Chapter Text
He called himself Vanitas. It wasn’t his actual name, at least not according to legal documents and even his school ID, but seeing as it was the only one he ever gave and that he guarded his awful school picture with his life, it was what everyone ended up calling him. If they called him in the first place, that is, which few did.
Vanitas was something of an acquired taste, a fact he’d often been told in much harsher terms; he didn’t mind the enemies made along the way as long as he was able to do what he had set out to do. On campus, the goal was simple: graduate and escape the shitty hellhole Luna paid for him to attend. At home, the goal was a little more complicated: survive, keep Luna at least a few arms’ lengths away at all times, and never fall for Mikhail’s cutesy acts. For the future, the goal was deceptively simple, even if actually setting out to achieve it would be more than a pain in his ass. For all his grand aspirations, he was usually summed up by commoners through a few choice words: jerk, asshole, and (his personal favorite) cryptid.
It may have been the fact that he subsisted on coffee, Monster, and, when he had proper access, Pixy Stix and only showed his face willingly once the sun had already gone down, but he’d gained some reputation as a mythical creature. It also may have been the fact that he intentionally laid in wait to scare the shit out of his most annoying classmates when they least expected it, but if he did, it was their own fault for annoying him in the first place. Karma was a bitch, and for as long as he could help it, Vanitas planned to keep her on his side.
That being said, it was beginning to seem like the tides had changed, and Vanitas was finally about to face the consequences of his actions – not something he was familiar with, and therefore he was totally unprepared for just how fickle the favor of fate could be.
It started innocuously.
Vanitas woke that morning in a cold sweat, images pressed against his eyelids that he would rather have forgotten entirely, his dreadful alarm having failed to rouse him in time to make it to his first class of the day. Phenomenal. But all wasn’t lost, as Vanitas could hardly be bothered to care about missing the morning’s Biology of the Cell lesson. There was a particularly annoying person in that lecture who insisted on sitting near Vanitas no matter how many extra bags he brought with him to block the closest desks, always leaning toward him and trying to talk to him. Besides the obvious, Vanitas also found the course material far too boring to stay awake for considering he’d already come in with plenty of credits to get out of the class, but found it required by his major for some reason. A ploy for money and misery, he suspected, but good-as-proven theories weren’t likely to earn him leave from the class. At least the professor never bothered to take attendance, despite it being written on the syllabus in large red letters – it only furthered Vanitas’ growing suspicion that said professor was actually illiterate.
His favorite sweatshirt, a lavender one with some garish print he’d never actually been able to parse no matter how hard he squinted, was crumpled next to the hamper, still damp with some substance Vanitas had no desire to investigate. The hangover actually explained the inability to wake up on time, too, and he mentally recorded yet another reason not to get drunk on Tuesday nights, no matter how loud his brain rattled within his skull. Setting new goals for sobriety (that he would never follow through with), while considered good by the therapist he’d been ghosting for a few months, wouldn’t magically clean his sweatshirt or convince his stomach to keep anything solid down. With that in mind, Vanitas was forced to find some lesser article of clothing to wear in the meantime, a strawberry-flavored poptart pressed between his lips that he wasn’t certain he’d even bother trying to eat as he shoved a notebook into his bag and set out for campus.
The commute was fine, not too long considering nothing would be far enough to convince him to live in the dorms. Vanitas wasn’t made to cohabitate, the thought of someone living with him in a single room making him about ready to commit several crimes of varying natures, and Luna had seemed to know as much when they had showed him apartment listings rather than the school’s housing website. It was a fair move, as he doubted Luna actually wanted to bail him out of jail should he be caught, not that he ever thought he would – if he ever decided to commit a crime, since j-walking definitely didn’t count whenever a college campus was involved.
And that was when karma finally bit him back hard, like a venomous snake turning on its owner.
A man dressed in a white suit suddenly appeared on the road before him, as if out of thin air. His gloved hands were cupped around his mouth, as if he were calling for someone nearby despite the imminent, oncoming danger.
Vanitas, not firing on all cylinders but having driven despite the danger, slammed his foot into the brake pedal, the car jolting at the abrupt reduction in speed as well as the body that made contact with the hood. He turned the car off immediately, on autopilot as his hands shook with adrenaline, afraid to even step out of the vehicle to check if he’d been hallucinating – he hoped he had been. But the road was otherwise deserted, and Vanitas forced himself out on wobbly legs, peering around the side of his car; he expected a splatter of blood and a life sentence for manslaughter, but it could be argued that what he actually found was much worse.
The seemingly dead man stumbled back up from what should have been his coffin, using the hood of Vanitas’ car to steady himself. He dusted his clothes off from the residue that had stuck to him, giving himself a once over to make sure all was well. A white furball approached the stranger from where it had been hiding at the edge of the forest, the man looking down upon the cat with a smile before scooping the animal up. He glanced back up to watch Vanitas beside the vehicle, his feet wandering over toward him as he asked, “Sorry to bother you, but may I ask you where I am?”
