Chapter Text
There’s a rumor about the chapel hall roof at Mach Prep.
Or, it may be more appropriate to call it a ghost story. A myth, a legend, a simple old wives’ tale – take your pick. There’s varying stages of agreement as to what the rumor itself might be, as rumors have a tendency to snatch the leash from your hands and run loose and wild, whether you want them to or not. Small town, and all that. Small town, big money, and too many kids with too much time on their hands to be doing anything not troublesome. You’re either there because of parental connections, wealth, or some trepid combination of both – and there’s little in between, for the most part.
Or, that’s what Claude’s heard, anyway.
But back to the matter at hand. The chapel roof, in the big scheme of things, is just another tangled stem of ivy twisting up the old red brick walls. Another piece of southern gothic history in a school where history’s all they care about - yet it snares him all the same, captures and holds his attention with a single-minded intensity in a way the other stories do not.
Somebody had jumped. A typical tale for a boarding school with a 300-year history and the aesthetic to match. Some say jumped, others say pushed – the end result of a haunted school building is the same no matter what. It’s the tallest and oldest one on campus, complete with an old copper bell tower that only the brave and inebriated dare climb up the narrow, crumbling stairs to reach. Some say, when the wind comes howling down from the hillside, the bell will toll all on its own, as if rung by frothy, ghost print hands.
Right – ghosts. Definitely not something else even more strange and supernatural, like the wind.
Judith asks about it in all but words, when the silence stretches on for a beat too long. She’d requested he call after the plane landed, and despite his teenage rebellion telling him not to, he’d found himself too prematurely homesick not to oblige her, even if for just a few minutes. The breath he heaves as soon as he steps out of the plane is a sigh of relief, and his phone jitters with a slew of old notifications ringing themselves in after his airplane-mode absence.
The airport’s like a kicked ant hill in the hours of early mid-morning. Everyone’s a certain degree of frantic to get where they’re going, and many don’t care if it means stepping on someone else so long as they themselves don’t end up getting crushed. Claude spends twenty minutes in line for the bathroom, twenty more squeezing his way through the train terminals. By the time he’s actually talking to Judith, post-flight exhaustion is really kicking him while he’s down.
“What’s on your mind, kid?”
He laughs it off, then, too busy struggling to pull one of his two scuffed duffels from the luggage carousel to speak. Even if he were to talk, the sentences may not be coherent in his usual fun, irreverent manner - which Judith would latch onto instantly, and not let go. It’s more trouble than it’s worth. His head’s a jumble of thoughts he’d spent the whole six hour flight trying to compartmentalize, put up into boxes for safe storage.
“Nah, don’t worry about it,” he says to the scuffed black tops of his sneakers, catching his breath. “It’s nothing.”
Because some things are better left to be examined at a later date. Or, not at all.
Things like: the fact his grandfather won’t give him money for college unless he graduates from his own boarding school alma mater. The fact that his parents agree with him. The fact that Claude’s now thousands of miles from anything he’s ever known, without his explicit consent, and about to be stuck for another two-hour car ride to a tiny, wealthy backwoods town nestled in the mountains where they still have things like haunted school buildings.
And staring up at the popcorn ceiling from his new, stripped bare bed, in his new, empty dorm room, in the middle of an empty campus soaked in late afternoon light, he finds himself unwilling to even so much as touch those boxes, let alone unpack them. Both those scattered around the room, and in his head.
The drive hadn’t been terrible - his chauffeur a long-time professor with a faint trimming of beard across his chin and a knack for stiff, polite conversation. The car was maroon and noiseless. He’d spent most of the ride staving off some horrible combination of altitude and motion sickness. The silent engine and snippets of the driver’s unobtrusive questions provided optimal conditions for Claude to sink down into the swamp of his own mind and rot for a while.
Only now he’s stuck here, his mind floating somewhere high above his body. He misses the smell of his mother’s laundry detergent and the warm ball of Barbarossa curled on his belly, and here when he swings his feet from the bed they don’t quite meet the floor. They just dangle. Suspended. His clothes still smell like stale air and sweat, but it feels such a waste to change out of his last piece of home so soon.
So, Claude does what he does best in stressful situations. He gets up, climbs out the window, and looks for trouble.
