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In the end, they left Machias lying atop his still perfectly made bed, fully clothed and stinking of alcohol. Rean double-checked everything twice before leaving the room; glasses on the bedside drawer, head angled so he wouldn’t choke on his inevitable vomit, the lock on the door after he tugged it quietly shut behind them. Across the hallway, Crow waited, arms folded behind his back and quiet.
It was only after jiggling the handle for the third time that Rean looked back, brow furrowed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m wasting your time.”
Crow didn’t move. “Eh,” he said. “If I wanted to leave, I would’ve.”
“Still.”
“Plus, we’ve got all night. Though you probably need your beauty sleep, huh?”
It was hard to miss the deliberate emphasis Crow placed on his words; you, your. Rean thought about all the times he’d woken up and found Crow alone on the deck of the ship well past any reasonable hour, and bit his lip. “I’m not tired,” he said.
“Sure you aren’t,” Crow said. He cocked his head, and looked down the hallway. “Where’s your room?”
“I told you. I’m not tired.”
“Just asking.” Crow put his hands up in surrender. Rean felt his throat close. He swallowed hard, and took a step forward.
Crow didn’t protest when Rean took his hands. They were cool to the touch, but Rean had gotten used to that. By now, it was instinct to sweep his thumb over the lines of his palm, down to the bloodless artery right in the groove of his wrist. Still no heartbeat. Rean hadn’t expected anything else, but he never stopped checking.
“If you want me to sleep, then let’s go to your room,” he said.
At that, Crow paused. The clock ticked by in seconds. Rean could feel Crow’s skin begin to warm under his own.
Finally, Crow said, “Rean.”
Before he could continue, Rean cut him off. He didn’t want to hear the rest of it. “I know,” he said, and miraculously, his voice didn’t crack. “I don’t— I’m not asking for anything.” Liar. Rean backpedalled. “Or— I am, I mean. But not that.”
Crow didn’t say anything. The weight of his gaze was almost enough for Rean to forget the rest of the world on his shoulders.
Rean licked his lips, too dry to speak. “Just for tonight,” he said, weak. “Just once.”
The silence stretched. Rean hated it, and he hated himself more. But finally, eventually, Crow moved. His fingers curled. They held Rean back.
“Okay,” said Crow.
Rean could feel his heart thudding in his ears. Crow tugged, and he followed. Crow’s room was five doors down, and Rean knew this too well because he knew everything about Crow too well and that was a line of thought too dangerous to go down. So he stopped thinking; and he stopped right as Crow stopped and watched him dig inside his coat pocket for the key. His other hand still gripped his. Rean had never felt worse and better at the same time.
The door swung open. They went in.
When Crow vacated his dormitory room, he’d left nothing behind. The posters, the unreturned library books, the cards, the board games; Rean went from tripping over something new every five steps to wondering if it’d all been in his imagination. Crow’s hotel room was just that: a hotel room. Still, upon the sight of blank walls and clean floors and a singular duffle bag tucked almost out of sight around a corner, for a moment, Rean forgot how to breathe.
Crow didn’t call out Rean’s distraction. He kicked off his shoes, then his jacket, then he was hitting the bed with a creak of the bedsprings, hands already working on his belts. Rean stared, mostly unconsciously; he didn’t manage to look away in time before Crow’s head tipped back up, and their eyes met.
It took a moment for Rean to register it; his face burned. Crow said, “If you wanted a show, you could have just asked.”
“Shut up.”
Crow just snorted. He shifted over, patting the open side of the bed in invitation. “The hell you waiting for, dude? Shit’s soft. Get over here.”
“I’m— coming.” The heat reached Rean’s ears. With fumbling hands, he lined his boots up neatly in the hall, and rearranged Crow’s too while he was at it. By the time he stepped tentatively forward, down to his shirt and pants, Crow was sprawled fully over the mattress, tapping something out on his ARCUS. He glanced up. Without so much as a word, he snapped his ARCUS shut, and tossed it onto the bedside drawer, gaze fixed upon Rean the whole way.
“You were the one who suggested this, you know,” he said.
“You agreed,” said Rean, because he had no other argument. Crow let him have it. When he twisted over to the farther side of the bed, Rean took the unspoken invitation and joined him.
The bed was more than big enough for two. Rean drew the blankets up and turned off the lights. For a moment, he didn’t dare to move a muscle, too acutely aware of the weight on the other half of the mattress; but he turned his head, then, jerkily.
Crow was already looking back at him, moonlit blue. Rean’s heart jumped. In the darkness, he could hear his own breathing pick up.
Crow said, “You can come closer.”
“Okay.” Rean’s voice shook. He shuffled a rege forward.
Crow didn’t bother hiding his laugh. “I meant more than that.”
“Okay.” Rean closed his eyes. He thought about getting up, going back to his room, taking his tachi and slitting his own throat. He thought about stabbing himself in the stomach. He thought about taking a fire art to himself and watching it burn.
Then he shifted forward, until his skin touched Crow’s.
It was too easy at this distance to pinpoint everything wrong. Crow was cold. Crow didn’t breathe. When Rean checked his wrist, again and again and again, nothing changed. But ultimately, it was still Crow. Rean thought about the possibility of having to sleep alone again, and suddenly, all his other thoughts didn’t seem so bad.
Crow shifted. The sheets beside Rean’s ears rustled. “There’s some dumb shit going on in your mind right now, isn’t there,” he said.
“Not really,” Rean lied. He moved closer again, and something inside of him eased when Crow kept obligingly still.
“Oh, so it’s really dumb, this time.”
“Dumb is subjective.” Rean closed his eyes, and let his head fall into the soft pullover stretching over Crow’s chest. Wool-woven, Rean could almost trick himself into believing it was body heat.
“Really, really dumb.”
Rean opened his mouth to argue, but before he could, Crow slung an arm over his waist and drew him tight against him. Rean’s mind went blank. By the time his muscles unlocked and his brain allowed him to think again, the argument was long gone, and Crow was holding him.
“Crow,” he said, weak.
“Don’t think, idiot,” said Crow. “Just sleep.”
“Tomorrow—“
“—is tomorrow.”
“—and both of us—“
“—are here now,” Crow said, and covered Rean’s mouth. His palm was freezing, clammy. “For now, isn’t that enough?”
“Crow,” was all Rean could say. He wanted too much he knew he couldn’t have; the words rose to his throat and stayed there, choking.
Crow reached up, and carded his fingers softly through Rean’s hair. “Go to sleep, Rean,” he said. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
The next day, Crow died. The worst part was that Rean didn’t.
A month after the destruction of the Retributive Tower, Rean found himself back in the Geofront, clearing the latest infestation of monsters. The new school year hadn’t yet started, and in the gap between preparations, he’d thought to check on the aftermath of Crossbell, still reeling from the almost end.