The college student stared for a moment, gears spinning as he wondered how the man had escaped without a scratch on him and where he had come from in the first place. Vanitas hadn’t seen anything until the very moment before the collision, and while he was hungover and exhausted, he was usually a very careful driver. “Forks,” Vanitas said shortly, watching the other to see if he was going to collapse; there could be a delay, while something bled internally, and the man’s seemingly fine appearance would fall apart. “Washington,” he added in afterthought, though he wouldn’t expect someone to be confused on which state they were in.
“Washington,” the stranger repeated slowly, as if the word was foreign to him. Holding his cat closer to his form as if he was in an unfamiliar place, he turned on his heel to take a quick scan of his surroundings. “Where are the forks?”
Vanitas offered a delirious laugh, the fact that he was going to miss his second class of the day hardly a concern anymore. “There aren’t any in particular? I definitely didn’t name the town.”
The man hummed lowly to himself, disregarding Vanitas’ sarcasm as his eyebrows furrowed together with an emotion akin to concern. Muttering something quietly under his breath, his frown became apparent as he asked, “I’m… in the States?”
He huffed, incredulous as he asked, “You didn’t get so lost in France that you ended up here, did you?” While the stranger was definitely strange, Vanitas could at least recognize that the other was speaking a language he understood, even if he hadn’t realized he’d replied in French until after the fact. He still spoke the language often enough to keep a hold of it, but he’d gotten used to shaping the English words differently to match the people around him, which had luckily lessened the comments on his ‘funny’ accent that had been halfway between the two.
“It appears so,” was the only confirmation, the man glancing up toward the sky. “I was on one of those-” he paused, stumbling upon his words as if they were all trying to pour out at once, “those flying contraptions. I must have wandered off, though I could have sworn that Domi was behind me the entire time…”
“A plane?” Vanitas assumed that was the only logical conclusion, even if it made the man sound as if he’d wandered from Paris in the seventeenth century. “Look, I don’t have time to play ‘lost puppy’ right now. Or ever, actually. Sorry I hit you with my car, glad to see you’re still alive and have no evidence to sue me with, and I’ll be on my way.” Shaking his keys in his hand for emphasis, the metal keychains jangling loudly, Vanitas gave the man a two-fingered salute and he took a step backward. “Au revoir.”
The man followed close behind, almost nipping at his heels due to the proximity. He glanced back at the hood of Vanitas’ car, offering after a moment’s hesitance, “I would not say there is no evidence, since I believe I made a person-sized dent on your… car.”
Vanitas glanced at the dent as well, wondering how much it would cost to get that taken out. Maybe with a plunger and enough determination, he could do it himself. Squinting at the mark for a few seconds longer, he turned his attention back to the stranger, informing, “That’s just as easily deer-sized. Or tree-sized. And I can obviously afford a lawyer.” The fact that he couldn’t was entirely beside the point.
“I could fix the dent upon your vehicle for temporary lodging,” the stranger offered, letting the cat within his arms to climb up onto his shoulders to perch there. Likely sensing the possibility of a ‘no’ coming along, the man added on, “My master would compensate you swimmingly for the trouble, too.”
Ignoring a few key concerns, like letting a stranger into his home, even thinking about what the word ‘master’ was supposed to mean, and the cat hair that would inevitably stick to his clothes just from looking at the thing, Vanitas asked the question that actually mattered: “How much?”
“Last time this happened, he gave the person as much money as they asked for,” he explained, offering a small, unconscious shrug to show off his uncertainty of the amount, the action nearly sending the furry thing off his shoulders.
“As much as- Hold on,” Vanitas interrupted himself, hands held up with palms facing outward, as if physically stopping the stranger from continuing, keys dangling from an index finger. “Let me summarize here. You’ve somehow gotten lost in an entirely different country, and you want to pay some random college student who just hit you with their car to give you a place to stay.” Staring at the other with eyebrows raised, he prompted, “Does that not sound completely insane to you?!”
“Not really, you seem rather nice,” the taller man reassured with a light smile before it changed into something along the lines of worry, “unless you are planning on hitting me with your car again. I know that I got no injuries the first time, but it was rather sudden.”
Vanitas sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t hit you on purpose,” he stressed, “and you shouldn’t be walking out into the road anyway! If my car had been bigger, you might’ve been flattened!” Lecturing a stranger for letting him run them over wasn’t actually on his to-do list for the day, but his schedule was in tatters as it was. Considering he’d been on his way to class when the incident had taken place, it was safe to say he wouldn’t be making it to economics either – for the best, truthfully, since he hated that class with a passion. But while it had been lucky that the man wasn’t hurt and no cars had chosen to drive by to interrupt, his car was parked in the middle of the road, and he really couldn’t leave it there for much longer; however nice Karma was playing at the moment, it wouldn’t last. “Is there somewhere I can… drop you off?” he asked awkwardly, recognizing the fact that he couldn’t just leave the man there despite not actually wanting anything to do with him.
The stranger’s feet shuffled underneath him in an unsure manner, his hand raising the scratch at the side of his temple. “I haven't a clue what is in ‘Forks,’” he muttered quietly, eyes squinting in thought. “Is there a place where I may send a letter around here? I think that may be the best way for me to be found.”
