x-posted to LJ ninth_eagle comm.

Err… Hello. I'm … really, really new to the fandom – writing it, I mean, though I've been stalking the movie, fics, and kink meme for longer than my schoolwork is happy with. I haven't written anything besides Hetalia, however, for almost two years now. I'm going to try really, really hard to keep these guys IC, so please, any and all comments you have on it would be lovely.

This is based on the fanvid by bachaboska on LJ and again, I hope I've stayed close to her vision. In case you don't notice, it's a modern-day AU.

(I feel like this is a trainwreck)

The second time that Esca saw the man, it was exactly twenty seconds before the shit hit the fan.

He was watching from the roof, at the time. Roofs were a good place to sleep, if you could get to them. No one bothered to patrol a roof, not of an apartment building, or a restaurant. No police lurked up there, and few muggers. There were venting shafts and chimneys that blew warm, fetid air when it was cold, and usually you could climb alley refuse or pipes or uneven bricks to get up to the top.

It was late morning when Esca woke up, that day. He ached all over, his head most of all – although, that had been his fault entirely. All of it had been his fault. He should have just said "no".

When Esca finally arched up the will to move, all he did was limp over to the wall around the edge of the roof and lean over. He looked, to all the world, as if he were dry-heaving (and perhaps, he felt a little sick) but he was just… looking. That's what he did. When his mum died, he didn't want to talk to anyone. He just sort of … retreated, and watched people from a distance.

His father had called him shy. His psychiatrist had called him antisocial. Some guy had called him a faggot pervert, and tried to beat his face in. Esca had beat him instead. Bit his ear off. At that point, his psychiatrist called him disturbed instead and things went downhill from there.

Anyway, he watched – he watched the people underneath his grimy fingers as they wandered about their daily business. He liked them. He liked watching them do things, inexplicably doing something, constantly. He didn't dislike people. No matter what anyone said he didn't hate people.

He watched for a long moment, trying to make out patterns in the flow of people, or picking something interesting and following them until they were out of sight. He was looking at a girl with bright yellow nylons and her ears gleaming with piercings, when man at the hotdog cart caught his eye. It was him, Esca knew immediately. Same jacket, different pants, same hair, different expression – of course, the first time Esca had seen him, he'd been asleep, zonked-out-exhausted-and-incredibly-tense asleep.

After that, it was just as he'd said – exactly twenty seconds of frozen staring before the man turned around and started beating the shit out of someone. Esca watched in rapt fascination, shutting out the noise and bustle of the world below until it was just –

The man pulled up abruptly, staring at his fallen victim, before turning on his heel and running, flat-out running away. Down a street. Towards a subway entrance. Away from Esca.

Esca moved then. He gathered up his backpack, the meagre contents still soggy from the rain last night, and slipped over the edge of the roof, hooking his fingers into the cold metal pipes and toeing his way down. As soon as he hit the ground, he was running.

He had to find that man.

This was the foremost thought behind his eyelids as he raced through the crowds he'd been content to observe from afar. He'd lost sight of the him as soon as he'd gone over the roof, but maybe if he just kept running, toward the subway entrance, maybe he'd find him just lounging there, waiting for Esca to come and find him.

The dirty green staircase to the belching center of the city was clear of lounging, waiting men, and Esca spat on the ground, vaguely feeling like he wanted to hit something as well. Fuck him, what was he even doing, following some guy who had beaten up a bloke at the hotdog cart?

But answering that question would be a lot like introspection, which seemed like something overly technical and psychological, which was to be avoided. He wasn't crazy. He just liked to watch people.

He watched people go up and down the subway entrance all day, searching for the flat brown hair and aggressive build that Esca knew he'd recognize anywhere. For a while, he even sat in the park where he'd seen the man asleep – the Fighter, he'd come to call him the Fighter, in his head. He didn't like the name for some reason, but he used it anyway. He looked for the Fighter in the park, but he didn't show up. Soon it got too dark for anyone to be in the park alone, and Esca was too hungry to keep up his search.

He bought hotdogs and trailmix at the convenience store and still had $46.80 left over of the fifty he'd gotten last night.

He wasn't a prostitute. He'd just said yes to fifty dollars from a man who looked like he wanted to be out on the street even less than Esca did.

Esca wasn't crazy, and he wasn't a prostitute.

He accepted fifty dollars again that night, as well.