Machias had rolled his eyes, then he’d hugged him, then he’d bought him a coffee, and then he’d put him to work. Everyone’s been so busy rebuilding that they haven’t had time to keep the monster population in check, he’d said. I hear Sector B in particular got hit with the worst of it.
So Rean went. He left his bag in his inn room, took his tachi, took his ARCUS, and swept through the narrow halls and tunnels until he reached a wide platform, raised high amongst the gushing pipes.
And that was where he found Crow.
The body was sprawled right atop the square of glowing red light. Eyes closed, chest rising and falling slight, he looked like he was simply sleeping. Rean wasn’t sure if he knelt down or if his legs simply gave out. A shaking arm stretched forward to grasp the body’s wrist—it was only after, when he felt the warmth of blood pumping beneath skin and flesh, that Rean realised the arm belonged to him.
In the Castle of Mirrors, there had been a simulacrum of Crow. For the rest of the climb up to the top, no one spoke to him; Rean was tense and silent, and he thought that he would never feel more furious in his life, until he found out just who had been responsible, and he did. For him, there was no easier person to hate.
That same mind-numbing anger—for a single moment, it rose in Rean’s chest, and threatened to choke the pathetic life out of him. Then he took a deep breath, and forced himself to think.
The body didn’t feel robotic. Elysium had been deactivated. It wasn’t possible. And yet, there was no other explanation. Crow was dead. The gnomes were gone.
And, most damning of all—
Ba-dump, ba-dump.
—when Rean checked, something had changed.
Rean wasn’t sure how long he stayed there, motionless. But after what felt like an aeon and another, the body shifted. Rean didn’t, couldn’t even blink, as slowly, achingly, Crow opened his eyes, a bright, brilliant red; and Rean was paralysed as the colour turned on him.
It took a moment. “…Rean?” mumbled Crow. His voice was soft, with a hint of a rasp. He sounded just like he did the morning he died. “What’s wrong?”
Rean found the strength to stand up. He went to the edge of the platform, and puked over the side of the railing.
They called the others once they were back in the inn room. Crow lounged in the middle of the bed and held Rean’s ARCUS at just the right angle to fit them both in the frame, even when Rean was sitting all the way on the edge of the bed, rigid, half-turned away.
“So to sum it up, everything was the same until the battle with Ishmelga ended. But instead of your…” Emma hesitated, eyes flicking over to where Rean sat, still and silent, just barely in frame. “…death,” she finished, hurried, and moved on, “you were revived by the miracle of the Divine Knights. And… everything continued from there.”
“That’s the gist of it,” said Crow, flippant.
No one needed to point out the parallels. So Crow could have survived, Rean thought. He closed his eyes, and tried not to pinpoint everything he’d done wrong.
“Then it most likely is Elysium,” said Jusis. His hair was unkempt, and there were bags under his eyes. “I’ll contact Rufus, maybe Lapis can—”
“You can get some sleep, I think,” Machias interrupted. “Like hell you’re getting anything done in your state. Besides, didn’t Lapis already wash her hands of it? If she’d known something like this could’ve happened, she would’ve told us beforehand.”
“Better to ask than to sit around doing nothing, Regnitz—”
“I’m not saying that you do nothing, just take a damn nap first—“
“Boys,” said Emma, very sweetly.
Obediently, they shut up. Alisa coughed, awkward. “What I want to know is,” she said, finger twisting taut in a strand of blonde hair, “will anything happen if we just… leave it?”
At the prompt befuddlement on everyone’s faces, she added hurriedly, “I mean, not that I’m saying that we shouldn’t do anything. But if we can’t figure it out, or we take too long— is there even a too long? What’s going to happen?”
“That’s, well,” Elliot was the one to break the silence. He spoke hesitantly, eyes darting to and fro. “The problem back then was that the two Reans were merging, right? But here, Crow’s already…”
He trailed off. In any other situation, maybe Rean would have found it endearing how everyone’s gaze shot to him at once. As it was, he only felt numbly, distantly sick.
“It’s starting to sound like you guys are willing to risk the fabric of space-time on li’l ol’ me,” Crow finally spoke. He leaned forward, propping his head up on his knee. “Not that I mind, y’know, not dying, but just saying. You might wanna think this through some more.”
“Then maybe you could suggest something, oh-so-wise Elysium creation,” Alisa snapped, before she bit her lip hard, and looked away, eyes glossy.
Crow didn’t so much as flinch. “Kill me,” he said.
There was a loud noise. Everyone went quiet. It took Rean too long to realise that it had come from him, off the bed and on his feet and with a fist smarting against the wall.
Unsteadily, he turned his head to Crow. Crow looked back. He didn’t seem surprised in the slightest.
That, more than anything, had Rean choking out, ”I need some air.”
He strode out onto the inn terrace. The noon sun beamed harsh, pedestrians milling in the shade out on the streets below. Sweat dribbled into his lashes and fell from his eyes. Rean wasn’t sure how long he stood there, staring unseeingly ahead.
Eventually, the door opened. Crow stepped out, Rean’s bag and ARCUS in hand. “Go check if there’s anything left behind, and pack it up,” he said. “You’re going home. Class VII’s orders.”
Rean couldn’t find it within himself to give a shit about any of that. “So?” he spoke, voice ragged. “What about you?”
Crow hummed. He twirled the room key in his hand. “If the world ends tomorrow,” he said, “not our problem.”
The words should have made Rean feel better. Or maybe worse, was he capable of thinking a little more logically at that moment. But his chest stayed tight, and he felt nothing at all. He nodded, jerky.
Rean checked the room, while Crow returned the key. They walked in silence to Crossbell Station and down to the railway platform, and when Rean stopped just below a sign scrolling 2 MINUTES in green, Crow stopped too.
Rean took a breath. ”So, you’re staying with me, then,” he said.
“Eh.” Crow shrugged. “You live in the dormitories, don’t you? Surely there's an extra room.”
“For the students,” said Rean. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You'll stay in mine. We’ll set up a bed for you.”
”A futon’s fine. Dunno how long I’ll be here, anyway.”
The sweat beading on his forehead belied the way Rean, abruptly, felt very, very cold. “Is that what the rest said?” he asked, strained.
“Well, no,” said Crow. “But, y’know.”
Rean was silent.
“I’m a construct of Elysium, when Elysium's already been deactivated.” Crow’s voice, clinical, stabbed into Rean’s eardrums. He didn’t want to listen, but his limbs felt too heavy to lift. “I'm not even supposed to exist. Everything seems fine now, but who knows what will happen in the future? And if we’re going by my track record, then.”
Crow didn’t have to say anything else. He didn't have to say anything in the first place. Rean had already known, just like he’d known a few months ago, just like he’d known two years ago.
Rean took a moment. Then a breath.
“We’ll set up a bed,” he repeated. His voice was hoarse.
