tertium non datur

"The alchemists have a saying: 'Tertium non datur.' The third is not given. The transformation from one element into another is a mystery, not a formula. No one can predict what will form out of the tensions of opposites and effect a healing change between them... Something new has entered the process. We can only guess."

Wednesday is when Seifer often visits Leon. Being the middle of the week, it is a good day to be at a bakery. He visits Tuesdays, too, because it is something to do on a do-nothing day. Mondays and Fridays as well, those days being the start and the end of the school week, but only every other Thursday or Sunday, because god, a guy has to have a life sometime.

Not that he does much with his life when he's on his own. It's the standard drinking and partying and skipping school lifestyle that so many disaffected youths and rebels without causes have led before him. There is no meaning in it, but in the live fast, die young crowd, life is like that. A montage of oddly familiar scenes, like a bad music video on repeat: parties in houses with parents gone, smoking in the school bathrooms, breakfast at two a.m. in all-night diners, drinks and sex and driving too fast. Flashes of bright images on dry retinas, all of it set to a catchy tune, a throbbing beat, it gets stuck in your head for days on end.

Leon's not a part of that life. Leon's not like anybody Seifer has ever met. He's way older than his other friends, for one - he's twenty-seven, and dude, that's old. That's almost thirty. But more than just that, Leon's strange. He's secretive and sullen and when he looks at you, he really looks at you, not just at your face or your skin but right down to your guts, intestines and bones and liver, red squishy bits and all. Like some sort of weird creeper X-ray vision. Like he could cut you open, just looking at you.

He's cool like that.

Seifer was pretty certain that Leon was some sort of serial killer the first time that he met him. The first time he met him, of course, he got that weird feeling, the one that the French invented – déjà vu – that he had seen him somewhere, some time before, that this had all happened before. Seifer figured that he had probably seen him on a wanted poster or a Most Wanted program or something, because that was the kind of vibe that Leon had.

Leon still has that creeper vibe about him, a young single guy (creepy old guy) living all by himself next to a cemetery, way out in the middle of nowhere, like some sort of spook. He's got an axe in his garage and he doesn't talk much, and if there were a body or two underneath the floorboards, Seifer would in no way be surprised.

That type of guy is not the type of guy you sit down with a beer and watch a ballgame with. He's not the type of guy you can go to bars with, cruise and pick up chicks. Seifer doesn't actually know what type of guy Leon is, other than weird and probably batshit insane, but for what it's worth, crazy guys are good to talk to. Or maybe talk at, since Leon never does much talking. You'd think that a baker, someone who specialised in other people's happy occasions – birthdays and graduations and anniversaries – would have better people skills. Leon communicates in terse words and, sometimes, if you're lucky, a series of grunts. He's probably not even listening half the time. And who knows why Leon actually keeps Seifer around. God knows they have nothing in common.

Still, he nods at all the right places, and he always gives Seifer free food , so they have a pretty good thing going.

When Seifer next sees Leon, the man shoves a yellow flower at him, holding it out like a sword, like he's challenging Seifer to a duel or something. Seifer blinks at it. The poor thing is wilting, green stem crushed, heavy yellow head drooping as if with clinical depression. Knowing Leon, he probably put a cake on it or something.

"What the hell's this?" he asks, as any person in their right mind would.

"A chrysanthemum," Leon replies, and when it's obvious that he's not taking the flower back, Seifer has no choice but to accept it.

He doesn't know what Leon expects him to do with it; make potpourri or some shit? He can't stick it in his jacket like some fruity doofus, especially not with it looking like that, all sad and dying like a terminal cancer patient. And then it occurs to him that Leon meant to give it to him. Dudes just don't give dudes flowers, that's weird. Friends or not. Actually, aren't dude friends especially not supposed to give their bros flowers?

"...Right," Seifer says, and shoves it into his pocket.

He didn't ask for this. He had just wanted cake, for chrissakes.

Leon keeps on going as if nothing's wrong. Leon locks up his bakery even though it's only three in the afternoon. The clock is ticking on the wall. It's a cloudy day; there is no sun.

