#vanvenweek

“Is this seat taken?”

You don’t flinch when a hostile amber gaze look up at you. The table he’s sitting at is big enough for six, maybe eight, but he’s alone and no one else at the university’s library seems eager to join him.

You look him over, with that gentle smile your hypocritical mother taught you to always wear (it helps that you’re white, and blonde, and skinny— oh, and you have blue eyes, or at least that’s what everyone is led to believe). Unruly dark hair, angry eyes that —now that you’re actually looking— are piss-yellow with hints of mildew green, a button nose that’s slightly flattened but still has a bridge. Mixed, you immediately think, and you don’t even need to ask to know you’re right. He’s got what white authors would call “exotic features”— truly, it meant nothing except he looked white enough to be fetishised over rather than killed at gunpoint.

Exotic features, then. The start of a Caucasian nose, of American (so, European) descent— but the tip of what could come from East-Asian roots. Full lips, well-defined, with a pretty Cupid’s bow (how many here had seen it and felt the urge to kiss him?); pinkish, plump, objectively ugly because the current trends hated “whale lips”, subjectively so fucking alluring you know the guy staring twenty feet away will dream of that mouth around his unwashed dick tonight.

You almost grimace at the thought— sex, in all its unhygienic glory. Not that you’re against it, at least not for others (you wouldn’t be there if Daddy King hadn’t fucked Mommy Hall on the office desk), but you like to keep it as far away from you as possible. You’re not a prude; you can’t find a word for it, you just don’t like the thought of someone fucking you (or worse: you fucking someone).

Anyway, you almost grimace but you don’t, because you know better than to crack the perfect mask you’ve spent your entire life carefully crafting. Also, he’s still staring at you with those eyes— and oh my, you almost forgot they look exotic too! Big and almond-shaped, upturned like cats’, with a subtle crease almost folding his upper-eyelid but not quite reaching the end.

Yeah, definitely mixed Asian.

“Does it look like it’s fucking taken?”

Like the Cheshire Cat Daddy King gifted you when you were ten (The same age as Pretty Little Alice, he’d added), your smile only widens after hearing him speak. Playing nice and doing regular acts of kindness usually isn’t hard on you: as long as you keep the interaction to a minimum, a nine to five that goes on every week with a specific group of people— well, you’ll be fine. Terra and Aqua got to see your ugly side twice already, and don’t seem to mind (then again, you’re their sweet little Ven; a victim of circumstance for being born and raised by wealthy pricks who own the building you’re currently standing in).

“Just thought I’d ask,” you chuckle as you pull a wooden chair towards you. What is he reading? You already have an idea of who he is and who he’s waiting for— but who is he reading to pass the time? “Usually tables fill up pretty fast, so—”

“It’s a library, shouldn’t you shut up instead of disturbing me?” he snarls, his exotic eyes back to his open book.

Ah. Interesting.

“… I take it that’s why no one wants to sit with you,” you can’t help but tease, devilish sparkles in those fake blue eyes you rejected Selphie Tilmitt over last week. She’ll get over it (not that you particularly care— wishing her the best and all, but she could get rolled over by Seifer Almasy’s bike tomorrow and you’d only act politely saddened by her loss).

“But, hey—” you lean closer to him and he tenses like a wild animal ready to pounce. Still not looking at you, but his hands are gripping the book tight and scratching it with long, broken nails. You truly are a beast. “—See that guy over there? Long hair, ponytail, cowboy look he thinks he can pull off but doesn’t? Totally wants to fuck you.”

The Beast’s reaction to your venom-spiked giggle is a grimace of disgust on the pretty lips Irvine Kinneas is probably fantasising about. Oh? Same species as me?

You can’t help but wonder— it’s so rare, you’d need to mark him so you can find him again later. What if he’s just not gay? asks the stupid voice in your head, and you mentally roll your eyes at it: the Beast is reading Professor X’s essay on Ancient Greece’s culture of pederasty and the meaning of the initiation rituals between the lover —the erastes— (understand, way older men) and the loved —the eromenos— (understand, literal teenagers). He likes dicks, for sure. Maybe not ones his age, though.

“… I’m waiting for someone. Please leave me alone.”

The “please” comes out through clenched teeth; not a plea, not an ounce of genuineness to it. He’s being polite because he thinks it’ll make you go away faster. Too bad he’s wrong.

“I’m Ventus,” you insist, and you swear he’s looking at you like he’s going to bite off part of your neck, “but my friends call me Ven! What’s your name?”

