Original -- Photophobia (Part 1)
Title: Photophobia (Part 1)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,985
Warnings: some language, angstpocalypse, AU
Prompt: weave at pulped_fictions
Summary: Celebrating Vincent's graduation does not quite go according to plan.
Author's Note: SOOOO… the moral of the story is that listening to the Cars is a dangerous thing to do, because the next thing you know, you're building a completely pointless AU where Vincent and Alistair are significantly younger, Maion and Michael are significantly less powerful, all of the rules are slightly different, characters you and eltea had make cameos, and Vincent and Maion are ex-lovers who broke up messily when Maion revealed what he was… and then you've pretty much shot yourself in the foot. :P I promise I'll fix the DEATH BY EMO sometime when I don't feel like I've been run over by a cement mixer. X'D
I got a lot on my head
Most of it’s you
I got a lot on my head
To forget about you
- “Got a Lot On My Head” - The Cars -
One too many times
I twisted the gate
When I was crazy
I thought you were great
- “It’s All I Can Do” - The Cars -
PHOTOPHOBIA - PART 1
Connor gives a low whistle. “Top of the class, huh? You could at least do us the honor of looking smug.”
Vincent shrugs. “I don’t feel smug.” It’s difficult to tell exactly how he feels-relieved, to a degree, because now he has the degree; consternated, because now he has to draw together the nebulous beginnings of a business before the money runs out; and beneath it all, there’s still the dull undercurrent of the infected ache. “I have an MBA. It’s a piece of paper that gives me a modicum of intellectual authority; it’s not a magic wand.”
Connor grimaces. “I’m going to the bar,” he says, “and I’m getting four bottles of wine, and you’re drinking all of them, because you’re not allowed to talk like that two hours after graduating from business school.”
Vincent frowns, but Connor’s already out of his seat and waving dollar bills at the brunette behind the bar. John, through whom they were introduced, musters a helpless smile of apology. Vincent worries about John when he has a fraction of leftover energy; the man works shifts at the hospital during the day, joins them for night classes, and then goes home to a harpy. Over the course of the last year, Vincent has actually watched the colors of the man’s face fade towards gray. Connor set a beer in front of him, which he hasn’t touched; most of his contribution to the ‘celebration’ of Vincent’s accelerated graduation so far has been fidgeting with his wedding ring.
There’s some small vindication in that-or there would be, if Vincent… there isn’t time. If he’s fortunate and disciplined, there never will be.
“Hope you’re enjoying this more than it looks like, Alistair,” John says, tired but warm, in his impeccably sophisticated English accent. “It’ll be you next year.”
John is the only person other than Vincent who doesn’t call him Tommy as an endearment of his last name. Vincent once asked Alistair if he minded, and his laconic right-hand-man said only, “It could have been ‘Allie.’”
Currently, Alistair is somehow taking a sip of water with eminent modesty. “I don’t take that for granted,” he says, “but thank you.”
Connor returns with five bottles of wine and a slip of paper. “Got her number, too,” he reports contentedly. “What do you say, Duval? You, me, her, more wine, blurry sexual boundari-”
“Only if you want to wake up in the morgue,” Vincent says.
Connor sighs loudly. “Then you should hook up with Tomm-”
“I can’t believe you passed Advanced Statistics when you’re incapable of processing the word ‘platonic.’”
Alistair laughs softly, and Vincent manages a small twist of a smile. Part of him has always wanted to lament Alistair’s heterosexuality, but just having another vampire-or, as far as the university is concerned, another student with debilitating photophobia-has been enough. Part of him, perhaps a braver part, has gone so far as to admit that it wouldn’t have fixed, wouldn’t have healed, wouldn’t have altered… what came before. The past. The things better left buried, because there isn’t time to dwell, because self-pity is a luxury he can’t afford.
Predictably, decent wine is a luxury Connor can’t afford, but Vincent pops the cork on one of the bottles anyway.
Michael returns with a Sprite and an orange soda, setting the latter next to the neatly-annotated list.
