A/N: Character switch; back to Saul. Just in case anyone forgot this story does that (I ALMOST DID).

Six

I always chose what I eat carefully. Almost to the point of near veganism. And low fat and low carbs. It’s just that I can’t really exercise, so if I don’t watch it fairly carefully, I could get pretty unhealthy. And pudgy. And I don’t need that, not with everything else. I mean, the best exercise I get is lifting myself in and out of my chair. My arms stay strong, but that doesn’t really translate to anywhere else on my body. I have these sort of sit-up exercises I can do, but—I’m not good at doing them.

Anyway, the point of all that was—eating in the school cafeteria. As expected, the food is pretty standard at best. Edible, definitely, but not what you’d want for the rest of your life. I eat salad, mostly, and sandwiches, and sometimes some of the hot plates they serve if it doesn’t look like a hotbed of grease. Still can’t get myself to eat ‘General Chicken’ though. A little too dodgy for me, like mystery meat.

I rolled up to a little table of my own with a big leafy salad. Since I had so many short classes all lumped together on Tuesdays and Thursdays I only got to lunch at weird hours—it was two o’clock right now, and the cafeteria was mostly empty. I’d been lucky they hadn’t rolled down the doors yet, since they usually did that a couple of hours before they started serving dinner at five.

I was okay being on my own. Sure, maybe I looked like a loser eating all by myself, but sometimes I just needed time to myself. I’d spent almost the entire weekend with Vaan, and he was so exuberant and invasive—not really in a bad way, but he was just a serious force of personality. I just wasn’t used to it. Most of the friends I’d had back home had been pretty mellow. I didn’t think Vaan had that word in his vocabulary. He was switched on every second of the day.

As I was eating, I became mildly aware of a whole group of people, pulling out chairs at a table behind me, clattering trays and dishes around and generally making a lot of noise. Because I couldn’t help it, and there wasn’t anything else to listen to, I picked up little snatches of their conversation.

“Oh hey, isn’t that—“

“Must be, how many guys in wheelchairs around here—“

“Well, go get him.”

About two seconds later, a wild head of purple, bleach-blond, and copper poked itself over my shoulder, peering into my face. I startled, but I recognized this hair; it belonged to one of the girls I’d met over the weekend, the one with a name that sounded like a last name.

“Heeeeeey there,” said the girl-with-the-improbable-name-of-Sloane. “Saul, right? Vaan’s new best buddy?”

“I guess that’s me,” I said. Sloane had a tongue piercing; a silver stud that clicked behind her teeth when she talked. I hadn’t noticed that before. She’d also not been three inches from my face before. Her breath smelled like mint and chocolate.

“You wanna eat with us?” she said, grinning.

I glanced around their table. Vaan wasn’t with them. I’d felt pretty comfortable with these guys when he was around, but I wasn’t so sure I could handle them on my own. The one girl, Alice, who had about six different colors in her hair and a neon lime-green sweatshirt on, grinned and waved at me across the table. Her moody-looking gothy boyfriend was busy unscrewing the caps from the salt and pepper shakers and mixing them together. The two brothers who looked possibly Mexican were punching each other. They were all so far from any of the kind of people I’d ever hung out with before.

“Um,” I said, as an answer. Sloane translated it as yes.

“Awesome,” she said, and picked up my tray. “I’ll get that for you.”

I can do that on my own, I wanted to say, but refrained. I didn’t like people doing things for me. Especially things I could do myself. That was another thing I liked about Vaan. He had not once tried to open a door for me, or do anything that was overly and unnecessarily helpful. Not after he’d asked me the first time if I needed help with my laundry.

I wheeled after my tray, over to the other table, where Sloane plopped it down next to Alice’s seat. There was a chair there, but Alice stuck out a neon-stocking’d leg and booted it out of the way.

“Yay!” she chirped. “Sit by me!”

“Okay,” I said, as if I had much choice. There wasn’t any other place to be.

#

It was okay eating with them. I survived it. I didn’t understand half of the things they were talking about and I just kind of sat quietly and unobtrusively there, listening. One in a while Sloan zeroed me out with a direct question or something, but overall my presence was severely understated. That was okay. I liked not being paid attention to, because it was kind of rare, these days.

I didn’t have another class that day, but I didn’t feel like going back to my dorm because the day was really nice and I hadn’t spent much time outside recently. I took myself on a little roll around the perimeter of campus, just taking my time and feeling nicely unhurried. It was a good kind of warm outside and there was a little breeze pushing at my back. A nice California day.

When I was nearing the end of my lap around the school, I passed by the theater building. There was someone on a short stepladder next to one of those kinds of signs they use to announce events with, putting up large plastic letters into the light-up box. So far they were spelling out “A MIDSOMMER NIGHTS D”. The purple spiked-up hair immediately told me that the someone was Vaan. I rolled up to the foot of the stairs.

“Hey,” I called up to him, and Vaan twisted, looking down at me over his shoulder.

“Yo!” he replied, giving me a wave. “What’re you doing all the way out here?”

“All the way out here? This is right behind the science building!”

“Oh. Is it?” Vaan asked, with complete feigned innocence.

I rolled my eyes at him. “So what are you doing out here?”

“I would think that would be obvious, what with me being on this ladder by this sign here.” Vaan slapped the metal frame, raising his eyebrows.

“You’re putting up a sign, I got that. Why?”

“Well, there’s this thing called a play…”

“Oh, shut up!” I said, laughing. “You know what I’m asking.”

Vaan grinned at me, picking up a black plastic R. “Okay, fine. I’m in this play and for some reason got nominated to do the sign. I think I was annoying everyone and they wanted me gone for a bit. We’re even spelling it the Shakespearian way—A Midsoooomer Night’s Dream-ey!” He enunciated the title exaggeratedly, but I was still stuck a few sentences back.

“You’re in the play? What, like tech crew or something?”

Vaan waved the plastic R back and forth a few times. “Naw. In it in it. Like, acting and shit.”

“I thought you told me you didn’t have any talents.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Saul.”

“You know what I mean!”

Vaan laughed. “Yeah, I know. Acting is about the one thing I can do, actually. Theater’s my major, actually—I never told you that? I like doing it, so that works out pretty well.”

So Vaan was into acting. Honestly, it didn’t surprise me. What with the little things he did all the time, falling into random roles that he could play out with a totally straight face. The only thing that surprised me, I guess, was that I hadn’t figured that out myself.

“Oh. Well—so who are you?”

“What? Oh, in the play.” Van grinned and lifted his arms over his head dramatically. I had this moment where I afraid he was going to fall right off the ladder, but he kept his balance perfectly well. “I am Oberon, king of the fairies!” he proclaimed, then glanced down at me with a smirk. “Not those kind.”

“Right, of course. They let you have purple hair for that?”

Vaan rubbed his hand through his spiky hair and stuck out his tongue. “Yep. The director actually thought it was kinda cool. And so Titania now has pink hair. But it’s a wig, so I’m just way cooler.”

“So when is this play?” I asked, and Vaan briefly glanced upwards, as if trying to remember.

“Ah…it runs for two weeks starting this Friday…why?”

“Come on. Why do you think I’m asking? I want to come see it.”

“You do?” Vaan sounded genuinely surprised, and that startled me.

“’course I do. Unless you don’t want me to or something—“

“No!” Vaan objected, then frowned slightly. “I’m just not used to…well. Never mind. But if you really want to come I can get you a free ticket.”

“Free is good. And I do want to come. Why is it weird that I do?”

Vaan wrinkled up one side of his face, squinting his eye. “I’ll tell you later. You done with classes for today?” I nodded. “I’m outta this one at four, so I’ll come by after. Cool?”

“Cool,” I said, putting my hands to my wheels and starting up again. “See you then.”

Vaan waved the R after me.

#

As promised, Vaan showed up just a little after four. Without knocking, as was his MO that I was getting fairly used to. He just strode through the door and threw his backpack onto my bed like this was his room and he had complete freedom to do it. I’d been at my desk, kind of messing around with homework but not very seriously, and I pushed back to face him.

“Hey,” I said, as he jumped up onto the end of the bed and pulled his legs cross-legged beneath him.

“What it do,” Vaan said with a grin, which I had to assume was some sort of greeting.

“So, your play,” I said, getting right into it. “Why is it weird that I want to come?”

Vaan scrunched up one side of his face unflatteringly. “Ah,” he said. “Well. Just no one else ever does, I guess. I think the last time anyone actually came to something I was in, I hadta be like…seven. In like a nativity play or some shit.”

“Even your parents—“

“My parents think everything I do is a fucking joke,” Vaan said, with the most vehemence I’d ever heard from him. But it was gone in the next second, a big stupid grin back on his face. “I’m totally stoked you want to come, though.”

“Oh. Oh, good,” I said, still a little…well. Surprised. “Well, I totally will. Uhm. I like Shakespeare.”