Esca slept on the same roof again, the one above the hotdog cart, and stared at the wall until morning, banging his head rhythmically on the concrete until it hurt too much and he had to stop. He was not a prostitute. He was not a prostitute. He just needed money and money was easy to get if you walked the streets and looked sort of small and easy.

He ate some of the trailmix, wondering if he ought to go to the trouble of using the disposable razor in his backpack to clean himself up a bit. Instead, he fumbled down off the roof again and started walking towards the subway entrance. Maybe the Fighter came here every day. Maybe it was habit. Maybe Esca could catch him.

The day was colder than before, and he gave up sitting on the sidewalk after only an hour, retreating inside some greasy diner for a cup of soup. Esca decided to give up. Maybe he'd find somewhere new to sleep, somewhere on the complete opposite edge of the city, somewhere that he'd never think about the Fighter again.

He really should have read the irony there, because the moment he thought that, stepping out of the diner and intent to just walk away and not come back, he caught sight of a familiar blue jacket and straight, angry shoulders across the street, recognizing the Fighter walking towards him, on the opposite sidewalk.

For a moment, all that Esca could do was stop and stare – he never got tired of doing that – at the Fighter's face, tracing his strong roman nose, square chin, the red scratch across his cheekbone. He was limping, just a little, and Esca wondered if it was from the fight two days ago.

Too long spent staring – the Fighter was already walking away, down the street behind Esca, turning a corner, almost out of sight.

Esca did the only thing he could think of; he followed him.

He wasn't stupid – he knew that getting caught would probably result in bodily harm. The Fighter had beaten someone up in broad daylight, at a hot-dog cart for Chrissakes. So Esca stuck to his side of the street, half a block behind, almost completely obscured by the city rush of humanity and eyes locked on the Fighter as if his life depended on it.

The guy limped his way through block after block, and Esca fleetingly worried about his leg, if all the walking was good for it –

And then he was gone. Heart in throat, Esca cursed himself, letting himself get distracted. He's probably turned a corner, and Esca sprinted after him, stopped thinking and crossed the street – he heard the whine of car horns, but ignored them – skidding around the corner that the fighter had turned down –

He was standing there, a little down the block, at the door to some residential complex, and Esca skidded to a halt, realizing that he was now out in the open and the Fighter was staring at him.

For a moment, their eyes locked, the Fighter's surprised and curious, Esca's wide and panicked, a wild animal caught suddenly in the middle of a city street.

The door to the place the Fighter was standing in front of swung open, and a voiced cooed at him – "Marcus, I was beginning to think you weren't coming -!" and it was at that point that Esca was able to marshal up enough self-awareness to break eye contact and bolt in the opposite direction. He felt the Fighter's gaze on him as he ran.

No. Marcus. His name was Marcus. That knowledge was going to have to content him for a while.

Actually, it didn't content him. The next day, Esca was down at the same diner again; loitering as long as he could over coffee refills and watching out the front window. He needed a bath. He needed to get the dirt and the smell of other men off him. Fifty-five bucks last night; he'd gotten a tip. He felt pathetic, then even worse as he saw Marcus – Marcus, the sound was in his head, fuck his head, it hadn't helped him before – striding down the street.

Esca waited a few seconds, wondering if he could just let Marcus walk away. He couldn't. He left the diner and followed him down the street, to that corner, waiting a long few minutes before turning himself. This time, he wouldn't get caught.

He caught sight of the familiar blue jacket and gym bag as it slipped inside the house. The door shut, and Esca looked for easy access to a roof. Any roof. There was a pile of scrap wood and old furniture in an alleyway, and he used it to boost himself onto the sloping tops of the apartments, picking around chimneys and over hangs and pigeon hideouts, trying not to make too much noise – maybe the people in the houses below could hear him.

And there. Here. He sat down, perched behind the rough stonework of a chimney and found himself staring into a window, wide and unshuttered, with a generous view of a small kitchen and a wood table and a woman who looked a lot like Marcus (same sharp lines, same strong face) and Marcus himself. They sat at the table, drinking out of mismatched mugs, and Esca watched Marcus smile.

Esca slid forward on the roof a little, his grip on the tiles faltering. He… very much liked that smile. It was stupid, but he did. A lot of things Esca liked were stupid – vanilla ice cream and running for no reason and watching people from roofs – but this, a single smile, was the stupidest of all.

Didn't matter much.