#the final roadtrip

[sheyri]

The Sunset Forest

Of course we had to cuddle the local myrad!

And further up north through the beautiful forest. We had the best luck with the weather!

It's getting late. Tharaêl checked his weapons while we get to look at a... uhm... great... tourist attraction.

[peterofthedrakes]

this is maybe the stupidest bit ive ever done. chromatic aberrations your boyfriends

[ladyspottedray]

So I've been replaying Final Fantasy 15

[kaciart]

-

Patreon | Ko-Fi

[donelywell]

January 10 2024

Growing up

[canisalbus]

I was in a road trip in Arizona, it was nighttime and I was looking out the window. I tried to think about just random stuff to let the time pass, but then I started to dream of a scenario where Vasco went over to Machete's grave, he was grieving and pretty much just talking to the grave about how there could've been some way to save him, or that he will never see him again, and stuff like he lost a piece of himself and how he would honor him. It was very emotional but that was the only thing I thought about for like 20 minutes until he ended his conversation and left

I've been thinking about this a little bit, and I'm not quite sure how easy it would be for Vasco to visit Machete's grave, to be honest. As a high ranking member of the clergy he'd most likely be entombed in a crypt underneath one of Rome's hundreds of churches, maybe one that held some kind of significance for him. As a secular citizen with no family relations to him, I'd imagine it could be challenging for Vasco to gain access to such a private and sacred space, at least unless he managed to pull some strings. But then again, I'm just theoretizing. He could and would still visit the church that stands above it.

[mediumgayitalian]

Blue, blue, blue eyes, wet and red-rimmed. White knuckles clenched around worn canvas. Salty cheeks and bitten-bruised lips.

“I’m running away.”

Echoes in a too-large room, quiet breathing in stale air. Freezing toes on marble floor. Struggling lamplight, gaunt shadows.

“Gimme a minute to pack a bag.”

———

“Shh,” Nico hisses, clamping a hand over Will’s mouth to muffle a shriek. A too-warm hand clutches his hip, scrambling for balance. The rickety wooden lattice creaks under their weight.

The freeze, for one, two, three seconds. Nico strains to hear, watching the crystal-clear, freshly-polished Jalousie window.

No light.

They let out their breath at the same time, Will’s exhale making Nico’s cold hands tingle. At Will’s glare, he removes his hand, wrapping it back around the rung.

“Be more careful, you clumsy fuck.”

“I’m trying!”

To his credit, he really is. He checks and double checks before putting his full weight on the lopsided strips of wood only meant to hold up vines. He doesn’t let go of the rung above him until his feet are firmly planted, and he doesn’t stray far enough from Nico that he couldn’t catch him. He knows the drill.

And, yet.

(Truly, Nico has no idea how he climbed up by himself.)

Thankfully, they make it to the soft lawn in one piece. Will stumbles into a hydrangea bush the second he lets go of the lattice. Nico lands with much more grace, snickering.

“This house hates me,” he whispers, pouting. There are several blue flower petals tangled in his hair; Nico decides not to tell him. “Like, actively.”

“You and me both.”

They sneak quickly across the lawn once Will’s upright again, booking it to Nico’s Jeep. Will takes their bags, tossing them in the back, then slides behind the massive, creepy gargoyle-thing that sits between the garage doors as Nico opens the driver’s door as quietly as physically possible. Once he’s seated, he glances over at Will, waiting for his signal — hand held up in wait, four seconds, five, six — then a rapid shooing motion, eyes trained at the security camera. Fast as he can, Nico shifts into neutral without starting the car, craning his neck to watch out the back window as he peels out of the driveway and onto the street. Once safely behind the massive pine tree that marks the edge of the property, he parks, turning the car on and wincing at the noise.

Two minutes later, Will comes barrelling down the driveway, nearly tripping over untied shoelaces.

“I fucked up, they totally saw me, go go go go go!”

Nico doesn’t need to be told twice. He’s in drive and racing down the empty street before Will has the door closed.

After long enough down the narrow roads he is sure nothing has followed them, Nico exhales. Will echoes him, slumping into the creaking leather, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. Nico drives, headlights dim, no streetlights to make anything brighter, until their pounding hearts no longer outroar the wind, until sweat cools to as cold as it can be this far south.

Nico squints into the empty road. If a deer jumps out, they're fucked.