“You lying liar,” Vaan said, “who lies to me with lies. Nobody actually likes Shakespeare! They just pretend to sound more cultural and pretentious.”

“Damn, you caught me,” I said. “My faux–intellectualism has been revealed.”

“And how,” Vaan said, grinning. I smiled a bit back, but I was still stuck on his brief bitter interlude.

“Um, do you want to talk about—“

“What, my parents?” Vaan said. “Nah. It’s cool, really. I just had like, a bitter moment there. Seriously,” he added, when I just kept looking at him. “It’s cool.”

I didn’t think it was. But, I dropped it. Just like he’d dropped the whole why-don’t-you-like-being-attractive conversation. I owed him for that.

#

Vaan stayed in my room until dinner time, where we met up with Vaan’s friends again. At least time Vaan was there, and I felt just a little more at ease. It wasn’t that I was that uncomfortable around his friends, it was just—that. They were his friends. I didn’t want to be one of those obnoxious people that got reluctantly accepted into a group just because I knew one person in it.

But it ended up not just us and the five of them at the table, either. There were people here I didn’t even know, had never met before. The Valez brothers—both kind of muscley—pushed together several tables in order to make one giant table that all of these strangers could sit at. Everybody seemed to know somebody else, but no one knew everybody. Maybe this was just what happened in college, but it was a little overwhelming. I was barely used to five or six loud people—never mind about twenty of them. It was the loudest table in the entire cafeteria. I felt so strange to be sitting at it, under an arch of yelling conversation, wadded-up napkin fights, yelling, food exchanges, and more yelling.

I’d ended up between Sloane and Vaan. Which was about the safest place I could be. After Vaan, I liked Sloane the best out of his friends. She wasn’t quite as weird. Well, she was weird, but in the same way Vaan was weird. A weird that I understood.

I was eating salad again (“hey there, rabbit,” Vaan had said, after looking at my plate) and I would have had milk except AJ had stuck his elbow into my glass and knocked it over. How, I’ll never be sure, since he was two seats down from me. Sloane only had food stolen from other people when they weren’t looking, and Vaan had combo’d up about three hamburgers into one very large hamburger. I didn’t really watch him eat it, because it was kind of gross. And apparently, it wasn’t even enough for him, since when he was done he pushed back his chair and stood up.

“Be back,” Vaan said to me and Sloane. “I’m laying siege to Osgiliath before the Causeway Forts are garrisoned.”

“What,” Sloane said, laughing, through a mouthful of fries she’d stolen off of some stranger’s plate.

“He’s getting more food before they shut the doors,” I said. Vaan did one of those, ‘yes, that’ points at me, and then ran off through the tables. One of the cafeteria workers was already poking at something up at the top of the roll-down gate, and Vaan dashed under it and disappeared behind the salad bar.

“Lord of the Rings,” I said to Sloane, since she still looked utterly lost. She rolled her eyes.

“He is such a giant geek,” she said, with equal parts disgust and affection. “Although, apparently you are too.”

“Maybe a little,” I admitted. I got jostled a little as someone dropped into the seat Vaan had vacated—someone who was not Vaan, as they were kind of large and beefy and Mexican. One of the Valez brothers, the one they actually called Valez. Apparently he’d wanted to talk to AJ, who was another seat over, and yelling across the table just hadn’t been good enough.

“I could not read those books,” Sloane declared. “No way. All those funny goofy names and things. I can’t even believe Vaan remembers all of them, he’s terrible with names. It took him like four weeks to remember mine when we met. And mine’s not really normal.”

“Is it—it’s not your last name, is it?” I asked.

“My last name’s Johnson,” Sloane said with a grin. “But Sloane isn’t my real name either.”

“Oh,” I said, wondering if she would tell me if I asked. “What is it, then?”

She glanced around, shifty-eyed, and leaned forward. But the noise level of the cafeteria was overwhelming enough that I could barely hear her, let alone needing to worry about someone else overhearing. “Don’t tell Vaan,” she said. “Or anyone else. ‘cause I’ll never hear the end of it. My real name’s Sylvia. And my middle name’s Antonia. See?”

Sylvia Antonia. I could see how you could mush that together into Sloane if you tried a little bit. Although I wasn’t sure why you’d want to. Sloane wasn’t…the most attractive of names, really. Especially for a girl.

“I get it,” I said. “I won’t tell.”

She sat back, smiling. “Good,” she said. “I have entrusted you with the secret, you must take it to your grave!” She waggled her hands dramatically. I laughed—she was cute, really. Likeable. I could like her, I mean. Maybe a lot. Potentially.

Vaan came tromping back to us then, carrying a new tray and looking put out.

“Oh, the fucking food here,” he said, and kicked the chair Valez had stolen. “Get out of my chair, Valez! That’s my spot, I’m sitting there!”

Valez shot something in fast Spanish at him that ended in puta and was half garbled by all the food in his mouth. But he slid out of the chair and instead just stood up behind AJ to talk with him. Vaan elbowed back in next to me, still glowering down at his tray as he plopped it to the table.

“What’s it?” Sloane said, pricking up. She hadn’t gotten any food herself, for some reason, and she was done with her stolen fries. “Can I have it, if you don’t want?”

“No way, bitch, it’s mine, I fought for it,” Vaan said, and I had to assume the insult was endearing. “They only had General Chicken left,” he added, giving the plate a morose spin. “Echk. Disappointing.”

“Yeah, I’d rather my chicken be at a higher rank,” I said to him.

“I’d rather mine to be more specific,” Vaan said back, and we grinned at each other.

“You guys, seriously, are so fucking cute,” Sloane said, beaming at us. “I see why you picked him up, Vaan.”

“Naw, it’s only because he’s so pretty,” Vaan said, stabbing a piece of unspecific low-ranking chicken with his fork and stuffing it into his mouth.

“There is that,” Sloane said keenly, and I flushed a little. There was a difference now between Vaan saying stuff like that, and someone else. Like a girl. Vaan could pretty much say anything to me now, and I was immune. I didn’t know Sloane very well yet. She was pretty herself, really, in an artistic glamour-punk fashion-school way.

“You can’t hit on him,” Vaan said, stabbing the air in her direction with his fork. “Doesn’t that go against the rules of your order?”

“Your order?” I said, having a brief thought that Sloane was some strange religion I’d never heard of.

“I have an appreciation for all variations of the human body,” Sloane said magnanimously. “I just only want to get into bed with the feminine half of them. But this one right here,” she jostled my shoulder, “is fiiiiiiiine. Bet he’s fending off a million people already. Better grab him up quick, Vaan, before somebody else does.”

“Saul, oh my darling Saul, be mine forever,” Vaan deadpanned at once into his chicken.

“For all eternity, sweetie-poo,” I said back blandly, and Vaan snorted into his water glass and nearly choked.

“There, he’s spoken for,” Vaan said when he’d recovered, as Sloane reached over me with her fork, aiming for his plate. “Lay off my white meat, woman!”

Sloane managed to nab a piece anyway, and chewed smugly at him over my head. Sloane, who was apparently gay. Well. She was still cute. Just not available to me. That was okay. I didn’t really need a girlfriend now. Or even a potential girlfriend.

#

The next day, I went along with Vaan to pick up the free ticket to the play. I didn’t really have to go with him, but since he was making the effort for me, I figured I should make one back. We had to go up to the student center on the 3rd floor, and Vaan had to present his ID to the girl at the student services office in order to verify that he was indeed entitled to a free ticket.

The girl slid it back and was busy typing up stuff and writing on forms. The counter was just below my eye-level, so I could sort of see the picture of him printed on the ID.

“Whoa, let me see that,” I said, grabbing for the card. Vaan tried to snatch it back, but I was closer and faster. “Look at you!”

Vaan in the picture ID had very short—almost buzzed, really—hair that was dyed black. He was wearing a plain white shirt and almost no jewelry; just a thin black cord around his neck. He didn’t have his lip piercing. His expression, with one eyebrow raised and a slight lift to one side of his mouth, looked smirky and confident, and kind of like he was trying to seduce whoever was behind the camera.

“That was summer before my freshman year here,” Vaan said, desperately, reaching out for the card. I kept him pushed back with my elbow, leaning out the other side of my chair with it. “Augh, no, don’t look!”

“What’s with your face?”

“I don’t know!” Vaan bawled. “Partial seizure. G’mme my card back!”

“No way,” I said, still holding him back. He wasn’t really trying very hard—he probably could have gotten it from me in a second, if he’d really wanted to. I glanced down at the name printed under his picture—which seemed to be his full name.

“Vaan Harrison Vincent Bauer,” I read off, and Vaan made a retching sound.

“Why would you say my whole name, Saul, why,” he said, dismally, like I had had just read him off a death sentence.

“It is a little—pretentious,” I said, grinning.