Crow looked at him, for a long moment.
He said, “Alright.”
The train arrived with a whistle. People surged on board; in the commotion, Crow was shoved close against Rean; he was warm, his heart beat, his breath ghosted against Rean’s neck. He felt more real and alive than he ever had before, but nothing changed the fact that soon, he would be gone.
It was the Great Twilight all over again. Rean tried not to puke; again. He found a seat, and looked out the window all the way home.
It took only a few days to settle into a routine. The new school year had officially started, and Rean was swamped. In the mornings, he did his morning practices and sped off to class, while Crow continued to snore and act like he hadn’t woken the moment Rean first sat up. During breaks, they might pass each other in the school halls; more often than not, Rean was in the office, and Crow wasn’t even on campus.
In the afternoon, Rean would do his rounds, and eventually, inevitably, Crow would find him. He never failed. Sometimes, they’d have dinner. Always, by the end of the day, they’d go home together. Rean would go to bed first, and Crow would call him an old man, and Rean would point out he was older, and they’d keep talking until it was time for Crow to sleep, too, and so Crow would. And Rean would watch his face relax. And Rean would listen to the sound of his breathing.
And Rean would sleep too.
He tried not to think about how easily Crow fit back into his life, like he’d never left it in the first place. Nor how much he’d missed him, until Crow would laugh, and the sound would shatter any of Rean’s defenses like a sledgehammer to glass. Any thoughts of keeping his distance had been dashed within the first day. Rean was stupid to even hope.
It was a week or so after they’d settled in that Rean found Crow in the school garden, after classes had ended, before Rean could pick up a new request. He was crouched in the dirt, sleeves rolled up and pants stained with mud, one hand holding a shovel and the other clawing into the dirt. On the ground by his side lay a few seed packets.
Morbidly curious, Rean bent over to peer down at them. Flowers, he made out. Delicate, pretty ones. “I didn’t take you for the gardening type,” he said.
Crow scoffed. He stabbed his shovel into the ground. Then he turned to grin up at Rean, wry at the corners, and Rean ignored the way his heart rate spiked.
“Thought I’d try it out,” said Crow. He folded his arms atop his knees. “And you’ll have something to remember me by when I’m gone.”
Rean didn’t need flowers to remember Crow, not now, not ever. “At least wear gloves,” he said, taking Crow’s hands in his own. Crow let him. He was warm. Ba-dump, ba-dump. “Aren’t they just next to the shovels?”
“Too late. I’ve already gotten my gross little Crow Armbrust germs everywhere.”
“You know what I meant.” Carefully, Rean swept his fingers over the palms of Crow’s hands, dislodging the soil. “Plus, I think we’re well past the point of that.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Crow smiled. The infection in Rean’s stolen heart cut deeper, bled through his veins. When he closed his eyes, he could see the evidence of an epidemic in everything Crow touched; the books pushed two rege farther into the shelves, the slight dip in the common room couch cushions, the gleam of a mira coin. It clogged his nose and left his throat tight. Pollen season had come early, he thought.
Once Rean finished brushing down Crow’s hands, Crow looked him right in the eyes, and pushed them right back into the mound of dirt. To the face Rean made, Crow laughed.
“Your hands are dirty too,” he said.
“It’s your fault,” said Rean, more than a little mulish.
Crow looked inordinately proud. “I know,” he said, and this time, it was him who took Rean’s hand. Rean let him drag it down, until his palm hit damp soil, loosened and fluffy from Crow’s efforts. When he fisted his hands and left a groove into it, Crow’s grin widened.
The choice was obvious to the point that it wasn’t a choice at all. Rean knelt and accepted the spare shovel Crow had hidden somewhere by his feet. Crow bumped his shoulder into his and Rean bumped him back, and Rean lost track of the number of times they’d managed to knock each other off-balance until both their fingers were stained black and the holes were dug. Crow scattered the seeds and Rean helped to bury them; they stuck the markers in together and Rean’s mind only sometimes added the two years underneath the messily scrawled Crow Armbrust.
“Maybe I should have planted a tree,” said Crow, after everything. He stood and wiped the sweat off his brow, leaving a streaky mess behind. “Would last a lot longer.”
“Maybe,” said Rean, and didn’t tell him it didn’t matter because all Rean needed was the feeling of dirt trapped underneath his nails. He reached up to wipe Crow’s face and ended up just smearing it more.
Crow laughed again. He ducked underneath Rean’s flailing arms, and plastered his filthy fingers over his face. “Retribution,” he said.
Rean didn’t try to fight back. He let the wind hit the cooling grime on his cheeks, and thought about taking the long way home.
On one of many Fridays, Rean forwent his usual after-class requests to catch up on grading essays, and Crow followed him home, something that Rean was too terrified to also describe as a usual, but had no other words for. Rean sat at his desk and started going through the stack. Crow lazed on the bed and fiddled with his shiny new ARCUS and pretended he wasn’t watching.
Halfway through Rean giving Juna an unfortunate C-, Crow pushed himself up, bedsprings creaking. “You want dinner?” he asked.
Rean glanced up. Before he could speak, his stomach responded for him; it growled, loud enough to ring through the room.
Rean felt his face grow hot. Crow didn’t bother hiding his snicker. “Guess that’s a yes,” he said, and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
Hastily, Rean stood, chair rattling back on the floorboards. “Now?” he asked, patting his shirt down and smoothing the wrinkles. “Wait, let me get changed.”
“Don’t waste your time.”
“Even if it’s just Barney’s—“
“We’re not going to Barney’s.”
“Then that’s all the more reason—“
“I’ll cook,” said Crow.
A thousand missed opportunities he thought he’d never get again flashed through Rean’s mind. “No, you don’t need to—“
“I’ll make fish burgers,” said Crow.
Against his better judgment, Rean paused. Crow smirked, and waggled his fingers in a way that more resembled that of an alien lifeform than any understandable human gesture on the continent.
Not that it mattered. Alien or not, Rean was a weak, weak man. “Okay,” he said, rough, and let Crow pull him forward.
It was early enough that most students weren’t back from club activities, late enough that those who were were holed up in their rooms. Rean, selfishly, was glad for it; the stairs were narrow enough that their elbows bumped together on the way down. That Crow, too, allowed for it to happen was another thing he shelved deep, deep within his mind, never to come out but in his worst nightmares, the ones he didn’t want to wake from.
In the kitchen, Crow managed to scrounge up all the ingredients and tools he needed. It was hard to tell whether he’d prepared beforehand, or if it was just Freddy being Freddy—for the sake of Rean’s sanity, he went with the latter.
Crow waved Rean away when he tried to help. Instead, Rean was relegated to simply watching, horribly curious eyes as Crow filleted the fish, mixed the batter, heated the pan with oil. He moved with a fluid dexterity that spoke of experience, the same as he did with laundry, cleaning, and every mundane thing Rean had never gotten to see up close between the lies and the wars and the deaths. Time moved too fast, and Rean had never been one for self-indulgence.