“So,” he says, forgoing his blinker as they turn onto familiarly torn-up roads. There is no one else at this hour. And the woods on either side of the road are a farce, hardly more than a copse of trees — nothing but farmland for hundreds of acres. No risk of death by Cervidae, thank God. Not that they know what blinkers are. “Running away?”

“There’s a rest stop an hour or so east,” Will says, face buried in a map. “We can sleep there and keep going in the morning.”

Go where, Nico wants to ask. He taps his finger on the steering wheel, chewing on his lip.

“Okay,” he relents. Will sighs, quick and quiet. “You gotta direct me, though. And, I swear to God, if you get us lost again, Solace —”

And Will laughs, finally, and it’s small and stilted and there are still tears drying on his cheeks, but it’s real, and stars shine brighter, brighter, brighter.

The two hours to the rest stop pass quickly. Nico is used to long drives, and thankfully he’d filled up a couple days ago, so all he worries about is staying awake and watching for cops. There shouldn’t be any, really, because he’s been the only car on this road the entire time, but Nico isn’t going to chance it. Not again. (He doesn’t have Piper to talk them out of trouble, this time, although Will could possibly manage the task.) 

(Maybe.) 

(Well, it didn't work last time, but never say never.)

“How prepared are we to run away?”

Will is quiet for several long, telling moments.

“Well,” he says finally, and Nico sighs. “I think there’s still blankets and pillows in the trunk from last time.”

“Christ alive, William.”

“It’s June! We’re – sheltered! We’ll be fine.”

“Christ alive, William.”

“Oh, can it.”

He bites his tongue, grinning. He doesn’t actually mind – it is June, and they have blankets, and they're certainly not going to succumb to the elements in the Jeep. Will, too, is like a goddamn space heater; if anything, they’ll wake up in the morning with the windows fogged. 

“I suppose I’ll manage,” he says, watching with interest as a flash of bare skin as Will leans over the seat, sweatshirt riding up his arched back as he digs around for the blankets. He turns back right before Will does, huffing dramatically. “Since there are no other options.”

He fully expects the pillow to the face.

“You’re a dickhead.”

“Dickhead with a license and a vehicle, Sunny Boy, so maybe count your blessings.”

“...Lou Ellen has a car. So there.”

Nico snorts, thinking of the piece of shit Bug that broke down for the twelfth time this year in her driveway, earlier this week. Likely story.

“And, yet.”

“And, yet,” Will agrees, voice significantly softer. He’s fully burrowed in his blanket when Nico looks over; seat reclined as far as it’ll go so he can curl up, knees to chest, all six two of him compressed to something small, delicate. The pillow smushes half his face, and the blanket is pulled up to his nose, and Nico swallows, roughly, because his eyes are bright in the moonlight, and his hair fans, frizzy and damp, slightly, out onto the pillow, and Nico doesn’t need to be a poet to compare his freckled forehead to the starry sky. There is a fragility in him, one he keeps firmly locked inside the deepest parts of him, and as Nico watches it he can see it spilling, pouring, bleeding out of him. In the car, in the dark, in front of Nico. “Goodnight, Nico.”

“Goodnight,” Nico says hoarsely. 

By the time he gets the courage to look at Will again, his eyes are already closed, breaths slow and even.

———

“Neeks. Neeks. Nico. Hey, Thanatos. Anubis. Gerard Way. Eddie Cullen."

Jab. Jab. Jab.

God, Nico is going to end up in prison.

“I got more, man, I made a list –”

“Will you stop fucking poking me,” Nico hisses, peeking out from his blankets to glare at his aggressor. He regrets it immediately, hissing harder as the sun burns his retinae.

He can feel Will smiling. “Up and at ‘em, Sunshine. It’s road trip time.” He pauses. “And, also, I’m starving. I packed granola bars for us but I ate them all already. Sorry.”

“Fucker.” Reluctantly, he tugs the blanket fully off, sitting upright and stretching his arms above his head. His back cracks satisfyingly. “Don’t suppose you know where the nearest Dunkin’ is, then.”

“Uh, no.” He looks back to find Will’s eyes snapping back to his, face flushed. “We’re just outside of Arcadia, though? So. I’m. Sure there’s one –”

“Are you good?” Nico asks, squinting. “It’s too early for you to be a weirdo, Will, it’s only –” He checks his watch. “Oh, you motherfucker, it’s like six thirty in the morning! Why the hell are we awake?”