“It’s just…so…businessman sounding,” Vaan said, his lip curling up on one side. “Plus, my initials are ridiculous. VHVB, it sounds like some sort of venereal disease. Like, I’ve got the VHVB and now my junk is falling off!”

I laughed. “Okay, it’s not that bad.”

Vaan pouted hard at me, and I obligingly handed him his ID back. He grabbed it and stuffed it away somewhere in one of his thousands of pockets. If I had as many pockets as he did I’d never find anything. The girl at the counter was watching us with a half-amused expression, like she wasn’t sure what exactly to make of us. I didn’t entirely blame her.

“So,” I said, as we were heading back out of the office, my free ticket for the show tucked away in my backpack. “Why isn’t your first name spelled V-a-u-g-h-n, anyway? That’s the normal way, right?”

“Yeah,” Vaan said. He had one hand on the back right handle of my chair, but wasn’t pushing me this time. Just resting it there. “My mom picked my name, and I guess she liked the sound of ‘Vaughn’ but not the spelling. Which I totally approve of. Fucking stupid silent letters. My dad’s responsible for the Harrison Vincent bullshit.”

“My middle name’s Algernon,” I said. “Does that help?”

Vaan brightened considerably. “Totally,” he said. “What the hell?”

“I think it was my dad’s grandfather’s name.”

“Algernon,” Vaan said, grinning. “Epic. I think I’m gonna call you Flowers from now on.”

“I have no idea how you expect people to keep up with all the references you drop on a daily basis,” I said, and Vaan grinned hugely at me.

“You do,” he said.

“Don’t expect that to last,” I said. “I didn’t even grow up here, remember? Eventually you’ll start hitting stuff I’ve never heard of.”

“It’ll be like a game,” Vaan said, as we got to the elevators and he hit the down button. “Find the holes in Saul’s pop culture knowledge. Yes. I will win this game. And you will rue the day you ever grew up in South Africa.”

Suddenly Vaan straightened up slightly, blinked at me. Then he said, “you’re from South Africa.”

“Yeah, Vaan, I am,” I said, laughing a little. The elevator dinged and opened, and we went in. “That’s been well established, I thought.”

“No, I mean—it has a bunch of official languages, right? Do you speak any of them? Like Afrikaans?”

“I—,” I really needed to stop being surprised by how much Vaan actually knew about things that most people didn’t, like official languages in South Africa. “Sort of. I can get by in it.”

Vaan looked seriously thrilled. “Oh, seriously? Dude, that’s awesome. Say something.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Anything!”

“Ek weet nie dit nie, enigiets,” I said, and Vaan looked like Christmas and his birthday had come early and on the same day. Majorly excited.

“What was that?” he said, eagerly. “What’d you say?”

I smirked at him. “I said, ‘I don’t know, anything’.”

Vaan smacked the back of my head playfully as the elevator delivered us to the ground floor and we headed out. “You are stupid,” he said. “Okay, you’re not, because you totally speak another language, and that’s awesome. Why are you so good at everything?”

“Because I try harder than you,” I said, and Vaan palmed my head again. The handcuffs on his wrist jingled madly. He fell into step beside me as we headed out of the building, his hand resting on the back handle of my chair.

“Actually, you’re probably right,” he said. “I don’t try that hard. But anyway. We totally had a talk about languages before this—why didn’t you mention the whole, ‘I speak Afrikaans’ thing?”

“I kind of forget, sometimes,” I said. “I haven’t really spoken it for four years, and I’m really rusty. And my mom never learned, so I don’t use it at home or anything.”

“And the school’s still making you take Spanish?”

I held up two fingers. “Two required semesters of a language for everybody, right?” I said. “I don’t think ‘grew up in South Africa’ makes weight on a waiver form.”

“Eh,” Vaan said, shrugging in an oh-yeah-huh kind of way. “That kind of sucks.”

#

Vaan had gotten me a ticket for the opening night of A Midsummer Night’s Dreame. So that’s where I was that Friday night. The assigned seat I’d been given with the ticket was pointless, since it was seat 12 in row H, about right in the middle of the theater. I couldn’t really get to it, or use it. There was a little area off to one side in the front that has a very faded blue handicap symbol sprayed onto the floor, which was where one of the girls taking tickets directed me to.

Seeing Vaan act startled me. Not because I hadn’t expected him to be any good, or anything. But he was just much different than I had expected. What I had expected was to see Vaan leaping around onstage in some sort of costume, acting, but still being him. Still being the guy that I knew, just slightly different.

But it wasn’t, at all. Even though I knew he was Oberon, I still had to check the program a couple of times, just to make sure. His voice sounded different, deeper and fuller and with some sort of affectation that was almost like an accent, but not quite. But it made him sound somehow exotic, mysterious, and not at all like the hyper and slightly spastic guy that I knew. He even moved differently, a sort of graceful slinking around the stage, moving his arms broadly around like he was swimmingly slowly through the air. It sounded absolutely ridiculous, but I would have believed he was a fairy king.

The whole production was good, actually. The stage was simple and a little whimsical, the backdrop done in a gradient of purple-pink lights, with silhouettes of leaves and vines curling in from the edges. It all took place in half-light, a perpetual dusk. The costumes were simple but effective—all of the faeries were wearing green and had fake vines and leaves wrapped around them, and each with their own accent color. Vaan, naturally, was purple. And as he’d said, the girl playing Titania was wearing a cotton-candy-pink wig.

During one scene, I watched Vaan touch Titania’s face with the back of his fingers, soft and reverent. I wondered how well he knew that girl. I don’t think I could have ever done acting. I couldn’t force emotions. I had them or I didn’t. And Vaan looked completely enthralled by this girl. I wondered, suddenly, if he had a girlfriend. I didn’t think so, I probably would have met her by now. I wondered if that’s how he would look if he did have a girlfriend, or if it was all just acting.

Afterwards, I was hanging around in the lobby where Vaan had told me to wait for him. I watched people filter out of the theater and into the dark courtyard outside, milling around and talking with each other. Some of the cast members (I recognized Titania even without the pink hair—she was brunette) came out and said hello to friends, or people who looked like family members. I remembered what Vaan had said about nobody coming to anything he’d been in for years. It seemed really strange.

In a few minutes, Vaan came out from a back hallway somewhere, half-dressed. He was wearing his huge black pants with the red thread, but still the shirt made of fake vines and leaves, which left almost all of his chest totally bare. His purple hair was still swept back and gelled into wild tufts, and there was bunch of makeup around his eyes, big dashes of purples and blacks with bits of silver, and I think there was some glitter on his face, too.

“Saul! What’d you think, man?” he said, bounding up and clapping me on the shoulder. Even with his exuberance turned up to its highest decibel, I could sense a little nervousness in him. I think he was afraid that I’d think he was a joke, too. Like his parents apparently did.

“I thought it was really good,” I said. “You know—I could hardly even tell it was you. And in a good way. You were really good. Label me impressed.”

Vaan gave me the biggest grin I think I’d ever seen on a person. I was half afraid his face was going to split open and the top of his head would topple off.

“Awesome,” he said, all that faint nervousness completely gone from his voice. “I totally—oh, hey, man, hang on a second,” he said, as a brown-haired kid in street clothes and wild green makeup still all over his face ran up behind us. I was pretty sure he’d been Puck. Vaan turned away from me to chest-bump him and then exchange a couple of incoherent exuberances with him, doing some sort of complicated hand-bump-shake-slap that went almost too fast to comprehend.

Then Vaan turned back to me. “Oh, hey, Matty, this is Saul,” he said. “Saul—Matthias. Matty.”

“Hey,” I said to him. “Just to let you know, I’ll never recognize you again unless you wear all that makeup regularly.”

Matthias grinned. “Hah,” he said. “And it’s just Matt,” he added, slapping Vaan in the chest with the back of his hand. Vaan oomph’dand let his tongue roll out of his mouth. “Saul, huh? Not the Saul that Vaan can’t shut his fucking mouth about?”

“Ooh, Matty, I’ll kill ya,” Vaan said, rolling up invisible sleeves. “I’ll kill ya dead.”

“No, seriously,” Matt said, smirking, tweaking his thumb at Vaan. “With this guy it’s all, my friend Saul says this, my friend Saul says that, my friend Saul is from South Africa and speaks other languages, ooh, my friend Saul plays the violin like a badass motherfucker—auuuugh!”

He yelled and had to jump back to dodge Vaan, who had leapt for him with a mock war-cry. Matthias turned tail and bolted off down the hallway, Vaan right behind him.

“I’ll be back when he’s dead, Saul!” Vaan hollered back to me. “Then we can hide the body together!”

“I’ll get a shovel,” I said mildly after him, smiling to myself.

#

Vaan came back a little later, his face clear of makeup and his hair looser and spilling over his forehead. And wearing a shirt. And also leather-looking fingerless gloves with crazy buckles and straps going all the way up to his elbows.