“Yeah, I can take you to a post office,” Vanitas offered, having a dreadful feeling that his day was only going to get worse the longer he remained conscious. “Just- Get in the car,” Vanitas said, gesturing toward the vehicle with one hand as if the other had already forgotten being struck by it minutes earlier. He squeezed the dumb rabbit attached to his keys without thought, giving the dent one last glare before returning to the driver’s door, fingers underneath the handle as he waited for the stranger to do the same on the other side.
The man followed suit, though he went toward the back seats of the car rather than the passenger seat. He glanced over at Vanitas’ hands to see how he was grabbing the handle before doing the same, a small ‘oh’ escaping his lips once the door popped open through his yank. Slipping inside the vehicle and onto the row of seat options, he peered back over at Vanitas through the window and asked, “If we are going to spend some time together, may I have your name?”
Vanitas watched the stranger through his rearview mirror, wondering why he was suddenly an unpaid Uber-driver – hitting customers with said car probably wouldn’t earn five-stars, so maybe it was for the best that he hadn’t tried to make a career of it, actually. “You can call me Vanitas,” he finally said, the ‘if you must’ left unspoken since he’d already done enough damage without being an outright ass. “And I’m not driving until you have a seatbelt on,” he informed immediately after, when it had become clear that the man wasn’t planning to reach for it. The college student made a show of securing his own as if he was teaching a toddler, as much consideration as he was able.
“Vanitas,” he repeated, as if he was testing the name on his tongue. Leaning forward to the point where his head was in the gap between the two front seats, he observed Vanitas’ action before bringing himself back to the seat he had chosen for himself. Buckling himself in after a moment despite how the seatbelt appeared to be choking him rather than keeping him safe, the stranger eventually offered, “My name is Noé, Noé Archiviste.”
“Wonderful,” Vanitas said without any wonder in his tone, jamming the keys into the ignition and belatedly flicking his hazards on, as if the vehicle hadn’t been a hazard for at least ten minutes already. Ensuring the guest of honor was secure in the backseat, Vanitas again thanked the higher powers he’d never believed in for the clear road where nobody could watch his shame play out, fellow student or otherwise. Vanitas had never actually been to the post office, since he wasn’t in the habit of mailing anything, but he knew where it was in theory.
Taking a moment to check that his bag was still in place, down in the footwell of the passenger side, he finally started up the car, placing it into drive without further delay – he didn’t bother with the turn signal, since it was an empty stretch anyway. He usually kept his bag on the passenger seat, buckled in like a child he wouldn’t mind losing to a fight with an airbag or a pineapple he’d rather not have splattered across his dashboard, but he’d been in a hurry and his hangover headache made him care a whole lot less about any potential damage done to textbooks he hadn’t even opened yet in the semester.
Noé gripped his seat belt at the sudden movement, though the hand slowly relaxed as the car took them down the road. His eyes were glued to the window once they hit a steady speed, trees taking up the entire scene. It took a while for the man to look away from the windows, eyes settling on him as if he were a shiny new toy. “Vanitas,” he started, leaning forward so that he could get a better look at him, “where were you heading before you attacked me?”
“I didn’t-” Vanitas let out a slow breath, tightening his grip on the steering wheel. “It was an accident, and I was going to class.”
“You’re a student?” Noé clarified, letting the cat jump down from its perch to sit on his lap instead. “It has been years since I’ve been in a school, unless I count the lessons my teacher has given me.”
If Vanitas hadn’t hit the guy with his car, he would be charging for this faux-therapy session, but there wouldn’t be a session in the first place if he hadn’t, so it wasn’t like he could exactly complain about it. “Yeah, hoping to graduate,” he commented tiredly, holding up a pair of crossed fingers as evidence. Skipping class wasn’t a good way to achieve the goal, but he usually just showed up to the exams and blanked out for the entire duration; even if he couldn’t recall the answers himself, his brain could fish them out somehow, a process he wasn’t going to start questioning. Vanitas idly wondered why the man, Noé, had mentioned both a teacher and a master – they would be the same person if he’d meant master as in a teaching sense, right?
Straightening his back against the seat as if to get more comfortable, Noé’s hands scrambled to grab the feline from wandering off his lap and onto the seats to spread its hair like the plague. He ignored the irritated meow that he had gotten in response to the movement, asking the question that would be expected next: “What are you hoping to do after you graduate..? I assume that you are from France as well?”
Wasn’t that really the million dollar question? “Get a job,” he answered flatly, watching the cat’s movement through his mirror. He’d need to get it cleaned after this, but he knew the nearby car wash would let him use their vacuums for free – providing he didn’t draw any attention from the couple workers there that actually had some vendetta against him. “The French should tell you well enough,” Vanitas continued; seeing as they were speaking in French, he thought the answer was obvious. Sure, the university offered French as a course, but he’d heard the students butchering the language far worse than he ever had as a child. “But yes, I am from France,” he finally finished, holding back on the sarcasm the words deserved to be drenched in, since the question was innocuous enough.