-
The school itself is a sprawl of red clay brick buildings, towering and traditional until you open the doors. That’s where the real money is, the old interior gutted out for the sleek and modern. It’s boring, if anyone were to ask Claude of his opinion – no one has yet, but he’s sure it’s bound to come up. After all, the only thing the rich love to talk about more than themselves, is their money. Their money, and all the ways they love to spend it.
How their parents love to spend it, that is.
He’d watched all the virtual tours of the place he could get his hands on, even scrounged blurry, pixelated images of the school through the trees on Google maps. Their collective assembly hardly compares to the real thing.
The paths are all clean, new cement, freshly power washed. He sticks to the grass, plush green and cooling with the air, the breeze tripping down in gusts from the mountain hedging them in. Claude tugs his jacket tighter to keep it from creeping under his clothes. Classes don’t start for another four days, and the sheer, vast silence of an empty campus is as eerie as it is comforting.
On one hand - no one here to tell him no. On the other - no one here to tell him no.
It doesn’t take long to find the building he’s after: the steeple slices through the treetops and into the sky, a sharpened spire caught in a sharp upswing. The chapel itself rises up six stories, the floor level a vast expanse of space full of the typical church wares – none of which are of any particular interest to Claude. It’s a nice surprise to find the great carved door swinging wide open when he tries it. He’d assumed he’d be relegated to the window again, and the ones ringing the chapel are mostly stained glass - which would be a real shame.
Inside, Claude runs his fingertips along the pews as he walks down the aisle, the rich wood coated in a thin layer of summertime dust. Dying light streaks through the windows, casting kaleidoscopes of iridescent light on the columns leading to the back of the chapel. The saints smile down in all their sharp-edged, brilliantly colorful and empty benevolence. Claude almost pauses to admire them, but only almost.
To his surprise, the door down the hall to the upper levels opens too, with a small, breathy squeak.
He climbs up the stairwell two steps at a time, pausing at each floor landing for the simple sake of gathering information. Faculty offices, spare storage rooms, a couple of empty classrooms – nothing enough to pull his attention away from the task at hand. He climbs four floors before reaching the top, and when he shakes the handle it sticks for a second before the rusting hinges crack open with a screech.
Weird, but he’s not about to question good luck while he’s got it.
The roof is sun-bleached, bare, flat and full of sky. Here the wind whips in stronger gusts, but the air is warm and pleasant, baking in the last rays of sun. Aside from a few stacks of ancient folding chairs, old school play props left to rot in the rain, and a smattering of leaves, the roof is empty. At the far end, the bell tower looms, its great crooked shadow slanting over the concrete.
His shoes scrape as he walks, moving in slow circles, face turned up. In his pocket, his phone gives a low hum. He ignores it for now – gaze taking in the darkening sky, hungry, like a starving man. It’s the first thing he’d noticed in the drive through the narrow mountain roads. Here, the trees crowd out any glimpse of blue, claustrophobic compared to the sweeping plains, and it’s not that he’s already homesick, he just missed how big the sky could be and–
From the corner of his eye, the shadow of the bell tower moves.
Maybe that’s not quite right – the shadow doesn’t move so much as it does change shape for the fraction of an instant, as if shifting from within. Claude freezes, foot half-twisted behind him, all of his guts clenching in a base, animal hindbrain instinct.
No, he thinks, into the disbelieving echo chamber of his own head. No, no, no. No. Absolutely not.
He waits for a moment, before daring to move again, ensuring his footsteps now are careful and silent. The far less logical part of his brain says to turn tail and book it back down the stairs, while the other half, decidedly not in flight mode, has a far better idea.
In typical killed the cat fashion, Claude slinks closer. He doesn’t think about the way Hilda would laugh if she saw him creeping around an empty rooftop, treading light on the balls of his feet so as not to startle – well, he hoped there wouldn’t be anything to startle up here in the first place. But it’s always better to err on the side of caution.
So what if the chapel roof’s haunted? He’s seen spookier.
The closer he draws to the bell tower’s base, the greater the choke of apprehension rises in his throat. It stretches up farther than he realized, looking at it from far away. Closer to the tower of brick itself the shadow looms, the wear of rain and snow on its structure apparent, chipping away in a slow, losing war with erosion. It isn’t until Claude ducks out of its shadow, skirts around closer to the front, that he sees it.