Why would he be closing so early? Does he have plans? He had never thought to mention them to Seifer, who, admittedly, does not know all that much about him.

"Hot date or something?" Seifer's quick to ask, because Leon was weird but he wasn't weird, ya know? There was no way he could be. He was married, once upon a time, to some hot chick whose name makes Seifer think of big grey thick-skinned animals with horns; she had dark hair and large eyes and a slim little waist. Oh, Seifer knew Leon's type. She'd be pretty and feminine with perky little titties, and she'd giggle a lot over nothing in particular. A real airhead. Nothing going on upstairs, but oh, baby, what a house.

Not that Seifer can blame him; after all, that's just the kind he likes, himself.

Leon tells him that's a negatory on the date and then he says, "Go home, Seifer."

"You don't mean that." Because he doesn't. Because he never does, or else why would he let Seifer come around all the time, and why all the free desserts? If you wanted a stray dog to go away, you wouldn't keep on feeding it, would you? Seifer immediately frowns at his brain –if one could, feasibly, frown at a brain - for the automatic association of himself with a stray dog. He has a home, after all, even if it's not one that he likes going home to. And he doesn't have fleas.

"Didn't you make anything?" He tries, reminding Leon about the cake that he promised him. Or whatever it is that was promised. Even a tray of cupcakes would do, maybe with little chocolates on top in the shape of leaves. Fuck all if he could remember what it was for.

"Go home," Leon says again, and if Seifer didn't know any better, he'd think that the older man was trying to get rid of him or something. Leon's always treating him like some dumb little punk. No fucking respect, that's what's wrong with adults today.

"I'll go wherever I want," he tells him. Yeah, take that, Leon. The world was his oyster, whatever the hell that means. Seifer never really got it – why would anyone want to live inside a giant oyster, all grey and goopy and slimy and alive and shit? Blech.

Where else would Leon be going but home? Leon sets off, clearly set to walk the whole way, every last foot of every last mile. "Look, I'm driving," Seifer says, dangling his keys, because God invented cars for a reason. Leon ignores him, instead says those two dreaded, expected, predictable words instead, "Go home" – and that's it, fuck you, Leon.

Seifer slams the door to his car when he gets in, turns up the radio as loud as possible. He doesn't look in his rearview mirror to watch the figure shrink into a small dot and then disappear on the horizon. He doesn't look back at all.

It starts to rain when he's almost at Leon's house. Seifer pulls over on the side of the road, hazards flashing, watching the clear drops splash against the glass of the car. His windshield wipers are squeaky. One of the headlights on his car is out; that's recent, from the time last week that that asshole rammed into him at the intersection. (Granted, he was the one speeding, but that asshole shouldn't have blown through that stop sign.)

Leon's probably still miles and miles behind.

He considers turning back.

"Fuck him," Seifer decides out loud. He rolls down his window and lights up a cigarette, something that Leon forbade him from doing the few times that he let Seifer ride in his car. The cool breeze hits his face; a few lonely raindrops splatter cold on the back of his hand.

"He can get pneumonia for all I care," he mutters.

But he waits until the cigarette is down to its filter before he puts the car into drive. It's unsafe to multitask while driving, ya know?

He flicks the butt out of the window where it bounces once, red cherry glowing, before it hits the slick wet street and the light gutters out.

Leon looks like a drowned cat by the time he gets home, and Seifer takes great pleasure in telling him so. It's one of those A-HA victories that you get bragging rights, the kind you so rarely get, like delivering a snappy comeback just in time.

Leon's brown hair is all dark with rainwater now, plastered to his face and neck, wet clothes clinging tightly to his body. Leon's going to catch his death of cold, insists the voice of the mother that Seifer never had. He looks miserable. For an instant, a flash of sympathy. Seifer takes a deep drag on his clove cigarette and fills his lungs with sweet, cancerous smoke. Everybody knows that cloves are twice as bad for you as a normal cig; Seifer prefers his vices to be doubly dangerous – it makes him feel dangerous, even though he's just another dumb high school kid.