“Thank you,” Maion says warmly, turning the list so that Michael can read it, too. “By and large, I think the theology graduates are actually a pretty Good bunch. Better than the ones we had last year, certainly. I’m worried about…” He pushes his finger down the list until he reaches the name. “Paul. He asks a lot of ‘hypothetical’ questions about the money involved, and I think maybe we should keep an eye on him.”
Michael nods slowly and approvingly, which Maion reads as permission to take a sip from his soda. Michael even remembered to get him a bendy straw-green tonight; blue is his favorite color, but beggars can’t be choosy, and maybe next time…
He takes his file folder from his bag and sorts through for the index of honors-and then the papers get the better of him, and somehow the one he wants jumps out and flutters to the questionable floor. He tries not to grumble inwardly about Michael’s insistence on “blending in” by meeting at bars as he slips out of his chair and picks up the escapee, brushing at it a little in the vague hopes of eradicating some of the bacteria. That’s when he makes the mistake of glancing idly across the room.
Michael starts in surprise as he dives back into his chair and hunches down, managing not to cover his head with his arms too obviously. It’s a small miracle-although he’s used to those-that he doesn’t upset his glass with the way he’s trembling all the way out to his elbows.
“What?” Michael asks sharply, seizing his shoulder. “Maion-”
Breathing is suddenly troublesome. “It’s him.”
“It’s-?”
And then Michael looks over, sees the gleam of light on the wineglass and on the long, smooth, pooling-ink hair; sees the arch of the eyebrow, the faintly sardonic curl of the lip.
It rushes back, swells, deluges, avalanches, burns-Maion presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying not to think. Trying not to remember. Trying not to lose every aspect of the present as the dam cracks and then dissolves, and everything is cool, not warm, but softer than he expected; and the elegant fingers card through his hair and then twine themselves in it, woven there like they belong, effortlessly pulling him up into another kiss like the one that just shattered the only world he knows.
Michael’s getting up, and there’s a frigid fire in his eyes.
“Wait!” Maion lunges for his arm and misses. “No, don’t! Michael, please, don’t-”
It’s too late; Michael’s halfway across the bar, and Maion can’t stay here and let him do this, but he can’t move, and-
And all of the old scars tear open at once.
A shadow falls across the table, and Vincent looks up into an unfamiliar face with almost-familiar eyes, which are composed into a caliber of rage that could give a human being instantaneous freezer burn.
He’s seen that kind of anger on just one previous occasion, so briefly but with such potent memorability that it slaughters the dismissal in his throat.
This can’t be-not in just three years.
And it isn’t. The angle of the jaw is different; the set of the nose, its curvature, the cheekbones, the eyelashes. Damn it all; why can he still summon a perfect ima-
“I take it you’re the piece of shit who broke my brother’s heart,” the angel says.
Everything goes so tight that for a moment that Vincent fears his skin will crack like vellum in the sun.
“Is that how he tells it?” he asks.
Renaissance artists were on to something; the angel’s clenched fists look like they’re carved from marble, but as the right one rises, Vincent can’t care. He can’t muster so much as anxiety; he can’t think; he’s fingering the frayed edges of another retroactively-altered recollection-odds are Maion wasn’t left-handed at all; odds are that he just pretended to be. More of the dust on the undisturbed memories turns to ash.
All of his friends are out of their seats and on their feet, but he doesn’t register their protests-not that a few mortals’ words could bring an angel even to the point of hesitation anyway. There’s a crackle of white light around the angel’s wrist, and they flinch back, trying to reconcile that with science, with logic, with a universe they understand; but Vincent doesn’t move. It might almost be nice-to feel. To feel acutely, distinctly, intensely, as he has not allowed himself to do since he made the decision to bury it all and move forward too quickly for the ghosts to catch up.
But the blow doesn’t fall, because another pair of hands have wrapped themselves around the angel’s arm, and these he knows.