“French is spoken in plenty of other countries other than France,” Noé said matter-of-factly, rubbing behind the cat’s ears. “I only knew you were French because you have the classic flair.”
Vanitas wasn’t sure if classic flair was a compliment or an insult, so he decided to take it positively. “Guess you’ve got me there,” he acquiesced, not having thought too much about that, never having visited any other French-speaking countries than the one he was native to. He was still miffed that he’d been dragged to the United States, since he’d definitely been unwilling to get on the plane, but now that he was settled, he’d prefer not to move again. There was nothing left for him in France anyway, and French-Canadian territories sounded even less enticing. “I just assumed you were from France when you started speaking the language.”
Noé nodded at the logic, rubbing the back of his neck as he explained almost sheepishly, “If I am honest with you, I thought I was still in France up until now. Maybe Europe, at the very least.”
“Well,” Vanitas started, not really having an end destination in mind for the sentence. How someone wound up on an entirely different continent with no knowledge of travel he had absolutely no idea. How someone stepped out in front of a speeding car and suffered no injuries he had no explanation for. The sooner he got Noé out of his car, the better. “You could probably win an award for largest distance lost,” he joked, immediately wishing to retract the words – it wasn’t even funny and it didn’t even make sense. That was the real reason he couldn’t drive people around for money: people liked to talk, and Vanitas was never dumber than when he ran out of things to say.
There was a light chuckle from the back seat before silence otherwise came, though it did not stay for long. Audible clicking noises came from the seat belt in the back seat, the type heard when an unruly child was leaning forward suddenly and the seat belt was trying to lock to prevent future injury. Noé was near him once more, his gloved hand pointing at the dimly lit screen of the radio. “Vanitas,” he said, as if he needed to grab his attention with all the noise he was making, “what do all these buttons do?”
Vanitas glanced at the stranger from the corner of his eye, attention still mainly on the road, as he needed to watch for signs that might direct him to the correct destination. “Music,” he said simply, having a brief moment to wonder what he’d left playing the last time he’d been in his car, speedrunning the stages of grief as he turned the music-player on anyway.
Noé flinched back from where he was once breaching Vanitas’ personal space, the booming music causing him to cover his ears with his hands. It was a fair enough reaction, Vanitas reaching for the volume dial on instinct, bringing the loud rock music down to a more tolerable level. He remembered the past car ride now, blasting music to make his head quiet for a little while, and he felt a twinge of remorse toward the man in the backseat, not having intended to deafen him. Vanitas should have turned the volume down when he’d gotten back home, but he had known he’d need it once he turned the radio on again, so it had seemed like a time-saving maneuver at the time; little did past-Vanitas know, planning ahead was a recipe for disaster.
“My bad,” he apologized lamely, feeling the need to say something.
Noé opened up one of his eyes in a light squint, apparently having squeezed them tight when Vanitas was not looking. Hesitantly lowering his hands once he indeed noticed that the music was significantly lower, he listened to the music with a confused expression. “It’s quite alright,” he reassured, scratching the back of his ear. His head moved back up to take up the space between the two front seats as if he was trying to uphold a normal conversation, commenting, “I have never heard music like this before, but it’s…” Noé paused, trying to find the word he was looking for, “what do the younger folk call it? Righteous?”
Vanitas wondered, for a long moment, what the Catholic church had to do with his music taste, before he finally caught on. If a forceful religious education was good for anything, then internalized self-hatred and a fear of burning for eternity were the best of the bunch. He hadn’t been to mass in years, thank god, but any mention of it, even imagined by himself, brought immediate discomfort. He was sure that Jesus guy was great, since that was the whole point of him, but being punished for not praying obviously enough seemed a little contrary to the rulebook – at least in Vanitas’ opinion. “It’s not the seventies anymore, Noé. Just call it ‘cool.’”
“‘Cool,’” Noé echoed back, almost astonished as he placed his hand on the shoulder of the passenger’s seat. Absentmindedly drumming his fingers on the black nylon seat, he suddenly gasped as if he had just witnessed an atrocity and swiftly sat back against his seat. Picking up the creature beside him, Noé brought the feline to the empty space he had just vacated, “This is Murr! I apologize for not allowing you the pleasure of making his acquaintance sooner.”
“Pleasure?” Vanitas questioned, glancing at the animal with disdain. “Just keep an eye on that thing. I don’t want to get yelled at if it wanders away from you.”
“He’s not a ‘thing’, he’s a friend,” Noé argued, the hiss the animal sent to its owner showing that the feeling might not be mutual. “He grows on you, he just has a big personality.”
Vanitas looked at the cat for a moment with deep suspicion – not trusting its intent, multi-colored eyes – before he focused back on the road, subconsciously leaning closer to his door. “Just keep Murr far, far away from me, and we won’t have any problems.”
Retracting the cat to sit back down upon his lap as requested, he did not flinch as the cat took it upon itself to claw at his hand openly. “You’re not much of an animal lover, Vanitas?” he guessed, looking down at the claws that were trying to burrow their way into his hand before pulling it away.