“Road trip!” he says. His face, no longer all screwed up and blotchy, returns to its usual blinding beam. 

Great. Now there are two things trying to blind him.

“C’mon, you dork,” Will says again, laughing. He tugs the blanket from Nico’s grip, tossing it haphazardly in the back and pestering him until he scowls, biting out a “Fine, you prick, Jesus,” and rubs the sleep out of his eyes.

He’s still not all the way awake, but he dutifully sits up, buckling his seat belt and starting the car. “Nav,” he mutters, tuning out Will’s chatter.

He loves the guy, but, fuck. It’s six thirty in the goddamned morning. He hasn’t seen six thirty in the morning in a long ass fucking time – even before he graduated at the end of May, he was late to homeroom every single day, without fail. Six thirty is an absurd time to be awake. 

“Left here, straight for a bit, and it’ll be on the corner.”

“You’re pointing to the right,” Nico says, patiently, not bothering to fight the smirk cropping up on his face. "Am I turning right or left?"

This, he’s used to.

“I meant right,” Will sulks. “...I said right in my brain.”

“Sure,” says Nico generously, grin widening.

“Fuck off.”

“What? You try very hard, Will. I’m very proud of you.”

“Choke.”

“Few more years, and you’ll be caught up to the kindergarteners.”

“That’s it, di Angelo –”

He laughs, batting away Will’s smacking hands. “Hey! Hey! No hitting the driver, do you want me to crash –”

By the time Will is done trying to beat him up, Nico has long spotted the sad-looking Dunkin’ Donuts, pulling into the empty parking lot and peering inside.

“Is it even open?” he asks, frowning. The lights are on, but it looks…more soulless than usual, somehow.

“Yep,” Will chirps, clicking off his seatbelt. “The chain opens at five. There's a location in Omaha that's open at 4:30, but as far as their policy goes, five is go time.”

“Nerd.”

“It’s okay, Nico. I’ll stay friends with you even if you get dumber than you already are.”

He grins wickedly. “Least I know my lefts and rights.”

He cackles when Will slams the door, stomping to the Dunkin’s entrance. He’s not really mad – he gets quiet when he gets mad – but it’s good to know that he’s won. (Not that it’s hard. Will is witty, sure, and wicked smart, but his buttons are just a smidge too easy to press. Great fun for Nico, who has raging ADHD and could not resist the allure of a shiny red button if it was going to blow up the Earth with him on it.)

Will is nowhere to be found when Nico gets inside, so he assumes he’s in the washroom and walks up to the counter to make their order. A bored girl a couple years younger than him flips a magazine behind the register, nodding as he comes up.

“I’ll have a black coffee and a…” He squints. “God. A butter pecan swirl signature iced latte.”

“With whipped cream and caramel drizzle?”

Nico sighs, resisting the urge to physically wince. “Yes.”

“Anything else?” says the girl, smile pulling at her lips. “I can put sugar in a cup to go, if you want.”

“He’d probably take that, too,” he agrees, snorting. “But nah. Just a couple breakfast sandwiches, if you don’t mind.”

“‘Course.”

She rings him up, letting him know it’s gonna take a minute as the machines boot up. He wanders while he waits, curiously observing a wall of what appears to be scrawled pencil graffiti. Nothing talented, but he has to fight the urge to walk out to the payphone he saw outside and call a few of the numbers, just to see what would happen. 

“Hey,” Will says, startling him. He’s changed his shirt and tied his hair back, looking a million times better than last night. Nico vaguely notices a sudden ease in his own shoulders.

“Hey.”

“D’you order for us?”

“Got you your morning milkshake monstrosity, don’t worry.”

Will grins. “Drinking black coffee doesn’t make you cool.”

“It does, actually. At any given time I am forty-seven percent cooler than you. More, if you’re wearing cargo shorts.” He glances down. “It’s a forty-nine percent day, apparently.”

“Go wash your face,” Will laughs, shoving him. “I’ll get the food, then we can look at the map.”

He doesn’t take nearly as long as Will did. He brushes his teeth, splashes water on his face, decides his hair looks awesome the way it is (of course he didn’t forget a brush, why would he be a big enough dumbass to forget a brush and also more than one pair of socks) and walks back out. He finds Will tucked in a booth in a corner, chewing on a pink straw, eyeing the ridiculously thick atlas he forced Nico to buy and keep in his car the day he got his license intently.