On second thought, better not to feel. Better never to feel. Better to flit through existence, to frequent the dark; better willful ignorance, suppression, focus by force. Better to lock it up, shut it down, cut it out with a scalpel and pitch it in the waste. It hasn’t been long enough to forget the way there’s always blue ink smudged on Maion’s fingertips, but somehow he’d forgotten that nothing compares to this sensation of his chest caving in.
Maion’s eyes flicker to his face, and there’s the requisite split-second of surprise-neither of them has changed; neither of them has aged a day; neither of them wears the marks in a place that can be seen.
And then Maion’s eyes fill, and Vincent’s going to be sick. That’s how they parted, although the deft twist of irony’s blade hadn’t occurred to him at the time; everything ended in a second Flood, and this time there were no survivors.
He can’t stand that look. He can’t withstand that look.
Just before the fast-motion implosion in his ribcage becomes a full-fledged black hole and devours the entire bar and all of its customers, Maion hauls the other angel away, weaving between the tables, dragging them out the back door, which slams shut, and they’re gone.
Vincent gets seven seconds of peace, which is two more than he was expecting.
“Holy crap,” Connor breathes. “Who the hell was that?”
“My ex,” Vincent says. The word sticks-it’s too small, too simple; it’s thin and juvenile, except that the X feels like a cross.
Connor stares in the direction of the door. “You tapped that? Damn, man, you have way more game than I give you credit for.”
“Connor,” Alistair says delicately. The young man turns. “Shut the fuck up.”
“It’s fine,” Vincent says-but it’s not, because he’s pushing his chair back, standing, and starting for the back door.
Stop, he thinks firmly at his legs. Quit it. Who the hell do you think you are?
And then his arms are in on it, too, depressing the metal bar that retracts the latch and lets the door swing open, releasing him into the chill of the night. The only explanation he can conjure is that a man dying of thirst will drink the water before him, no matter how diseased, to sustain himself through another mile of the desert.
The door falls shut. His head turns. Maion is alone, leaning against the wall, ink-stained hands spread on the brickwork behind him, staring at the sky. Vincent wants to say something pithy-or something petty. Anything at all; if he spoke, he would be moving first, demonstrating that he’s in control of himself. Proving once and for all that his will is stronger; that he’s still whole.
“I’m sorry,” Maion says, and this must be what it feels like to get staked. “I didn’t mean for him to make a scene.”
“What in the hell are you doing here?” Vincent says. There. That’s safe. And it’s assertive. Good. Great.
Maion looks down, and Vincent’s gaze shifts, too-still a dog on a leash; a puppet on a string. Maion’s wearing white flip-flops. The aversion to shoes wasn’t fabricated, then. That makes one thread of memory that Vincent can trust.
“Michael picked the meeting place,” Maion says. “You won’t see me here again.”
Fine. Great. Peachy. “That doesn’t answer the question.”
Maion’s wearing dark-wash jeans and a white Oxford shirt. One of his hands lifts slowly and picks at the third button, which is the highest one he’s done up. “You’ve always been good at asking questions to which you don’t actually want the answers.”
Not fair-but cruelty is a game made for two. “Is that why you never gave me any honest ones?”
“No,” Maion says. “That was because you wouldn’t have listened anyway.”
“Go to hell,” Vincent says, turning for the door.
“It only opens from the inside,” Maion says as Vincent comes face-to-face with a sign that confirms as much.
In the silence, Maion shifts, and his stupid-adorable plastic flip-flops grate on the dirty cement.
“Are you still in the habit of honesty, then?” he asks.
“Depends who’s asking,” Vincent says. So little has changed about either of them that Maion can probably tell that most of the venom is directed at the door.
“Are you happy?” Maion asks quietly.
A slightly intoxicated man near the other side of the door tells an entire story about his cat shredding the curtains while Maion waits, fastidiously reminding himself to breathe.