“I haven’t been around too many animals,” he started, squinting through the windshield, “but I’ve never met any that have liked me.”
“Murr could be good practice,” Noé offered, finally giving up on trying to keep the cat still. Murr made its new home as far away from its owner as possible, leaning against the right hand side’s door and curling up into itself. Glancing between the creature and Vanitas, Noé made a small observation to himself, “You two seem similar.”
“That’s a cat,” Vanitas argued astutely, “and you don’t even know me.”
“Murr would run me over, too,” he shrugged, lightly fiddling with his seatbelt that had locked him in place with all his sudden movements.
Vanitas scoffed, removing one hand from the steering wheel to make a wide gesture. “It’s ridiculous anyway! I mean, comparing people to animals? I don’t need to be a humanities major to tell you that there’s something wrong with that. Plus-” He stopped, tightening his grip on the wheel until his knuckles were white before abruptly loosening the hold again. “Plus, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with biting people as a defense mechanism, especially when someone puts their hand in your mouth! He had it coming.”
Noé looked almost taken aback from the outburst, though he seemed to have quickly recovered. “Don’t worry, Vanitas, I bite people as well. There is nothing strange about it.”
He released a slow breath to forget the taste of iron in his mouth – disgusting – and to question whether he’d actually made a mistake in letting the other into his car. Biting was one of a few things, and Vanitas was leaning toward the conclusion that Noé was just childish enough to bite people like a playful dog. In Vanitas’ own case, it didn’t really matter why he did things. “As long as you don’t bite me, I don’t really care what you do,” Vanitas replied, truthful enough.
“I wasn’t planning to, I wouldn’t want you to die,” Noé scrambled to deny, shifting in his seat. His head tilted to the window beside him, a small black button taking his attention away from the conversation quickly. Pushing the button with his index finger, he was met with an abrupt wind as the glass slid further and further down. He blinked at the motion, not minding how his hair was getting in his eyes as he pushed the button the other way, the window now going back up. Noé repeated the pattern a number of times before he excitedly inquired, “Vanitas, did you know you had this contraption in your vehicle?”
“Quit acting like a five year old,” Vanitas huffed, glancing down at the driver’s door in search of the child safety feature of the windows. He’d never actually had to use it, not having encountered any children since he’d gotten the car, but was suddenly wishing he’d at least read through the manual.
“See, that is why I said you two were similar,” Noé remarked, reluctantly taking his hand away from the window’s button. “You’re grumpy, too.”
Vanitas sighed, not rising to the bait for once as he was distracted by the very signage he had been looking for. He’d made a few wrong turns, admittedly, but he’d found it, and Noé hadn’t dropped, either, so he was probably going to make it. A quick turn into the parking lot had Vanitas parking his car safely, tugging the keys from the ignition and looking at his temporary companion pointedly.
“Here’s the post office,” he announced, like some cheap tour-guide that definitely didn’t love their job as much as the fliers claimed.
“Thank you, Vanitas,” the male in the backseat replied, picking up Murr so that he could prepare to get out of the vehicle. Patting his pockets lightly to see if he brought his wallet with him, Noé inquired sheepishly after a few moments, “Mailing a letter does not take money in the States, right..?”
“Are you kidding me?”
“... No?”
Vanitas rested his forehead against the steering wheel, somehow more exhausted than when he had first woken up despite not having done anything worthwhile. He had only just met the man, but he could confidently state that dealing with him was worse than dealing with a toddler, which was made more impactful by Vanitas’ deep distaste of children. “Obviously it takes money. I’m pretty sure they have money in France, too!”
“I’ve never mailed my letters personally before! I thought we still used birds!” Noé defended, following Vanitas’ lead as he raised his voice a tad.
Sitting up in order to turn fully around, Vanitas stared at the man in his backseat, asking, “Where the hell did you think I was taking you?”
“I thought the States was the land of the free. Why isn’t mail free?”
“Nothing is free,” Vanitas stressed, pressing his fingers into his temple as if the motion would alleviate his headache. “I’ll be in debt for the rest of my life just to get an education that I need to get a job that I need to live, so yes, Noé, mail costs money.”
A face of genuine sadness flickered upon Noé’s face, “Why would they do that?”
"To wring people of every last cent before tossing their bodies into a big pit," he answered sarcastically, though there was some truth to it. The pit was only for special occasions, afterall, and he was especially unlucky to be so familiar with it.
The frown remained, Noé’s hand raising to adjust the hair that had gone out of place due to the wind, “Why did you come here if it's as bad as you say?”
"I- Do you need to send a letter or not?" Vanitas huffed, considering knocking his head against the steering wheel again.
Scratching the side of his cheek with his finger as if he had almost forgotten the reason that they were there already, Noé’s eyes turned back toward the post office, “I suppose I could see if they’d let me send one for free.”
“I can pay for it,” the student offered, two main thoughts in mind: it couldn’t possibly cost more than ten dollars to mail a single piece of paper and it really was the least he could do considering he’d hit the man with his car. Mailing a letter wouldn’t push him any further into crippling debt than his school already had, so Vanitas found the risks of his offer to be minimal.