“So,” he says as Nico approaches, handing him his coffee, “I did some math.”

Nico notices a napkin scrawled with ink that he could not read even if he wasn’t dyslexic.

“Geek.”

Will chucks his balled up straw wrapper at him. “We can go five hours-ish on a full tank of gas, and you’re a bit above a half tank, so we got maybe three hours before we need to stop.” He circles a little dot about a quarter way into the state, letters too small for Nico to read. “And since going anywhere near Orlando in the summer is asking to stick us in bumper-to-bumper traffic, that puts us in Anthony.”

“I did not know there was a town named Anthony,” Nico says sagely. “That’s a shit name for a town, if I’m being honest.”

WIll shrugs. “Welcome to Florida. Anyways. Want me to drive? You drove last night.”

“Barely,” Nico dismisses, waving his hand. He likes driving – it’s just scattered enough that he doesn’t get antsy. It’s being a passenger that kills him, although he’s sure they’ll switch on the way back so he can rest. “I’ll drive.”

“‘Kay.”

Will turns his attention back to the map, tapping his pen against the table in between bites of his breakfast sandwich. Every so often he returns to the napkin, scribbling something down and making little hums of concentration. 

Nico begins to notice the route he’s drawing extends a ways past state lines.

“So,” he says carefully, eyes trained on his best friend. “Running away.”

Will tenses, again, at the mention of it, although this time there is a set to his jaw, a stubborn spark in his eye. Good.

“Road trip,” he corrects. “It’s our last summer, Nico. I turn eighteen in a couple months, and then…” He taps his pencil against the edge of the table. Nico waits out the silence, seven seconds, eight, nine. “Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? One last huzzah, road trip around the nation, or whatever?”

Tap. Tap. Tap.

“Did you happen to tell your mother about this road trip?”

Will shrugs. “I left a note.”

Nico hums. “Sounds an awful lot like running away. I would know. I’ve been picked up by social services in three separate states.”

“Road trip,” Will corrects again, chin lifted. 

Nico decides to let it go for now.

“Road trip,” he agrees. Will looks at him gratefully. “Where to?”

“That defeats the point of a road trip.” He closes up the atlas, looking at Nico like it’s obvious. “Duh. Journey, not the destination, et cetera, et cetera.”

Privately, Nico bets that by tomorrow, Will be be restless and guilty and they will be on their way home. Outwardly, he says, “You have seen a truly disgusting amount of movies,” and Will laughs, and Nico follows him to the Jeep, and knows, as he always does, that he will follow him regardless; across the world, across the country, even back to Shit Fuck, Florida.

———

next chapter

[waroferas]

people covered in blood, people in the scary

[astral-sphere]

[dudeimintomonsterprom]

Hey guys! I know it's a weird post to be making out of the blue but something about the new year made me want to clean up and finally post the mod I started to create in either 2019 or 2020.

Five years later and I for one cannot believe it's finally here, an Oz centric storyline. It takes place over four events, with a new ending. I'll post an event guide if anyone wants it :p

[sheyri]

Thalgard

Just a brief detour to Thalgard. Not an inviting place, though interesting.

[kaciart]

Day 23 Well, that doesn't taste right: Accidentally poisoned / Allergic reaction / “My tongue feels like bees, is that normal?"

imagine if antidotes looked like epipens

@whumperless-whump-event

-

Patreon | Ko-Fi

[donelywell]

Roadtrip Vector might be able to carry both Espio and Charmy in his mouth

Maybe? But there'll never be a day where we get to find out.

[honeydots]

lily of the valley

[mediumgayitalian]

prev chapter

———

“Okay,” Will says, when they’re comfortably on the road. This early in the morning, Highway 17 is practically empty; nothing but sunny skies and clear air rushing through the open roof. The emptiness may also be attributed to the fact that it is a random Tuesday. “Pick a number between one and nine.”

“Uh, five.”

“Good choice, good choice.”

He opens the centre console, digging around Nico’s – well, and his, at this point – collection of CDs to find the right one. He makes a little noise of triumph when he finds it, blowing on the back and wiping it on his shirt before sliding it into the port.

“One half-assed polish isn’t gonna fix those scratches, Solace,” he teases.

“If you weren’t such an emo fuck, Playlist Five wouldn’t be so scratched.”