Cotton whispers as Vincent folds his arms across his chest. Maion wants to touch him-wants it so badly that it feels like his blood’s turned to magma; so badly that every twinge of those muscles he used to trace makes his stomach twist; so badly that his fingers tremble against the brick wall until he digs them into the mortar; so badly that he can almost taste the metallic tang of Vincent’s sweat. So badly it hurts, a hurt he can distinguish from the deep, heavy throbbing that’s settled in everywhere.
All of that, every piece of that creature-the hair, the eyes, the mouth, the skin, the shoulders, the hands, the heart, the humor, the wit, the intellect, the bizarre nobility that only creeps out of hiding when it’s safe to be vulnerable-it was his, once. And having it was so overwhelmingly wonderful that he couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to have it taken away.
Vincent Duval is twenty-nine and looks five years younger; Vincent is mean and brilliant and sweet and beautiful; Vincent is maddening; Vincent is genuine. Vincent is standing in an alley behind a mediocre university bar, surrounded by dumpsters and damp, half-shadowed and wholly dark. Vincent Duval is the only being on the bounteous planet who makes Maion’s stomach do that twirl-flip thing that almost makes him vomit, which is why he didn’t realize he was addicted to it until it was far too late.
But Vincent isn’t his anymore.
Vincent hates his twirl-flipping guts.
“No,” Vincent says. His fingers curl into his sleeves. “I’m not.”
Maion swallows. “Were you celebrating finishing your degree? That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? You did it exactly like you-” Said. Swore. Hoped. Mumbled about into my collarbone when you were so tired that I wrapped you in a blanket and carried you back to your bed. “-intended.”
“Early,” Vincent says. “Yes.”
“Congratulations,” Maion says.
Vincent’s eyes narrow a little-confusion, not accusation. It’s a nice change. Sort of. “Thank you.”
Maion makes the mistake of letting their eyes meet, and then it’s real. They’re really here, together, in the same place, four feet and three years of dead silence between them, and it all happened, and Maion can’t pretend that the 1,090th day isn’t crushing him fractionally more than Day 1,089.
I just want you back. You’re the only thing I’ve ever wanted for myself, and you were the only thing I couldn’t bear to lose, and I never meant to hurt you, and I never would again-
“I should go,” Maion says.
Vincent blinks.
“Goodnight,” Maion says, and he turns away before he vanishes, because Vincent hates it when he cries.
Connor does a marvelous double-take when Vincent comes back into the bar via the front door. He can see from here that Alistair is watching him with the usual frightening perspicacity, and in the process of instinctively avoiding eye contact, his gaze falls on an abandoned table. He can’t believe Maion still has the same stupid messenger bag, which wasn’t exactly stylish three years ago-except that he can believe it. Maybe the sentimentality was real, or partly real, or not entirely feigned. He’s too enervated for estimates; most of his professors would probably despair at the way he’s ruled out mathematics when he most needs something safe, but most of his professors have presumably not had their hearts torn out and then handed back to them by a blue-eyed angel.
His hand only shakes a little, not too noticeably, as he lifts the flap on the bag to look for the small plastic window with the card inside. It’s a new address in the old handwriting, so maybe Maion really is left-handed after all.
He doesn’t jump when John touches his shoulder-either he’s just too numb now, or his senses are acting on their own.
“If you’d prefer,” John says, “I can take it to him. It might be… easier.”
Maion left papers strewn all over the tabletop, including a ring of them around the glass of orange soda. Vincent has the crazy thought that he could snatch up the straw and touch the end to his lips, and it’d be almost like…
Stalking. Stalking is what it would almost be like. Also, clinical insanity.
“I’ve been doing things the hard way for as long as I can remember,” he says, gathering the papers and the folders and slotting them back into the bag. “I appreciate the thought, but it’s better if I see this through.”
John hesitates before offering him a cautious smile. “So long as you’re sure.”
I’m sure I’m still in fucking love with him, and it makes me want to die. Having died once before, I speak from experience when I say that that's no small matter.
“I am,” he says, and he shoulders the strap of the bag before he can lose his nerve. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
If nothing else, Maion taught him a thing or two about lying through his teeth.
