The Gentleman's Affair
Chapter 3: The World Or Nothing
Disclaimer: I don't own.
A/N: Hello guys~ I'm back with a little update I wrote on holiday. I hope you enjoy this. The title was inspired by Deaf Havana's The World or Nothing. (: give it a listen. It's awesome. Thank you everyone who read and reviewed~! Enjoy~
By the time he had walked into his neighbourhood, Lavi had run out of buzz. Left to walk thirty or so blocks back to the apartment building he shared with his old man, the redhead had about an hour to himself. And thinking had never done Lavi much good.
The twenty year-old turned the corner around Mrs Foxx's house. The street lamp in front of the porch had short-circuited the year before, marking the five blocks he had left to walk to his apartment building. He crossed the street, wary (as he always was when he passed the shattered windows of the old lady's house) of the kind smile she had given him as a child. The fruity, warm and gently erotic scent of well kept honeysuckle in her west-facing flowerbox in the summer. The scent of homemade cinnamon rolls wafting out the window and caressing his senses.
Lavi closed his eye and sighed. His feet thudded on the pavement, soft and rhythmic, unparallel to his heavy thoughts and troubled musings.
Earlier that evening, just after he and Allen had changed into their casual clothes, ready to head home, Mr Conrad had summoned them to his office. Handing them their new uniforms (which had Allen humming in delight), he informed them that they would be required to be at the hotel by seven AM the next morning. They would then change into their uniforms – which they would bring home with them that day to prepare and make any minor adjustments to – and be waiting on the delegates (and family, if any) by seven thirty.
Then he'd told them about their new salary.
At first the redhead had been ecstatic. Allen had almost gotten a heart attack from the unusual way Lavi had been smiling. It had been a while since the twenty year-old had grinned that widely. Not only would they as escorts receive a significant pay raise, they were also likely to receive tips from their passengers. The extra money would definitely contribute to Lavi's school savings and the funds he reserved for his grandfather's health.
But on his solitary walk home, the redhead realised that he wasn't living in some kind of fantasy. He wasn't a hero whose life more or less sucked in the initial stages of the story and who somehow suddenly attained the riches of a prince (or by his standards, anyway). No, Lavi was just someone whose life sucked. The job required his dedication for most of the day. That meant that he either needed to put the old panda in a hospital ward for the time being or hire a caretaker for the old man. Neither was, to say the least, cheap.
Lavi sensed the sweet smelling incense of the Oxfords' house ghosting through his nostrils. He lowered his eyes in bitter sorrow.
They had been good people, intelligent and kind. They had not deserved their fate. Their garden had once been adorned with flowerbeds, the walls of the building painted in soft pastel hues. Once a long time ago, their beautiful daughter, fresh out of high school, had babysat him. She was tall and beautiful with a kind smiling face curtained by chocolate brown hair that shone in the sun. And whenever she looked at him, her deep blue eyes twinkled with love. He had loved her like the older sister he'd never had. And he knew she'd loved him too.
If she had lived, she would have had children by then. She would have been a mother.
… The redhead came to a stop. He looked up, but did not see the light fading from the sky. He could only remind himself that crying didn't bring the dead back to life. Swiping the back of his hand callously across his eyes, he continued to move forward.
All those years ago, she had spent her time teaching him everything there was to know about flowers. How one identified the type of flower they were looking at, how to determine which flower came from which seed, how to water the growing plants properly so that they grew strong and healthy.
Even as a boy, Lavi hadn't minded. Flowers weren't something a boy would usually like. But he loved to know anything and everything, and that included knowledge even about flowers. Anything that he could possibly know, he would want to know it. But those had been dreams from the past. They were no longer relevant. Like the house, they had been destroyed. It had been a cheerful place, brimming with laughter, smiles, and love back then. Now it lay empty, the door hanging precariously on whatever was left of its hinges. The inside of the house was dark and hollow.
Just like the redhead's heart.
Lavi shook his head, pushing the impending darkness in his mind as far away as he could manage and ran a hand through his hair. His own problems were insignificant. They were stupid. They always had been, and they always would be. He looked down at his skinny wrists, pale in the cold. He tried not to imagine the things he could do to them, the shapes, patterns and grids he could carve into them. He needed to focus on other, more important things. The old man needed him. And he was tougher than that…
… Wasn't he?