"Put that out," Leon commands. He's got that grrr tone in his voice that means he's pissed. Not that it makes much difference; Leon's baseline is either apathetic or grumpy. To most people it'd be like reading a rock. And a not particularly emotive rock, at that. Seifer knows when he's getting to him, though, and he grins. He takes another long, slow drag before he drops it. He stomps it under his boot, grinding it into the floorboards. It's a sad, mangled black thing. Like a flattened worm. Fuck, that was his last one.

"Go home," Leon says, and doesn't he know how to say anything else? As if he doesn't need someone around to take care of him – ha! Leon would chop his nose off if it weren't attached to his face, or however that saying goes.

Like hell he would. It was fucking cold out, Seifer informs Leon as he follows him inside, like a good little stray. Leon's house is always warm, and it always smells nice, like vanilla and cinnamon and sugar and all those good, warm smells that filled the bakery. The curtains match and the furniture is tasteful – the ghost of a woman's touch.

There are no pictures of said woman, however. Barely any pictures at all, in fact. Leon is strange like that. Like he doesn't want to remember anything - not even the good bits, so that bad must be really bad.

"Your car has a heater," Leon says, insensitive bastard that he is, he wants to send Seifer back out into the cold again already. And he doesn't care that Seifer cares about his health and well-being, so Seifer has to remind Leon that he owes him, a fresh pack of cigarettes, a cake – as promised. Was it for Fuu's birthday? Or was it Rai's? Maybe even Zell's? Hell, it had to be someone's birthday.

"Go home," Leon says again, and then he's turning away, and he's taking his shirt off. And Seifer doesn't look, of course, but it'd be weird to look away, wouldn't it, especially since he's seen plenty of guys shirtless before. No biggie, nothing he doesn't have himself. It's not like Leon has tits or anything.

No, no man-boobies here. Instead, Leon has a sculpted chest, clearly defined abs, brown nipples crinkled and perky with the wet and cold. There's a trail of sparse curls on his stomach, wet and slick against his skin, leading from his bellybutton down into his too-tight pants. Maybe that's why Leon was so uptight all the time, his pants were too constricting – and that would be no surprise, from the way they clung to his hips and thighs, it was a wonder he had any room for his package. If he were a chick, he'd get a yeast infection from wearing those things. But Leon obviously wasn't a chick, not judging by what Seifer could see, the muscled back, the cut of broad shoulders, the very obvious bulge he had in the crotch of those ridiculous pants.

Leon heads towards the stairs. Seifer stays behind.

Sneezing yourself awake has to be one of the most disconcerting and unpleasant sensations out there. It's like the fucking Arctic in Leon's house. Christ, Seifer might as well be inside of a refrigerator, that's how cold it is.

Leon didn't even leave a blanket on the couch for him, that's how shitty a host he is. Nevermind there is a guest bedroom, that's all the way upstairs. Who the hell wants to climb stairs at this hour? Seifer helps himself to the thermostat instead, turning it up to 85 degrees. The house shudders and shakes like a monster roused out of slumber as all the vents turn on, breathing hot air. That's better.

While he's up, Seifer also helps himself to whatever food he can scrounge up in the cupboards and the fridge that isn't pure sugar. The offerings are poor and sparse: some condiments, some lunchmeat, a can of tuna, a box of instant mac and cheese, all of which Seifer knows was bought entirely for his sake, and only after much nagging. If it were up to Leon, he would only eat cakes and pastries all day - the man must subsist entirely on sugar, like some sort of strange mutant insect alien.

Seifer dumps the milk and the strangely neon orange cheese powder and the macaroni in a bowl, nukes it in the microwave. He puts the lunchmeat on top of that and drizzles ketchup on it in the shape of a frowny face to express his indignation at being subjected to this slop. Leon's lucky that at this age, he'll likely eat anything when he's starved. He's less a teenage boy and more a trash compactor.

There is some fresh bread, though, and that makes it worth it. Say what you want about Leon, but that man can bake like nobody's business. Yeah, suck on it, Betty Crocker.