[Part 2]
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,985
Warnings: some language, angstpocalypse, AU
Prompt: weave at pulped_fictions
Summary: Celebrating Vincent's graduation does not quite go according to plan.
Author's Note: SOOOO… the moral of the story is that listening to the Cars is a dangerous thing to do, because the next thing you know, you're building a completely pointless AU where Vincent and Alistair are significantly younger, Maion and Michael are significantly less powerful, all of the rules are slightly different, characters you and eltea had make cameos, and Vincent and Maion are ex-lovers who broke up messily when Maion revealed what he was… and then you've pretty much shot yourself in the foot. :P I promise I'll fix the DEATH BY EMO sometime when I don't feel like I've been run over by a cement mixer. X'D
I got a lot on my head
Most of it’s you
I got a lot on my head
To forget about you
- “Got a Lot On My Head” - The Cars -
One too many times
I twisted the gate
When I was crazy
I thought you were great
- “It’s All I Can Do” - The Cars -
PHOTOPHOBIA - PART 1
Connor gives a low whistle. “Top of the class, huh? You could at least do us the honor of looking smug.”
Vincent shrugs. “I don’t feel smug.” It’s difficult to tell exactly how he feels-relieved, to a degree, because now he has the degree; consternated, because now he has to draw together the nebulous beginnings of a business before the money runs out; and beneath it all, there’s still the dull undercurrent of the infected ache. “I have an MBA. It’s a piece of paper that gives me a modicum of intellectual authority; it’s not a magic wand.”
Connor grimaces. “I’m going to the bar,” he says, “and I’m getting four bottles of wine, and you’re drinking all of them, because you’re not allowed to talk like that two hours after graduating from business school.”
Vincent frowns, but Connor’s already out of his seat and waving dollar bills at the brunette behind the bar. John, through whom they were introduced, musters a helpless smile of apology. Vincent worries about John when he has a fraction of leftover energy; the man works shifts at the hospital during the day, joins them for night classes, and then goes home to a harpy. Over the course of the last year, Vincent has actually watched the colors of the man’s face fade towards gray. Connor set a beer in front of him, which he hasn’t touched; most of his contribution to the ‘celebration’ of Vincent’s accelerated graduation so far has been fidgeting with his wedding ring.
There’s some small vindication in that-or there would be, if Vincent… there isn’t time. If he’s fortunate and disciplined, there never will be.
“Hope you’re enjoying this more than it looks like, Alistair,” John says, tired but warm, in his impeccably sophisticated English accent. “It’ll be you next year.”
John is the only person other than Vincent who doesn’t call him Tommy as an endearment of his last name. Vincent once asked Alistair if he minded, and his laconic right-hand-man said only, “It could have been ‘Allie.’”
Currently, Alistair is somehow taking a sip of water with eminent modesty. “I don’t take that for granted,” he says, “but thank you.”
Connor returns with five bottles of wine and a slip of paper. “Got her number, too,” he reports contentedly. “What do you say, Duval? You, me, her, more wine, blurry sexual boundari-”
“Only if you want to wake up in the morgue,” Vincent says.
Connor sighs loudly. “Then you should hook up with Tomm-”
“I can’t believe you passed Advanced Statistics when you’re incapable of processing the word ‘platonic.’”
Alistair laughs softly, and Vincent manages a small twist of a smile. Part of him has always wanted to lament Alistair’s heterosexuality, but just having another vampire-or, as far as the university is concerned, another student with debilitating photophobia-has been enough. Part of him, perhaps a braver part, has gone so far as to admit that it wouldn’t have fixed, wouldn’t have healed, wouldn’t have altered… what came before. The past. The things better left buried, because there isn’t time to dwell, because self-pity is a luxury he can’t afford.
Predictably, decent wine is a luxury Connor can’t afford, but Vincent pops the cork on one of the bottles anyway.
Michael returns with a Sprite and an orange soda, setting the latter next to the neatly-annotated list.
