Snapshots

So being back in his hometown pries up memories. So what? So do scorpions. So does tap water that tastes like the bottom of a hot shoe.
So he barely knows who Isa is anymore, after so many years apart. So what? It’s not like they need to win a round of the Newlywed Game to void a marriage. It’s not like Lea knows himself anymore, either.
So he’s Isa’s biggest mistake. So what? Maybe Isa’s his.
Maybe that’s all they ever were.
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At 17, Lea and Isa faked parental consent to get married in secret, thinking it was the beginning of a bright future. It was rash; it spins out of their control, and they reconnect after a decade of bitter silence with the intent to undo it. But with an ocean of things left unsaid between them, it's bound to get complicated.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Chapter 1: A Lot of Road to Cover

Chapter Text

The needling chime of Lea's alarm roused him.

He turned over, swiping the sleeve of his t-shirt over a half-dried trail of drool on his cheek, then groaned and slapped at it half-heartedly until it went quiet. He scowled at the bright strip of sunshine cutting the drywall down the middle.

The snooze alarm went off what felt like seconds later, and he dragged himself out of bed. He narrowed hazy eyes at the minefield of clothing strewn across his bedroom floor. There was no real way of knowing what was clean and what was dirty, and fuck if he was going to rifle through it before he'd even had coffee. Elrena had seen him in his boxers a million times.

He headed for the bathroom. The door was hanging open, and Elrena was leaning over the sink, touching up her makeup in the filthy mirror. She glanced at his reflection as he leaned into the doorframe.

"I figured you were dead," she said.

"I have to piss."

"Nobody likes a whiner." She tugged at the lid of her eye to even out one sharp blue wing.

Lea squinted at her reflection. "Are you using my eyeliner?"

"It goes with my outfit," she said, her tone shifting into irritation. "I'm going to be late, and I'm bored of you."

Apparently he was holding it.

Aqua was sitting cross-legged on their futon, a stack of textbooks at her side and her laptop open on the coffee table, and she looked up as he made his way to the kitchen. There was a second of delay before she offered him a small, tight smile.

Lea made a beeline for the coffee pot instead of saying good morning. He dug through their crowded counters for the coffee tin, and Aqua shoveled her things back into her bag. She stopped at the open bathroom door long enough for Elrena to catch her collar and pull her in for a needlessly thorough kiss, then hurried past the kitchen.

"Bye, Aqua," Lea said flatly, and she glanced at him with barely-contained disdain before she was out the door.

He combined the dregs of two near-empty boxes to scrape together a bowl of cereal and wrestled with the chair at the breakfast bar until it jolted free of the peeling vinyl, absently scrolling twitter as he sipped as his coffee.

Elrena finally gave up her occupation of the bathroom and brushed by him without a word.

"You could warn me when she's gonna be here," Lea called.

"You could wear pants when you leave your room," Elrena answered, then added "neanderthal," under her breath before the door slammed behind her.

At least he had the place to himself for a while.

A Grindr notification interrupted his scrolling, and Lea glanced at the time. He still had half an hour before his shift.

xXgracefuldahliaXx: Hey, gorgeous. You free tonight?

burnout: Working, tragically.

xXgracefuldahliaXx: That’s a shame. Would love to get to know you better.

Lea eyed his profile picture. It looked vaguely familiar.

He tapped the user and started scrolling his pictures. Most of them were in his flower garden.

He opened the message thread again.

burnout: You know we’ve hooked up before, right?

He watched the chat for a second, and the green online status abruptly blinked out.

Lea scoffed into his coffee. “Nice getting to know you,” he muttered.

Tinder yielded nothing interesting, and Twitter was completely dead. In a fit of boredom, he checked his facebook.

At the top of his feed was a memory. From 10 years ago, it read.

Lea's stomach plummeted. He dropped his spoon into the dish with a clunk.

The photo was grainy—a low-quality scan of an old polaroid, dinged and scratched from being tossed loose into Lea’s bag. The desert backdrop was barely more than a flat grey-blue, a splash of bright color in the center from the frozen bonfire. Beside it, sweeping back a stray lock of dyed-blue hair as he leaned forward, was Isa.

The firelight caught half of his face, the rest lost in the night beyond. His eyes were fixed on the camera, the knowing curl at the corner of his mouth barely more than a trick of the shadows.

Lea's finger hovered over Isa’s name, still tagged. Not blocked, then.

Shit. Fuck. Please tell me he hasn't seen this.

He put his phone to sleep and set it on the counter, as far away from him as he could reach, and finished his cereal.

Work was a madhouse, and it was exactly what he needed. He and Demyx were a well-oiled machine of faux-friendly smiles and tip-worthy smalltalk. They were ringing orders faster than Lea could string together a thought, and he barely thought at all.

A sheepish-looking college student had just dumped a fistful of change in front of Demyx’s register when Lea’s phone rang. He wouldn’t even have noticed if he hadn’t thrown it under the counter when he showed up to an afternoon rush.

