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“Sometimes, the grown-ups ask me what it means and they look confused when I say it’s from Lily.”
Iris looks at him curiously, attention pulled away from his book as the boy, Lillium (he introduced himself after coming up behind Iris to ask what he was reading), plucks grass out from under his shoes.
“But your name is like a flower too! So we match.” Lillium grins a big toothy grin. Iris feels a warmth under his palm, where his fingertips touch the pages of his book, and he doesn’t think it’s because of the spring sun. “They say there’s not a lot of us anymore.”
“What does that mean?” Iris asks in a small voice, not really sure if he wants Lillium to truly answer or if he just wants to see the glint in Lillium’s eyes when he talks.
Lillium just shrugs, still smiling a soft soft smile. “They don’t tell me anything. I think it means we’re one of a kind. So we should stick together, shouldn’t we?” he looks over at Iris then, thumbing at the stem of a four-leafed clover in the grass.
The book forgotten, Iris gives Lillium a long look and a slight cock of the head.
“I don’t know you.” Iris says.
“I don’t know you either,” Lillium replies, “but I think I would like it if I did.”
The warmth of the pages returns, cartoon renderings of talking animals on glossy paper burning softly into Iris’ fingers and seeping into his core as slow and gentle as morning tide lapping onto the shore. His small heart feels full. He wonders if it’s the heavy dust from the city clogging up his blood tubes. Or whatever they’re called.
Sheepishly, Iris says, “Okay.”
---
A daisy interrupts Iris’ view of the murky sky, held by bandaged fingers above his face.
Iris tips his head back a little to match the grin Lillium is sporting. “Good morning!” Lillium greets, slipping the flower into Iris’ hands. He leans into the window ledge with Iris and takes in the same view. The classroom is still quiet since school hasn’t begun yet, save for the pair of kids trying to stack enough wooden blocks together to set new personal records. “It’s a flower for my best flower friend.”
At that, Iris shoves Lillium’s shoulder, his face contorting in a strange way to that Lillium can’t tell that he’s trying not to smile. He’s sure he can tell anyways.
“Gross.” Iris says with no bite. “Only married people give flowers to each other.” Though he isn’t really complaining, and is holding the daisy to his chest anyways.
Lillium seems to get an epiphany then, pushing himself fast off from the window and settling into a power stance facing Iris, who raises a brow. “We can…” Lillium’s voice is unsteady and Iris thinks his face is red and it’s kind of funny. “We can get married then. So then I can always give you flowers.” Iris thinks his own face is going to be red now.
Despite how suddenly flustered Lillium looks, he digs into his pocket with a fierce determination and fishes out a crumpled up wrapper that contains something… bulbous? He gnaws at the edges of the wrapper until it gives.
“Here!” Lillium grabs for Iris’ hand that isn’t holding the flower and fits a Ring Pop onto his fourth finger. Iris idly thinks about how sweaty Lillium’s palm is. The other boy simply smiles, tight lipped and beaming at his handiwork, chest puffing behind his dinosaur sweater. “Now we are married and I can give you flowers all the time. I am now your husband and you are also my husband and we are husbands together.”
Iris (as happy as he is at the sudden marriage) juts his bottom lip out. “Um, I think only adults are allowed to get married…”
“.....Oh.” Lillium suddenly looks defeated and oh no, Iris didn’t mean to--
“But! But I promise that when we grow up,” Iris starts, and Lillium regains a little bit of shine in his eyes. “When we grow up, I will marry you. I promise. I promise.”
Lillium thinks about it for a second. His hand feels nice in Iris’s.
“How old do we have to be to be grown up?”
“...I don’t know. Sixteen?”
“That’s so far away!” Lillium complains with a squeeze of his clammy hand. “I’ll be dead by then!”
“Nu-uh! I know a lot of people who are, like… one hundred!”
“Mmmgh…” he grunts loudly in frustration, obviously not happy with the waiting times. But he settles on “Fine. When we turn sixteen, I’m going to marry you! Deal?”
Iris holds up the ring on his hand with a proud smile. “Okay!”
---
“Happy birthday, dickbutt!”
Iris crossing his arms over his chest, hands gripping his shoulders in haste. “No birthday punches!” he yells and shoots an accusing look at Lillium from his desk.
Lillium - in a battle stance with both fists clenched, one ready in the air and aimed for Iris’ shoulder - squints hard at him, but Iris looks determined enough to not let down his guard, so Lillium rolls his eyes and lowers his fists to grab for a chair instead, swinging his legs over to plant himself into the seat. Iris watches his cautiously with furrowed brows for a long moment and finally accepts that he’s in no harm.
“But thanks,” he says as he slides his notebook closer to him, continuing his intricate ink doodles of a heavily armored dog wielding a sword brandished completely in dicks. “Another year closer to death.”
Lillium nods. “But not close enough.” and Iris snorts a laugh in agreement.
For a minute, Lillium watches Iris drawing and neither of them say anything more. Just seeking each other out, sitting with each other, being with each other, basking in each other -- has become habit. And they’re both horrible creatures of habit.
This time, Iris feels like Lillium’s gaze has shifted away from the sketchy lines of his masterpiece and he’s staring at him. And sometimes Lillium does that (and Iris does it to him as well), but this time it’s… intense. Iris chances a glance up and yeah, Lillium is boring holes into his head with his gaze (and boring holes into his heart with his smile).
“What?” Iris asks, feeling nervous and subconsciously tucking a tuft of hair behind his ear and god, that’s kinda gay then drops his pen to smooth down both sides of his hair, growing increasingly frustrated with Lillium not responding. “ What!? Dude, you’re just staring at me.”