“Thank you,” Maion says warmly, turning the list so that Michael can read it, too. “By and large, I think the theology graduates are actually a pretty Good bunch. Better than the ones we had last year, certainly. I’m worried about…” He pushes his finger down the list until he reaches the name. “Paul. He asks a lot of ‘hypothetical’ questions about the money involved, and I think maybe we should keep an eye on him.”
Michael nods slowly and approvingly, which Maion reads as permission to take a sip from his soda. Michael even remembered to get him a bendy straw-green tonight; blue is his favorite color, but beggars can’t be choosy, and maybe next time…
He takes his file folder from his bag and sorts through for the index of honors-and then the papers get the better of him, and somehow the one he wants jumps out and flutters to the questionable floor. He tries not to grumble inwardly about Michael’s insistence on “blending in” by meeting at bars as he slips out of his chair and picks up the escapee, brushing at it a little in the vague hopes of eradicating some of the bacteria. That’s when he makes the mistake of glancing idly across the room.
Michael starts in surprise as he dives back into his chair and hunches down, managing not to cover his head with his arms too obviously. It’s a small miracle-although he’s used to those-that he doesn’t upset his glass with the way he’s trembling all the way out to his elbows.
“What?” Michael asks sharply, seizing his shoulder. “Maion-”
Breathing is suddenly troublesome. “It’s him.”
“It’s-?”
And then Michael looks over, sees the gleam of light on the wineglass and on the long, smooth, pooling-ink hair; sees the arch of the eyebrow, the faintly sardonic curl of the lip.
It rushes back, swells, deluges, avalanches, burns-Maion presses the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying not to think. Trying not to remember. Trying not to lose every aspect of the present as the dam cracks and then dissolves, and everything is cool, not warm, but softer than he expected; and the elegant fingers card through his hair and then twine themselves in it, woven there like they belong, effortlessly pulling him up into another kiss like the one that just shattered the only world he knows.
Michael’s getting up, and there’s a frigid fire in his eyes.
“Wait!” Maion lunges for his arm and misses. “No, don’t! Michael, please, don’t-”
It’s too late; Michael’s halfway across the bar, and Maion can’t stay here and let him do this, but he can’t move, and-
And all of the old scars tear open at once.
A shadow falls across the table, and Vincent looks up into an unfamiliar face with almost-familiar eyes, which are composed into a caliber of rage that could give a human being instantaneous freezer burn.
He’s seen that kind of anger on just one previous occasion, so briefly but with such potent memorability that it slaughters the dismissal in his throat.
This can’t be-not in just three years.
And it isn’t. The angle of the jaw is different; the set of the nose, its curvature, the cheekbones, the eyelashes. Damn it all; why can he still summon a perfect ima-
“I take it you’re the piece of shit who broke my brother’s heart,” the angel says.
Everything goes so tight that for a moment that Vincent fears his skin will crack like vellum in the sun.
“Is that how he tells it?” he asks.
Renaissance artists were on to something; the angel’s clenched fists look like they’re carved from marble, but as the right one rises, Vincent can’t care. He can’t muster so much as anxiety; he can’t think; he’s fingering the frayed edges of another retroactively-altered recollection-odds are Maion wasn’t left-handed at all; odds are that he just pretended to be. More of the dust on the undisturbed memories turns to ash.
All of his friends are out of their seats and on their feet, but he doesn’t register their protests-not that a few mortals’ words could bring an angel even to the point of hesitation anyway. There’s a crackle of white light around the angel’s wrist, and they flinch back, trying to reconcile that with science, with logic, with a universe they understand; but Vincent doesn’t move. It might almost be nice-to feel. To feel acutely, distinctly, intensely, as he has not allowed himself to do since he made the decision to bury it all and move forward too quickly for the ghosts to catch up.
But the blow doesn’t fall, because another pair of hands have wrapped themselves around the angel’s arm, and these he knows.