Well, not an it. A him.
His foot, anyway, swinging in a gentle tap atop the tower’s lip, the rest obscured by the supportive pillar’s stony height. All Claude’s able to make out is the long, toned length of leg, and an athletic shoe that no doubt costs more than half of his closet. It’s scandalous, in a way, and suddenly Claude understands all those old stuffy poems about ankles being the height of erotica when it was all one was permitted to see.
This outing’s turning out to be more promising than he ever could’ve imagined.
Claude sets his hands down on the roof’s low brick barricade, leans forward, and aims his voice up.
“I thought it was weird that the doors were unlocked!”
There’s a scream – a choked off noise caught somewhere between shrill and guttural. The leg kicks, a startled hand wraps around the pillar, long fingers grappling with the gapes in the brick laying. Claude leans, perhaps a little too far, over the edge just to see a flash of gold catching like a coin against the fading afternoon sun.
Claude squints up, and the boy’s face, when does find Claude from down below, is a careful blank slate filled in with surprise, that golden hair wind-ruffled, sticking to one cheek. His features are left indistinct by the distance, but even from far below Claude can see the wide, breathless light of his eyes beneath his brow. There’s a beat of silence filled with direct eye contact that makes Claude weirdly giddy.
“Sorry!” He calls up again. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
Another few seconds of silence, of Claude smiling up at the boy in the bell tower, hoping to show that he means no harm. Maybe not no harm but – not much, anyway. Although difficult to see the precise details of his expression, there’s a level of scrutiny to bell tower boy’s stare that seems equal parts confused and wary, like a cat thought to be fleeing a dog only to turn and find a mouse. Claude’s about to speak again, likely to shove his foot even further into his own mouth, when he sees a hand raise, an index finger pointing up.
Claude cocks his head, a bit confused himself until the arm grasping the brick disappears, and Claude watches with no small bit of fascination as those long limbs scale down the tower face. Claude leans down onto his elbow, a little impressed, a little frightened. He watches him until he disappears around the opposite corner, resisting the urge to sprint around the tower just to get another glimpse of him.
He walks, instead – because it’s not like his curiosity is poking and prodding at the door, begging to be let in. It’s just, not every day you see someone climb down the face of a wall with their bare hands, and well. Between that and the sensual, sinewy line of where ankle meets leg, Claude feels a very simple man.
So, maybe he’s a little intrigued. Sue him.
Claude rounds the corner, and just barely avoids smacking himself into almost six solid feet of person , the sound of their feet scrambling away just in time to avoid collision bouncing over the rooftop. Time narrows down to the spike of his pulse, palms tingling where Claude braces himself near his abdomen. There’s a grip that clasps around his forearms with a strength just shy of painful, and then he’s looking up, farther than he thought he’d have to and – oh.
Those eyes. If Claude could be staggering backwards he would. He’d fall straight back all the way over the low wall on the roof’s opposite end, tumble the six stories down until all he sees is sky. Because if Claude were to pick a name, if he could make a paint color out of those eyes he’d call it something like “Forget-me-not Blue”, or “The Sky on a Long Walk Home”.
They’re just blue, the very small part of him that hates dramatics, says. Yeah, but saying they’re just blue wouldn’t be any fun, right?
How is that real, anyway? Does the paint bucket tool work like that in real life?
Bell tower boy’s chin is tilting down, his hair falling like clumps of yellow marigolds across his forehead and catching on the long, proud line of his nose. His mouth’s stuck in a state of surprise, open until he snaps it shut, lips pursing down into a firm, crooked line across his face. It happens a few times more, and the indecision is written all over his symmetrical little face. He smells a bit like sweat and fresh laundry detergent – something chemical in the way he breathes. Claude keeps looking up at him, feeling a little weird and weightless with a stranger’s arms anchoring him a few inches above the ground.
He’s handsome – in an Ivy League boy you take home to your parents kinda way. Slap on a button down and some khakis the color of modesty and he just screams, “Yes, sir, I’ll have your daughter home by eleven”.
Which is why, perhaps, Claude shouldn’t open his mouth right now. Perhaps he’ll think on this later, in the privacy of his own head, and wonder: what in God’s name were you thinking?