“What are those for, joining the Opera Lovers Biker Gang of America?” I said, and Vaan laughed hard enough to make a series of funny little snorting sound.

“C’mon, let’s hit the rooooad,” he said, taking the back handles of my chair and heading us through the big double glass doors of the theater building. He did this frequently now, pushing me, and most of the time I wasn’t sure if he was aware of it—it seemed to be an unconscious thing. It was kind of this weird, chivalrous, protective gesture that I probably wouldn’t have let anyone else do. I didn’t like being moved around by other people, not having too much control over where I was going or how fast I was going. But, like most everything else, it was different with Vaan.

Vaan wanted to hear what I liked about the play. Not necessarily about him, specifically, but everything. I told him, as best as I could, not knowing much about theater, really. But he seemed satisfied with what I could say, and that I’d liked it. We got about halfway back across campus before Vaan suddenly rolled us to a stop. I glanced back at him, thinking something was up or he’d seen something or someone. But he was looking upward, into the night sky.

“Let’s stop here,” he said suddenly, stepping off the concrete path suddenly and onto the grass.

I wheeled myself around to face him. “Why?”

“I dunno. Just want to.” Vaan sat down at the base of the slight slope, and fell back into the grass. I could either sit in my chair and look at him, or get down there myself. So I did the second, locking my wheels and levering myself down to the pavement. Then I scooted myself onto the grass and up nearer to Vaan, who was just watching me do it, waiting. Not offering to help. Because he knew I was perfectly fine to do it by myself. There weren’t even words to express how much I appreciated that.

I lay back on the grass next to him. Crickets chirped in disembodied audio all around us. Grass tickled the back of my neck and my arms, and I could hear Vaan breathing beside me. The sky was dark and mottled brown above us, too many city lights reflecting off clouds for it to be truly dark. A few stars managed to gleam through anyway. Everything around us was cool, dark and calm. Really peaceful. I could have fallen asleep. And then—

“You hear that?” Vaan said, suddenly.

“What?”

“That sort of hissing—“

The hissing became a sharp spluttering noise, and suddenly columns of tiny water droplets shot out of the ground, arcing upwards into the dark sky and falling down again to land on the grass, and us. Sprinklers.

“Oooh, fuck,” Vaan said, somewhere between laughing and groaning.

I was getting wet fast, and I pulled myself up on my elbows, looking over at Vaan, who hadn’t moved.

“Getting up?” I asked him, and he blinked wetly at me.

“Naw. It feels kinda nice.” Vaan closed his eyes and titled his face upwards, water running down his neck.

“Okay then.” I flopped back down against the now-damp grass, my shirt instantly soaking up the moisture, sending cold shivers up my arms. Water pattered down on my face. I let my head fall to the side, glancing at Vaan, who still had his eyes closed. He lifted his arms upward, then let them flop back down to the grass with a soft squelchy mud noise. His fingers brushed against my hand, and stayed there, the back of his knuckles resting lightly against mine. For some reason, I was hyper-aware of him touching me, like every molecule of my body was trying to rush towards my fingers.

Vaan turned towards me after about another half-minute. “Okay, wanna get out of the rain now?”

“Isn’t really rain,” I said. Vaan suddenly grabbed my hand in his, squeezing my fingers tightly.

“You know what I mean,” he grinned, swinging our hands back and forth. And I felt prickles of heat marching deliberately across my face.

“Yeah, let’s get out of it,” I said, and pulled myself to my elbows, my hand slipping subtlety out of Vaan’s.

“Hey, at least that’s not wet,” Vaan said, gesturing to the concrete path, on which my chair was sitting innocently, a few safe feet from any of the sprinklers.

“It’s gonna be in a second. I’m soaked.”

“So I’ll just carry you bride-style back to the dorms.” Vaan grinned at me, and I couldn’t help laughing.

“Right, because you’re strong enough for that, and my chair can roll around and follow us by itself.” I patted my thighs, and whistled at my chair. “Come, Fido!”

Vaan absolutely cracked up and fell back into the grass and wet dirt, cackling. I rolled my eyes at him, but was somewhere privately impressed that I could make him laugh like that. He was always generally so much wittier than me.

“Let me see if I can do it,” Vaan said when he recovered himself, rolling up to his elbow. His hair had turned a deep black-purple, and little wet curls were matted along the edges of his forehead. I frowned at him.

“Do what, exactly?”

“Carry you. You can’t be that heavy, right? Let me try.”

“What? Are you serious?”

“Yeah!” Vaan seemed bizarrely excited about this idea. “Wait, like—how much do you weigh? Okay, no, that’s rude. How tall are you?”

“Four-six,” I said, and Vaan threw back his head and laughed.

“Without the chair,” he said, when he’d controlled himself again.

“Six feet even,” I said and Vaan’s eyebrow shot up.

“Dude, seriously?” he said. “You don’t look that tall.”

“Because I’m always sitting down, idiot,” I said, amusedly. “I used to be six-one. Before, uh, everything. I had some surgery and stuff.”

“It made you shorter?”

“Dicking around with your spine tends to do that.”

“Whoa,” Vaan said. “I’d hate to be shorter. I’m already short.”

“You look tall to me.”

“That’s because you’re always sitting down, idiot.” Vaan grinned and patted my head. Water sponged out of my hair and ran into my eyes. “Dude, you are really wet,” he said. “Okay, I’m gonna try and pick you up now.”

“Okay, whoa, wait—“ I said, but it didn’t do any good. Vaan scooped one arm around my back and the other under my knees, and lifted. He honestly didn’t look strong enough to do it, but he managed it. Suddenly I was up in his arms, and the only thing I could do was throw my own arms around his neck and hold on tight. And we were both still wet, so the whole thing was just very squishy, cold, and intimately awkward.

“I did it! And you really aren’t that heavy,” Vaan commented. I blinked furiously.

“Yeah, I—uhm.”

Vaan hefted me up a little, adjusting his arms, then did a sort of awkward twirl around. I was really sure we were going to take a dive into the mud, but Vaan managed to stay balanced. The sprinkles were still going off all around us, and I was glad I’d worn my contacts, or I’d’ve been completely blinded.

“I’m siiiiiinging in the rain,” Vaan warbled, and I clutched at his shoulders for my life. “Just siiiiiiiiiinging in the rain—!”

“My god, you know musicals,” I said, now unable to do anything but laugh at this situation. “You sure you aren’t gay?”

“You knew it was a musical,” Vaan said, grinning. “You sure you’re not gay?”

“My mom loves them,” I said. “I used to watch them with her all the time. When I was like six.”

“Awww, shut up.” Vaan swung me around again and I grabbed back at him and tried not to squawk like a girl. He picked up the tune again, pretty off-key but not exactly that horrible to listen to. “You can be my Caaaaathy,” he sang, fitting the words into the melody of the song. “What a marvelous feeeeeeling—“

“Seriously, okay, down!”

Obligingly, Vaan dumped me down in my chair. Which still had the wheel-lock on, thankfully, otherwise his less than coordinated movements probably would have knocked us both all over the ground.

“Ohoho, I’m so fucking wet,” Vaan said, and took a step back and shook himself like a dog. Water spat out from his hair and shirt, and I halfheartedly held up my hands to block it. “Okay,” he said then, slicking his hair out of his face with one hand. “Okay, now I’m cold and not real happy. Let’s go back.”

“Good idea.”

Vaan took the handles at the back of my chair and started pushing me along again, at a much faster pace this time. There were other people walking along the sidewalk back towards the dorm block, and Vaan considerately shook his head and sprayed water at some of them as he zipped us along. Some of them made unhappy noises about that. Vaan slowed down again once we were in the dorm block.

“Gotta slow down, my pants are totally chaffing,” he said as an explanation, and I laughed.

“That’s what you get,” I said, “for keeping us in the sprinklers. And calling me gay,” I added, as an afterthought.

Vaan made a ‘thhhppbbt’ noise with his tongue. “You know I don’t actually think you’re gay, right?”

“Thanks,” I said, rolling my eyes at the unneeded assurance. “I’m not so sure about you, though.”

“That’s probably pretty accurate,” he said, and it took me a moment to sort of realize what he’d said.

“What?”

“Being not so sure. I’ve never had a girlfriend,” Vaan said, and I gaped a little. We’d reached our dorm building, and Vaan started patting down his soggy pockets for the card key. I pulled mine out of the little handy pouch on the inside of my chair arm and handed it to him. “Thanks. Never had a boyfriend either,” he said, without missing a beat, swiping the card and handing it back to me. The front doors wooshed open. “But I’d be up for either, really, I’m not exclusive. Long as I like them, and vice-versa, right? That’s really all that matters.”