But the war was over now.
Rean swallowed. He took a chance. “I’ve never seen you in the kitchen before,” he said.
The fillets went into the tray of breadcrumbs. Crow hummed. “Really?”
“Really.”
“I cooked a bit on the Merkabah, though. Courageous, too.”
“By the time I knew it was your turn, you’d already have started serving the food.”
“Rough.” Carefully, Crow introduced the prepared fish to the pans; oil sparked and splattered, but hit no one. “Guess it’s all the better that you get to see me now, then. Though only Aidios knows why the hell you’d want to.”
“I…” Rean started, and stopped. His lips felt dry; he licked them, clumsy. “I’ve always wanted to watch you cook, actually.”
“What, li’l ol’ me?”
“I can see the old, but I don’t know about the little,” said Rean, and dodged the jab of Crow’s elbow. “Kidding, kidding. But, really, I…”
Still dry. He licked them again. Nothing.
Rean must have paused for too long, because Crow looked back, eyebrows raised. “You?” Crow prompted, before flipping a fillet without so much as a glance downward. Rean tried to ignore the way he went pathetically weak at the knees, and failed.
“On the Pantagruel,” he managed to get out, a hand darting out to steady himself on the counter. “That burger you made for me…”
“Mhm. What about it?”
“Don’t play dumb.” Rean resisted the urge to smack Crow’s smirking face, or, even worse, lean in and— “You know how many times I’ve tried to mimic it. And that I never managed to.”
“Oh, c’mon. Yours tasted fine.”
“They never tasted right.”
“Eh, right’s subjective.” Crow shrugged. “S’long as it tastes good. And yours do.”
But yours taste the best, Rean didn’t say. “Still, I’m just glad I get to watch now. It’s always good to know the real way to cook something.”
At that, a snort burst out of Crow. “Man,” he said, sounding almost disbelieving. “If you want real, you should try Jurai’s. Eat one of those and you'll realise mine’s the pale imitation ‘round here.”
“I’ll have to taste it for myself to judge. Though I doubt I’ll change my mind.”
“Now you’re talking big.” Crow grinned. “I’ll bring you there one day.”
On the Courageous, he had said the same thing to Stark, to Rean. “Okay,” Rean heard his own voice after a moment, and felt the bile threaten to rip from his throat. “It’s a promise.”
“‘Course.” Whether Crow believed himself, Rean couldn’t tell.
When the fish finished frying, Crow scooped it up and set it on the rack. Oil dripped down onto the paper towel laid below, golden. Rean didn’t realise he was reaching out surreptitious fingers until Crow smacked them away.
“Wait your turn,” Crow scolded, but his lips were twitching. “Geez, didn't take you for a petty thief.”
“I’m hungry,” said Rean, not even trying to sound abashed.
“I’ll be done soon.” Crow smacked his hand away when Rean reached forward again, this time deliberate. A laugh escaped Rean, bright and utterly involuntary. He darted away to grab the plates and cutlery before he had to force himself to stop.
After Crow had rounded off the rest—the buns toasted, sauce whisked—Rean watched him stack everything together, swallowing drool back. Everything about Crow’s method, the ingredients, the process; they were deceptively simple. If he had done anything different from all the recipes Rean had followed before, Rean hadn’t caught it.
That didn’t stop him from making a grab for it, swift, the moment they sat. Crow snorted; Rean ignored him. Even more inelegantly than the sound Crow had just made, he yanked the burger up for an overlarge bite.
When it hit his tongue, he froze.
Across the table, Crow merely observed, gaze deceptively sharp. “Worse than you remember?” he asked, casual.
It wasn’t. Neither was it better. It just tasted exactly the same.
Rean swallowed. “Of course not,” he said, choked.
Crow’s share still lay untouched on the plate sitting between them. “Damn,” he said, leaning in and propping his head up on his hand. “They must be real shit if only one bite’s enough to make you cry.”
“Stop teasing, Crow.” Rean’s voice was too ragged to have any effect at all. “I’m just… glad I got to eat this again.”
“Yeah?” Crow said. He smiled, rueful. “Well, lucky you, then.”
“Yeah,” Rean said. He thought that one day, he would lose this again. “Lucky me.”
Somehow, still, he couldn’t bring himself to regret any of it.
Over time, Rean had slowly, awfully, started to almost relax. It was a creeping infestation, one that Rean didn’t notice until he once woke up in the middle of the night, and so naturally, instinctively, turned over to check for Crow in the other bed. He’d fallen asleep afterwards to Crow’s quiet breaths, too sleep-dazed to think about the warm relief in his chest.
In the morning, he’d woken up and thought, shit.
The rest of the day was spent jumpy, dazed. In school, Rean spotted more than a few concerned glances. He ignored them and the sinking pit in his stomach, and went to his first request, where Crow was already waiting.
Obviously, Crow noticed, and he must have known that Rean knew he knew, but he didn’t pester. Instead, as Rean bent down to collect the herbs at the end of the highway, he leaned in and slung a heavy arm around Rean’s shoulder, warm and solid and secure. Rean wanted so, so badly that it hurt, and he hated that he didn't hate himself for it at all.
At night, he lay in bed, and watched Crow. Looked at his face, loose and easy, listening to his breathing, soft and steady. Selfishly, Rean wondered if he could be allowed to dream.
He got his answer only a few days later, fishing in Leeves River. Up north and on the pier, Rean stood fully alert and not glancing away from the water even once. In contrast, Crow sat back against a wooden post, hands off his fishing pole held in place by the edge of the water with the help of a clamp. Occasionally, his head dipped down; he’d jerk back up a few moments later, eyes shooting wide open from where they'd nearly slipped shut.
“Sorry,” said Rean, after the fourth instance of Crow’s near doze. Most of the time, the situations his Eight Leaves training helped with were surprisingly mundane. “I know you're not a big fan of this.”
Crow waved him off. “Eh, it’s not too bad,” he said, before promptly undercutting his statement with a loud yawn.
“If you want to do something else…”
“Nah. Just chillin’s good enough for me.”
Rean hesitated. “If you’re sure,” he said, after a moment.
Crow grinned up at him, lazy. “Sure am.”
Rean felt overheated. He thought, numbly, about jumping into the river and soaking in the chill; but his line tugged with a bite, and with a jolt, he turned the entire span of his attention back to the waters. Eyes narrowed and knuckles gone white, he leaned in, senses narrowed to a pinpoint.
Crow’s snort went ignored.
It took barely a minute before Rean was pulling up a kasagin. He dropped it into the almost full bucket that Crow obligingly held out, and tried to force a gracious smile over the freefall of disappointment in his gut. Evidently, he failed, because Crow snorted again, louder. “Not everything can be one of your fancy little silver fish, you know,” he said.
