december sun - ongoing.

[Lightning Farron]

december sun
--
words: 781 and counting
pairing: yujxmaqui
game: pre-final fantasy xiii
status: subject to edit and addition
--

His books hit the floor with a resounding thud.

Yuj dropped to his knees to grasp the folded piece of notebook paper, crisp and white as a swan's feather, a baby bird nesting in the bottom of his locker on its lonesome. Opening it with delicate (shaking) fingers, the locker door swung flush against the locker to its right with a small creak.

Some would call it flighty
some a misguided sense of duty
but I hope you know that none of it
nothing that I said was a lie.

Even land-locked lovers yearn
for the sea like navy men.
On the back of a motorbike
arms stretched wide, we tried
to take flight, but even at
top speed we didn't leave
the concrete.

You may tire of me as our December sun
is setting, because I'm not who I used to be.

All that I touch breaks eventually,
and I will not let this happen to you.
I wish things didn't turn out this way.
I love you.

-- Yvette

His eyes read over it, again and again. And again once more.

Yuj longed to crumple it into a ball and throw it away, screaming, cutting the wings off of the fledgling with the strength of his fist. But it only sat innocently in his hands as one after another, round wet stains blossomed on the page.

You may tire of me as our December sun is setting, because I'm not who I used to be.

He wasn't sure how long he stayed there - minutes, hours - as people made their way around him, on his knees with the notebook paper drying before him. His Accounting textbook got kicked across the floor once or twice, but he didn't notice when the corner ended up digging deep into his calf.

And Yuj would have stayed there a long time. A long time, probably until the invention of time ended, a monument to heartbreak. If Maqui hadn't gotten worried, noting that Yuj rarely - if ever - spent extra time after school and never without telling him first.

"If I were Yuj," he thought out loud to himself, exploring the empty hallways with both hands in his jacket pockets, "where would I be when hiding from my best friend?"

Cafeteria was out. Too obvious. The same with the mens' bathroom. The womens' was a possibility - until he tugged the door open (at five o'clock on a Friday nobody was here) and noted the lack of light or sound. His best friend wasn't that quiet.

So he let the weighted door swing shut with a click, wondering where else to explore. Passing the janitor two hallways down and offering a half-assed excuse about forgetting a textbook, he blew past the old guy with an idea. Maqui didn't know why Yuj'd be at his locker, but it was a place he hadn't checked yet.

More than two hundred feet away from the bluette, he could already tell something was wrong - he wasn't moving, his textbooks were strewn around him (the one on modern history being actually open), and he was actually touching the floor. Touching. The floor.

"Hey, Yuj," Maqui called down the hallway, rubbing his blonde hair with his bare hand unconsciously. "Yuj. Your shift at Lebreau's starts in a half an hour, we gotta go."

He didn't respond, didn't move, nothing.

Maqui got closer, boots thumping on the flooring noisily as he passed locker after metal locker, pocked with age and teenager-use and uniform with lack of decoration.

Yuj didn't respond until the blonde actually touched his shoulder, having stood over him for a good two minutes just waiting for a response. The bluette jumped about a foot off the ground (impressive as he was still on his knees), whipping the paper out of sight and folding it delicately. "Yeah?"

"Dude, where you been?" Maqui frowned down at him, arms now folded with the gloved hand on top. "Your shift starts in a half an hour, let's go!"

"It's already five?" Yuj went pale, staring at the air above Maqui's shoulder for two seconds, then hopped to and started stuffing his five textbooks into his oversize messenger bag. The younger held back, not knowing how Yuj could fit everything in there like a clown car, and took it upon himself to close the nearing-empty locker and snap the lock shut as the other hefted the twenty-pound bag on his shoulder.

Skinny as he was, the weight almost caused him to lean hard to the right into the lockers, but throwing his own weight to the left and walking with a slight tilt helped to alleviate his lack of balance.

tbc.

[Lightning Farron]

He blatantly ignored it when Maqui called out to a few of his buddies, passing them on the way to his shift at Lebreau's bar as per usual. Neither of the mechanically-inclined barely-acquaintances were fond of Yuj, and they ignored him mutually as they waved at the naive blond connecting the two groups.

Thankfully he didn't stop to talk to them.

When they hit the beach bar, four minutes and fifty-two seconds ahead of his shift, Yuj dropped his bag unceremoniously on their usual table to go check in with Lebreau. As per usual, except without the usual "I'll check in with you in a few" that by now was more of a reassurance than a promise.

Judging by the bluette's expression anyway, Maqui was fairly certain he was preoccupied with something. Probably the same thing that caused him to kneel in the same place for two hours without noticing it had been that long. The blond had never seen his best friend sit still for so long, and he kind of wondered why - before it occurred to him.

The letter...

Yuj'd stuffed it in his bag...

Casting a furtive glance in the direction of the bar, being outside on the patio, he could see Yuj shuffling around the cash register. Satisfied that he wasn't paying attention, Maqui pounced on the messenger bag.

"Where are you, piece of paper...?" he muttered, checking in textbooks and then pulling them out to stack on the table, ever on the hunt for that folded piece of notebook paper that elicited such a response.

781 + 261 = 1042 and counting
tbc.