“Right, I guess,” I said. Was this Vaan kind of coming out to me as…bi, or something? Not that it was really that shocking, this was Vaan after all—it was more shocking that he’d never actually dated anyone before, being as friendly and charismatic as he was. Still, I’d just never really known anyone like that. Well, there’d been the one girl, but I was pretty sure it had mostly been a phase. And I guess Sloane.

“I mean,” Vaan said, and I was starting to wish he wasn’t still walking behind me as we went into the lobby/common room area. It was kind of weird, talking about this kind of thing, when I couldn’t see his face. “There’s all these stupid stereotypes about gay people—guys—and, you know, gaydar and how they’re supposed to act and stuff. I don’t really seem gay, do I?” No, he didn’t. Not at all. “I mean, I’ve liked girls, usually. But I could see liking a guy too, you know? I could see how that might be something I could want. I wouldn’t rule it out.”

I was still kind of running it all through my head when Vaan tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey,” he said. “You clammed up. You got a problem?”

“No,” I said. “Not at all.”

“Okay, then,” he said. “Good. So. That’s why I don’t know what I am. You know—I’ll go for whoever I like. The fuck cares what body they’re in.”

“What if they were in, like, a squirrel body?” I said. “Or a sea slug body?”

“Ugh, Saul, ugh,” Vaan said, laughing. “Why would you even—just ugh.”

I was glad he was laughing, because I’d been a little worried I’d offended him by going quiet before. That was one thing that did throw me a little, about him. His opinions were so—opinionated, I wasn’t sure what actually disagreeing with him would be like. I’d probably get completely steamrollered by his forceful personality. So far it hadn’t been an issue, but…well, I’d worry about it if it ever did.

I went off to my room then to get out of my wet clothes, while Vaan ran up to his own room to change. Or at least, I thought he was going to change, but he came down about a minute later in the same sopping clothes, but holding dry ones. I hadn’t even managed to get a change of clothes myself yet.

“There are like—a million people in my room,” Vaan said, sounding a little apologetic. “Todd’s friends. I couldn’t even get to the bathroom. Uh. I’m gonna change here, cool? Maybe borrow a towel?”

“Yeah, cool,” I said. “I’ll get you one.”

I rolled into the bathroom and rolled out again with one of the spare towels I had (my mom had packed me off to school with about three people’s worth of linens and towels). Vaan had already peeled off his wet shirt, his back to me. I saw the tattoo right away. It was on his right shoulder, some kind of small bird, like a sparrow, done in solid black shapes. One wing outstretched and the other just an abstract, curved line. It was fitted onto the whole of his shoulder blade.

“You have a tattoo,” I said. Vaan twisted around to look at me, and caught the towel when I tossed it to him.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “That I do.”

“Seriously, can you just strip down and show me all the stuff you’ve got on you? Because it’s really odd discovering them one by one like this.” Like the nipple piercing.

“That’s the last one,” Vaan said, grinning. “But I’ll still strip for you, if you want.”

“No, no, it’s cool.”

Vaan reached over his shoulder and patted the bird tattoo there. “Got that at the end of high school,” he said. “Parents don’t know about it either.”

“You’re a rebel,” I said, and Vaan stuck out his tongue.

“I am a free fucking spirit,” he said, and I hadn’t heard truer words for a while.

A few minutes later we were both dry(er), changed, and sitting on my bed. I was up at the headboard, leaning back and trying to stretch out my back a little, and Vaan was cross-legged next to me, the towel draped over his head like a bizarre nun habit. He was trying to tie a knot back into one of his corded necklaces that had popped off while he was changing shirts. He was only wearing about a third of his normal jewelry overall, probably because of the play and everything. The handcuffs on his wrist were also gone—apparently, he had known where the key was after all.

“So,” Vaan said, suddenly, glancing up at me. “I want to know about the accident.”

The question came out of nowhere, and the only thing I could do was splutter out a shocked, “w-what?”

Vaan was looking totally serious, and he slipped the re-knotted necklace back over his head, beneath the towel. Then he yanked the towel away and tossed it towards the bathroom. His hair was mussed into all crazy angles. “The accident. You only ever mentioned it the first time we met. I want to know what happened.”

“I…I told you. I got hit by—“

“By a car, yeah, that’s what you said. But that’s not a story. It has to be a story, I mean—there’s more to it then just that.”

“I—don’t know.” I had to look away from him, because I wasn’t used to him being like this.

“You don’t tell people about it, do you.” It wasn’t even a question. I shook my head. It was always ‘I got hit by a car’. Never more. I figured no one wanted to know the details. No one wanted to know how my life was suddenly rendered half useless and numb. What did the event matter if the results were all anyone saw?

“Not—really.”

“Would you tell me?” Vaan shifted a little, moved around so he was facing me more directly. “Please?”

No, was what I wanted to automatically say. And I almost did, except, suddenly—hands slipped into mine, cold skin and thin fingers with lots of cool metal rings closing on mine. I didn’t even want to look down to confirm that Vaan was holding my hands. Again.

“You can do this,” he said. “Saul, you can. I know you can.”

I wanted to shake my head—no, no I can’t do this. Why do you think I never have?—wanted to tell him that there was no story, there was this, the consequence, and that was all. But Vaan wouldn’t take that for an answer, and suddenly, surprisingly, my tongue was itching to speak, as if the words I’d been holding back for so long were finally trying to pour out of me from my mind, my heart, wherever I’d been holding them.

“Uhm,” I said, and shuddered out a long breath. Vaan’s fingers tightened on mine, and somehow, it was comforting. And suddenly, I was talking.

“It was, uh—in the summer. Before my senior year, mid June sometime. I was with some friends and we were—going to go see a movie, I can’t even remember which one. It was me and some other friends and my girlfriend at the time. You know, nothing special, just hanging out. It was such a normal day.

“When we got to the theater, my girlfriend, she realized she’d left her wallet in my car, in the parking structure. I can’t even remember how this—but somehow I ended up going back to get it for her. She probably hadn’t wanted to walk all the way back or something because it was getting dark, I don’t know. But I went back alone while the rest of them stayed at the theater.

“So I was just walking, across the crosswalk. There’s barely ever any cars on that street because there’s this bus depot, and it wasn’t even really dark yet. Just dusk. I remember thinking that we probably could have pooled enough money to cover her ticket. Right about then I heard tires squealing, and I remember I thought it was someone stopping short at the stoplight down the road. I know I looked that way first. I don’t even know if anything would have been different if I’d looked the other way, if I’d had time to react, to do anything…”

My throat closed up then and I tried to clear it, but just ended up making this kind of odd little gulping sound. Vaan’s grip got even tighter, and he started rubbing his thumbs, just slightly, on the backs of my hands. My eyes felt hot and wet, and I hated it.

“Sorry,” I said, furious with myself. I’d thought I’d been done crying about this a long time ago. “God, sorry.”

“It’s fine. It’s fine. Take a second,” Vaan said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

I had to pull one of my hands away from Vaan and scrub it over my face then, just to gain some composure back, just to breathe. As soon as I put it back down, Vaan grabbed it again. This time, I held back. I didn’t even care how weird it was, that I was holding another guy’s hands, because it was helping. Seriously helping, just to have that little bit of contact.

“This is about where I stop being able to remember,” I said, when I could. “I just remember sounds…I sort of remember feeling. It kind of felt like…like someone had shoved me hard in the middle of my back. It didn’t really hurt at the time, it was just pressure. I remember seeing a lot of dark grey and yellow and white. It felt like being in a snowglobe. But it was only a second and then...just blackness.

“There were only two people around to see it happen. The guy driving the car, and a woman on the sidewalk. She was the only one who could even say what happened, because after he hit me, the guy ran onto the curb and hit the parking structure. Hit a solid cement wall. Steering wheel crushed his chest. He’d been, uh, really drunk, apparently. I don’t know much about that part. The woman who was there was the one who called 911. I was unconscious, and—obviously never made it back for the movie.”

I tried to laugh after that, but it didn’t really work. It just sounded like a strangled, phlegmy noise. Vaan just kept squeezing my hands, looking at me.

“Uhm,” I said, finally. “So that’s—yeah. That’s how it happened. I didn’t wake up for four months, after. I had a bunch of broken bones, and they’d healed before then, so I didn’t even know I did. But that was also part of the problem…because I was in a coma, the doctors weren’t sure if I was paralyzed or not. They didn’t want to operate on me without a reason, and so they decided to wait until I woke up. Personally I think a lot of them didn’t think I was going to wake up.“

“Why did you?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Sometimes stuff like that just happens—medical things they can’t explain. One day I just woke up. I didn’t really have any idea what was going on, I barely remembered the accident, I totally freaked out. I remembered more later on, but right after it was like—I’d closed my eyes at home and opened them again in a hospital, hooked up to like five different machines, and I couldn’t move my legs. I thought I was dead, for a while. Sometimes I wished I was.”