By the time he's done - the dishes left in the sink for someone else to wash – the house is considerably warmer. Almost too warm, in fact. He strips down to his boxers before flopping down on the couch, his clothes left strewn all over the floor in weird little puddles of grey and white and black. Stomach warm and body warm, he curls into the couch. It smells like leather and vanilla. Typical Leon. It's strangely comfortable, for a couch.

It's only that when he's lying there for a while that he realizes he can't sleep. His eyes are closed, his breathing deep and even, he's drifting, somewhere, in that place that isn't sleep and isn't reality.

His mind wanders, his hands wander. Down the flat, angled planes of a tight stomach, and then further still to cup the still-soft bulge of his dick through his boxers. It probably takes him like two seconds to get hard – no surprise there. He thinks about sex every six seconds, after all, and although it's gotten better, sometimes even a slight breeze can still get him hard. His hormones are on a rampage. It's like his body is a village and his hormones are Vikings and they're storming in and stealing the women and raping the horses. Or something like that. It's normal.

It's also normal to think about fucking chicks, even ones that you know. There's a girl in his chem class with sweet tits and she wears these low-cut shirts all the time, and man, you know chicks like that are just asking for it. For some reason he can't really picture her face or what she'd look like being fucked. But that's okay, the face isn't the important part, anyway. He pictures her breasts, large and heavy with crinkled brown nipples, tight and erect with cold. Yeah, that's it, baby. The boxers are shoved past his hips as he takes his erection in hand, stroking it to the thought of her.

And yet somehow it's not working.

He imagines someone else instead, the pretty little thing from last weekend, with the boyish haircut and the grey-blue eyes and the tight, perky small breasts that he could cover with his palm. She had almost been completely flat, they were so small, but she was a great kisser, she gave even better head, and she had the cutest pink nipples. When he thinks about her he thinks about her eyes, though, and he makes them stormier, and maybe the hair a little longer, and those nipples are brown and tight, and the way she kisses is stronger, more defined, one hand tugging tight in Seifer's short blonde hair.

Suddenly he is hyperaware of the feel of his own hand on his dick. It's the feel of it, rough and calloused in parts. The feel of a large thumb, swiping across the slick sensitive head of him, wet with precum. He licks his hand for better lubrication and he can taste it, sweat and salt and the tinge of bitterness. His own fingers are strong, touching just right, but when he grips himself again he grips himself tighter, harder than he usually does it, almost on the point of pain, the way someone really intense might do it. The rougher strokes feel so good, the tighter squeezes; he clenches up inside. He's getting close. He can feel his orgasm building, the sort of tingle that runs up his legs into his balls; he turns his face into the couch and breathes in leather and vanilla and the scent of his own sweat. His eyes squeezed shut, he is rougher with himself, tugging on himself tightly, squeeze and twist on the upstroke that almost makes him cry out. And there in the secrecy of the night, behind the darkness of his eyelids, there is a single raindrop, dripping off dark hair, running down a creamy throat, down to that shallow pool of shadows between the collarbones, and what it would taste like -

Seifer comes, explosively, all over his own stomach.

It takes several long moments to recover. He lays there, breathless and panting, his own sweat sticking his skin to the leather couch, splattered with his own semen.

When he finally finds the strength to get up, he finds a box of tissues and wipes himself off. There's a strange sort of sense of shame and disgust. He balls the tissues up into tiny white crumples – like beheaded paper flowers, but in a really gross way - and tosses them into the trash.

It's easy to go straight to sleep after that, it's easy to not think about why.

By the time Seifer wakes up, Leon is gone. He can tell this by how empty the house feels. That and the weirdo left a note on his face saying that he'd be gone for a day or so.

He dresses quickly. The morning sun is streaming through the large window in the living room. Things always look better in the morning. Brighter, clearer by the light of day.

Except Leon isn't answering his fucking phone. Why even get a goddamned phone in the first place if you're not going to fucking pick up? Goddamn.

"Cookies for breakfast! Who the hell eats cookies for breakfast?" Seifer asks the phone. He's pissed when it doesn't reply.