On second thought, better not to feel. Better never to feel. Better to flit through existence, to frequent the dark; better willful ignorance, suppression, focus by force. Better to lock it up, shut it down, cut it out with a scalpel and pitch it in the waste. It hasn’t been long enough to forget the way there’s always blue ink smudged on Maion’s fingertips, but somehow he’d forgotten that nothing compares to this sensation of his chest caving in.
Maion’s eyes flicker to his face, and there’s the requisite split-second of surprise-neither of them has changed; neither of them has aged a day; neither of them wears the marks in a place that can be seen.
And then Maion’s eyes fill, and Vincent’s going to be sick. That’s how they parted, although the deft twist of irony’s blade hadn’t occurred to him at the time; everything ended in a second Flood, and this time there were no survivors.
He can’t stand that look. He can’t withstand that look.
Just before the fast-motion implosion in his ribcage becomes a full-fledged black hole and devours the entire bar and all of its customers, Maion hauls the other angel away, weaving between the tables, dragging them out the back door, which slams shut, and they’re gone.
Vincent gets seven seconds of peace, which is two more than he was expecting.
“Holy crap,” Connor breathes. “Who the hell was that?”
“My ex,” Vincent says. The word sticks-it’s too small, too simple; it’s thin and juvenile, except that the X feels like a cross.
Connor stares in the direction of the door. “You tapped that? Damn, man, you have way more game than I give you credit for.”
“Connor,” Alistair says delicately. The young man turns. “Shut the fuck up.”
“It’s fine,” Vincent says-but it’s not, because he’s pushing his chair back, standing, and starting for the back door.
Stop, he thinks firmly at his legs. Quit it. Who the hell do you think you are?
And then his arms are in on it, too, depressing the metal bar that retracts the latch and lets the door swing open, releasing him into the chill of the night. The only explanation he can conjure is that a man dying of thirst will drink the water before him, no matter how diseased, to sustain himself through another mile of the desert.
The door falls shut. His head turns. Maion is alone, leaning against the wall, ink-stained hands spread on the brickwork behind him, staring at the sky. Vincent wants to say something pithy-or something petty. Anything at all; if he spoke, he would be moving first, demonstrating that he’s in control of himself. Proving once and for all that his will is stronger; that he’s still whole.
“I’m sorry,” Maion says, and this must be what it feels like to get staked. “I didn’t mean for him to make a scene.”
“What in the hell are you doing here?” Vincent says. There. That’s safe. And it’s assertive. Good. Great.
Maion looks down, and Vincent’s gaze shifts, too-still a dog on a leash; a puppet on a string. Maion’s wearing white flip-flops. The aversion to shoes wasn’t fabricated, then. That makes one thread of memory that Vincent can trust.
“Michael picked the meeting place,” Maion says. “You won’t see me here again.”
Fine. Great. Peachy. “That doesn’t answer the question.”
Maion’s wearing dark-wash jeans and a white Oxford shirt. One of his hands lifts slowly and picks at the third button, which is the highest one he’s done up. “You’ve always been good at asking questions to which you don’t actually want the answers.”
Not fair-but cruelty is a game made for two. “Is that why you never gave me any honest ones?”
“No,” Maion says. “That was because you wouldn’t have listened anyway.”
“Go to hell,” Vincent says, turning for the door.
“It only opens from the inside,” Maion says as Vincent comes face-to-face with a sign that confirms as much.
In the silence, Maion shifts, and his stupid-adorable plastic flip-flops grate on the dirty cement.
“Are you still in the habit of honesty, then?” he asks.
“Depends who’s asking,” Vincent says. So little has changed about either of them that Maion can probably tell that most of the venom is directed at the door.
“Are you happy?” Maion asks quietly.
A slightly intoxicated man near the other side of the door tells an entire story about his cat shredding the curtains while Maion waits, fastidiously reminding himself to breathe.