Lillium doesn’t spare him a response still, but he inhales a heavy steady breath like he hasn’t breathed in ages and is taking his first breaths of oxygen. “Nothing.” He finally offers, leaning back into his chair. Iris isn’t convinced, but he doesn’t press. He returns the stare though, narrowing his eyes at Lillium, who shoves a hand into his pocket and at the sound of crinkling, Iris is now alert.
“What’s that? It is food? Hey, is it food?”
Lillium draws his hand out and tosses a wrapped candy onto the desk with a clatter. “Happy birthday,” he says again, smiling an almost unreadable smile. Iris thinks he looks fond.
Iris reaches out to inspect it, turning it over into his palm. Satisfied with contents, he rips open the package. “A Ring Pop? Haven’t had one in a long time. But food is food.” he shrugs and hooks his finger into the ring and pops the candy into his mouth.
“So you wanna keep that promise now?” Lillium asks nonchalantly, though something in the pitch of his voice suggests a hint of nervousness and the way he looks out to the window instead of at Iris makes Iris confused.
“What promise?” he asks around the candy before pulling it out.
There’s a long stretch of silence then. Lillium’s gaze looking out into the city grows a bit cloudy and his adam’s apple bobs so subtly, Iris almost misses it. But he doesn’t, and something in the way Lillium’s shoulders relax and the way he slumps back and the way he smiles something sad into the distance makes Iris’ chest burn.
“Hey,” he says softly, like a decibel louder would be far too loud. In the distance, muffled by the window, Iris can hear alarms blaring among the dark fog outside.
“Huh? Oh, it was nothing.” Lillium scratches the side of his head, shifting bobby pins in their places.
“...Lillium,” Iris slides his hand across the desk, feather light touches of his fingers to Lillium’s wrist. “Did… Did I forget something…” Orange sunlight grazes Lillium’s cheeks, masks the look of what Iris might mistake as embarrassment on his face.
Turning towards him, Lillium smiles. A reassuring smile. Lillium turns his hand over, lets Iris’ fingers fall into the heat of his palm, and runs his thumb up the length of his middle finger until it meets the plastic of the ring pop. “It was nothing, seriously. You promised I would have your firstborn if I gave you a ring pop on your sixteenth when we were kids.” Lillium snickers.
Iris huffs a gentle laugh. “Wow, really? Geez, I was a dumb kid.”
“Yeah, we both were.”
“So… You’re not upset or something, right?”
Lillium exhales and Iris breathes in. “I would never be upset over something so silly. Don’t worry about it, alright?”
Iris curls his fingers into Lilliums, a gesture openly returned. He feels a buzz in his bones and a vibration in his chest that makes the dark hairs on the back of his neck stand on their ends. When he smooths a fingertip along Lillium’s heart line, he wonders if Lillium can feel it too.
“...Okay.”
---
Gunshots echo through the warehouse in rapidfire and Lillium darts into cover behind a stack of rotting crates. The sound is far and he knows he hasn’t been detected yet, but his lungs burn in exhaustion as he slumps his back against the wooden crate.
The week had been hectic and there has been absolutely no time for rest. Then again, there hasn’t been time for rest since the outbreak, but this time has been especially horrible.
“Shit,” Lillium mutters to himself, pressing a bandaged hand against his eyes, collecting a pool of sweat in the fabric. Distantly, the gunfire slows and softens, and Lillium swallows a wad of spit in desperate relief.
He slumps further into the crate, further, further, until he’s planted flat on the grimy sticky concrete. A moment passes where he simply breathes and takes in the fact that he’s escaped a hoarde with an empty gun sitting in it’s holster on his waist. But the moment passes fast, his eyes shooting open and hands flying to his vest to take quick inventory before he has to make another run.
There are maybe three whole granola bars in his vest pocket and a nearly finished roll of white bandages in the other pocket. Barely any food, no medication, and no ammo. He needs to find a safe town or a trader fast . He’s got little money, only a few coins in his jeans and maybe a dollar bill stuffed somewhere behind the granola bars. If he decides to raid a nearby neighbourhood, there’s bound to be glitch families just waiting on his arrival but if he goes straight to town, he has no ways of obtaining money and nothing to trade. Or he could run further, ignore the scream of pain in his legs, and book it back to a previous camp that might not even still exist and--
Fuck. Lillium grunts, half in pain and half in frustration. The gunshots are nonexistent now. Just him, his gun, his bandages, and some granola bars in this empty godforsaken warehouse in blood stained jeans and a rapidly declining will to live.
He sniffs, a loud noise in the silence. Then he yells, a loud noise in the echoing hollows of this barren wasteland. A prolonged shout into the void that bounces off cement only to come back to him twice as loud. Then, staring into the support beams in the high ceiling of this warehouse, he sniffs again, with a hiccup.
Blindly, he reaches into the inside of his vest, unbuttons an inner pocket, and shakily brings up a piece of laminated paper to his face.
Iris smiles back stupidly to an almost crying Lillium, a seventeen year old’s smile frozen in this fucking laminated photo taken years before the outbreak. Lillium squeezes his eyes shut tight, lets out a long whine, presses the photo to his mouth for a long long moment.
“Okay… Let’s do this, let’s do this, let’s fucking get him already, let’s go home, Iris. Okay… Okay…”
Lillium gulps, takes a shuddering breath, tucks his photo away, buttons the pocket, stretches his wrists. Then gets up, and heads out into the dusk.
“Okay.”