“Quicksilver carp,” Rean corrected, purely habitual. Then, “And I’m not expecting everything to be that…”
“Uh-huh. Sure.” Crow did the opposite of hiding his skepticism. “Don’t be so down, man. Jingo’ll give you good shit for this.”
“She’ll give one shell,” Rean said, and managed to sound only somewhat miffed.
“If anyone’s to blame for the collapse of the fishing economy, it’s you.”
Lloyd’s a pretty avid fisher, Rean almost argued back. As it was, though, his line tugged yet again, and he swiftly forgot everything else.
He didn’t even spare a glance for the new, empty bucket that Crow held out for him, again, before dropping the snow crab inside. This one, he didn’t make a face at.
Crow still snickered.
“Okay, but seriously,” he said, holding his hands up in surrender when Rean shot him a glare. “It’s pretty damn impressive that there’s even anything left at the rate you pull ‘em up. How the hell do you even do that, anyway? Filled a damn bucket in the time my rod’s gotten jack.”
Rean managed to not cast a completely derisive look at the clamp on Crow’s pole. “The fish know when you’re engaged in it,” he said. “Fishing is an art. It needs to be respected.”
“Shouldn’t that be the opposite of helpful?” Crow asked, dubious. “Didn’t think the fishies were lookin’ to be all engaged on a hook.” He paused, then added, “Unless they’re into that. I mean, more power to ‘em.”
If Rean weren’t holding his pole, he would have smacked Crow, lightly, over the head. As it was, he only sighed. “You just don’t get it, Crow.”
“Sounds like you’re doin’ a pretty poor job of teaching me then, instructor.”
Rean wasn’t sure what sort of insanity possessed him at that moment. Maybe it was Crow’s infuriating smirk, directed up from under his lashes. Maybe the notion of Crow coming around to fishing was too attractive to resist.
Maybe Rean just wanted to touch.
Whatever it was, Rean stepped forward, and by the elbow yanked Crow up to his feet, ignoring his yelp. “Here,” Rean said in his best field study gone wrong tone, and shoved his fishing pole into Crow’s flailing hands. “Hold this.”
“Wait, wait, what–”
“You wanted me to teach. So I’m teaching.”
“You know I wasn’t being serious,” Crow whined, but he let Rean adjust his grip without fighting, his fingers guided into place around the handle. “And that I find this shit boring, besides.”
“That’s because you suck at it,” said Rean.
“Hey.”
“It’s fine. It just means you’ll like it better after this.”
Crow sighed, but he shut up. Rean took perhaps too much glee in manoeuvring Crow’s body, forcing his back straight with a squawk, lowering his elbows with an indelicate tug and ignoring the disgruntled glare Crow shot him. It distracted him enough–both the actual fixes, and the minuscule corrections just for the look on Crow’s face–that Rean didn’t notice how close they stood, until he leaned in over Crow’s shoulder, and felt his breath, low and humid, on his cheek.
Rean froze. Hastily, then, he stepped back. “There,” he blurted, staring blindly away. “Like that.”
Crow glanced down. “I don’t notice anything,” he said.
“Give it time.”
“That’s exactly what I don’t want to do, actually.”
“Fish, Crow.”
Crow grumbled, incomprehensible. But he held the pole, and didn’t move.
Rean sat. It felt strange, being by the pier, watching someone else fish without a pole in his own hand. But the afternoon breeze blew, refreshing, and he thought he could see the appeal. Idly, he watched the sway of Crow’s hair, memorised every aspect of his focused countenance, too rare a sight to not. Rean thought, it would be nice to do this every day.
And then Crow’s arms flickered, and faded into nothing.
Rean jerked up.
He blinked. They were back, like nothing ever happened, but Rean’s fishing pole was in the river and floating away, and even as a joke, Crow would never let that happen. Numbness washed over him; Rean stared at Crow’s limbs, deceptively solid. He recalled Bryonia Island. He recalled the Empyreal Fortress.
Abruptly, the once-pleasant breeze felt freezing.
For a long moment, it was quiet.
Crow opened his mouth. “Guess even Aidios is telling me to I ain’t cut out for this gig, huh,” he joked.
Rean didn’t laugh. Crow licked his lips. He reached up and scratched his cheek as the pole drifted out of sight. “…Sorry about that, by the way. I’ll buy you a new one.”
“No need.” Rean only belatedly placed the sound of his own voice. “I have spares.”
“Figured.” Crow coughed into a fist. He glanced down at Rean, lips twisted and nothing else showing.
Rean remained sitting, frozen in place.
Tentatively, Crow said, “Rean?”
There was a ringing in Rean’s ears, deafening. “Let’s go home,” he said.
So they did.
The thing was, Crow had spent more time dead than he ever had with Rean. A few school months led to a year of grief led to a month of war led to half a year. At some point, that was just the universe sending you a sign; it had become less about determination, and more about sheer, unadulterated idiocy.
Rean didn’t like being an idiot, but when it came to Crow, it was hard not to be. He’d chased Crow, he’d chased Siegfried, he’d chased Crow again until their souls melded together into an indistinguishable amalgamation and Rean could feel the echo of Crow’s unbeating heart in his own chest and Rean thought, if he dies, at least I’ll die too.
He was wrong. In the wake of it all, bent double over the dormitory toilet and sobbing so hard he ran out of puke to choke on, Rean believed he’d finally learned to stop believing.
But fuck, man.
The moment they entered the dormitory, Rean made a beeline for his room. He didn’t check if Crow followed. He closed the door behind him, remembered not to lock it—it was Crow’s room too, no matter the reminder of how temporary that status was, and even in the throes of this, Rean hated to be inconsiderate. In the first place, he couldn’t even tell if he wanted to be alone or not; in the end, he didn’t try to think. He sat on the edge of the bed with his knees to his chest and curled into himself.
For a while, everything was quiet.
The door opened. Rean didn’t move, didn’t look up as the weight of the bed shifted beneath him, sheets rustling. Then Crow asked, blunt, “Are you crying?”
“No,” Rean said, muffled. Maybe it would have been better had it been a lie. But it wasn’t.
Crow was silent for a moment. Rean’s hands clenched into fists, nails digging into his palm. Still, he couldn’t feel anything.
“Rean,” said Crow, eventually. “You knew this was going to happen.”
He did. “I didn’t,” he said. “No one did. You said it yourself. Who knows what will happen in the future?”
“Do you always reserve some brainspace for remembering my most specific quotes?” Crow asked. Rean didn’t dignify him with an answer. His fingers moved to his calves next, running sharp red lines over the curve of the muscle.
It was then that Crow’s hands covered his, and Rean’s hands jerked to a stop like the emergency plug had been pulled.
Crow wove his fingers into Rean’s. Rean let him, and he let him again when he slowly, gently prised Rean’s hands away from his legs.