Later, maybe. But right now? It sounds like a great idea. Claude feels the words fall out of his mouth before he’s the time to think twice.
“Well hello to you, too.”
Whether the tone of his voice, or the curving innuendo pressing to the corner of Claude’s lips, it seems to break through the layer of ice freezing the boy in place.
“Are you–” he blurts out, loud before startling, reconsidering. The next word is a touch softer. “Alright?”
Interesting reaction, his mind supplies above the din. Claude gives his best smile – the one he knows won’t make him uneasy. “More than alright. Well, I will be. Once you put me down.”
“Oh!” The vice grip disappears in a burning instant, hasty, and Claude’s heels tap back on solid ground. “Oh, of course, I am – I am so sorry.”
Claude’s shimmies his arms further down his jacket sleeves, adjusting the fall of it around his shoulders. “No worries. I’m the one who should be apologizing, anyway.”
The way the nervous twitch tugs at his lips is obvious. A blatant declaration. “No, no, don’t be foolish. I truly didn’t intend to–” He looks down. Swallows so thick Claude sees it go down. “Grab you in such a manner.”
“Well, I really didn’t mean to scare you,” Claude looks down at those stupid fancy shoes before flicking back up to his eyes. “Again.”
“Oh, it’s alright, you didn’t–” He smiles but it doesn’t get far. His teeth are straight as can be; the most perfect, opulent shade of white. “I was startled, that’s all. The wind is strong up there. I couldn’t really hear you, so–”
The words trail off, and Claude watches the unsure way his hands move, trying to find a place to land on his elbows, his hips, behind his back. The nerves must be contagious – he has to fight them out of his own casual stance, arms crossed, weight leaned to the left. It feels like a crime to just leave his words hanging there. Claude does his best to pick up where he’d left off.
“I imagine. Bet you weren’t expecting any company up here, too.”
He keeps looking down. “Admittedly, no.”
“I wasn’t either. At first I thought you were a ghost.”
“...A ghost?”
“Yeah, you know. Ye old vengeful spirit, dead under mysterious, maybe murderous circumstances. Rings the bell because apparently it’s got nothing better to do. That sorta thing.”
“Oh.” He tries a smile again but it keeps falling off. “I haven’t heard that story in years. They used to tell it all the time before our freshmen year. It frightened my friend so much it gave him nightmares.”
“Rightfully so! Well, that’s what I thought at least. You’re much too strong to be dead.”
“Oh,” he says again, the tone turned downwards. “I suppose that’s true.”
“You suppose?” Claude wonders for a brief moment if he’s caught that right. The other boy’s still fidgeting to a distracting degree – and something tells Claude’s feet to start moving before his mind has the wherewithal to catch up.
He slides a step closer. Bell tower boy stays still, as if he’d grown roots into the concrete.
“I just watched you scale down the side of a building and lift me off the ground in the span of two minutes and you suppose?”
“It isn’t that impressive.”
“Agree to disagree, then, spider monkey.”
At that, Claude starts walking in earnest. Where, and for what reason he’s not really sure – but something about watching the other boy attempt to stand there, juggling his weight and jittering fingers is enough motivation to get him up and moving. Claude sidles past, holding his arms in close, hands stuffed in his jacket pockets.
“Come on.” He jerks his head. “I came up here for a ghost, but the view can’t be that bad, right?”
There’s a handful of seconds filled with nothing but the soft pat of his own sneakers, and he’s ready to shrug it off, having thrown his two cents into the fountain of this pretty boy’s thoughts and gotten but a ripple in return – but then he dares a glance back.
And to Claude’s frank astonishment, he’s following. To Claude’s even greater shock, he looks like he has something to say.
“My father,” he starts, his inhale quick and sharp as he matches Claude’s meandering pace. “He used to take my rock climbing when I was little. Quite often, actually.”
“Ah, that makes sense. You must’ve been pretty good at that, too.”
He shakes his head, emphatic. “Not particularly, no.”
“C’mon,” Claude throws his hands up in defeat. “I can count on one hand the amount of people I know who can do what you just did. On like, two fingers actually, because I know it’s only two. Tops.”
It earns him a huff of a laugh. The wind whips up in the same second to snatch it away, which is a bit disappointing. It’s a nice laugh.