“Fuck,” Vaan said. “Saul.”

“I’m okay now,” I said, unnecessarily and maybe not entirely truthfully. “I mean, yeah. I’m okay.”

Vaan looked at me for a moment. Like he wasn’t quite sure what to make of that lame answer. He looked down at our joined hands, and for a second I thought he was going to pull his away. But he didn’t. After a moment, he raised his head again.

“How paralyzed are you?” he said. “I mean, I don’t know much about this stuff. You can’t move, I know that—can you feel at all?”

“Uhm, I’ve got—“ I said, terms and facts from my rehabilitation months suddenly tumbling into my head. “There’s two classifications of SCI, complete and incomplete. Mine is incomplete, which means that I can’t move, but I can kind of feel things. Mostly only in my right leg, I can feel a little bit when things touch me. And you already grilled me about the sex thing, so you know about that.” I couldn’t help but blush at that—that still remained one of the more embarrassing conversations I’d yet had. Minus the original one with the female doctor. “I guess I am lucky, in a way. It could have been worse.”

Saying those words made me feel traitorous. It was what the doctors had told me, countless times, over and over again, at the point when I’d been refusing to accept the fact that I wouldn’t walk again. It was what my mother had told me when I hadn’t wanted to go back to school because I didn’t want to go there in my wheelchair. And now I’d just said them for Vaan, those same words I hated to hear. I couldn’t even think why I’d said them.

Vaan was watching me carefully. After a moment, he slipped his hand out of mine, and rested it on my right knee. “You can feel this?”

I couldn’t lie to him. “No.”

He moved his hand higher. I swallowed shortly and put my hand on top of his, stopping him. His fingers were long and thin and cold. “I can feel that,” I told him. His hand was halfway up my thigh. And I could feel it now, very slightly, like a very light touch, even though I could see his fingers pushing deliberately against the material of my jeans.

“Um,” I said, feeling a little odd. “Um.”

Vaan glanced up at me, unruffled. “I didn’t know you could feel at all. I don’t really know anything about this kind of thing.”

“And I know too much. It doesn’t matter, I guess.”

He just continued to look at me. “Are you all right?”

“I…I’m fine.” It was a lie, of course it was a lie, what did he think? Talking about this was going to make me happy? Although, strangely…I felt a weird sort of relief. Somehow, I had a feeling that Vaan knew that. I was fighting back the stupid urge to cry at this point, and I think Vaan knew that too.

Because he said “no,” and leant forward, staring so intensely into my eyes that I started wondering where the Vaan I knew had gone. This wasn’t like him at all. “Are you all right?”

“I…I…” I couldn’t even get it out this time. I had to bite down on my lip to keep it from trembling. And then Vaan’s arms were around me suddenly, pulling me against him. The angle was entirely awkward because he was still cross-legged, leaning forward over his knees, and I could only be moved so far forward myself, but Vaan didn’t seem to care. His hands were in my hair and pulling my face against his shoulder, and he just held me like that.

I put my own arms around him and felt the little uncontrolled hitchings in my breath start up. Oh, God. I was crying. How…pathetic. How stupid and just—stupid. I hugged Vaan harder so he wouldn’t pull away and see. But I was getting his shirt wet with my stupid, stupid tears and of course he knew I was crying. And he let me. For just a few minutes, he let me. He didn’t say anything for another minute or so, and when he did, it was a very casual, “you okay?” beside my ear.

“Yeah,” I said quietly. I was, too. Maybe better than I had for a long time. But I also felt weak, and embarrassed, and pitiful. I’d never even cried in front of my mother. And Vaan—god, I’d only really known him for a few weeks.

Vaan gave me a little squeeze. He was still holding me, gently but somewhat awkwardly, and I got the feeling he didn’t do this much. If ever. He didn’t really know where to put his arms, and he kept fidgeting. But he didn’t let go. And I didn’t want him to. This guy—he was the best friend I’d ever had in my life. I’d known him barely a month and he was already this important to me. I felt more comfortable with him than I ever had anyone else, outside of my family.

After another moment, he eased back. His hands trailed down my arms and caught at my elbows, holding on. This was all so weirdly—intimate, touchy-feely, and I wasn’t used to it. But Vaan was really a tactile person, I’d already realized that. I would just have to get more used to this if we were going to be the kind of friends we were turning into. Good ones, close ones.

“I just…I feel so stupid,” I muttered, staring at my lap.

“Hey, you have a perfectly legitimate reason to be really fucking upset,” Vaan said firmly. “See, like, if I ever cry, I want you to punch me, hard, because I’ll have officially become a useless pussy. There’s almost nothing wrong with my life right now.”

“Can I get that in writing?” I asked, trying feebly to joke. Vaan grinned.

“Sure. I’ll sign it in blood too.”

I managed a weak smile. I still felt torn-up and miserable inside, hollowed out and aching. I never would have picked Vaan as the person to do this in front of. Except….he hadn’t acted like I would have thought. I didn’t know how I thought he would have acted, just not…like this. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever had anyone who would have done what he had for me, even before the accident.

“Vaan,” I started awkwardly. “I, um…thank you. Just…for everything.”

“I’m not doing anything really,” Vaan said simply. “Just trying to…you know. Be a friend. Not something I’ve practiced a lot.”

“You’re doing good so far,” I said, sighing.

“Well, thanks,” he said. “I just wish I could more than listen.”

“Even that’s more than most people do.”

“Yeah,” Vaan said. “I’m…starting to see that. You’ve never told anyone this stuff, have you?”

“I—no. Not—I mean….everyone knew it. They were there, or, afterwards. And—“ Here was a subject I was reluctant to bring up, but I wanted Vaan to know what I felt about it. I drew in a little breath before continuing, “I know you think the counseling is stupid, but—“

“No,” Vaan interrupted me right away. “Look, okay, Saul. You’re in counseling for legitimate reasons. That’s a lot of shit to deal with, and—I wouldn’t blame anyone for needing help, needing to talk it out. You want to know why my parents sent me to counseling?”

Vaan twisted a hand into his hair and tugged on it. With his other hand he pointed at the ring in his lip, the bars in his eyebrow, and then lifted up both jewelry-laden wrists and shook them. “Because of this kind of shit. It’s stupid shit, stuff that my parents go into total crisis mode over. They think I’m on drugs and suicidal and probably about to flip my shit and turn Ted fucking Bundy or something, because of the stuff I wear. That’s why I think it’s shit. I don’t need it. I’m fucking fine. Whatever I need to deal with in my life, it’s nothing like…what you do.”

I managed a tiny, wry smile. “So you’re saying I need therapy.”

“Aw, shut up, stupid,” Vaan said, and knocked me with his elbow. “I’m saying—don’t be embarrassed by it. If it’s helping, or even if it’s not really, but you’re just getting to talk to someone—someone better than me, at least.”

“You—you’re fine,” I said. I didn’t think I could admit to him that I’d never had a friend who would do this kind of thing for me before. “You’re really—you’re great.”

“Durr,” Vaan said, sticking his tongue out of the corner of his mouth. “Don’t get sappy on me.”

“Let’s punch each other a little to get back our manhood,” I said, and Vaan laughed.

“I can’t punch a cripple. I think you go to hell for that,” he said, but gave my shoulder a hard nudge anyway. “Let’s go play Halo instead. Then we can shoot each other to get back our manliness.”

“Okay,” I said. This time I managed a real smile. “Sounds good.”

#

Feelings-sharing time with Vaan had been completely unexpected and surprisingly enlightening. Not to get girly and soppy, but I really did feel like I could talk with him about anything, especially after that. I didn’t want to unload all my baggage on him, but at least that one, he’d asked for. I wasn’t going to throw stuff about my dad or my ex-girlfriend on him unless he asked about it. I was eyes-deep in issues and nobody really wanted to deal with all of it. Except Dr. Townsend, who was getting paid for it.

On Saturday, I took a shower. Sounds average and normal and nothing to write home about, but it’s a little more complicated for me. There’s a stable chair fixture in the shower I have to get myself into from my usual chair. It takes some work and some time. Once in everything’s easy, since my dorm is the designated handicapped room and has things like detachable shower heads. My mom, I think, was secretly terrified I’d slip and die in here one day on my own. So I always brought my cell phone in with me and kept it within reaching distance. Especially since she tended to freak anytime she called and I didn’t answer, even if the phone was just off or dead or on silent. She worries a lot, but with only a half-functional kid, she’s maybe allowed that.

Getting out of the shower again takes more time than getting in. Firstly, everything’s wet, which means I have to make sure I’m not going to slip and die like my mom fears. I have to dry off, get myself out of the fixed chair and into my other chair, and get dressed, and that last part is kind of hard enough normally sometimes. But I’m used to this whole exercise. I got good at it at home pretty fast, because otherwise my mom had to help me. And that was just—very awkward.