He came to a dead stop with his hand still halfway inside the pastry cabinet, blinking at the glow of his phone screen as it rattled to life. He read the ID, but it processed like alphabet soup.

The woman at his register cleared her throat, shifting her knit purse over her shoulder, and Lea came back to his senses. He popped her scone on a dish and slid it towards her, then reached for the closed register sign under the counter and dropped it alongside.

“Thanks, enjoy,” he said. The woman took her scone and disappeared without so much as a pleasantry, and there was an audible series of groans from the crowd when they caught sight of the sign.

Demyx stared daggers in his direction, undoubtedly losing count of his change. "Seriously?"

Lea fumbled at his phone. “Sorry, I gotta take this.”

“What?” Demyx said, his voice thin with desperation. “Who is it?”

Lea paused at the door to the stockroom. He chewed his lip. “My husband.”

He left Demyx staring blankly after him, the dumbstruck "Your what—” cut short as he yanked the stockroom door shut.

He collapsed into it and stared at his phone.

He could let it go to voicemail. It was probably only a ring away.

Before he had time to change his mind, he picked up.

“Hi, honey. Did I leave the stove on?”

There was a long, stiff silence on the other end of the line.

“Isa?” Lea said.

“I am a hair trigger away from hanging up,” came the brisk reply.

“You called me. Sorry for having a sense of humor.”

There was another pause. “Fine,” Isa said.

Lea's adrenaline was starting to boil over into anger. “Well? To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I want an annulment.”

“Were we married?” Lea asked bitterly.

“All right. Well, it was...nice...speaking with you.”

“Wait—shit. Hold on.” He slumped against the door, shoving a jittery hand into his pocket. “I’m listening, okay?”

“Thank you,” Isa said flatly. “We have solid grounds. It never should have happened in the first place.”

“Legally speaking, you mean.”

Isa didn’t respond.

Lea grit his teeth. “Fine,” he said. “What do you need from me? Do I have to mail something, or can we do this online?”

This time, the silence dragged so long that Lea started to worry the call had dropped.

"Isa?" he said again.

“There is...a complication.”

Lea hadn’t been to San Francisco since he was a kid. His mom had taken him once—just once—to see his father. He couldn't remember much of anything about it, except that they hadn't stayed long.

As he crested a hill, the engine heaving and wheezing as gravity finally eased off it, he could see straight through the thinning fog to the bay, and the imposing silhouette of the Golden Gate bridge looming out of the mist.

That part, he remembered.

The drive up from San Jose wouldn't have been bad, if his car wasn't a ’98 zombie that should have been in a scrapyard by 2005. Lea tried to ignore the ominous rattling below the dashboard and focus on Google Maps. Cell service was apparently spotty as hell in the Golden City, because the driving instructions looped him over the same hill twice while Lea prayed under his breath that the junker wouldn't just die in the middle of a tramway after the next 45-degree incline.

As he passed by a suspiciously familiar street corner, his phone announced a sudden turn, and Lea swerved to catch it and came to a shrieking halt at the curb.

"Your destination is on your left. You have arrived."

Lea spun the wheels away from the curb and threw the junker into park.

He stared across the placid residential street, at the row of narrow, sickeningly charming houses cuddled up shoulder-to-shoulder and tilting drunkenly into the slope of the hill.

It looked like the cover of Better Homes & Gardens. It looked like a fucking Pintrest board.

Lea's nerves caught up with him. The atmosphere in the car suddenly felt oppressive, and he grabbed at his phone, swiping frantically through for the driving playlist he'd thrown together the night before. He’d been so restless that assembling a full day's worth of music that was impossible to talk over made a lot more sense than sleep.

He glanced back up at Isa's apartment building. He was itching for a smoke for the first time in years.

One of the narrow dollhouse doors swung open, and the man who stepped out onto its modest porch was tall—probably close to Lea’s height, which was rare—and much broader in the shoulder. His hair was silver all the way to the root, although he couldn’t have been older than his early thirties.

He looked like an off-duty underwear model. Lea half-expected the sleeves of his turtleneck to tear open at the seams when he crossed his arms.

The piercing gaze he turned on Lea’s piece-of-shit car told him that Isa probably wasn’t the only one who’d been expecting him.

Lea's palms started to sweat. He wiped them haphazardly on his thighs, then killed the ignition and climbed out.

“Hey, there,” he called. “I’m picking up Isa—Isa Wolff? You know him?”

The man’s gaze turned somehow steelier.

If Lea was going to be dressed-down, he was at least going to play an active role in it. “’Bout ye-tall?” he added, gesturing to his chin. “Made a lot of bad choices as a teenager?”

“You’re one of them, I’m aware,” the man said, and his voice sounded like a knife through velvet.

Okay, he'd walked right into that one. He opened his mouth, but a hand appeared at the man’s shoulder, and Lea’s retort dried up on his tongue.