“Well, around here, anyway, it isn’t too unusual.”
“Around here, huh?” Claude turns his gaze up. He can sense the other boy’s gaze roving over his features, brazen and unwatched. Claude blinks, flicking his eyes over just in time to catch him in the act for an unguarded moment, the brilliant blue of his irises there one second and gone the next.
He’s obvious in a way Claude hasn’t encountered in, well. Ever. It’s a nice change of pace. It’s almost enough to make him feel just a little bit smug.
“You’re new, I take it?” bell tower boy asks, his voice in the shape of small talk. “What grade?”
“Senior.” Claude keeps looking up, watching a cloud morph from whale to bunny rabbit, depending on the angle and degree of squint. “Fresh off the plane this morning, actually. How’d you know?”
“It’s a relatively small school. Most of us have been in attendance since we were freshmen. Besides–” A pause. Claude tilts his head, finally does look at him in earnest. “I think I’d remember you. If we had met before.”
Well, he thinks, around the grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. Isn’t that unexpected.
“You would?” He says, without any serious question mark tacked on the end. The words are an invitation, not an inquiry.
The realization, and all its insinuations, doesn’t seem to get through bell tower boy’s pretty noggin in the slightest. Doesn’t so much as come close to gracing his thoughts, as far as Claude can tell. He gives a perplexed look. Brow raising, disappearing under the chopped, uneven fall of his hair.
“Well,” he says with serious consideration, scratching at his fingers, picking around the red of his nails until he balls his hands into fists. When he speaks again, his voice is steadier. “As I said before, it’s a small school. Our graduating class is only a hundred people or so. Everyone knows everyone.”
Everyone knows everyone. Claude turns those particular words over in his head a few times before putting them away to look at later.
“Oh, is that it?” He says as they reach the low top of the roof edge. Claude sits without hesitation, leans back on his hands and stretches his legs, crossing his ankles. “I thought you were going to say something more along the lines of I’d never forget a face as handsome as yours, all Prince Charming style. But, small class size makes sense too, I guess.”
Claude’s looking him direct in the face when he says it – and, really, he has no right to be feeling this bold. Yet their shared attentive gaze, tentative and flighty as it is, stokes the warm pit settling in the cradle of his chest.
Claude tilts his head. The boy blinks back at him from where he stands, as if he’d just been stunned by a flash of light too quick for a timely reaction. The wind blows another gust, strong enough to ruffle his hair into his eyes, draw him to push it back.
He’s got his hand still threaded through his bangs, smile unsure but unmistakably there when he says, a bit incredulous, “Prince Charming?”
“Yeah,” Claude leans on one arm, wilting to the side. “I’m thinking the one in Cinderella, in particular.”
“Cinderella,” he sighs as he sit down, like Claude’s drawn-in mirror, his limbs gathered closer, tighter. “Isn’t his hair more…” There’s a moment of set-face contemplation, his thumb brushing his lip before he turns his head and says, “…brown?”
They look at each other. His expression is utterly, completely serious. Inquisitive, even, seeking Claude’s evident approval.
Claude really can’t help it – he busts out laughing. It rises in him, unbidden and unexpected. Big, raucous laughter that shakes his stomach, borders on the pleasant side of painful. What an idea to have. What a thing to say.
“Sorry,” Claude huffs, the laugh still bubbling up his throat. “Sorry, I just, wasn’t expecting–” He clears his throat. “No, of course. You’re absolutely right. I haven’t seen the movie in a while, so I forgot.”
“I don’t see why it’s so funny,” Is what he says in response, but the smile fighting its way across his face says otherwise. “That’s just how I remember it.”
“Just how you remember it?”
“Yes.”
“How many times have you seen Cinderella, exactly?”
His mouth opens. Shuts. He sits up a little straighter. “Enough to know.”
And that gets Claude laughing again. Only this time he has the awareness to rein it in before it gets away from him. He stifles it into his fist – and this time around is better for more reasons than one when he catches bell tower boy laughing, too. Claude doesn’t look at him too long, lacking any kind of directness he might point at someone else. His head tilts back and Claude watches the pale stretch of his neck, his shoulders hardly shaken with the way he holds his gentle laughter in. Claude follows his gaze up, twisting his head back to look at the view as the silence, eventually, fills in around their breathing.