Fuck this, he isn't gonna stay around and wait. He has better things to do with his time than this, even if he can't name any of them right now. And he is only going to call Leon one or two more times, and then that's it. He's going to give up after that.

He reaches into his pocket to put the cell phone back, and finds something already there, soft and crumpled. He pulls it out to find the remnants of the flower from the day before, now just a crushed blossom, a sunburst of yellow petals. He leaves it on the kitchen counter, slamming the front door on his way out. Fuck Leon and fuck his stupid yellow flower.

Seifer's house always seems dank and dark, even when the sun is high in the afternoon sky. The curtains are always drawn because his dad is usually nursing a hangover. The smell inside is like something warm and stale, like open cans of flat beer, boxes of cold pizza.

"Honey, I'm home," Seifer calls, not so subtly ironic, as he steps in the front door.

There's no response, of course. On the couch, his father sleeps, lit only by the flickering screen of the television. On the screen, airplanes drop bombs over a sleeping city, lighting it up with the blasts.

Seifer never knew his mother; in a way he never knew his father, either – at least not the father that he once saw in those old photo albums, handsome and smiling. The dad that he does know is a bit of a drunken asshole, unshaven and with an ever-increasing gut. But that's okay. He's used to that. And coming home to someone can be lonelier than coming home to an empty house, it can.

There's a pile of dishes in the sink; coffee cups with sticky brown rings inside. The trash is full and needs to be taken out. Seifer will have to do it at some point because he always does; good luck getting his dad to ever fucking do anything. Once, out of sheer rebellion, he ignored it for weeks and weeks. He made sure he was never home while the trash piled up; surely dad would break down sometime. The smell had gotten so bad that even the neighbours complained and threatened to call the police to see who had died. Seifer had been positive that it had become sentient at that point and was sure he saw something moving in there, and was forced to haul the whole thing outside to burn it before it could kill him in his sleep.

The fridge at home is both better off and worse than the one at Leon's house. There's sticky stuff on the inside of it from where the Chinese takeout has leaked sauce and where the ketchup has spilled and where the orange juice was splashed when he grabbed it to drink straight from the carton. It has more food though, more than just condiments or sugary things, boxes of takeout, a jar of pickles. Cans of beer, both opened and not. Seifer takes the milk out and sniffs it – ick, it's expired – he puts it back. Closes the door. Posted on the fridge are the unpaid bills, congratulatory letters from credit card companies. On the counter, there are more bills, letters addressed to Resident, You-May-Have-Already-Won. The mail's never for him. Except for maybe recently, the few college brochures that he ignores.

He goes upstairs to take a shower but afterwards there still seems to be a sticky, tacky feeling on his skin. The mirror is steamed up when he comes out; he can't see his reflection. He flops down on his bed naked, on top of rumpled clothes and a thinning blanket, stares at his cracked ceiling for a while, until all the little dots on it start to dance and jiggle and do weird shit in front of his eyes. He tries to go to sleep and can't, so he gets up, gets dressed, gonna go out again.

Halfway down the stairs he hears the heavy footsteps shuffling about, the sticky sound of a fridge door closing, a plain, uncensored, "Shit" and "Goddamn." All the way down the stairs he meets his father, grumbling and lumbering, probably piss-drunk still.

"Finally home, eh?" his father says blearily. He's heavy and clumsy. Seifer's eyes flick down to his father's hands, large and rough, before up again to meet bloodshot green eyes, that are so similar and so different from his own. He smells like stale sweat and beer. Once upon a time those hands had cradled an infant, a little baby boy with downy gold hair and tiny, tiny fingernails. Now his white shirt is yellowed with sweat, around the back of the collar and in the armpits.

"Hey," dad says. "What's for dinner?"

"Whatever you want," Seifer says, "I'm headin' out again."

"Again?" his father echoes.

"Yeah," Seifer replies, and bites his tongue to keep back the words: you losin' your hearin' or something?

"Goddamnit Seifer," his father slurs. He looks bleary. Just one of those things, Seifer supposes, how alcohol makes things better and alcohol makes you bitter, makes you mean. "You haven't been home for days. Come home to eat sometimes, maybe sleep. This ain't your home, it's a fucking hotel."