Cotton whispers as Vincent folds his arms across his chest. Maion wants to touch him-wants it so badly that it feels like his blood’s turned to magma; so badly that every twinge of those muscles he used to trace makes his stomach twist; so badly that his fingers tremble against the brick wall until he digs them into the mortar; so badly that he can almost taste the metallic tang of Vincent’s sweat. So badly it hurts, a hurt he can distinguish from the deep, heavy throbbing that’s settled in everywhere.
All of that, every piece of that creature-the hair, the eyes, the mouth, the skin, the shoulders, the hands, the heart, the humor, the wit, the intellect, the bizarre nobility that only creeps out of hiding when it’s safe to be vulnerable-it was his, once. And having it was so overwhelmingly wonderful that he couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to have it taken away.
Vincent Duval is twenty-nine and looks five years younger; Vincent is mean and brilliant and sweet and beautiful; Vincent is maddening; Vincent is genuine. Vincent is standing in an alley behind a mediocre university bar, surrounded by dumpsters and damp, half-shadowed and wholly dark. Vincent Duval is the only being on the bounteous planet who makes Maion’s stomach do that twirl-flip thing that almost makes him vomit, which is why he didn’t realize he was addicted to it until it was far too late.
But Vincent isn’t his anymore.
Vincent hates his twirl-flipping guts.
“No,” Vincent says. His fingers curl into his sleeves. “I’m not.”
Maion swallows. “Were you celebrating finishing your degree? That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? You did it exactly like you-” Said. Swore. Hoped. Mumbled about into my collarbone when you were so tired that I wrapped you in a blanket and carried you back to your bed. “-intended.”
“Early,” Vincent says. “Yes.”
“Congratulations,” Maion says.
Vincent’s eyes narrow a little-confusion, not accusation. It’s a nice change. Sort of. “Thank you.”
Maion makes the mistake of letting their eyes meet, and then it’s real. They’re really here, together, in the same place, four feet and three years of dead silence between them, and it all happened, and Maion can’t pretend that the 1,090th day isn’t crushing him fractionally more than Day 1,089.
I just want you back. You’re the only thing I’ve ever wanted for myself, and you were the only thing I couldn’t bear to lose, and I never meant to hurt you, and I never would again-
“I should go,” Maion says.
Vincent blinks.
“Goodnight,” Maion says, and he turns away before he vanishes, because Vincent hates it when he cries.
Connor does a marvelous double-take when Vincent comes back into the bar via the front door. He can see from here that Alistair is watching him with the usual frightening perspicacity, and in the process of instinctively avoiding eye contact, his gaze falls on an abandoned table. He can’t believe Maion still has the same stupid messenger bag, which wasn’t exactly stylish three years ago-except that he can believe it. Maybe the sentimentality was real, or partly real, or not entirely feigned. He’s too enervated for estimates; most of his professors would probably despair at the way he’s ruled out mathematics when he most needs something safe, but most of his professors have presumably not had their hearts torn out and then handed back to them by a blue-eyed angel.
His hand only shakes a little, not too noticeably, as he lifts the flap on the bag to look for the small plastic window with the card inside. It’s a new address in the old handwriting, so maybe Maion really is left-handed after all.
He doesn’t jump when John touches his shoulder-either he’s just too numb now, or his senses are acting on their own.
“If you’d prefer,” John says, “I can take it to him. It might be… easier.”
Maion left papers strewn all over the tabletop, including a ring of them around the glass of orange soda. Vincent has the crazy thought that he could snatch up the straw and touch the end to his lips, and it’d be almost like…
Stalking. Stalking is what it would almost be like. Also, clinical insanity.
“I’ve been doing things the hard way for as long as I can remember,” he says, gathering the papers and the folders and slotting them back into the bag. “I appreciate the thought, but it’s better if I see this through.”
John hesitates before offering him a cautious smile. “So long as you’re sure.”
I’m sure I’m still in fucking love with him, and it makes me want to die. Having died once before, I speak from experience when I say that that's no small matter.
“I am,” he says, and he shoulders the strap of the bag before he can lose his nerve. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
If nothing else, Maion taught him a thing or two about lying through his teeth.
[Part 2]