It’s been a while since he’s had this much fun.
With a scrape against the cement, Claude swings his legs over the edge, nothing under his feet but seven stories of empty air. Bracing on his hands again, he leans forward, peering down at the green below, the twisting sidewalks cutting their way through like lines of pale chalk. The sun’s begun to set in earnest now, melting over the mountains in a boiling glow of bright creamsicle orange on the horizon. The whole campus stretches out to every corner of the valley, the last tendrils of sun streaking across it in clawed fingers of light.
“Well I’ll be,” he breathes. “You can see the edge of the world from up here.”
Silence serves as his answer for a long pause, and he knows they’re both staring out at the same moment, seeing the same shadows pressing around the trees.
“Yes,” Quiet, a whisper of a mutter. Claude almost doesn’t catch it. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it.”
“It is.”
They sit and let the sun lapse over them, a short few seconds turned to minutes, passing through his fingers like water. The breeze stills, swirls lower over the tree branches, crackling and quaking. He doesn’t take his eyes off the sky. Neither of them do. It could go on for hours like this, for all Claude knows – he’s never been great at keeping track, sometimes so caught up in his own head he misses meals, skips out on sleep. Maybe they’d fallen into a pocket outside of time entirely. It’s a place that still believes in ghosts, where everyone knows everyone. Anything is possible.
“I see why you came up here now,” Claude breaks the wind-filled silence. “What a great hiding spot.”
He’s hesitating – Claude knows it without even having to look. “Is that why–?”
Claude snorts. “Well, partially. I wasn’t lying when I mentioned the ghost, or the view. So, all of the above, I guess. I like to keep my options open.”
“So, that’s what you were truly looking for? A place to hide?”
“First thing I do whenever I get to a new place,” he says, a little surprised himself by how easy the truth comes. “Everyone needs somewhere to go where they can think. Just, be alone with their thoughts for a while.”
“Really?”
“What? Don’t think so?” Claude takes a deep breath, the air chilled enough to singe his lungs. “I’m a strong believer that if you don’t have some means of escape you’re bound to lose your mind. At least a little bit.”
“Hm.” Claude turns his head in time to see him tuck a tangled knot of yellow hair behind his ear. “I’d…never thought about it that way before.”
Claude watches him now, a reversal of their previous arrangement. There’s an odd cadence to how he breathes, not unsteady or nervous, per say, but long and heavy. As if he’s breathing deep not to get much in return. Claude watches the light drip down his nose from the corner of his eye, and it feels as brazen as staring him straight in the face. A fact he’s aware of with a sudden, sharp acuteness.
“You say the strangest things, you know that?” he says, gripping the gritted stone of his seat.
A huff, and there’s that hesitation again, like he doesn’t know the acceptable time to turn his card over, reveal the secret underneath. “I’ve been told as much.”
“Well–”
The sound of a phone ringing at full volume makes Claude’s heart lurch an uncomfortable degree up, his whole body jumping along with it, and then that hold is grabbing at his elbow again, just like before. It isn’t until Claude realizes how precariously forward he’s begun to lean that he whips his head to meet the other boy’s gaze – so wide and stricken and blue it makes Claude dizzy.
Or, maybe that’s just the vertigo from his near fatal drop. Either way–
The phone’s still ringing. It’s all Claude can hear, and his eyes dart all over to spot a pocket, or hidden place under the waistband of his athletic shorts. Bell tower boy hasn’t let go of him, yet. His grip strength is truly incredible, and under any other circumstances, Claude might be into it. Maybe. The words are forming on his traitorous tongue, but fortunately he manages to stuff them away in time to prevent anything from escaping. Hilda would never let him live if she knew what he was thinking about.
After this moment of deep self-reflection, he lifts a delicate brow. “You gonna get that?”
The words don’t appear to register at first, between the slow blinking stillness, but it’s impossible to tell whether it’s due to racing thoughts or the subsequent lack of them. “Uh.”
Claude gives a tentative smile, just an upturn at the corner of his mouth, and that seems to do the trick. The hold on him disappears quick as it came, apologies covering the air. Claude watches the imprint of his fingers on the fabric relax as he digs for his phone, bright screen lighting his face a shocked white as he swipes to answer it.