Somehow, Isa looked more and less the same than Lea expected. Like someone had pasted Isa’s face onto a wax double. His hair was longer than Lea had ever seen it, but even after all these years he was still dying it blue.

The thing that grabbed him the most, though, was his camera bag. It was infinitely nicer than the ugly, faded monstrosity with the busted zipper glued to Isa’s hip when they were teenagers. It didn't look like a thrifted treasure for a kid with more passion than income. It looked like a professional’s.

“Lea,” he said, and hearing Isa’s voice in person snapped him sharply into the present.

Lea cleared his throat. He kept his eyes fixed on the stairs off the porch and leaned into his car.

“Isa,” he said. “I was just getting acquainted with your friend.”

Isa glanced at the man. “Xemnas,” he said, and there was an edge to it that hit Lea’s ear like an unfinished conversation.

Jesus, he looked like a marble statue. Acted like one, too.

“Hello again,” Lea said.

“Charmed,” Xemnas said, although he sounded anything but. “It’s nice to finally meet my partner’s husband.”

Partner, thought Lea. Big word.

Xemnas and Isa exchanged a look, and Isa’s eyes were sharp, exacting—a clear warning that Xemnas apparently wasn’t going to heed.

“I confess, I don’t see why an entire inter-state excursion is necessary,” he said coolly.

Lea offered him a slow, lazy shrug. “Well, that’s what you get for falsifying legal paperwork. Everything gets more complicated." He smiled. "You shouldn’t worry so much. You’ll go gray.”

“We have a lot of road to cover,” Isa said tersely. “We should go.”

Isa finally shouldered past his chiseled mountain of a boyfriend and paused on the top step to give him a chaste kiss. He murmured something Lea made a point not to hear.

He unlocked his piece-of-shit car as Isa stepped onto the sidewalk and swung his duffel into the back seat. Lea climbed back into the driver’s side, ignoring Xemnas’ eyes boring into him through the windshield. He plugged his phone back into the aux cord dangling from the junker’s tape deck and started GPS navigation and his avoid talking to your ex-but-still-husband for twelve straight hours in an enclosed space playlist in quick succession.

When they were strapped in and the silence between them was drowned in layers of grunge guitar and heavy drums, Lea peeled away from the curb and started towards the I-5, in mutual agreement with his passenger that they were taking the trip alone.

The silence was easy enough, at first. Isa immediately extracted a paperback from his bag and stayed glued to it like he was trying to politely ignore armageddon. Four hours on the I-5 South passed in a dissociative haze of white-noise doom metal, and Lea was starting to relish the idea of that haze going unbroken.

When he merged onto the exit for the I-40, Isa suddenly spoke.

"You're not taking the interstate?"

After rapidly cycling through the 5 stages of grief, Lea found it in him to be annoyed. “Like hell am I driving through LA traffic."

"It's a weekday. It's nowhere near rush hour."

He shot Isa a flat look. "I can turn around and get back on, if you feel like gambling another four hours of your life on it."

Isa's lips made a hard line. He crossed his legs and flattened his paperback over his knee. "Twelve is long enough," he said.

Lea kept his eyes fixed on the highway. He counted the mile markers and fought down every mean spirited thing that came to his lips. “That’s what I thought,” he said.

He wouldn't take that bet, either.

They’d burned through six albums by the time they finally crossed the border into Arizona and stopped for lunch at a roadside diner with a 24-hour neon that was cold and dim in the bright afternoon. It was nearly empty inside, just a handful of stragglers nursing coffee at the counter and the odd salt-and-pepper trucker tucked away in booth corners with their newspapers spread like privacy screens over their faces.

There was no better place in America to be alone in public than a diner. Everybody minded their own business.

They seated themselves in a booth by a window without discussion, and Isa snapped up the menu and pretended to be interested before Lea had even made contact with the cushioned vinyl.

Their waitress checked up on them before Lea even had a chance to lift his menu. He ordered the first thing on the all-day breakfast without actually reading it, and she was gone as quickly as she’d appeared.

For once, he was wishing they’d gotten stuck with a chatty server. It was a hell of a lot harder not to look at Isa when he didn't have a road to keep his eyes on.

He started flipping through the booth jukebox just to have something to do with his hands. Pink Floyd, Springstein, Skinner…it wasn't like he had change for it, anyway. He just needed a buffer. Any buffer.

Isa slowly set down his menu and folded his hands over the glossy plastic. “I suppose we should talk logistics,” he said.

Lea’s hand stilled on the jukebox dial, and he sank back into his seat. “I’ll sign whatever you put in front of me. We show up to our appointment. What else is there to talk about?”

Isa dug into his bag and extracted a folder and a pen. He slid them across the table to Lea.

“Read it. I marked the places that need initialing.”

Lea stared down the folder dumbly. “Now?”