“Rean,” said Crow. “Look at me.”
Rean did, helpless.
Crow’s movements were delicate things. He twisted his hands, let Rean’s fingers slip down and loose. Rean watched, mind a blank fuzz, until finally, Crow took Rean’s thumb, and pressed it gently down into soft, beating skin.
Ba-dump, ba-dump.
Rean tried to remember how to breathe.
“Hey,” said Crow. He kept his hand holding Rean’s holding his wrist holding the pulse of his beating heart. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
Rean said, choked and small, “You’re here for now.”
“But I’m still here.”
Rean thought he should have felt angry. Or upset. Or maybe, optimistically, even comforted. But he didn’t, and he couldn’t. He looked inside himself, and tried to grasp for any emotion, any feeling at all; and all he came up with was that right there, right then, he wanted to hug Crow. So he lurched forward, horribly unsteady, and he hugged Crow, like he had hugged Crow the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that, and somehow, it still never got old.
When Crow’s arms closed around him in return, warm, secure, Rean took a long, shuddering breath. Crow must have felt the new wetness staining his shirt, but all he did was pull Rean closer.
In the days that followed, nothing much changed at all. Rean woke up, went to class, did requests with Crow, and then they’d go home. Rean didn’t think about how Crow would flicker, and he didn’t think about how it was getting increasingly difficult not to think about it as the frequency grew by the day.
Crow never called Rean out on it, even though Rean knew he had to have noticed how Rean couldn’t ever tear his gaze away whenever it happened, how he had learned a habit of touching any part of Crow he could reach, after. Rean still couldn’t tell if it was for the better or the worse. He didn’t think about that either.
Everything came to a head on a quiet night maybe two weeks later; Rean had stopped keeping track of the dates, too cowardly to risk finding a pattern to it all. Rearranging the shelves, however, was an event that didn’t need a calendar.
It was semi-regular. Rean had a habit of frequenting too many pawn shops, eternally on the hunt for souvenirs. Since his untimely third revival, Crow had already been enlisted into helping on two separate occasions, and what Rean found was for all that Crow loved lording his three rege height advantage over Rean, he fell suspiciously quiet whenever Rean dragged the stool out and told him to climb.
Dragging his feet, Crow still would, always. And when Rean would pass him a book, expectant, he would only groan once before getting on his tiptoes to push it back into place.
They were nearly done with it when Rean picked up the statue. Ceramic, misshapen and resembling nothing he recognised, he couldn’t even remember where and when he’d gotten it. Likely, it had been a gift. That was the only reason he hadn’t left it at Neinvalli’s.
He held it up. Crow took it, not even bothering to look. He moved his hand back to the shelf, statue in firm grasp.
That was when it fell.
Instinct had Rean moving out of the way, even before the crash rang out through the room in a piercing scream. Dust flew, everything scattered. The floor, in a blink, became a minefield of shattered white.
In the thick silence that followed, Rean took a breath.
“I’ll clean it up,” he said.
“No,” Crow was quick to refute. He was already climbing down the ladder. “It’s my fault.”
“It’s not. And it’s fine, really.”
Rean bent over before Crow made it over to him, and swept up the closest fragments into his palm. Unthinkingly, he stepped forward into a seemingly clear spot to reach yet another, and hissed as a tiny shard dug into the sole of his foot.
Before Rean could so much as blink, Crow grabbed his upper arm, tight, and yanked him back. Rean went, nearly stumbling, and he twisted around to protest—but the look on Crow’s face shut him up.
Crow was deafeningly silent. Then, he said, “I’ll get a vacuum.”
Rean swallowed. Against Crow’s piercing gaze and pursed lips, he couldn’t bring himself to argue. “Okay,” he said.
Crow left. Rean, shattered ceramic in hand, let his fingers curl in.
He dumped it in the wastebasket, stepping carefully over the dust. This time, there were no stray shards; when Crow came back, Rean was crouched down again, pinching the largest pieces between his index finger and thumb.
“I said I’d get a vacuum,” said Crow, but he didn’t sound surprised.
“A vacuum alone won’t get everything,” Rean pointed out, dropping the piece into the wastebasket. It hit the bottom with a low clink.
“It’ll make it safer.”
“Or it might clog. We are not breaking the school’s vacuum cleaner.”
“We aren’t,” Crow agreed. And then he switched it on.
Rean hurried out of the way before Crow ran the mouth straight into his foot. When he glared, Crow smirked. And he sighed, and Crow laughed, and Rean could feel his face physically relax even when Crow didn’t deserve it, and he didn’t bother trying to fight because it was a foregone conclusion that both of them had long known.
Instead, Rean took the wastebasket, knelt in the path Crow made for him, and picked up the pieces. The room wasn’t big and the statue had shattered small, and working like this, he thought it would be quick. And he would press The History of the Republic into Crow’s hands, and Crow would groan again, and still, he’d step onto the stool.
In Rean’s mind, it was still too soon. That was why he didn’t expect it. Somewhere behind him, Crow swore, loud and violent. And then there was a crash.
Rean jerked around. His vision cleared, just in time to watch Crow’s arm fade back into existence.
No one said anything. The vacuum whirred uselessly on the ground, until Crow kicked the power switch. Slowly, Rean stood, even though his legs felt like they were about to give out at any second.
Crow didn’t look at him. He stared at his still outstretched arm; the one that held the statue, the one that held the vacuum.
It probably meant something, but Rean thought that if he let his mind extrapolate now, he might just have to stab someone, and that someone was most certainly going to be himself. So instead, he squeezed his eyes shut. He breathed in, shaky. And he pressed the bottoms of his palms into his eyelids until they started to hurt.
He couldn’t see it, but he could hear it. The rustle of fabric, Crow’s arm dropping back down to his side. Crow’s breathing, too loud next to the stabbing pinpricks in his head. The creak of the floorboards as Crow shifted his weight, and turned.
Rean waited.
Crow said, “Let’s go to Jurai.”
It took Rean a moment to process the words. Then, he clutched onto the change in topic with what meagre strength remained within him. “I have school,” he spoke, hoarse.
“Skip it.”
“I’m the instructor.”
“Take leave.”
“I can’t just—“ Abruptly, it struck Rean how very pointless this argument was. He cut off. He pushed his palms in even harder, until it felt like he might just go blind.
For a moment, Crow was silent. He stepped forward, close enough that Rean could feel his body heat; it made Rean dizzy.
In stark contrast, Crow’s tone was steady. “I made a promise.”
Rean’s lip curled, knee-jerk. “I didn’t realise you started keeping them,” he said, and immediately felt awful about it.
“Ouch.” Still, Crow didn’t step away. “Guess I deserved that. Did Stark ever get his free meal?”
“No.” Rean paused. Then he said, “He cried.”