“I don’t want to be more of a bother,” Noé excused, gesturing to Vanitas’ car hood, “I already dented your car.”
Pointing a finger at the man, Vanitas stated, “Just say yes. This conversation right here is already bothering me and the only way to fix that is to stop having it.”
Holding his hands up in surrender, the other man readily agreed, “Okay, Vanitas, I will take your money. Please don’t strangle me.”
“Perfect!” Vanitas exclaimed, having been extremely close to resorting to threats, actually, even if his guest wasn’t aware of that. Direct action, often in the form of violence, just seemed to work for him. Maybe it was the fact that he usually had a knife on his person, but it wasn’t like he’d actually stabbed anyone. “Let’s go in, and then we’ll talk about that… ‘lodging,’” he prompted, using Noé’s own wording.
Nodding readily, Noé made a move to get out of the vehicle before he was halted by the seat belt keeping him in place. It took him a few moments to figure out how to free himself, but he was able to step out of the vehicle in no time. The man opened Vanitas’ own car door, standing there watching him as he waited for him to exit as well.
Vanitas stared at the man, squinting as if Noé himself were the sun, before he shrugged, clutching his keys in his hand as he got out. He brushed Noé away with a shoo-ing hand gesture while he shut the door, ensuring that the other had closed his all the way, and clicked the button to lock the car. He gave another woeful glance at the dent in his hood, but led the way into the post office with the stranger at his heels. “You still need to write a letter, right? You don’t just, like, carry one on you, right? That would be weird,” the college student rambled, still stuck on the idea of carrier pigeons, since those had been extinct for a fair bit of time. He couldn’t remember very much about the classes he’d been taking the past three years, but he could regurgitate random facts he’d read on the internet in the witching hour between two and three in the morning.
“That is a great suggestion, Vanitas, I think I should start carrying one around with me,” he agreed after a few moments of thought, walking toward the office building at a fair pace. “I will need to write a letter in there, though it should be rather quick.”
Sighing at the ‘suggestion’ he hadn’t meant to give out, Vanitas moved to hold the door open, waiting for the other to enter first. “Yeah, sure, just pick your favorite person and send them a message. And tell them to pick you up, seriously. I don’t even know you, but I can absolutely imagine you forgetting to write that part.”
“I will, do not worry about it. I will make sure to mention you as well,” Noé reassured, nodding toward Vanitas in thanks as he walked through the door. The man walked right up to the woman at the front, the place having been empty enough for him to be able to ignore the lines, and was able to secure a piece of paper and a pen so that he could start writing. After having found a desk that suited his fancy, Noé started writing to his heart’s content, quickly filling up the page.
Vanitas watched the man write from a respectable distance away, not wanting to be associated with the man until the very last second in which he needed to retrieve his wallet from his pocket, through which it wanted to burn a hole to curse him for spending his already scarce bills on somebody he didn’t even know. He had a job, but it wasn't like they were going to pay living wages to broke college kids who had absolutely no experience to offer. But, he reminded himself, paying off a court fee for hitting someone with his car would cost a lot more than mailing a letter – which was looking to be of a multi-page variety from the way Noé was scribbling away like money was as free as air.
It took about twenty minutes before Noé was finally done with his letter, folding the papers into thirds nicely. He made his way up to the disgustingly friendly lady at the desk, returning the borrowed pen to her before stuffing the papers into the envelope. He wrote the usual details upon the front before turning toward him, calling, “Vanitas? I need your money, now.”
With a put-upon sigh, Vanitas trudged up to the counter, offering his credit card to the woman working the desk. If he swiped an extra pen from the edge of the counter while she was distracted, that was nobody’s business but his own. “What the hell were you writing that it took that long? A sonnet? Do you have some lover in Paris that you just couldn’t wait to serenade over paper?”
“I was writing about what I have been up to,” Noé explained, sliding the letter across the counter so that the woman would be able to put it aside once she was done with the transaction. “I made sure to put down that I need to be picked up, by your request.”
“Good,” he replied, getting the distinct feeling that parenthood couldn”t be far removed from this, accepting his card back when the payment was complete. “Now let’s just hope that monster of yours hasn’t entirely destroyed the backseat of my car.”
“He hasn’t done that, I’m sure. My guess is that he is sleeping right now,” the taller man excused as if he had to defend the creature’s honor, walking toward the door so that he might hold it for Vanitas this time. “Do you still need to go to class, Vanitas? I did not realize how long I was taking.”
“That ship has sailed,” Vanitas answered, knowing for himself that there was no chance of even catching the tail-end of his lecture. It was fine, he could afford to miss one day of classes. “I’ve already missed it, so there’s no point in worrying about it,” he added, stepping through the held door with a degree of suspicion. Noé did still want something from him, but holding a door wasn’t about to tip his decision toward one side or the other.