A crow flapped its wings clumsily on a lamp post nearby, taking flight in a lumbering motion. Lavi paused to watch it stagger pitifully through the skies and land on the corner of an old building nearby. Pathetic though it was, at least the black bird had the freedom to go wherever it wanted, even if it was difficult for it to get there.
Lavi shook his head and continued on his way.
Either way, the amount of money accumulated in his school savings account didn't matter nearly as much as his grandfather's health fund. That was his first priority. And considering he couldn't possibly cater to his grandfather's health personally, with the escort job on his hands. He had no choice. He barely had a few hours after work as it was. The escort job would probably require him to chauffeur the delegates to and from important meetings (or late night parties) in the late hours of the night. That left Lavi with little to no time to care for his old man.
The redhead rounded the corner, turning onto the street leading up to his apartment building. He tried to keep his gaze trained on the ground in front of him, but the shattered glass on the ground and scattered remains of hastily cleared rubble brought memories flooding back into his head like they always did. And his right eye throbbed painfully in its socket like it always did. The twenty year-old's jaw tightened.
The sky was a deep blue by now, the remnants of daylight fading to black. A sliver of silver glistened faintly in between dark grey storm clouds. Lavi glanced skywards as thunder rumbled in the distance, promising rain and the chill that always came with it.
The redhead ran a hand through his hair. Now that he thought about it, he realised he'd left his windbreaker back at the hotel, in his locker. The black suit (with red and gold trimming) Mr Conrad had given him had taken up most of the space in his messenger bag. It had left barely any room for his (almost-empty wallet) and small second hand phone. The only protection he had against the oncoming storm were the clothes on his back; his faded Levi's, his ten dollar bargain sneakers, the black cotton t-shirt he was wearing with wing graphics on the back that he'd had since he was fifteen and the sports jacket he'd had from high school. Not much. They would all be drenched in a heartbeat.
Lavi felt the first drop of icy rain caress his right cheekbone, cold and fleeting like the tears of a corpse bride. The redhead licked his lips as the raindrop trailed down the contours of his face.
A light drizzle began to chill the air around him, and Lavi found himself wandering through memories of better times like a wraith. At night, the empty streets had been illuminated by street lamps, the sidewalks casting neat shadows on the tarmac. Warm rays of sunlight had coaxed dreamers awake at dawn.
Footsteps echoed behind him somewhere. The redhead paid them no mind. He was probably hallucinating, hearing the semblances of what had once been trying to break down his locked doors, thrashing in the weak grip of his sanity to surface in the foregrounds of his mind.
Subconsciously, he hoisted his worn messenger bag higher up his shoulder. The rain began to pour down on him in fat, heavy droplets like the weight of the world on his shoulders. Lavi's strides grew longer and he hastened, pace quickening. He couldn't afford getting the escort uniform wet.
He heard footsteps again, closer this time, and Lavi glanced over his shoulder cautiously. Maybe he hadn't imagined the footsteps after all.
The redhead had only managed to glimpse his assailant when the wind was knocked out of his lungs. He gasped, his lungs scrambling for air. A hard chop was dealt to his neck, and Lavi felt the darkness he ran so desperately from explode in front of him, enveloping him in its suffocating embrace.
Forms blurred to indiscernible shapes and colours faded to pale grey in his clouded vision, impaired by the fog of frustration and helplessness.
Swallowed by desperation, his mind transported him back to better times. The rain, cold and piercing, prickled his skin and number the pain of the blows that followed.
He thought back to the times before life had been a struggle.
Before his old man had gotten sick.
Before he'd been torn away from the education he treasured.
He heard something tear nearby. Something deep down.
Before the invasion.
Before they had killed everyone.
His heart.
Before the fighting and the hate.
Before the pain.
Lavi's jaw tightened.
Before all the accusations.
Before his life had become a stagger along fragile lines. Thin, fragile lines that were bound to snap, tear, fray, under pressure.
The redhead felt himself drifting away from mortality.
Before everything.
The heavens wept cold tears as though having seen his fate from the beginning, crying as though in pain for that which they could not prevent. They moaned for his unrewarded pain, for his undeserved punishment, and for all the agony that was to come.
A world of grey faded to black.