"Don't even contribute around here," dad rambles on, "Oughta make you pay some fuckin' rent. You're gettin' too old for me to support you, you know that?"

He always gets like this. All Seifer has to do is wait it out, let his fists clench and unclench. Ignore the irony, the hypocrisy.

"Where do ya go all the time, anyway? Why don't you get a goddamn job? Don't contribute nothin' to society. Good for nothin'..."

Dad has a battle wound, from the war. A bad leg, bad arm, bad heart. Seifer's never sure what all he has from the war, only that he's on disability and they get a monthly paycheck from the government.

"Who are you spending so much time with anyway? Got a little girlfriend? Better be using protection, last thing I need is another goddamn kid to support, you're enough of a leech as it is –"

Dad's hand twitches. It bothers him when it rains. And amputees get phantom pain in their phantom limbs, hurting in body parts that aren't there anymore. Seifer can feel his own knuckles pop when he flexes his fingers.

"Dad, you're drunk," he finally says, plain as the night is long, thinking of all the long nights spent listening to his father curse at the news and throw things at the wall.

"Don't you fucking speak to me like that. I won't have my own son speaking to me like that. Think you know so much, do you?"

"Fine then," Seifer says. He can feel his teeth rub against one another. "You gonna tell me you're not drunk?"

There is only silence.

"Didn't think so," Seifer mutters, and he moves to push past his dad. "'scuse me," he mutters.

The strike comes so suddenly that it catches him completely by surprise; he feels the stair railing jabbing into his back before he even feels the pain. And then there's a big hand closing around his arm as he's wrenched up, his father pulling so hard that if he were any smaller it would undoubtedly be dislocated, twisted out of its socket. Seifer doesn't cry out, even if he winces, even if tears sting his eyes, because he's never cried out. But he doesn't fight back, because he's never fought back. He's tossed back against the stairs, hard, his back hurts and his arm feels numb. He clutches his arm, glares at his father, who says, "You wanna go so much, then go." Then dad is gone again, and he's been left alone.

It's a funny thing, really, how no matter how old you are, a parent can always make you feel like such a child.

Seifer sits in his car, hand on the key, listening to the radio while the heater blows cold air in his face. He's turned the battery on but not the engine and there's a catchy song playing, the kind that can get stuck in your head for days on end. It's not a very good song, but it's very popular. Everything feels heavy, sore. His arm hurts like such a bitch. A bitch and a half, even, although what you would do with half a bitch he can't even begin to imagine. He doesn't know why it sucks so much. He's gotten hurt like this before. It hurts to breathe. Just his luck, probably bruised a rib or two. Fuck.

And Jesus fucking Christ on a cracker, he's out of goddamn cigarettes and Leon doesn't know how to use a cell phone.

He starts to laugh, because something about it all is just too damn funny. And then his ribs hurt too much and he has to lean on his steering wheel until that clenching throbbing pain in his chest starts to ebb away.

The lights are already on in Leon's house by the time that Seifer gets over there – it's a bit early for it but the sky is made darker by the rain. Before he even goes in, he can see Leon moving around in his house, and he sits in his car for a moment to watch him. It's like looking into the windows of a dollhouse, almost, a little miniature model home inhabited by little miniature model people living miniature model lives. And there's Baker Barbie moving around his kitchen – of course – putting the kettle on, putting something in the oven, hunched over the counter, Baker Barbie, making a cake. Patty-cake, patty-cake, baker's man, bake me a cake as fast as you can. And roll it, and pat it, and mark it with a B, and put it in the oven for baby and me.

Seifer needs to get inside, the rainy weather is making him weird.

The front door is still open, waiting for him, as if he had been only a couple of steps behind Leon instead of a couple of hours. He closes it behind him.

Baker Barbie is leaning over the counter in the model kitchen, marking his cake with a B.

"Where did you go?" Seifer asks. He's too cool for Hello.