Noé let the door shut behind them before following Vanitas to his car, glancing around at their surroundings as if he was simply taking in the scenery. “I’m sorry, Vanitas, though you seem smart enough that you will be able to catch up quickly.”
“I’m not worried about it,” he excused, waving a hand like he meant to physically brush the words away, stopping next to the locked car with the keys in his palm. “Here’s my plan: you get in the car and keep your little beast from criminal mischief, I drive us over to where I live, and then we have a little conversation. Sound good?”
“A conversation about what?” the other man asked curiously, stopping a little ways away behind Vanitas.
“About the-” Vanitas huffed, unlocking the door and pointing firmly at the backseat’s door, directing Noé to get in the damn car before the student absolutely lost his mind. “I already told you I’d think about giving you a place to stay. And thinking means talking, and you had better be very convincing or I’m kicking you outside and letting you wander back into traffic.”
Noé opened up the door after the aggressive point in its direction, putting one leg in front of the other as he got into the car. He grabbed Murr from where the cat was chewing on a nearby seatbelt and placed it upon his lap before he looked at Vanitas expectantly, “What would convince you? I already offered you money, did you want services as well?”
Vanitas needlessly adjusted his rearview mirror, busying his hands as he considered what would actually ‘convince’ him. The real problem was the fact that Vanitas had notoriously low self-preservation instincts, evidenced clearly enough by his hasty decision to let a stranger into his car and proceed to drive said stranger around. If Noé really said that he needed a place to stay for just one night and promised to keep his little creature under wraps (not that Vanitas would actually believe that, Murr’s bright eyes mischievous in the backseat), then Vanitas wouldn’t really have much reason to refuse. He lived alone, so he wouldn’t be inconveniencing a roommate, and he was certain that Noé was harmless. Considering Vanitas himself was used to being the strongest force around, whether by physical or verbal means, he had gotten fairly good at reading people – at least, he thought so.
“I don’t need you to service me, Noé,” Vanitas scoffed, well aware of the connotations slapped across the word as he said it. “I want you to convince me that you’re not an axe-murderer or something like that. Obviously.”
The man in the back seat took it upon himself to lean forward once again, hands on the back of both the front seats. Tilting his head to the side as he contemplated how to go about this task, Noé simply offered, “I don’t even know how to use an axe to murder someone. Is that good enough?”
“I think it’s pretty straight forward,” he countered easily, turning the car on with practiced motions. “What if it’s the middle of the night and you see a knife sitting out on the counter? Do you just not know how you might stab someone with it?”
“I understand the mechanics, I just do not understand why I would need such an object,” Noé excused, watching the lights of the car dazzle up as if it was Christmas night. “By the way you are talking now, you seem much more dangerous than I thought you were.”
Vanitas snorted at the compliment, glancing at the other with a mild smirk as he backed the car out of the parking space. “That’s why you shouldn’t invite yourself into a stranger’s home, Noé. You don’t know anything about me.”
The taller man paused for a moment before shaking his head, denying without a second thought, “I know you wouldn’t kill me, Vanitas. If you were going to, you would have run me over again.”
“That’s actually a good point,” he acquiesced, “since there weren’t any witnesses there, and now that lady at the post office has seen us together. It would be too messy to get rid of you now, I completely agree.”
“And the same logic could be used for my case as well, so in the end neither of us will kill each other,” Noé piggybacked, moving back to sit properly within his seat. Looking down to notice that he had forgotten his seat belt, he made sure to put it on as he asked, “Is that enough to convince you, or do I need to reassure you some more?”
Vanitas narrowed his eyes at the use of ‘reassure,’ glaring at a stop sign as he followed its written directions. “Hm. Maybe I’m not convinced yet,” he decided, dragging the words out like he really needed to think them over first.
“If I were a killer, I would have killed you when we were in the middle of nowhere,” he reminded lightly, petting the cat that sat upon his lap to keep his own hands busy. “We will be in populated areas now, so if I did want to kill you it would be ‘too messy’.”
“Consider me convinced,” Vanitas replied, amused with the fact that he’d gotten a stranger to play along with him. The logic was sound too, and he hadn’t really needed more convincing – Noé was interesting, if frustrating, and Vanitas found himself generous enough to do the ‘right’ thing for once. “Do you know how long it'll be until someone will come get you?”
Obviously it would take some time for the letter to reach its destination in the first place, but Vanitas didn’t really have a handle on how long that would be. He figured Noé didn’t make international calls, since Vanitas himself might resort to letter-writing if he found himself stranded in a different country just to avoid the extra complications and charges associated with it. The alternative was that Noé didn’t have a phone at all, which was absurd but not impossible.
“I’m not sure,” Noé confessed, crossing his ankles with the little leg room the backseat provided. “How long does it take for mail to get to Europe?”
“No idea,” Vanitas sighed, following the familiar route home even with the added distraction of his guest. “I suppose we can just play it by ear, assuming you left some way for whoever you contacted to actually find you. You did do that, yes?”
The man paused for an extended period of time, exhaling wearily as he agreed, “Yes, I… most definitely did that.”
“Noé,” Vanitas started, watching the other through his mirror. “Why don’t I believe you?”