Nico punches him and laughs. Will looks inordinately pleased, nose scrunching along with his tiny smile even as Linkin Park -- who he hates -- starts blasting through the speakers.

“Three songs ‘til Britney,” he grouches as Nico starts hollering along to Points of Authority. Nico shakes his head, still grinning – as if he didn’t make these playlists. If he is truly so miserable, he wouldn’t have put the song on at all.

(Nico knows, in the very back of his mind, that Will actually and truly cannot stand Linkin Park. To him it’s not music at all. He has never been able to get into it, as much as he truly likes music of every genre. If Linkin Park is on this playlist, and they’re on more than one of the playlists Will has made specifically for their shared car rides, it’s because he cares about Nico more than he hates the band. Nico takes great care to shove this knowledge deep into the dustiest corners of his mind along with the rules to every card game and the entirety of high school required mathematics.)

The next couple hours pass by comfortably. There isn’t much to remark on the side of the road except the odd fruit stand, or farm advertising eggs and honey, so onward Nico drives. He keeps an eye on the odometer, but mostly trusts Will’s calculations. If he says they won’t need gas ‘til Anthony, wherever the hell that is, Nico believes him. 

“Highway changes to the 98 through here,” Will says, nodding to the tiny sign that boasts nothing except Ft. Meade CITY LIMITS, right next to the giant banner half the size of the church it's attached to that reads, REPENT OR BURN. 

Ah, Florida. Please one day change.

“Do I need to exit?”

“Nope, the road just changes to a different number.”

He eases off the gas as they approach the tiny town, watching carefully for state troopers. And, like, children, probably. So far he’s passed twelve gun ranges and one school, but whatever. He can have priorities, even if this garbage state doesn’t.

“Hm. 98 is a better number.”

“Absolutely not,” Will tells him, aghast. “17 is a prime number!”

“Ninety-eight is more fun to say. Also, prime numbers suck.”

“You take that back –”

Nico slides up his sunglasses, shaking his head fondly. Nerdiest nerd to ever nerd. He would be embarrassed on his behalf. Should be.

“It's just -- they're just -- they're infinite!” A long arm very nearly smacks him in the face. “Infinitely cool!”

Nico would be disgusted by his own smile, if he had the discipline.

He presses back on the accelerator as they exit the town, turning up the music as Will’s rant ends. He shucks off his shoes – Feet off my goddamn dash, Solace – and curls up into his seat, burying himself in a book. Nico glances away from the road to try and read the title, but quickly gives up since the font is bright fucking purple, for some reason, and in some horrible looping shape that he knows will give him a migraine. All graphic designers should be in prison. 

“Hey, there’s apparently a gator reserve forty-five minutes ahead.” Nico squints again at the book. Barely, he can make out “roadside” and “weird”. “‘Weird American Roadside Attractions’,” Will reads aloud, noticing Nico looking. “Such as a very nice and highly rated gator reserve –”

“No.”

“Road trip, Nico. Adventure.”

“I’m super happy to adventure away from living fucking dinosaurs, Solace.”

“Aw, come on, they’re kinda cute –”

“Two thousand pounds per square inch of jaw strength! You are the one who told me that!”

“You don’t think you could take one in a fight?”

Nico stares at his best friend incredulously. He’s got a thoughtful little frown on his face, looking at the sky as he contemplates. Nico notices, vaguely, that the shade of his irises is the exact same colour. 

“No, I do not. Obviously.” He pauses. “You think you could take a fuckin’ gator?”

“I think it’s possible.”

“See, that’s crazy, because fifteen seconds ago I genuinely believed you were an intelligent person.”

“Do not lie to me and tell me you don’t have a list of animals you know you could take in a fight,” Will says, instead of rising to the bait. He waits, meeting Nico’s glare, eyebrows raised.

“An ostrich,” Nico admits, begrudgingly. “I feel like – one good punch to the throat –”

Will smiles smugly at him. “That’s what I thought.” He turns back to his book, fiddling with the corner of a page. “Also, ostriches are more closely related to dinosaurs than alligators. So. Check and mate, motherfucker.”

They pull into Anthony at around eleven, at pretty much exactly a quarter tank – just like Will predicted. He looks inordinately pleased about it, so Nico shoots off a quick prayer to the karma gods. 

He trips on his way out of the Jeep. Nico smirks.