"Why are you here, Seifer?" Leon says instead, and that strange tone must be the Leon imitation of what would be 'pleasantly surprised' in a normal human.

"Nice to see you, too," Seifer says, and instead reaches for the package on the counter, wrapped with brown paper. Brown-paper packages, wrapped up with string. He picks it up and shakes it, turns it over in his hands. "What's this?" he asks. "This for me?" When Leon doesn't reply, he rips the paper off and it's a carton of cigarettes with a black label on them, some company – Intangir - that he's never even heard of. There's a sense of relief, maybe joy, even, this weird bubbly light feeling in him at the sight of it. Fuck, he didn't think he was really an addict.

"It's from Traverse Town," Leon replies.

Traverse Town. He's heard rumours about that place, knows the rhymes about that place, knows what they say – Sin, Sin, City of Sin, never come out...

And these would be those same black-label cigarettes, then, that are illegal because they're laced with a mild hallucinogen. Everybody knows that. "How'd you get these, Leon?"

Leon slices the cake. Patty-cake, patty-cake, baker's man.

The cake reads "Welcome to." "Welcome to what, Leon?"

"Leon," Seifer asks, "where did you go?"

City of Dark, City of Sin, you never come out the way you went in.

Leon ignores him, and instead serves him cake. The kitchen is warm and the cake is moist and sweet and all the lights are on in the model house. The rain and the cold are on the outside. So what does it matter, if Leon's a drug-dealer or a murderer or a pimp or freak or even worse than that? So what?

Seifer hands Leon a fork and asks him the only thing that matters.

"So what's for dinner?"

Dinner is nice. They cook it together. Leon can cook real food when he tries, and it's real good, actually, and Seifer has learned to cook a thing or two, from those times when he didn't have any money for takeout and he got sick of Easy Mac and Instant Noodle.

After dinner, Seifer even helps with the dishes.

After dinner, Leon says, "Go home, Seifer."

Seifer pretends not to hear. Instead he opens up one of his brand-new cartons of cigarettes, and rustles the plastic wrap, loud enough to drown out words. He takes a cigarette out, thin and deadly, into his hand, takes it out onto the porch. He doesn't care if Leon follows him, but Leon doesn't.

The air is cold against his face; the sparks from the lighter look like tiny, lost stars in the dark, shooting stars, out of control – they die in the blink of an eye. Seifer takes a deep drag on the cigarette and waits for the euphoria to kick in. Nothing at first. Nothing for a while. Out on the porch he watches the rain fall, the smoke a tiny wisp in the dark. He feels light-headed.

When it rains all the earthworms crawl out of their homes onto the sidewalks because if they stay home they'll drown. But when they climb out sometimes they get stepped on and squashed like pink bubblegum or they crawl too far out and they can't get back when the sun comes out, so they all dry up, all to death.

Seifer hates that. He's always hated that, ever since he was a little kid.

Leon's in his bed and Seifer's standing in Leon's bedroom and Seifer's not quite sure how either of them got where they are.

Leon's sleeping, it seems, sheet covering up part of him but his torso shirtless. Seifer's mouth feels full of cotton, bone-dry.

It's those damn cigarettes. Shouldn't have had so many. Although who could have known that two was many?

But everything is like that. The furniture is familiar and yet it swims and looms and the rain outside is pounding, pounding against the window and his brain is pounding inside his head and his pulse is pounding just underneath his skin.

Leon sleeps on, dead to all this, dead to the world.

It's weird, isn't it, how a person is a different person when they're asleep. Leon almost looks dead, sleeping like that, only his chest rises and falls and his lips are pink, not blue – that's important, Seifer thinks, as he looks at his mouth.

One hand reaches out, lightly touches the skin of Leon's face. No, that's not weird at all. He just wants to touch Leon's eyes. Because they're closed now, dark lashes resting against his cheek, and Leon can't see into him now, deep down into his bones and the marrow and the blood and the deep, dark puddles inside, and it's weird, how much younger Leon looks when he's sleeping, how there's that weird feeling that the French invented, they must have invented it, they're the only ones that have a name for it – déjà vu – that Seifer's seen this all before.