“Well, shit. Seems like we’re gonna have to get takeout.”
“He wasn’t the only one.”
“A lot of takeout, then,” said Crow, like it was just that easy.
Rean breathed. He let his hands fall from his face. Light flooded his vision, and when everything faded back into place, he was greeted by Crow’s smile, soft, before it all got too much he jerked his eyes away and grabbed for the vacuum and shoved it into Crow’s fumbling hands. “Go clean,” he said, throat tight. “I’ll buy the train tickets.”
Crow’s teeth shone. “Now you’re getting the hang of it, instructor,” he said, and Rean thought about punching him or kissing him; he did neither, and instead switched on the vacuum to hear Crow’s yelp when his pant leg got caught in the mouth of it.
The train to Jurai took half a day and three different transfers. When they arrived, clothes rumpled and hair unkempt, the sun was just starting to rise, dyeing the sea a red-golden hue.
Rean stared, struck by the sight. Beside him, Crow yawned and stretched.
“Shouldn’t have taken the night train,” he lamented. His shoulder made a horrific crack as he rolled it, groaning. “Don’t think I’m gonna be able to stay awake the whole day.”
Rean thought that if it meant spending even a second longer with Crow, he’d never sleep again. “Stop being lazy,” he said, and took Crow by the elbow.
“Slavedriver!”
Still, when Rean dragged him forward, Crow didn’t resist.
They had a weekend and no itinerary. Crow had booked a room and nothing else; when Rean side-eyed him and asked about restaurants, he’d simply waved it off. It didn’t take long for Rean to figure out why, when Crow led him through bustling streets laden with casinos and tourists and the artificially strong reek of fish—It’s about selling the image, Crow said, passing a shop window with SINCE S.1163 painted on it, And that shop hadn’t been built yet when I left—and they ended up on a dimly lit side street, sea salt breeze through the peeling paint of the warehouses and a few scattered open-air eateries, mayflies buzzing.
“Home sweet home,” Crow said, and managed to sound only mostly sardonic.
It didn’t matter to Rean. “I love it,” he said.
“And you aren’t even lying, are you? You damn sap.”
Rean listened to the harsh edge of Crow’s words, and didn’t point out the nostalgia in his gaze, nor the quirk in his mouth. “Hurry up,” he said, and tugged Crow forward. “Which do we eat?”
It turned out that the answer was all of them. They bounced from stall to stall to dish to dish, and Rean ate too fast and Crow had to hit him, hard, on the back, whenever he started to choke. After, Crow took him to the morning market, then to the pier, and then to the lines of fishermen laying out their wares. Predictably, Rean ended up with two people’s worth of new fishing gear, and Crow rolled his eyes and led them back to the inn, but not before Rean stared maybe too longingly at a few souvenir shops and an authentic sauna, or at least as it wrote on the sign.
“Tourist traps, Rean,” Crow said, firm, at the third billboard they passed. Arms fully occupied, he bent to headbutt Rean on the shoulder to a startled squeak. “Gentrified bullshit. You want authentic, bring back a rotting herring.”
“I’m helping the economy,” tried Rean, feeble.
“That’s the worst part,” Crow said, but in the end, he left Rean loitering on the street with their bags, walked in and walked out holding a fuzzy lobster plushie with JURAI SEZ knitted in yellow across its back, and dropped it on top of the pile with everything else.
Rean couldn’t help the twitching of his lips. “For Juna,” he said. “Now, four more.”
Crow traipsed back into the store and left with five.
Street stalls, a museum, a few shrines and dinner, and despite Rean’s protests, they returned to the inn long after the sunset. “We still have tomorrow,” said Crow, hanging their jackets up on the clothes hooks. Rean watched the flex of his knuckles, and felt his mouth dry.
“We only have tomorrow,” he said.
“And if you pass out in the middle of it, we’ll only have half that,” returned Crow. He put Rean in a headlock and dragged him, helplessly laughing, to bed.
The day after, Crow tried bringing them into a casino. Thankfully, there was a fast food joint right beside it; Rean shoved a whining Crow inside, and proceeded to order every variation of fish burger they had.
“I still like yours better,” said Rean, after the third with two more to go, and not yet showing any sign of nausea.
Crow’s expression of steadily growing disbelief finally went flat, just for a flash, for him to scoff. “Because you haven’t had the real good ones,” he said.
Rean said, “Our next meal, then.”
“Hell no.”
They trekked through what Crow claimed to be the biggest street market there was, and which emptied Rean’s bank account in appropriate proportion. An overlong jaunt in the sauna left them sweaty and overheated, bringing them to the shade by the stretch of another shore, melted ice cream dripping sticky down their fingers. They had an early dinner, not fast food, but still with burgers, and Crow rolled his eyes as Rean did just as he did during breakfast, and they walked out, later, with enough takeout that they had to return to the inn to keep it all.
Finally, they went up a gentle hill, into the cemetery.
“Even when they hated him, they still gave him the best spot,” Crow said. He stood a few steps in front of Rean, right by the grave overlooking the sea. Without the distraction of Jurai and every fantasy Rean had thought would be forever left unfulfilled, it was easier to notice the slight fade to the ends of Crow’s limbs. “I left too early to see it though. Hadn't even known ‘til I came here on that field study.”
“The others didn't notice you sneaking off?” Rean asked.
“They did. They just thought it was to a casino.”
Crow stared up ahead, and never down to the grave by his feet. Carefully, Rean picked his way forward to his side.
Where they stood, there was a perfect view of the sun setting into the ocean waters. “He would’ve found it fuckin’ hilarious,” Crow said, softer.
“He sounds a lot like you.”
“Eh, maybe. We both took stupid gambles and died for it. Runs in the family.”
There was nothing Rean could say to that, so he didn't. He took Crow’s hand in his own.
Ba-dump, ba-dump.
Slowly, Crow entangled their fingers.
“I’ll have fun telling him all about it, if past dead me hasn’t already,” he said. “Soon.”
Rean didn’t ask, Why not here? He knew the answer, and he didn’t want to hear it, not now. He said, “I think he'll have fun too.”
Crow barked out a laugh. “Will probably mock the shit outta me for it, I bet.”
He took a breath. Then, exhaling, he let go, and stepped forward to the edge. The echo of him lingered in Rean’s palm, warm.
Silently, Crow looked out over the sea. He cast a solemn silhouette in the golden glow of the evening, hair drifting, jacket swaying. Setting sunlight reflected off the lapping waves and reflected the same in the distance of his red gaze; within these borders, he was a son of the sea, born anew. Breath caught, Rean thought, beautiful, and ache in his chest, he thought, at least he got to have this, even if their world ended the next day, even if it was the first and the last and never again.
Something clicked. Before he knew what he was doing, Rean went up and wrapped his arms around Crow’s waist, burying his face in his fur collar, close.
