Disclaimer – Don't own Tekken.
For Razer. Just, you know, for Razer. For being awesome.
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Forest knew they would be watching the grainy screen of the television hooked up in the old warehouses; each tense, expectant face lined up like a perverse chorus.
And then…
Jin Kazama missing…
The Mishima Zaibatsu is in uproar…
National powers have begun to reclaim oil rings and military facilities…
Forest watches from the busted TV in his father's kitchen. Marshall is at the tournament, still fighting a match with no final voice to herald a winner. The prize money is void. Their reason for being here is as aimless as the leaves cast off in the autumn wind.
He switches it off. Dumps the dishes in the sink. That wasn't the reason he was here. It was the reason his father was here, yeah, of course. But funnily enough, he would have never come here in the first place if his own Dad had tried to pass himself off as reason enough.
He'd been the reason.
Forest chuckles. It's an empty sound and one he'd forced from his throat. He continues scrubbing, even when the plates are shining and white and his knuckles become sore from soap and water.
Behind him, the television crackles out a different headline.
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.
The days morph into weeks.
They haven't got a reason to be here.
And neither has he, not anymore. Even if he spent the previous year sneaking out, cooking large quantities for secret gangs, tending to scrapes and cuts, making all those jokes about being a Good Samaritan. His father's ignorance colours his actions in a large black blot and to Forest it's as if part of his life has been erased.
Japan is a stricken mess, sunken into uproar, but the rioters patrolling the streets do not wear bashed biker goggles or torn chaps, and Forest knows when he is beaten.
As the plane lifts off the ground, he grips the seat until the lining tears.
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Time kills pain like no other. Even if he's adjusted to the old familiar sting prompted by a song on the radio or the discovery of a t-shirt that isn't his, or Paul's trademark smell of mingled smoke and oil.
He keeps the television switched off. The papers are left to wilt on the doorstop. If he closes off the rest of the world, then maybe the worlds of noise and colour and gunfire will collapse onto themselves, into the clean and comfortable slate of ignorance.
When did I turn into my father?
Paul looks at him funny. Business is picking up at the dojo, the world recovering in small, shy steps, and Dad is happy and Mum is content but Paul just looks at him funny, and he hates it.
He's packing away the gym equipment, self-assured in his self-imposed isolation, but a shadow falls across him and Paul leans back against the monkey bars, lights up, and closes the door with his foot.
Forest ignores him, folding mats and hanging up sandbags, listening to the occasional shuffle of paper nestled between lips and something stirs on the brink of his memory, and his gut aches so hard he thinks he might throw up.
Paul's inevitable question pricks through the air.
"Who's the girl?"
Forest jangles the keys in his hand.
"It's not a girl." He gestures to the broom and bucket beside Paul. "I need to get there."
"Oh…" He cracks his neck side to side, and stubs the cigarette out on the leather of his knee. "Who's the guy, then?"
Forest is conscious of his mouth closing.
Paul smirks.
"Forget it." Forest looks again at the broom and buckets; sighs, and instead trundles towards the door. "It's nothing."
"Doesn't look like nothing, kid."
The plaster catches in Forest's hair as the door slams behind him.
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Hwoarang didn't care.
Why the fuck would he care? He was a traveler, a free spirit, dodging from lodging to hostel to street, picking and dropping lovers like dandelions, unraveling egos in random spats on sidewalks, and then disappearing with a rumble of his bike as the only evidence he was ever there.
Forest's cheeks flame as he hits the sandbag. Again, again, again. He's broken all the wooden planks, ripped the padding out of every boxing glove, and even smashed through Paul's bricks.
I hate you.
Each thrust of his fist erases an imaginary smirk.
I hate you.
Rotten bastard. Ignorant, proud, beautiful bastard.
In the doorframe Marshall watches him.
Forest lets the bag creak to a halt.
His father stands aside to let him pass. He looks away when Forest catches his eye.
Forest wonders if he looks dark, angry, rife for reproach. He catches sight of himself in the foyer mirror. His eyes are wide and bright and wet.
His Dad moves from the doorway, toward him, hand outstretched, and Forest practically flees upstairs.
What would a bad boy biker see in a weak kneed kitchen wimp, anyway?
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His phone rings.