I rolled out of the bathroom finally, hair still wet and a towel around my shoulders. The last thing I expected was to see Vaan sitting on my bed, grinning and cradling a big rolled up paper tube like it was a baby. I startled, badly, lurching back in my chair.

“Oh Jesus Christ, Vaan,” I said, pretty sure I was going to have a heart attack on the spot. I must have forgotten to lock the door. I hadn’t seen him all day and he hadn’t made any mention of coming over.

“Hah, scare ya? Sorry,” Vaan said, grinning. He thrust both of his arms, holding out the paper tube to me like an offering. “Look! I promised I would, right?”

I squinted at him. “A poster?”

“Yeah, yeah!” Vaan said excitedly. “Go ooon, look at it!”

I little afraid of what might actually be on this, like he might have sincerely found a picture of naked wrestling mud giantesses or something. But I took it from him, and—a little bit awkwardly—unrolled it. It was black and white, obvious right away, and it was of a person. I had to fight the thing flat against the edge of my bed because it really wanted to curl up, so it took a moment for me to see what it was.

A black and white photograph of a man in profile, a slightly older looking man, holding a conductor’s wand. His hands were up in the air, fingers arced and poised, skin standing out against the blackness behind him. His face was calm, but intent, focused on something beyond the darkness of the picture. It took me a second, but I recognized who it was.

“Karajan,” I said, somewhat blankly.

“Oh, fuck yeah, you know who it is,” Vaan said, settling back with a grin. “I had no clue, but I thought you would.”

“You got me a poster of Herbert Von Karajan?”I said. “Who even—makes these?”

“Oh, no one, probably,” Vaan said. “I did it myself. Google images is magical. As is Kinko’s.”

“I—what?” I said. “You made this?”

“Well, that piece you said was your favorite to play, I looked it up before I forgot the name of it,” Vaan said. “And, like, apparently everyone thought this guy was the best at conducting it. So I thought, if it was your favorite piece, you’d probably know this guy. And you do, so I’m just like, amazing. Otherwise it could have been naked wrestling mud giantesses.”

It was the most oddly thoughtful gift I could ever remember getting. And out of the blue, too.

“I—it’s great, Vaan. Seriously,” I said. “I didn’t actually think you’d—you know. Ambush me in the shower with a poster.”

“Okay, now, I’m gonna put it up for you,” Vaan said, taking it back from me. “Show me where!”

“How about over the desk,” I said, and Vaan practically bounded over there to do so. Just clambered up onto my desk and started sticking the picture to the wall with thumbtacks. He just pulled them out of one of his many pockets like they were something he carried around frequently.

“It’s not straight,” I commented, and Vaan snickered.

“I could make a joke,” he said. “But I will refrain. And how the hell is this not straight? Your eyes are crooked!”

“It’s completely at an angle,” I said. “Fine, fine, keep it that way.”

“Fuckin a right,” he said. He leapt down from the desk, looking pleased with himself. He stuck his hands on his hips and gave the poster a firm nod.

“Now your room no longer looks like a prison cell,” he said. “A-may­-zing.” He looked at me then, and did a little sweep up and down, checking me over. “I just noticed you’re wearing short sleeves.”

“Hm,” I said. “And?”

“Never seen you in ‘em before. Dude, you have nice arms,” he said, reached down and squeezing at my left bicep. “You weren’t lying.”

I was just waiting for him to say something about the scars. They’re pretty obvious. They’re all from the accident, not any sort of angsty cutting frenzy, or anything. It’s why I tend to wear long sleeves. I have scars all over my legs, too, and a huge one on my back from surgery. It’s probably a good thing people still consider my face to be pretty, because the rest of me looks like a taxidermist’s nightmare. There’s actually a scar on my head, too, but it’s under all my hair.

It took a moment, but finally Vaan touched the long patchy scar on my left shoulder, where a bunch of my skin had gotten scraped off.

“The accident, right.” I nodded. “Ah, don’t worry,” Vaan said. “You’re so buff it’s totally distracting. Not like me. Look at this. Grr,” he curled his arms down and flexed. He really had close to no visible muscle at all. “No one’s gonna tell me where my beach ball is.”

“What?” I said, laughing a little.

“Y’know. Oh, have you seen my beach ball? It’s this big,” He did the down-flex again, “and went that way.” He lifted one arm up in a right angle, pointing one finger out and flexing again.

“You picked me up, remember?” I said.

“That I did!” Vaan looked re-enthused. “Well, that makes me a little bit cooler, I guess. So, let’s go to my room and play manly video games,” he said, with his penchant for switching topics. “Todd keeps kicking my ass in Halo and I need backup.”

“Apparently you haven’t noticed how godawful I am at that game,” I said, and Vaan grinned.

“Oh, I have,” he said. “That’s why I need you running around as a big old distraction while I take everyone else down.”

“Remind me to never really go into a war zone with you,” I said.

“I’ll mount gatling guns on your chair if we ever do,” he said, completely straight-faced. “Forward and back, you’ll be Hell on Wheels.”

I laughed, because I couldn’t not.

#

This guy Brian lived a few rooms down from Vaan and Todd. He was over in their room a lot, especially at night, since apparently his roommate put a tie on the door practically every night. I’d needed to have what that meant explained to me—Vaan had taken the opportunity to pat my head and call me a cute little freshman again. And Brian was there now, when Vaan and I came in to his and Todd’s room.

They were already playing something else on one of the systems Vaan owned, but Vaan threatened Todd’s access privileges if they didn’t quit and switch to Halo right then. They acquiesced. So the four of us played Halo for about an hour until Brian started talking about how hungry he was, which made Todd decide he was hungry too, and that they should go out on a food run.

“Do you guys want to co—errr,” Todd said, stumbling to a halt as his gaze fell down to my chair, which obviously couldn’t fit in a normal car. “Huh—ah. Hmm.”

“It’s cool,” I said, before he started to make it more awkward by apologizing. “I’m okay.”

“Bring us something back,” Vaan said, pulling a ten out of one of his pockets and throwing it at them. “Unless you go to Wendy’s. Then I want none of that horror.”

“Dude, you could have at least handed it to me,” Todd said, having to get nearly on his knees in order to retrieve the bill from the floor. He was just that tall.

“No, fuck you,” Vaan said, grinning at him. “I like to watch you bend over.”

“Jesus,” Todd said, laughing like that hadn’t been completely suggestive at all. “Vaan, you’re retarded.”

“Sadly, I know this,” Vaan said, placing his hand over his heart. Then he made broad shooing motions with his arms. “Go, go, get! Hasten forth and fetch sustenance. Your lord and master commandeth.”

I sometimes forgot Vaan had a roommate—and that the poor guy would have to deal with Vaan a lot. But he seemed to be pretty immune already, just like I was. He’d have to be, or he’d go crazy. Todd straightened up, flipped Vaan off, and—still laughing—shoved Brian out the door ahead of him.

The door clicked shut behind them, and Vaan turned to me. “I just tease him a little,” he said. “He’s gay, by the way.”

“Oh,” I said. “Oh, I—yeah, okay.”

“Can’t tell, can you?” Vaan grinned. “He’s totally like, manly and everything. And that buzz cut. And the whole him being a total fucking slob. Look at that.” Vaan gestured to Todd’s general area of the room, which was, definitely, a giant mess. “I’m neater than that.”

“Sort of,” I said, and Vaan socked my arm.

We didn’t play anymore Halo after that, since Vaan declared that the AI were more of a challenge then me, and that was just sad. “Let’s watch a movie or something,” he said. “Oh my god, I have The Voyage Home, I totally just bought it the other day. Let’s watch that.”

“That’s uh, nuclear wessels, right?” I said, and Vaan grinned.

“Yes,” he said. “And whales.” He got up and started riffling through a huge foot-locker truck at the end of his bed, and pulled out a DVD and stuck it in one of the gaming systems. He grabbed a controller and flung himself back onto the bed.

“Get up here,” he said, as music from the menu started up.

“What?”

“Get up,” Vaan said, patting the bed beside him, “here.”

“You know, I’m pretty good here—“

“Your giant head is gonna block my view,” Vaan said. “So you will either get up here or you will sit on the floor.”

I laughed at how solemnly “Okay, okay.” I wheeled myself back until I was parallel with the bed, locked the wheels of my chair, and levered myself up and over. Vaan scooched closer to the wall to give me room, but there wasn’t that much in the first place.

And it was kind of odd, squishing together on a twin size bed, but after about five minutes I stopped even noticing it. I even leaned on his shoulder a bit—mostly because I was a little afraid I was going to slide off the edge of the bed. Vaan smelled a little like butterscotch and shampoo. It was an interesting, and oddly nice, mix. And then I realized I’d been smelling him, and that was kind of weird. And I stopped.

#

“Where the hell did they go?” Vaan complained, about an hour later. “Weren’t they just getting food?”