Crow didn’t jump. He only shifted, slight. “Rean?” he murmured.
“Nothing,” Rean said. He breathed Crow and sea salt in. “I’m just glad we came here.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Rean didn’t need to look at Crow’s face to see his smile. The image had long been burned into his brain, every wrinkle and pore and lash of his squinting eyes. Crow at nineteen, twenty, twenty-two, dead. Rean would never forget, could never forget. It used to feel like a curse. It still did, mostly. But sometimes, he thought it might be a comfort.
It was past midnight by the time they reached Leeves. As quietly as they could, like teenagers sneaking in past curfew all over again, they crept into the dormitory, overfull bags lifted off the creaky floorboards. Crow, somehow, fit the too excessive amount of takeout boxes into the fridge, while Rean left souvenirs on the couches and tables for the students to find the next morning. When everything was said and done, he was left with enough gear to fish for the next three months, and a singular lobster plushie.
In the room, Crow changed first, before flopping promptly into bed with a groan. Rean, ever diligent, unpacked, leaving other gifts and trinkets in a mostly disorganised pile on his desk, any free shelf space; after a bit of thought, he went to his bed, and left the lobster lying tucked into the blankets.
Then he stripped to his shirt and pants, and clambered into Crow’s.
The bed was only meant to fit one person, but Rean made it work. Without hesitation, he drew close; Crow opened his arms and he took the space gladly. On the train, downstairs, in Crow’s bed, it was impossible not to notice the flicker and fade of his body, increasingly unstable.
Despite that, he was warm.
“Guess it’s become just twice now,” Crow said. His chest rumbled with the words. Rean pressed his face in closer.
“Mm,” he said, muffled. From this alone, he could hear Crow’s heartbeat, ba-dump, ba-dump. He closed his eyes. He didn’t think about how much he would miss it.
“Tired already?” Crow asked, quieter.
Another moment awake was another moment with Crow so Rean said, “No,” even though they both knew it was a lie. Crow didn't call it out. He just brought his hand up to Rean’s head, and carded his fingers through his hair.
“It’s always so soft.”
“Is that why you keep petting me?”
Crow laughed, the breath of it tickling Rean’s scalp. “That, and you're just like a dog.”
“I am not.”
“Cat?”
“Crow.”
Rean could feel the curve of Crow’s lips against his hair. “Nah, not that,” said Crow. “You definitely aren't a bird.”
Rean thumped his back with a fist, hard. Crow wheezed, sounding more like hilarity than anything.
“If I’m a dog,” said Rean, petulant, “then you're a… a…”
He trailed off. Crow hummed. “Lion?”
“You wish.”
“Snow leopard. I thought those ears fit me pretty well.”
They had, but Rean refused to say that aloud. “A mosquito,” he said, firm.
“Okay, ouch. Choose something else.”
Rean allowed magnanimously, “Or a louse.”
To his credit, Crow at least hesitated before asking, “That’s like, singular lice, right?”
“If Ash ever talks about dropping out of school again, I’m citing this as an example.”
“It’s a legitimate question!” Crow protested, and Rean could feel the shake of his shoulders by his ears, Crow’s teeth biting his own lips to stifle a snicker. Even now, Rean thought, there were new facets to learn about Crow, new experiences to see. Millions of possibilities and their impossible futures spiralled out in front of his mind’s eye. He locked them in his heart and threw away the key.
“For Sunday School,” he said.
“C’mon, you know I’m a practical sort of guy.”
From the books piled in a new messy pile in the corner and the way Crow crunched calculus in the time it took for Rean to simplify the formula, Rean thought, if anything, that he knew Crow was an everything sort of guy, it just depended on whether or not he found it useful to learn. He said, “You weren’t that much help on our field studies, either.”
He could feel the jut of Crow’s bottom lip, chapped. “Sheesh, you’re mean today.”
“You made fun of me first,” Rean said, before squeezing Crow tighter. “Sorry.”
“Hey now, I didn’t ask you to apologise.”
“Alright, alright, I won’t then.” Rean paused. He said, quieter, rougher, “Instead I’ll just say that… You were amazing, Crow.”
Crow said, “Okay, I prefer mean Rean, actually.”
“Crow.”
“You know sappiness gives me hives.” Despite that, Crow’s pets grew gentler. Rean felt Crow bury his face in his hair.
Ba-dump, ba-dump. Rean couldn't tell whose heartbeat it was. He didn't need to.
“Crow,” he said after a moment and again. His throat seized, his voice was raw. “I…”
“You heard what I literally just said about the sappiness.”
“I know,” Rean said. Small, and wretched.
Crow paused. His fingers curled, nails against Rean’s scalp and not pressing in. He felt blisteringly hot, body warmth and the fuzz of his pullover and it only got worse when he slung a leg over Rean’s waist, heavy and unyielding, until they were one, inseparable.
Crow said, “Say it anyway.”
So Rean did.
“I love you.” The words wrenched out of his chest, ribs cracking, muscles tearing. Rean thought that it hurt, that he couldn’t breathe, and that he would keep saying it until there was nothing of him left. “I love you. I love you. I love you.”
No matter how many times Crow came and went, Rean couldn’t stop making the same mistakes over, and over, and over again. At some point, he’d realised he didn’t want to stop. Not if it let him have even another second of this. Not if they could go back and forth in foolish conversations that meant nothing to the world and everything to Rean. Not if, just one more time, Crow would sleep against him.
He didn’t expect Crow to say it back. Crow didn’t. He wasn’t the type, not in a time like this, not under the circumstances they were in now. But his breath hitched. He shifted his hand, from Rean’s back to his neck. Fingers pressed just below his jaw, then came a wrist, and Crow twisted it, until Rean could feel the jackrabbit pulse of his heart against his. Moving, beating, alive.
That, Rean thought, spoke more than words ever could.
Rean closed his eyes. He felt the dip of Crow’s chin, and lips against his forehead, featherlight.
Crow didn’t say, I’ll be here when you wake up, because that would have been a lie. But he was there when Rean fell asleep. For now, it was enough.
The next day, Crow was gone. Rean reached over the length of his half-vacant bed for his ARCUS, rumpled sheets already cold to the touch, and sent a mass message before turning it off and forcing himself up.
It took only fifteen minutes to make it. Tucked in the farthest corner of the garden, Crow’s planted flowers swayed in bloom; if Sandy was right, they’d outlive him by a couple of weeks.
Rean took a shovel from the back of the shed and chose a spot close by, out of the way of any taken plots. He wasn’t sure how long he dug. By the time it was deep enough, the sun was high in the sky, rays glaring into the burn of his skin. Sweat dripping, dirt packed under his nails, Rean looked down at the empty grave, and listened to the birds chirp in the distance.
He sat down on the grass. The breeze was cool and his mouth tasted salty. Somewhere, the pollen of flowers drifted anew.