“If you want to be on your way home the moment our appointment is through, we can’t afford mistakes.” He leaned back into the booth, wrapping both hands around his coffee mug. “Just read it.”

It was massive, huge chunks of dense legalese interspersed with Isa’s tight, severe handwriting and neat signature. He read it.

“The hell is a ‘covenant marriage’?” Lea muttered. “What is half of this shit even for?”

Isa swirled his coffee without sipping it. “What does it matter?”

Lea scowled. “Seems like a lot of red tape for something that 'shouldn’t have happened in the first place'.”

Isa leaned into the table. "We could have filed for divorce online if you had the patience to wait until we were eighteen."

"Don't put this on me," Lea snapped. "You said yes."

The server chose that moment to return, her arms laden with plates, and they lapsed into tense silence as she laid them out. They stared at each other across the table, the momentum bleeding out of the argument.

When she was gone, Isa took a long, slow breath.

"Lea," he said.

"Isa."

"I'm not interested in a discussion. I just want to get it over with and return to my life. Quickly and cleanly."

Lea stabbed at his eggs. "Uh huh."

"Please don't make this difficult."

Lea stopped dead. A hot spike of anger prickled at the back of his neck, and he felt it searing out into his limbs until his fingers shook. He set down the fork. "You've got nothing to worry about," he said flatly. "I gave up on you a long time ago."

He could feel Isa's eyes snap to his face, but he refused to meet them. You don't want a discussion? Fine. You won't get one.

Before Isa had a chance to tear his menu in half, their waitress returned with a pot of coffee, and Lea decided that was a win.

The sun was sinking in the rearview as the desert stretched around them, punctuated by the craggy lines of a distant cliffside off to the south. It wasn’t long before the landscape started to look uncanny, every stone and cluster of desert brush deepening the feeling of time building up like dust around the outskirts of town.

The atmosphere in the car changed as they pulled into Dry River. He could hear Isa shifting in his seat as they passed through the town center, and the junker wheezed along the sun-bleached streets, puttering like a relaxing animal. Somehow, most of their old haunts had survived the years; some of the storefronts were new, but some looked like they’d been collaged in from Lea’s memory.

His childish desire to force Isa to speak first was momentarily forgotten. “No way,” he said. “Xigbar’s shop is still here.”

Isa leaned over their discarded fast-food wrappers to peer out Lea’s window, and Lea’s enthusiasm was swallowed by the proximity.

Isa scoffed and leaned back into his seat, and Lea’s heart started to beat again.

“He’ll outlive this whole town,” Isa said.

“D’you think he’s still working?” Lea asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. He tipped back his head, eyes shut, his mouth pulled into a taut line. “I’m tired, Lea.”

Lea frowned, casting him a quick glance.

He veered off the main road and pulled into a storefront parking space. The junker sputtered into stillness.

Isa glared at him. “Lea,” he said.

“You don’t have to come in,” Lea said smugly as he nudged open the drivers side door. “Just wait in the car.”

Xigbar’s shop looked exactly the same, right down to the faded streaks on the ancient postings plastered inside the glass of the door. There was no way even one of them was more recent than 2006.

The bell over the door chimed as he pushed it open, and the man at the counter turned from where he was polishing the glass over a shimmering assortment of body jewelry.

His salt-and-pepper hair was tied back in a long braid, and if his face had gained a few new lines over the years, Lea would have been hard pressed to pick them out.

Xigbar slapped his hand towel down on the bar. “Look what the wind blew in,” he said, his grin deepening the creases at the corners of his eyes. “How the hell are ya, copper top? I didn’t think I’d see any more of you after you played me for a fool.”

Lea grinned back at him. “You’re still in business, aren’t you?” he said. “You should thank me for pointing out the weaknesses in your ID verification system.”

Xigbar skirted around the counter. “Lemme see what you’ve done to my hard work,” he said.

Lea turned and tugged his t-shirt up to his shoulders until the full stretch of his phoenix tattoo was exposed.

Xigbar eyed it, scratching at his chin. “You ever heard of sunscreen, kid?” he muttered.

“Don’t call me kid,” Lea said. “I’m pushing thirty, for fuck’s sake.”

“If I ink you while you’re underage, you’re gonna be ‘kid’ until they put you in the ground,” Xigbar said. “Could be worse. Doesn’t look blown out…”

The bell over the door rang again, and Lea hurriedly tugged his shirt back down as Isa stepped inside.

“I’ll be damned,” Xigbar said. “Two for one! Decided not to keep the septum ring, eh?”

Isa shifted uncomfortably, crossing his arms over his chest. “It didn’t suit me,” he said.

“I gotta admit, it warms my frigid heart to see you two together. I always said you’d be back here making trouble when you were withered old bags.”

Isa started to look like he was turning to stone, so Lea spared him the admission.

“We’re not together,” he said quickly. “We’re just taking care of some legal stuff.”