He'd long since given up looking at the screen. But the voice, timid and a little tired, surprises him.
Xiao's in America. She wants to get away from Japan, she claims. Wants to stay away. There's too much there, too many memories spun into its buildings and roads and hordes of blinking lights and shiny new electronics.
They had written to each other after the third tournament; letters and e-mails and phone calls, pixelated web cams with laggy footage and the promise that they would see each other again. Soon.
It always seemed so far away; one of these illusive slung off promises that you makes lots of but never expect to actually keep. But here they are scouring the city centre together, comforted by its mild, mundane amusements and Xiao's hand is a warm weight against his. She speaks non-stop, in a bid to distract them both, but her voice wavers with strain and she presses close to him as they walk. They steal themselves away to a small corner just outside the cinema, shy of the town lake. The sky is lit with stars and it stains her skin in icy slithers of white.
They stand together, leaned up against the wall. Her nails prick into his palm, and the rough collar of her coat brushes against his chin.
Somehow, his hand finds the curve of his cheek and it shocks him, because he did it without thinking. He brushes the shell like turn of her ear and the corner of her eyes where the skin crinkles when she smiles, and she smiles then.
Something catches him, like the sudden snatch of an old memory, and it dances on the rim of his thoughts; a faint heat of yearning, but it passes as she turns her eyes down and steps back.
"I need something new," she says it more to herself than anyone else, twisting her fingers, but he knows what she means. "I can't go back there."
Xiao guides her head onto the corner of his shoulder, fingers tightly locking on his jacket and his eyelids shudder shut as she begins to cry.
Moment pass, soft and slow, punctured by the hiccup in Xiao's sobs and the circles he gently traces on her back.
Forest isn't sure what it is that makes him open his eyes. It could have been the vague scent of tobacco pinching the air or the rumble of an engine being eased down into stagnancy, but when he does open them he sees a man leaned against the opposite rail.
Hwoarang is completely still. He balances a cigarette between his lips, dangles it between his fore fingers and exhales; smoke cloaks his face in grey billows and Forrest can see his stance is casual, leant back against his bike, but his eyes are the colour and consistency of granite.
Xiao pulls away. Hwoarang watches from over her shoulder; he taps his ash on the back tire.
"T-Thank you Forest," He offers a tissue and she takes it, giggling lightly. "But I better get back before this gets awkward."
"It's never awkward."
"I think you're the only person in the world who says that and means it. Truly."
Forest half expects Hwoarang to sneer and speed off, but he's turned toward the lake, draping himself over the railings.
He lowers his gaze to Xiao and smiles.
"Where will you go, then? If you can't go back?"
"Someplace different, I guess." She zips up her coat, and shakes her hair free. No more pigtails. "I don't think I know what I wanted to begin with. What I was expecting."
Forest's eyes slide to the figure silhouetted against dark water.
"You should see the world." It's a lame line, set for soap operas, but her irises glitter and she gives his hand one final squeeze.
"I do know this," she pokes him in the chest. "I'll miss you."
"Hey, I'm a phone call away."
She gives him a final wave, turns, and is gone.
Forest pulls his collar up. Sucks on his lower lips, chapped with frost, and stares straight ahead.
The whites of Hwoarang's eyes spark as their gazes meet.
That's when Forest sees it.
The skin running down Hwoarang's left cheek is mottled, bunched, as if poorly sewn together. The outline of a crude, white scar and Hwoarang smirks and looks away.
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He buries his hands in his pockets, which are frayed through, and the air is too cold for this.
"I waited for you." He says slowly. "I waited for something. A phone call. A note. A goddamn text. Just..." He tears his eyes from Hwoarang's face, which is too still, too uncharacteristically serious. "Just something."
Hwoarang stubs his cigarette on his jeans. Like Paul. So like Paul, and Forest is wondering for the first time about his father and their best friend.
The minutes wade in. The mist is low and thick, and Forest gazes across the water, but the lights on the other side are swallowed whole and it's just like the silent, hollow cove of the ocean. Maybe that is more romantic. He doesn't know. Maybe he doesn't care.
"I would have done." Hwoarang's tone is matter-of-fact, unaffected, but he flexes his fingers; open, closed, open, closed. "If it hadn't been so batshit. I might have…"
His words trail off.