“Maybe they went somewhere to make out,” I said, sleepily. I’d given up a little and was now leaning my head entirely on his shoulder. It was kind of nice. Vaan shook against me with laughter.

“What?” he said.

“Didn’t you say Todd’s gay?” I said, letting my eyes drift shut.

“Yeah, but Brian isn’t,” Vaan said. “Er. I don’t think.” He laughed again. “Dude, what if they are making out somewhere? That’s hilarious. What a pair. Todd could fit Brian inside his shoe. He could probably fit Brian’s whole head in his mouth.”

Brian was kind of a small guy, really. I laughed at the image of Brian stuffed into one of Todd’s beat up, boat-sized running shoes, and then at the secondary image of Todd eating Brian’s head.

“I’m definitely asking if he and Brian are a thing,” Vaan muttered, mostly to himself. “Because that would be awesome.”

I went in and out after that, dozing off and waking up when anything was louder than usual on the TV. I didn’t know what Vaan was doing, other then breathing. He could have been sleeping too, for all I knew.

I woke up at a point, and credits were rolling. And Brian and Todd still didn’t seem to be back. I jostled Vaan a little, and he went, “huh” and flailed slightly.

“Movie’s done,” I said. I glanced at the clock—it was pretty late. “I should go.”

“You don’ hafta,” Vaan said, sounding equally as sleepy. He shifted a little, and his hand curled into the front of my t-shirt. “Youc’n stay. D’mind sharing the bed.”

I laughed a little, because his voice suddenly sounded like he was about five years old and about to start sucking on his thumb or something. But I didn’t want to get up and I definitely didn’t want to have to get myself back in my chair and navigate the elevator and Vaan’s bed was warm and comfortable and….I could just stay.

“Okay.” I leant back against him, closing my eyes. Vaan was right next to me, really close, and I could feel warmth radiating from him. It was…comforting, in a weird way. But I couldn’t think about it too much, because right about then I fell asleep.

#

The first thing I was aware of when I woke up was that someone had their arms around me. Around my waist, more specifically, and a head was pushing against my neck, soft hair tickling my skin. At first, it felt really nice. In a sleepy, semi-conscious way. For a moment I just let myself enjoy the warm, comfortable, safe feeling it brought me. Just being held, being touched so gently, in the drowsiness of just-awakening, it felt perfect.

But when I started to wake up a little more, remembered that I didn’t have a girlfriend or anything at the moment and that the last person who I’d been on a bed with was Vaan.

My eyes snapped open, and I was suddenly very, very awake. I could see fuzzy purple in the corner of my vision—Vaan’s hair. He was really sleeping on me. Or sort of…against me. He’d slipped further down the bed than I had, so that the top of his head was wedged under my chin. And he’d wrapped me up in his arms like I was a giant teddy bear. We’d also switched sides somehow during the night—I wasn’t going to think too closely about how that had happened—and now I was on the side next to the wall and Vaan was nearer to the edge of the bed.

I held very still, making absolutely sure that I didn’t move at all and wake Vaan up. I had to figure out exactly how to deal with this, or explain it, before he did. He was pretty cool with most stuff, but this was a little…intense.

Vaan shifted slightly and I tensed—but he only pressed closer to my neck and sighed softly, his warm breath on my skin making me shiver. That was about the point that I realized where my own arm was sort of under his shoulders, curled up around his back. There was no way I could move it, and I didn’t even know how it had gotten there.

And right then, an alarm went off next to the bed. Vaan’s, apparently. He jerked his head up and smacked it against the underside of my jaw.

“Ow—!”

“Ow, motherfucker—“

Vaan rolled back and nearly fell off the edge of the bed. Out of reflex I caught him with the arm that was already up around his back. He flailed a little, grabbed at me, wrapped his entire arm around my body and nearly threw himself on top of me in an effort to keep on the bed. He managed it, and also ended up with his chin planted on my chest, staring up at my face.

“Well, hey,” he said, when we were both safely balanced again, and grinned.

“Hey,” I said, blinking. I guess I hadn’t needed to worry about this being awkward. Vaan didn’t find anything awkward. So we’d slept in the same bed all night and woke up cuddling. Apparently, that was cool with him. So then, it would be cool with me.

“Did I hit your face?” Vaan said, wincing a little. “’cause the top of my head really fucking hurts.”

“I’m fine.” Yeah, my jaw was a little achey, but it was all right. “Do you wake up like that every morning?”

“Only with you,” Vaan said, and then groaned and rolled over, sliding out of the bed. “Fuck fuckfuckfuck, my arm is so asleep,” he wailed, shaking his left arm out from the shoulder. I sat up, stretching out my back, which wasn’t happy with me for the weird position I’d been in for probably a fair amount of the night. I had an extra pad on my own bed just to keep morning pain down to a minimum. Right now it kind of felt like burning lead weights attached to each of my vertebrae. But I could deal with it; it had felt worse than this for a long time after the accident.

“Breakfast?” Vaan said hopefully at me, still wriggling his arm around and slapping at it. “It’s Saturday, so there will be waffles.”

I nodded. “Sounds good.”

We found a ten dollar bill taped to the inside of the door as we were leaving, along with a note that read, we went to Wendy’s, hahaha. XOXO Todd

“Okay, he’s totally gay,” Vaan said with a grin, ripping them both down and stuffing them into a pocket. I was a little more concerned with the idea that Todd and Brian had probably come in and seen us sleeping on Vaan’s bed together. I wouldn’t have cared as much if we hadn’t been completely spooned up together. That was a little much.

But there was nothing I could do about it, and Vaan apparently didn’t care we had been doing it, so I pretty much had to ignore it. Just another strangely over-intimate moment in our bizarre friendship. I was getting more and more used to them.

#

“Maaaanly video game time,” Vaan sang as he barreled through my door later that week, without knocking. He never knocked. If I didn’t want him to come in, I had to lock the door. Which I only did when I was showering or sleeping, so Vaan pretty much owned my room. Which I didn’t mind.

“Actually, I can’t. I gotta go to this thing,” I said, pretty apologetically. I really liked manly video game time with Vaan (which usually included Brian and Todd), even though I was pretty terrible at everything we played.

Vaan threw himself onto my bed with a whumpf, pouting his face into something petulant.

“Aww,” he said. “What? It’s Thursday night! Nothing’s going on.”

“It’s for class, I have to. It’s like a senior concert or something they’re putting on—anyway, I have to go. I get credit for it.”

“A concert?” Vaan said, the hurt look vanishing from his face instantly. “Well, then, I’ll come too.”

“You really want to?”

“Hey,” Vaan mock-bristled. “I like music and stuff. You know. With real instruments. That aren’t guitars.”

“You like classical music like I like Shakespeare,” I said, and Vaan put on a ridiculously over-aghast expression.

“I do not,” he said. “Now I am totally coming.”

And he did. The concert was just in the biggest hall of the music building, no ticket needed, and it was just plastic chairs arranged in rows to face the ensemble of players. Pretty casual for the audience, although all the players were dressed nicely. I knew a few of them, just seeing them around the music building or having them in classes. One girl, Nadia, fellow violinist, gave me a subtle little wave when she saw me. I waved back. Vaan noticed, and smirked at me and bounced his eyebrows up and down. I elbowed him in the gut.

I wasn’t even really sure what this was actually for, other than I got credit for it. A senior presentation, I thought, and at least Nadia was a senior. Some people had solo pieces they did, but a lot of it was everyone together in tandem, ensemble pieces. And they were all good—really good. I missed orchestral pieces, since my only classes now were individuals. I played with other violinists, but no other instruments, at least for this semester. I missed that group feeling, being one part out of a whole, not the main focus but still contributing my worth.

“Shit, this is so beautiful,” Vaan said, very quietly, right in my ear. I startled, and glanced at him. He wasn’t looking at me—instead focused completely on the players. I knew he’d liked listening to me play the violin, and that he had completely eccentric tastes in music, but I wouldn’t have guessed him for someone who got emotionally moved by classical pieces.

“Yeah,” I said back. “It is.”

Vaan looked at me then, and suddenly his hand slipped over mine, where it had just been resting on the arm of my chair. It startled me, but this just seemed to be something he liked to do. Holding my hand. And it didn’t bother me. I turned my hand over, let my fingers fall between his, and held back.

I’m probably going to go back and touch up/redo the first several chapters of this. Just because looking over them I realized that…they’re just a little hideous. Just need some serious editing and continuity catches and to be reworked so they don’t read like they were written at 2 in the morning four years ago. That’s really going to have no bearing on the progression of the story, but if those chapters suddenly change a bit, that’s why. This story is more of guilty pleasure than anything, really.

The picture that Vaan blew up for Saul: http :// radiobeta. com /blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/herbert-von-karajan . jpg (without all the spaces)