Xigbar eyed them in turn. “Sorry to hear that,” he said. “Didn’t mean to pry. That’s your business, not mine.” He looped back around the counter. “But hey, if you’re in need of my business while you’re in town, you’re welcome any time. That shoulder piece could stand a touch-up. And you, baby blue—” he tilted his steepled fingers at Isa “—an industrial might suit you better.”

They got a room at the cheapest and closest motel they could find. The whole place had a faint, musty smell, and it looked like the decor hadn’t been updated since the 80s, but the front desk receptionist was nice enough, and the rates were dirt cheap. With any luck, they’d be out of the puke-greens and wood paneled walls and back to their lives by noon tomorrow, anyway.

The receptionist pointed out the complimentary breakfast bar, a humble little addition that looked more like a tidy grandmother’s living room with a wall counter than a restaurant.

“We’ve got a full kitchen menu, if you’re not interested in the continental,” she added. “Food’s pretty good, if you don’t mind coffee on the strong side.”

The sun was long gone by the time they headed back out to the landing. The door to their room was jammed, and Lea had to knock it hard with his shoulder to jostle it open.

It looked much the same as the rest of the motel, with muddy orange bedspreads and a push-twist lock on the bathroom door handle. Lea dropped his duffel against the door jamb.

Isa hovered at his shoulder. He pulled a face.

“Not your style?” Lea said. “Or were you hoping for a double?”

Isa ignored him and brushed past to stake his claim on the bed by the window. He drew the blinds shut and immediately started rifling in his bag for his toothbrush.

Lea collapsed onto the scratchy comforter nearest to the door, his limbs barely functional after so many hours crammed into the junker. He dug his phone out of his pocket and tossed it onto the shared nightstand.

Isa shot him a disparaging look as he brushed past for the bathroom.

“Sure, you can take the window,” Lea said.

Isa kicked the bathroom door shut in response, and Lea heard him push-twist the lock into place. He spent way longer than he had any right to monopolizing the sink, and he still hadn’t spoken a word by the time he finally emerged and Lea could brush his teeth and wrangle his unkempt hair into a manageable braid.

Isa was already in bed when he’d finished. He faced the drawn curtains, his back to Lea in one stiff, uncompromising wall.

It was just one night. One night like this, and the whole ordeal could go back to being a painful, well-buried memory.

Lea clicked off the bedside lamp and climbed into his own starchy sheets, still jittery despite being tired down to the bone. He turned to face the abysmal wood paneling, turned his back on Isa and the chasm of things unsaid between them.

Besides, what even was there to say?

Chapter 2: Bad Habits

Notes:

CW: this chapter contains non-explicit references to past parental death, teenage sexuality, and alcohol & drug use. please feel free to inbox me for more specific content warnings.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Lea’s bicycle kicked up a cloud of dust behind him as he flew along the desert trails, the sandstone cliff face looming ahead. Isa’s bicycle was already propped at its base, and Lea skidded to a halt alongside and shucked his helmet, wheeling back his pedals until he could line it up with Isa’s and lean them together.

There was a bonfire already roaring, painting the massive boulder formation behind it in fitful shadows. Isa crouched between the two, his own shadow magnified against the streaked red stone. His camera was raised to the level of his eye.

“Thanks for starting without me,” Lea called.

The shutter clicked, a strip of film curling slowly from the bottom, and Isa lowered the camera. He turned, and there was a twist in Lea’s gut.

He knew that look.

He tossed his helmet aside and started towards the fire. “Isa?”

Isa sat back, pulling a knee up to his chest. Lea settled next to him, and he leaned forward until Isa had to work to avoid meeting his eye.

“Was it bad?” Lea said.

Isa’s gaze was cold and sharp as he stared into the fire. “Do you have to ask?” he said.

“What about your mom?”

“She was…better,” Isa managed. “She wanted to understand, at least.”

Lea watched the side of his face for a long moment, then tipped towards him to slide his fingers over Isa's.

“We’re gonna get out of here, you know,” he said. “I’ll get a car the day I turn eighteen, and we’ll pile everything we care about in the back seat and flee Arizona in the dead of night.”

Something flickered at the corner of Isa’s mouth. Lea wanted to see that corner stick.

“We’ll drive until we break down or run out of gas,” he said, inching closer, “and we’ll find the nearest town and start a new life…” Lea trailed off, heat rolling in his chest as he swallowed the words a new life together.

Isa turned his head, and he leaned his cheek down against his knee. His eyes on Lea’s face made him feel drunk.

“Your pictures will hang in galleries all over the country,” Lea murmured, “and we’ll travel around with your shows and see all the big cities, and then all the galleries around the world—”

“Rent will be dirt cheap,” Isa added quietly. “And groceries will always be on sale, and there’ll be no potholes…”

“Come on, I’m serious,” Lea said, but he smiled in spite of himself.

Isa echoed it with a fainter, dryer smile. The light in his eyes was still dim. “I know,” he said.