“Hello?” A beat goes by, two. The taut line of his mouth doesn’t relax, only tangles and collapses in on itself when he continues. “I’m…at school.”
He can’t hear a voice on the other end of the line, and Claude would like to pretend he isn’t listening at all – but that would be silly, considering their proximity. He does the body language equivalent of giving privacy, keeps his gaze averted, tilts his chin down and away.
Doesn’t mean Claude’s going to go so far as to plug his ears, though.
“No, no it’s truly alright. I can drive back.” Pause. “Yes, I’m sure. I’ll call you when I get in the car.” He’s picking at his fingers again. With a careful look from under his lashes Claude can see a drop of blood well up where he’d shorn the skin clean off the side of his thumb. It’s smearing all over his forefinger. “I promise. Alright. Okay, you too. Goodbye.”
Claude straightens, tugging his smile up again. Claude waits for him to speak, to so much as look up from where he’s glued his gaze to the ground far below. He does, after a handful of breaths, a hair shy of a sigh.
“I’m sorry, I – I have to go.” he says, and if Claude were to twist it just the right way the words might sound disappointed.
He hurries to stand, not giving Claude the time to formulate a response. Claude’s eyes follow him. He seems to be debating, teeth worrying his lower lip before he offers: “I can walk you back? I don’t want you getting lost.”
“I’ll be alright,” Claude taps his temple. “Got a memory like an elephant. I’d like to stay up here a little longer, anyway.”
“O-Oh. I see.”
“Don’t worry,” Claude says, because he needs something else to say. “I’m sure we’ll see each other around, right? Small school and all that.”
“That’s true,” he nods, shifting his weight from right to left, back to right. He’s holding his elbows, practically hugging them in, and there’s something crumpled in it despite the practiced, drawn up straight line of his posture. Claude almost squints at him, as if he were a cloud that may change its form with a different degree of focus, or maneuvering. The silence is heavy. Claude doesn’t look away this time.
“Please, don’t–” He says all in a hurry, takes a moment to reorganize, stuff his trembling hands in his pockets. “Don’t tell anybody I was up here. Please.”
So that’s it-? Claude inclines his head, a question mark.
“It may be even better to...pretend we haven’t met. I apologize, I don’t wish to be rude-”
“No, I get it,” Claude says, even if he does not, entirely, get it. But he can hedge a guess as best as the rest of them. “Don’t wanna be associated with the weird new kid?”
“That isn’t it at all! Trust me, I-”
Claude wants very much to interject, and he usually would, but the pleading urgency bleeding underneath the words tapes down his tongue. So Claude watches with a kept degree of apprehension, gaze falling between the stern knit in his brow, the telling tremble in his wrists.
“It is more for your sake, than it is mine. I’m sorry.”
They both hold very still. He becomes viscerally aware of the way his heartbeat sounds in his own ears, a steady, growing pound, and the curiosity he’d been idly scratching at before flares to a full-blown case of septicemia. He feels it crawl up his arms, trickle down into his chest cavity, and Claude knows he’s in trouble when the questions creeping up his throat.
So, maybe now Claude’s more than a little intrigued. Is it really such a bad thing?
The answer: probably not, but he should be careful, regardless.
And it’s not as if he has anybody to tell. Except Hilda. Lorenz might count, if Claude’s ever in the mood to tell him a truth and not a carefully concocted half-lie – which is unlikely. The next step is a logical, objective course of action anybody might take. Boil down the water to get to the solution underneath. If you want the feral cat to come closer, you first must earn its trust.
“Alright, sure.” He pours all the reassurance he can into his next smile. “It’ll be our little secret.”
He smiles small, the sound of his words clipped but warm. “Thank you.”
“No problem.”
The silence stretches. A thanks and an unspoken, casual you’re welcome, but he still hasn’t made a move to leave yet, and the shadows casting over the strong line of his jaw are so sharp it’s almost distracting. Not that Claude’s looking at it – because of course he isn’t. Not even a little bit.
“In that case, then–” Claude receives the reward of another small smile, a laugh laced with self-directed exasperation. It’s still a nice laugh, regardless. “I hope to…see you around.”
Claude, for all that it’s worth, keeps smiling back.
“Me too.”