“I’m gonna go stretch my legs,” he says, unaware of Nico’s hand in his humbling. Nico waves him off, attention turned to the gas pump.

Annoyingly, as he pulls out his card and handles the pump, he remembers Will’s scrunched nose and pursed lips as he’d explained, when they were 16, how gas station pumps were frequently more germy than their toilets, and cleaned approximately one hundred percent less. Suddenly, his hand begins to feel grimey.

Twelve bags of chips, a gas station slushie, and a pair of clean hands later, Will is still nowhere to be found. Nico frowns, craning his neck to look around the tiny parking lot as if he somehow missed Will’s neon orange shirt the first time he looked. Still not catching sight of him, he walks hesitantly back to the Jeep, tucking his snacks away and biting his lip, contemplating. Will is both very fast and very easily distracted, but he has enough sense not to go too far in a random town five hours from home. If he sticks by the car and waits, Will’ll be back soon. 

But, on the other hand, waiting is torture.

Easy decision, really.

He locks the door, hopes that no one will show up with a pair of wire cutters and a flathead screw driver, and sets off. The first thing he notices, and he adds it to his mental list of things to loudly complain about when Will is locked in the car with him, is that it is fucking sweltering. In the hours approaching the afternoon, the day has gone from pleasantly warm to so hot the air is actually genuinely thick with it, no bullshit, and he doesn’t have wind ripping through the open windows to cool him down. Plus, he’s wearing jeans, and for the first, and hopefully only, time in his life, he envies his friend’s cargo shorts. 

The second thing he notices is that Anthony, Florida, is empty as shit. All the love in his heart to the people who call it home, but also, move, maybe. He’s hesitant to stray too far from the gas station, in case Will comes back and finds him gone, but there are no hills or anything. He can see quite far down the road. The only thing he sees is a possum starting a fight with a poor random guy – which, actually, is kind of fun to watch. 

Perhaps he has judged Anthony too harshly. 

“Nico!” shouts a voice, startling him. He whips around and finds Will, standing in the goddamn centre of the road, the dumbass, waving like a lunatic.

“There is no possible way I was going to miss you,” Nico informs him when he’s close enough. “You are approximately the height of the Washington monument. I could not miss you if I tried.”

“I wasn’t waving to get your attention, I was waving to shoo away the eagles that mistook you for a mouse.”

Nico kicks him in the shin. Will, well used to his violence, dodges, grinning, except in the act of hopping away from Nico’s dangerously hardy boots, he somehow wraps his foot around his own ankle and goes sprawling.

Nico smirks. “Who’s the short one now.”

Faster than he can even follow, Will’s hand darts out, wrapping around his ankle, and tugs, yanking him yelping on the asphalt next to him. 

“Wh -- foul!”

“All’s fair in love and war, Neeks.”

Shut the fuck up shut the fuck up shut the fuck up, Nico screams at the alarm bells blaring in his brain, he doesn’t mean it like that and you know it oh shit he’s looking this way quick look normal look normal –

“I can do war if that’s what you want, Solace,” he manages, and is honestly quite proud of himself for managing speech with approximately fourteen percent of his brain still functioning. Damn.

“Yeah, yeah. Anyway.” He crawls to his feet, offering Nico a hand. He takes it, dutifully fighting the urge to pull Will down again, just to be an asshole. He’s cool like that, and most definitely being normal about the scrape of Will’s callused fingers against the inside of his forearm. “I found maybe the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, and I need you to come look at it immediately.”

“Sick,” Nico says, immediately intrigued. He and Will have their differences, sure, but if there’s one thing they can agree on it’s their sense of humour. 

He follows will down the road, passing the gas station again. (His car, thankfully, remains in one piece and beautifully not-robbed.) They dark across an empty intersection, walking across a yellowed lawn as they approach a run-down, patchy, one-storey bungalow with a rusted sign that reads: The Iron Works.

“Behold,” says Will gleefully, “the Abstract Iron Centaur.”

And behold, Nico does.

Gaping, he observes the structure standing proudly under the sign. Striding proudly, rather, its front legs bent to simulate movement, its human arms poised as if ready to strike. It wears a medieval knight’s helmet, and holds a rusted axe. The entire structure is a little taller than Will, and made of, presumably, iron, rusted into a light roan red.

“Abstract Iron Centaur,” Nico repeats, after several minutes of silence.