“But you don’t believe me.”

Isa’s smile withered.

Lea straightened up, and he snatched the camera out of Isa's hand.

“Oh, come on,” Isa groaned.

He raised it to his face. “I call this one, ‘Brooding Boy In Desert’,” he said, and he snapped a picture just as Isa pushed a lock of stray hair behind his ear.

Before Isa could make a grab for the camera, Lea jumped to his feet and made for the boulder formation, and he could hear Isa complaining as he scrambled after him.

“We’ve got shit to immortalize!” Lea shouted.

Even with the camera clutched in one hand, finding a foothold in the rock was second nature. He pushed off a shelf of flat stone and hauled himself up, where a split in the cliffside gave way to the yawning opening of a cave. He slipped into the pitch dark without hesitation, clambering down a familiar pattern of stones and dropping to the cave floor.

Isa's voice flooded in moments later. There was an echo as his shoes scuffed the stone. "If you break it, I swear—"

Lea fumbled along the cave wall until his shins found their cot, and he collapsed into it. He rolled over to grope underneath it for the lantern, but Isa snatched the handle and dragged it out before he could get a hold of it.

Fluorescent light filled the hideaway. Isa set the lantern in front of him, his legs neatly crossed.

“You gonna tell me a ghost story?” Lea said with a grin.

Isa rolled his eyes. He held out an expectant hand.

Lea shuffled onto his side and set the camera in his palm. “Didn’t break it,” he said.

“Good,” Isa said. “I doubt we could travel the world on my photographs if you started breaking my equipment for sport.”

Lea hummed, tucking an arm under his cheek. “Is that optimism I hear?”

Isa lifted the camera in response, and Lea found himself staring into the lens. Isa snapped a photo, and the film was already forming the shape of Lea’s ghost as he tucked it into his jacket pocket. “There,” he said. “We’re even.”

“I love you, y’know,” Lea said. He meant it to sound matter-of-fact, but the closed echo of the hideaway always made the truth ring a little more honest. “I’d spend the rest of my life like this, right here.”

Isa’s hand hovered over the shutter. He lowered the camera, setting it tentatively into his lap.

“Do you mean that?”

Like it was even a question. Like there was any other answer. “Yeah. I mean it.”

Isa shuffled toward the cot, sliding the lantern out of the way. His arm wound over Lea’s waist, and he settled his head in the crook of his elbow on the mattress.

“It’s ridiculous,” Isa mumbled, “but I would, too.”

Lea propped himself up. “Why’s it ridiculous?” he said, and he reached out to comb his fingers through the hair at Isa’s temple. “Who says we can’t?”

Isa wrinkled his nose. “You’re teasing me,” he said.

“No.”

Isa’s eyes widened, fixing on Lea’s face.

Lea could hear it, too. The conviction he tried so hard to downplay was breaking through to the surface.

“I want that. I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” Saying it out loud made him dizzy. “I’d follow you anywhere, Isa. What’ll it take for you to believe me?”

Isa buried his face in the crook of his arm. His fingernails bit into Lea’s jacket. “I believe you,” he whispered. “That doesn’t make it true.”

“Marry me,” Lea said.

Isa twisted against the blanket, staring at him like he was trying to decode an alien language.

He scrambled onto the cot in a burst of motion, and Lea barely managed a startled yelp before Isa’s hands knotted into his hair and his breath disappeared into a kiss.

“What do you mean ‘rescheduled’?” Lea demanded. “Don’t you need our permission to just move dates around?”

The receptionist looked up at him from behind the glass. Her eyes were tired, and she regarded him like she might regard news of a late bus or bad weather.

“I’m sorry, sir, but your appointment has already been updated in our systems. You’ll need to come back Friday morning.”

Lea twisted towards Isa, hoping for someone to back up his outrage, but Isa had already sunk into a nearby bench and had his palms pressed firmly over both eyes.

Lea turned back to the receptionist and braced himself against the desk. “Look, we were only expecting to be here one night. Are we seriously supposed to hang around this shithole for another three days?”

“Friday morning,” she repeated sharply. “We would be happy to issue a reminder card.”

“We were here on time!” Lea exclaimed. “We were here early!”

Isa’s hand suddenly fell to his shoulder, and he shoved Lea out of the way.

“We’ll take a reminder card,” he said through clenched teeth. “Please.”

She filled out a slip of cardstock, and Isa took it wordlessly and made for the courthouse entrance like the building was on fire.

Lea hurried after him. “You’re really letting this slide?” he said. “What happened to getting it over with?”

Isa glared daggers at him. “Just take me back to the motel,” he hissed. “I have work to do.”

He rammed the door with his shoulder like he expected it to be barricaded, and Lea stumbled through and hovered at the top of the courthouse stairs. “Well what the hell am I supposed to do?”

Isa didn’t look back at him.

“Entertain yourself,” he said.

After almost two hours hanging around this shithole, Lea was ready to climb the walls.