You remember every student’s name, every face you’ve encountered in the corridors, every minuscule detail that helps keep up that ‘perfect angel’ image. And you don’t remember the exotic Beast. You know you would; he draws out masochistic, cannibalistic urges out of you, and you’re definitely not the first to feel it.

The Beast considers you for a bit, micro-glances at every single detail of your perfect face. The Beast has good instincts, and is smart: someone like you wouldn’t sit with someone like him. You’re too different, your aesthetics clash, you may both embody academia, but you do so in opposed ways. Still. We’re the same inside— I know you can feel it.

A subtle pinch of the brow, those ugly lips Kinneas is drooling over pouting with what would look like a scowl if only the Beast was more akin to a tiger than a cat. So you allow it; a tilt of the head, the sunrays coming through the window, the smile that becomes a bit crueler and slits your cheeks vertically (oh, dimples, how rare of a sight they’d become). Speckles in your fake eyes, but you cracked the Mask and are allowing the Beast to peek through it. We’re the same.

“… Vanitas,” the Beast whispers after having stared for too long, but you know he doesn’t care about social niceties— you don’t either, you keep up with them because it’s order and order is everything, the only anchor a guy like you can hope to have— but there’s no one like you.

There is only one Benjamin Ventus King-Hall, class president and valedictorian, not-a-TA-yet-but-almost-there to Professor E, and destined for greatness. It always felt like your life would end up a tragedy, with some old witch warning your parents that you’d fuck your mom and kill your dad, or that you’d destroy the very thing you promised to protect; so far, nothing. Your life isn’t worth a tragedy. What about his?

“Vanitas,” you repeat, and maybe for once you understand what sex and love feel like. His name coats your tongue like the sauce your old nanny used to make, this bœuf Bourguignon as she called it with her thick French accent, the meat melting on your tongue and the warmth engulfing your entire body as you swallowed. You miss her food.

But his name, oh, his name. Vanitas, Va-ni-tas. He is emptiness, he is void, he is nothing (yet idiots would immediately say he is vanity; it could be, but that’s not the first meaning of the word, silly). Vanitas is empty and fills the void with books, with essays talking about older men teaching younger ones then penetrating them at night; Vanitas isn’t a student, and you knew that already, and you know he’s Professor M’s son, and you also know he shouldn’t be here because his father isn’t giving any class today. Also, he’s still in high school.

You graduated early because Daddy King jumped at the opportunity when overpaid elementary school teachers told him his son had “so much potential” and was “smarter than the other students” (it was true, but you also heard them say the same thing about little Tidus, and the only bright thing in him was his smile).

You know you’re Vanitas’s age, maybe a few months older, but you’re his age regardless; that’s why you’re sweet little Ven, that’s why you’re perfect, that’s why everyone likes you: you’re the Uni’s baby, and everyone rushes to guide you and make you their project. But Vanitas doesn’t belong.

And it doesn’t take much to understand why he’s here, almost barking at every student who dares glance his way, his hands still tightly clenched around Professor X’s book (worn, a bit damaged, some notes and highlighter on the pages you can see).

Is Professor M a worse father than Daddy King? Your son wants your colleague to initiate him, you mentally hum. It’s funny, really; kinda pathetic, too.

“Professor X won’t come until…” you look at your watch (three o’clock), and send him a compassionate pout that clashes with the gleeful glint in your eyes, “… at least three hours. He’s teaching a complex class, from what I’ve heard, and he has so many students who need his help. It’d probably go faster if he had a TA,” you dramatically sigh, “but he never felt the need for one.”

“I don’t care,” Vanitas says, “I’ll wait.”

Will he drive you home? Why would he like you? ‘Cause you can read, like what’s expected of any decent human being?

But you shrug it off, sharply inhale, and grin at him again— the angel is back.

“I’ll wait with you, then! I’m finished with my classes for today anyway, so I can do some homework— oh, and if you have any question at all, no matter the subject, just ask away—”

“Why are you fake?”

Ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump.

Oh, Vanitas. If I could, I’d pin your eyes on my wall like those freaks do with butterflies.

“I could tell you,” you start, and you feel drawn to this amber gaze, this sirenic look, this bewitching creature, “but I’m so thirstyyy! Let’s get some drinks!”

You stand up and walk to the library’s exit without looking behind once. You know he’ll follow. He’s like you.

Talk about a meet-cute. You let out a giggle once you feel his shoulder brush yours. One look at him: in the backlighting of the hallways, his hair looks blue.