His thumb absently toys with the edge of his cheek.
Forest's knuckles crack in his gloves. He pulls away from the chill of the bar. He shifts along, head downcast, until his fingers curl into the fabric of Hwoarang's too thin coat.
"You think that I wouldn't have waited?"
Hwoarang grins, but its irony is bitter, and shakes his head.
"Not many people have waited for me."
"And you thought I was one of those?"
Hwoarang doesn't answer.
"Because I'm not." Forest leans in close, analyzing the hard straights of Hwoarang's nose, the stony glint set deep in manila eyes. "I never was, and I never want to be."
Forest rests his lips against Hwoarang's mouth, tastes smoke and oil and spearmint; draws a kiss across to the arch of his marred cheek, down to the line of his jaw, and on the curve of his ear lobe.
Hwoarang's hand jolts up; grips the edges of Forest's face tight, causing the bones in his cheeks to creak.
"You better mean what you're saying," He whispers through clenched teeth, breath a rolling wisp on the cold. His voice cracks. "You better mean it."
There is a shake in Hwoarang's body. It rattles through; a slight and barely definable shiver.
Forest moves his tongue to answer, but Hwoarang's kiss is crushing and lacking in tenderness and the freezing iron of the bar is wrenched up against his back. They've both stumbled backwards, closer to bleared light and black water.
The fog carries up and around them, damp and dank and chilly. Hwoarang's mouth is moist and hot and as Forest pulls back, Hwoarang's teeth snag on his lower lip and pull.
And then…
"Will you stay?"
"I…" Forest ghosts the exposed part of Hwoarang's shoulder. "What was that?"
"I don't want to go back yet. The dojo was Baek's. Everything was Baek's."
His fingers twist in the back of Forest's jacket. He growls deep in his throat.
"Now I'm just…wandering. It's like what it used to be. Before Baek. Before anything."
Before…
The scar warps with Hwoarang's scowl.
Forest thinks of family and home and wide spaced gym floors. Of uniform little houses and peeling paint on old signs and the smell of petrol and fresh produce in the morning. Of ash and oil and the rumble of ancient Harleys.
And then he thinks of dashes of terracotta hair burning beneath sun and the rock of a bike straddled between his legs and hands, rough on his skin, and laughter, coarse and contagious. Of the brunt of muscle against bone, of the sweat clad sanctuary of dojo and bedroom, of wide and closed spaces, of freedom and progression.
"You just need a compass," He says softly.
"Will you come with me?'
"What do you want me do? Let down my hair from a tower?"
"No."
Somewhere above the smog, Forest is convinced there is a sky; dusky aquamarine, stretching far and wide and beyond.
"Tomorrow." Hwoarang is still close, still holding on. Forest closes his eyes and continues. "I'll leave a note. But you've got to be there at six, okay?"
He detects the tingle of breath against the jut of his collarbone.
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The note is left curled by the fridge door. In his satchel are clothes, food, ingredients. Paul's old leather jacket that is too baggy on the shoulders. It had been a teenage birthday present. Dad had tsked and tutted, but on its back was a glaring skull and Forest had thought it was seriously cool, even if the colours had faded in the wash. His first medal, given to him by a father struggling to stay stern in the face of bursting pride. A picture of his mother, and the small travel recipe book she had brought for him, signed with her love.
He doesn't need much more. He'd once thought that crowding himself with things; ornaments, notes, shoes, busted up disk drives, and everything else that lay forsaken in his dark bedroom, would have helped construct for him a study little world of his own making. Little keepsakes and mementos and silly bits of junk that held value to him only.
But now, it's like a way has parted. The roads ahead are wide and wild, dangerous and sparse, and so he attaches to himself a few things and leaves the rest behind to define something else. Something long past.
He doesn't know how he came to first taste freedom, maybe from the blood in his mouth at that first fight or the rattle of a rock at his window frame or the feel of a body, trembling and taut, sliding down his back. He doesn't know where to break these experiences, doesn't know where to take them apart and analyze their separate edges. And whether if they did break, they would be fair and break even.
But freedom waits through the door.
"Took you long enough. You ready?"
"Yeah."
And it had never looked so damn perfect.