He hadn’t brought his computer, or even a book, and their motel room didn’t have a television, which he thought must be against some fucking code somewhere.

Isa ducked out for a merciful few minutes to call Xemnas, since apparently their little day trip had turned into a vacation; after that, he’d cracked open his laptop and started to construct a full mobile office all over the flimsy particle board desk, and he’d been glued to something editing-intensive ever since.

Lea managed to pretend he wasn’t there for a while by dicking around on his phone, but combing Grindr for guys who went to their high school only kept him busy for so long, and when the only familiar name he stumbled upon was Xigbar’s, he exploded out of bed.

Isa’s eyes flickered to him as he made for the door, but Lea was still doing his damnedest to look like he didn’t care. He snatched his car keys from the counter over the mini-fridge, then grabbed the door handle and jarred it out of the sticky frame.

He paused at the threshold. His mind went to the handful of places in this shithole of a town still worth revisiting, and he realized with a nervous jolt that Isa was all over his memories of every one.

He wasn’t getting off that easy. Not here.

Lea turned reluctantly in the entryway. “Isa.”

Isa was staring stone-faced at his computer screen, but his hands had gone still in his lap. He eyed Lea without turning his head, like maybe he could still decide he wasn’t listening.

“You wanna go see how this place held up without us?”

They stood on the sidewalk, hands in their pockets, and stared up at the parlor sign.

“It looks the same,” Isa said incredulously.

“Yeah,” Lea said. “You don’t think I’m still banned, do you?”

Isa gave him a long, hard look. He hissed quietly through his teeth. “‘Banned for life’,” he said.

“Yeah, but…I mean, the old man’s gotta be retired by now, right?”

“His nephews will remember you,” Isa warned.

“Nah, they were tweens. No one remembers their tweens.” Even if Lea hadn’t been especially easy to forget.

“At least two of them were working when you bombed the soft serve machine. They’ll remember you.”

“I didn’t bomb it,” Lea said, and he pushed open the front door. “They were just fireworks. Besides, I doubt any of them stayed in the family business this long.”

After that, Lea learned a few things in quick succession:

The triplets had stayed in the family business; they did remember him; and he was, in fact, still banned for life.

There was another surprise, though, one that Lea had a harder time wrapping his head around. After being chased out onto the sidewalk like loose animals, while Lea was hunched over his knees and trying to wipe the whipped cream off his t-shirt, Isa laughed.

He laughed at Lea’s expense, but that was nothing new. And he laughed genuinely, until there were tears at the corners of his eyes.

Lea wasn’t prepared for it to sound the same.

They wandered main street as the sun started to tip from late morning into early afternoon, and they stopped at the old-school cinema on the corner. At first, Lea assumed it was shuttered; the box office window was empty, and some of the neons on the sign had burned out, but there were still showings listed overhead. Of course, everything playing was from before the turn of the century. They probably just fed burned DVDs into the projector. He looped around to the back alley while Isa peered through the box-office window, and found what he was looking for next to a rusty dumpster that reeked of stale popcorn.

The staff door was propped open with a chipped brick. God, it even looked like the same one.

Isa hovered on the sidewalk as Lea curled his fingers around the lip of the door, peering into the dim hallway beyond. There was no one in sight.

He turned his grin back at Isa. “Looks like the staff are still lazy,” he said, hooking his foot in the threshold. “Wanna catch a showing on the house?”

Isa stared at the brick in the threshold, and he didn’t have to say it for Lea to abruptly remember that they never actually watched the movies when they snuck in here together.

“I doubt they turn much profit anymore,” Isa said. “We should at least buy tickets.”

“No, never mind,” Lea said, jamming his hands back into his pockets as he brushed by Isa for the sidewalk. “Nothing good playing, anyway.”

The arcade was well and truly shuttered. The rental sign in the window looked as ancient as the arcade cabinets gathering dust behind it.

Lea felt a creeping unease come over him again. They were running short on landmarks. He opened his mouth as he turned to Isa, ready to ask if he wanted to try breaking in to see if the pinball machines still worked, but Isa’s expression was so stark and serious that Lea nearly swallowed his tongue.

“Lea,” he said quietly, “I want to visit my mother.”

He rolled to a stop outside the woven iron gates, watching the towering flag overhead ripple in the breeze. They were the only people there, near as he could tell, and Lea couldn’t decide if that was a relief or a shame.

Isa looked out over the expanse, his expression unreadable.

“You can stay in the car,” he said evenly.

Lea didn’t argue with him.

Isa climbed out, and Lea watched him skirt around the gate and start down the dry dust path. He made his way up the shallow hill, the browning grass shaded by a scattering of small acacia trees, his silhouette shrinking into the rows of polished granite. He moved deliberately, like he was reading every name.

Lea realized that Isa may never have come here before. Did he even know where she was buried? Were graveyards alphabetized? He must have been here for the funeral, right? Or…God, was he already gone by then?

