pulling, the sense that this had to happen because they both needed it for some reason - release or resolution or the calm before the storm, the mutual admittance of No I don't hate you god how could I hate you you're everything I have left, never leave never ever leave.
One of them whimpered, deep in the back of his throat. Seifer pulled up, still leaning into the hand on the back of his head, staring at Hayner with red-rimmed eyes. He was just as confused as Hayner, if not more. They'd scraped something buried deep inside; here was hoping they hadn't woken it up.
Silently, Seifer slid off the rock and picked up his backpack, pulling his pants higher up on his hips and staring out into the trees. Hayner followed suit, and the walk to the motel was permeated with a heavier silence than they'd ever had before.
A/N: Hnng. I dunno.
REVIEWING KEEPS MY CREATIVE JUICES FLOWING.
Really though. Reward me for my attention-whoring. Otherwise, no joke, I get all "OH GOD IT WAS SO AWFUL THEY HAD LITERALLY NOTHING TO SAY"
If it is full of problems, let me know what they are so I don't sink into a black hole of silence and mope.