Fingers trace across a cheekbone, brush aside some strands of shaggy brown hair. There is a cut on the side of Leon's face. It's fresh, the blood newly dried. The scab is still reddish, not yet brown. There's all this blood inside of all of us, all of it trying to get out.

The cut's so deep it might even scar. Seifer is fascinated by the scar across Leon's face, since it mirrors his own. He doesn't remember how he got his own; it must have been when he was very, very small. It's a wonder he doesn't have more scars.

He always wonders how Leon got his.

"What are you doing?" The corpse says suddenly. The body comes alive. Eyes flicker open, staring right up at him. Into him. Inside him. Down where all the blood and tubes go and all the stuff that keeps the stuff from getting out. Eyes like the sky in a storm over the ocean, just as deep. There's a hand on his hand, a hand on his wrist.

Seifer is as surprised as anybody would be when a body comes to life. It's an awkward moment, that. "Leon!" he says, and unable to explain himself, he says, "I-I should go." He pushes back quickly, and he pulls away. Or at least he tries.

Leon's grip tightens, unrelenting, and like a dog on a leash tethered in the yard, Seifer is suddenly yanked bank. It wouldn't have been so bad if not for the fact that this was his bad arm, and it wouldn't have been that bad, even, if he hadn't forgotten all about it. As it is he winces as the shock makes the pain worse and the pain makes the shock worse and the two lance through his body.

"I need...need to get home," Seifer manages, ignoring the throbbing in his shoulder, and he does a good enough job of faking that he's sure that Leon hasn't noticed anything.

"You're hurt," Leon observes quietly.

"So are you," Seifer retorts.

"Doesn't matter," Leon says.

"Then neither does mine," Seifer replies. Leon just grunts. Without permission, he tugs Seifer's sleeve up, revealing skin and bruises. He finds them, the purple imprints, and then he covers them, finger by finger, overlapping each one. He presses in, his grip identical to that of Seifer's father. The pain tingles underneath his skin, all the way down the muscle. Seifer winces but he doesn't go anywhere.

"Stay here," Leon says. It's not even a command, the way it's said, it's a statement of fact, like how the sky is dark outside or that there is a crushed yellow flower and half a cake on the counter downstairs.

Seifer does not go anywhere. The salve that Leon brings is cold on his skin. Leon's hands are achingly gentle, as if Seifer could break. It makes him want to snarl. It makes him want to tear away. And then it's over and done in an instant, a blink of an eye, the time it takes a lost star to die.

Leon smoothes a thumb over the bruised flesh.

"You can't stay on my couch anymore," Leon says.

"Go home, Seifer, I know," Seifer says. "Can I have my arm back now?"

"You should sleep on a real bed," Leon says, and does not let go.

There's an awkward, amber moment, the obvious facts left unsaid. There's a dizzying moment of vertigo where nothing makes sense. There's a throbbing beat of blood inside of him, there's a throat full of cotton, there's a burst of yellow petals on the kitchen counter and cities of sin, you don't come out the way you came in, and cities are bombed to ashes on a television screen. Flashes of images on dry retinas and so what?

Leon's hand is warm on his skin. Worms and dogs and stars alike all die in the end.

"The guest room is kinda nice," Seifer finally says.

"Yes," Leon agrees, and slowly, carefully, he lets go. His hand twitches, just once, on the bed.

Outside, the rain sounds like a song, the kind that gets stuck in your head for days and days on end.

Tertium non datur - Latin expression. Literally translates third is not given. There is no third possibility. A way of expressing the law of excluded middle, that is, the law that every proposition is either true or false and that there is no third possibility. There is no third option, or there is no alternative.

This story was written as a companion piece to yuumoya's Chrysanthemum: http : / yuumoya . livejournal . com / 99786 . html #cutid1

It's like that dream where it feels like home but it don't look right
Yes I will look everywhere tonight
I will not stop till I make things right
And I can't go home till I see the sun
I can't go home without
Chrysanthemum
No I can't go home without
Chrysanthemum
-Everclear, "Chrysanthemum"