Will still looks delighted. “It was in my book. I had no idea what to expect and also I didn’t believe it was real. Isn’t it the greatest thing you’ve ever seen?”

“It’s…something.”

“We gotta take a picture, Neeks. I never want to forget this thing.”

Nico allows himself to be pulled, still somewhat bewildered. It’s not even the oddest thing he’s ever seen, it’s just – he has many questions, like, for example, why? And also, how long has this creature existed? Maybe, how long will it persist? Who created it? Why is it in Will’s dorky book? Does it house a soul?

“Okay, squish in, this camera is older than your elderly ass and doesn’t have a timer.”

The familiar jab breaks him out of his stupor. “Seven months older than you, fucker.”

“Geriatric.”

Without warning, Will crowds them under the Abstract Iron Centaur’s lifted arm, and then presses his widely grinning cheek right flush to Nico’s, raising his beat-up camera to the air.

“Say cheese!”

In the hotels he stayed with his mother, sometimes, so long ago the memories have lost their taste, there were televisions, barely. And they were big and blocky, and when Bianca finally kicked him hard enough to get the remote, and the giant thing turned on, click hard enough to echo, it would take a minute, or two, and Bianca would rush over, strong hand gripped onto his elbow, and force his fingers to the bowed screen, waiting, waiting, breath big and burning in his lungs, for the burst of black and white, for the digital snow, for the tiny down hairs on his fingers to stand straight, for the ring in his ears.

Nico’s brain goes static.

“Hnngh,” says Nico, as the camera blinds him.

Luckily for his continuously worsening blood pressure, Will pulls away the second he hears the click, shaking the ejected negative to help it develop, and Nico has a second to remind his lungs that they have a function, actually, get your shit together, I am not dying in fucking Anthony, Florida. 

“You look like a dork!” Will says, delighted. “Look!”

Blinking at the photo shoved one sixteenth of an inch from his eyeballs, Nico indeed looks. The Abstract Iron Centaur looks more foreboding on camera, somehow, but Nico barely notices it – instead, he finds his gaze drawn to the beam so wide it forces Will’s eyes shut, and the dazed, dopey look on his own face; eyes wide, mouth dropped, slightly, and posture undeniably leaning into Will’s magnetism. 

Humming to himself, Will slips his wallet out of (one of) the (many) pocket(s) of his shorts, tucking the photo inside it. Nico melts into a puddle of goo on the dead grass. His mortal soul escapes his body, descending rapidly. His atoms return to star dust. Et cetera.

Will looks up to the sky and squints.

“Oh, shit, we gotta go if we want to reach Georgia in good time.”

“Right,” says Nico, voice cracking. He clears his throat and tries again. “Let’s go.”

He absolutely does not haul ass to his car. He walks at a normal pace, for normal reasons, thoughts in a normal place. 

Will crawls in through the window like the strange weirdo creature he is. Nico stands, hand on the door, breath in, breath out, and shoves himself inside.

“Back on the 75,” Will instructs as they peel out, sliding sunglasses on his nose. The wind picks up again, competing with the sound of heavu drums. Nico leans back into his seat. “We gotta scoot around town a bit to get to the entrance, but it won’t take long.”

“D’you know this place?” Nico asks, even though he doubts it. As far as he knows, Will was outside of Sarasota one time: in the move from Austin. He supposes his mother might have had a concert up here, or something, and unusually, let him tag along, but he doubts it.

“Nah, just memorised the map.”

Nico hides a smile. “Oh, of course.”

It’s all too easy to tease Will, but there was a reason he was valedictorian. There’s a reason for his many shining scholarship offers, his endless well of ridiculous facts pulled from nowhere. He is, genuinely, the smartest person Nico has ever met.

Even if he genuinely believes he can fight an alligator and win.

“Two hours ‘til we cross state lines,” Will says brightly, shouting slightly over the wind as they merge onto the highway. “And then on to infinity!”

“Onto infinity,” Nico agrees, matching his smile. 

Already, he’s proved Nico wrong. They’re farther now than Will has been since he was seven, and there’s nothing in his expression that suggests he wants to slow down. 

Privately, and quietly, Nico lets himself start to hope. 

———

next chapter

[maryse127]

For a game where the protagonists basically just move from traumatic event to traumatic event the Final Fantasy XV ost sure is very comforting to me somehow XD