“You’re clearly reading too far into this, Vanitas,” Noé excused, letting Murr crawl off his legs as it pleased. “They will find me eventually.”
Shaking his head, Vanitas decided to keep his thoughts to himself on the matter, figuring someone would come for the other eventually. Vanitas hadn’t promised to put Noé up forever – he hadn’t actually promised anything, since the word of a stranger definitely wasn’t contractually binding – and would have to wriggle his way out of Noé’s orbit should the interim drag on too long, but those were concerns for a Vanitas that wasn’t hungover and so dehydrated he was starting to taste colors. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d had water, usually picking soda or alcohol as his liquid of choice, but he knew it was getting bad when he started noticing it; first order of business when he got home would be to pen the animal into some corner where it couldn’t destroy his every belonging, and the second order would be to offer his guest a drink (as a host commonly did), which was the perfect excuse to make himself drink some too. Taking care of his own health shouldn’t be a negotiation, he’d been told, but some days, he was really just checking off boxes on the to-do list of staying alive. Maybe having a guest would force him to behave more like a regular human, which would be beneficial according to his therapist, though Vanitas wasn’t entirely convinced.
“We’re almost there,” Vanitas announced after some time passed in blissful quiet, the stranger’s eyes glued to the windows as if he’d never been outside before. “And you’re not going to touch anything until I say you can, alright?” It might have been a forceful request, and one he didn’t imagine for a single moment that the other would adhere to, but Vanitas really didn’t like the idea of some stranger rifling through his things before he’d even had the chance to evaluate exactly what his drunken self had left lying out the night previous. “Just keep your beast under wraps while I clean up, and then I’ll let you in.”
“I’ll try,” Noé promised, inching closer to the car door as if he was ready to break free from it. He watched the outside pass by carefully, head moving back and forth as if he were reading a story due to objects catching his attention every now and then. “What kind of home do you live in?” he piped up, a hint of curiosity in his tone as he rested his arm beside the window.
It seemed like a reasonable enough question, so Vanitas shrugged, responding, “It’s an apartment, just me and a few rooms.” He wasn’t sure what else to say about it; his apartment was the place he spent most of his time, sequestered in one room or another working on one assignment or another, and it had just enough space to keep all his things contained. Luna had called it a ‘tornado’s nest,’ as if that made any sense whatsoever, and Vanitas had taken it as a compliment.
Noé tilted his head at the answer, his body moving with the shift, “Doesn’t it get lonely with just you? That’s how it was back home for me, too.”
“Lonely?” Vanita scoffed, knowing full well that he wasn’t meant to be around other people – at least not on a regular, long-term basis. “No, I don’t get lonely,” he answered, hating that it felt like a lie even when it was the truth.
The student considered it lucky that his guest was silent for the rest of the ride, though he was sure it was actually more likely that he’d overshared and accidentally traumatized the other. Either way, Vanitas took solace in the quiet drive, parking in his usual spot and taking a deep breath before he unbuckled and turned in his seat.
“I’m going to go inside and you’re going to stay right here until I come back. Got it?”
Noé nodded in confirmation, scooping the feral monster into his arms in preparation, “I’ll wait, Vanitas.”
Vanitas wasn’t sure he trusted the other’s word, locking the pair inside the car as he spun his keyring, looking for the one that would let him into his apartment building. He climbed up the stairs to the second floor of three, the elevator still out of order, and disinterestedly took note of his neighbor’s door decorations. They went all-out, even for the most mundane of holidays, and Vanitas could only imagine how much of an eyesore the inside of their apartment must have been. His own door was bare, Vanitas only slightly fumbling the key as he shoved it into the lock, letting himself into his mess of a home.
The first step was tossing his dirty laundry into the hamper, stuffing old t-shirts down despite their desperate desire to fall over the side; he really needed to wash a load, but he just hadn’t had the combination of time and motivation to get it done. He dragged the curtains open as he passed, letting some light into the otherwise dark cavern he preferred to dwell in. There wasn’t a lot of direct sunlight, which was for the best considering his great enjoyment of alcohol and nocturnal tendencies, but he assumed that Noé would prefer something a little brighter than pitch dark; blackout curtains were a marvel of engineering, and they could only be pried from Vanitas’ cold, dead hands when he’d finally succumbed to some vice or darted out in front of the wrong car – how it happened wasn’t really important.
With enough light to see, Vanitas mechanically went through his living space, picking up objects that sat out of place and shoving them into corners where nobody would think to look for them. He knew he’d be missing some things in the coming days, searching for the place where a different version of himself thought it would be a good idea to put something, but he didn’t have the energy to worry too much about it. The important things always came back to him eventually.
He paused briefly in the bathroom, running fingers over the purple skin beneath his eyes, discolored with all the late nights he’d been having lately. Vanitas sighed at his reflection, leaving his messy ponytail unbothered – it couldn’t possibly get worse, and he wasn’t trying to impress anyone. He was certain he was going to regret allowing Noé to stay, but that was a problem for future him; present him was fucking exhausted.