Claude watches his back until he reaches the door, and he hears but doesn’t see the screech of its hinges as it wrenches open and shuts behind him. The sun’s almost set now, only light pouring out from the ridge of the mountains, red and gold dribbling through a jagged set of teeth. At last, Claude allows his posture to falter, curling his knees up to rest his chin. He should climb down soon, scrounge dinner from the mess hall and crawl his way into bed. A bed that isn’t quite his yet. A home he isn’t quite sure he wants.
As if dwelling on it will do you any good, he hears Judith tease. Yeah, yeah, she’s right about most everything in the world, but–
Suddenly, he’s very tired. Eyes falling shut with heaviness, bones hollowed out and aching kind of tired. Like a rag wrung dry and empty.
It can’t be but forty five seconds later that he hears the chapel door open far below. Twilight dampens the colors beneath the trees, but the last streaks of sunlight still hit the top of his head like solid gold. His walk is brisk, heading east. The opposite direction Claude had come from. His pace quickens to a jog, and he holds it for a few strides before he skids to a stop.
He stops, and sprints back to the base of the chapel wall, directly below Claude’s feet.
“I’m sorry,” He calls up, across the green, voice a tenuous balancing act. “But may I know your name? You never told me.”
Claude’s grinning, even if he’s too far away to catch it. “You never asked!”
The scene is humorous enough to draw it out of him, this strange shadow of a boy standing at the bottom of a tower, calling up in an ardent attempt to learn his name. What else can Claude do but laugh?
“So, I don’t know.” Claude continues. “May you?”
“I would give you mine in return.”
Claude laughs, because maybe it’s a bit of a game now. “I would hope so! It’d be a shame if you didn’t.”
A breath of silence. He backtracks a few steps, and from here Claude can see him better, see how he teeters on the edge of the sidewalk when he says:
“Dimitri. My name, that is. It’s Dimitri.”
"Dimitri,” he says, the exhale of a whisper just for his own ears to hear. Just to see how it fits in his mouth. He pitches his weight forward, the stone crackling under his fingers, carving bumpy landscapes into the soft of his palms.
“It’s Claude!” His voice is clear and sharp when he sends it down around a smile. “My name’s Claude!”
-
It isn’t until he’s back in his room, enjoying the satisfaction of pulling old sheets over the corners of his new bed, that he pulls his phone from his discarded jacket’s pocket. He flops back, letting his body bounce with the bedsprings. The messages are only an hour old.
From: Lorenz [19:02]
How was your flight?
Weird, Claude hears the logical part of him say. Since when does he care?
It’s strange, but his fingers are already tapping out a long, half-truth about how the toddler singing a song from The Sound of Music to the whole plane reminded Claude of him as a kid – a joke he’s sure Lorenz will find appropriately incorrect and un-funny.
The second text sits a little better in his stomach.
From: Hilda <3 [19:13]
how’s campus without me?
bored out of your mind yet?
The strange restlessness of Dimitri’s petal-veined fingers comes to mind. The crumple of his white t-shirt around his hips, and his unusual name for middle of nowhere mountain country. Dimitri.
Claude shoves the images out the backdoor before it can gain any traction. The jet lag must be really starting to get to him now. Nestling into his pillow feels like touching the hand of God, or some other primal, world-creating entity he doesn’t quite believe in.
With that thought, he rolls over, and texts Hilda back.
Me [20:20]
never been more unentertained my entire life, frankly
take an earlier flight? for me? pretty please
The thought bubble pops up almost immediately – flickers once or twice before it’s replaced with:
From: Hilda <3 [20:20]
would if i could :( holst wants to get in one last hike together before i enter into exile. annoying but not like i can say no
he calls it ~sibling bonding time~ but frankly it’s more like “let’s go out and get horribly bitten by mosquitoes together” time
he says hi btw <3
Me [20:21]
hey. at least this year we’ll be in exile together! tell my favorite big brother right back at ya ;)
From: Hilda <3 [20:22]
ur so right. and don’t even think i’m passing on the wink to him u weirdo
i mean i could try. but i think the effort involved might kill me
Me [20:24]
you’re the worst y’know that?
god i miss you
From: Hilda <3 [20:24]
i know :) and what would u ever do without me
just two more days!!!
i miss u tooooooo