He drummed his fingers anxiously on the steering wheel. This wasn’t his business. It was over his head. It was out of his depth.

Isa told him to stay in the car.

“Shit,” he muttered, and he scrambled out of the junker and slammed it shut behind him.

He had to jog to catch up. Isa didn’t acknowledge him as he fell in step behind.

The grave itself was unremarkable; one granite drop in an ocean. Wife and Mother: the sum total of Ivanna’s life, according to the engraving. Lea had always liked her. Or, at least, he liked her more than he liked his own. Guess it wasn’t a very high bar.

Isa slipped a hand into his pocket, and he drew out a pressed flower from the inner fold of his wallet.

The impulse to poke fun came to Lea fastest and hardest, a defensive reflex to hold him safely at arms length, but the guilt that came after pried up something a little more honest. It made him raw, knowing that Isa carried something so revealing around in his pocket. Like his gentleness was a private affair to be tucked neatly away. Like it wasn’t supposed to see the sunlight.

Isa crouched by the grave, anchoring the flower in a crevice between the stones. When he stood, it seemed like he’d laid more than just that at his feet.

“She’d just started using my name,” he said.

Lea watched him carefully, waiting for the cracks to show, but he stayed stoic as ever. A mirror of the uncompromising stone.

When Lea reached out between them, his fingers extended in quiet invitation, Isa still took it and didn’t let go.

They climbed back into the car.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Lea said, and the sound felt immediately out-of-place.

Isa blinked at the dashboard, and then he shifted in his seat until his eyes found Lea’s. He pulled a knee towards his chest in the cramped cab.

“Thank you,” he said, “for wanting to be.”

Holding Isa’s gaze made him feel manic, but the hooks were already in him. He couldn’t look away.

“Hey,” he said, “you think our stash is still in the hideaway?”

It didn’t seem like this little corner of Arizona had seen much action in their absence, other than some overeager desert brush and several generations of spiders. Lea’s arms still ached looking at the massive stack of firewood and kindling leaning into the side of the boulder formation, apparently undisturbed.

He skirted the circle of wide, flat stones, blackened with soot and streaked from years of charcoal and smoke. He set his hands against the boulders and ran them over the rough stone. They were smaller, more compact than they seemed in his memory.

Isa watched in silence as Lea hoisted himself up the rock formation and dug his phone from his pocket to flick on the flashlight.

“I know you’re curious,” Lea said, and he cast a glance at Isa before he stretched his legs for the stone shelf and slid into the dark crevice.

It was cool and musty, the tang of dust and the sharp, coppery smell of sandstone in the air. Lea swept the beam of his phone’s flashlight over the cave walls, casting each one in jagged relief. Their layers of etchings and scrawled obscenities were faded, but they were all still there.

A clatter of pebbles dislodged as Isa dropped behind him, and his shadow split in two as the light of Isa’s flashlight joined his in wandering the walls.

The uncanny weight of the hideaway amplified as Lea took in the debris of their teenage years. Lawn chairs with cracking plastic, a dirty camp lantern, a deck of scattered playing cards rendered unreadable by years of dust and damp air; even their folding cot and an old blanket practically cemented in its shape.

Lea knelt by the cot and fished underneath it, dragging out a dented flour tin as big as a paint can. The strip of masking tape and sharpie across the top helpfully identified it as SIN BIN.

The lid felt like it had been welded on, and Isa watched with something approaching amusement as Lea planted himself on the cot and wrestled with it until it popped open. He poked around inside, rifling through more relics of a wasted youth: a pack of old fireworks, a bent carton of cigarettes, a string of horrifically expired condoms, a handful of nips, and a ziplock of dusty joints.

“Oh, man,” he said, and he held up one of the joints for Isa’s inspection.

“There’s no way those are still good,” Isa said incredulously, and Lea turned it between his fingers with a thoughtful purse of his lips.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” he said, and he held up his other hand with a grin, four of the nips protruding like wolverine claws from between his fingers. “But I bet these are.”

They dug a lighter and a stack of ancient newspapers out of the mess and started a fire, cracking decades-old kiddie-sized vodka around it like they were teenagers again.

Lea pulled the bent carton of cigarettes from his pocket and shook one into his palm. It had been a long time, but it went down smooth.

He offered it to Isa with the quirk of an eyebrow.

"I quit," Isa said.

"So did I."

Isa eyed it for a moment, then took the cigarette and pulled in a long, deep drag.

The stars were incredible in the desert. It made Lea remember why people were willing to live out in fuck-all Arizona; why people put up with the blistering heat and the nightmarish wildlife and the stretches of barren, dusty earth.

It seemed like a fair trade for a sky like that.

“They don’t make ‘em like that in the city, do they?” he said.

Isa passed back the cigarette and crossed his arms over his knees. “No,” he said, “they don’t.”

His phone suddenly buzzed, illuminating his face in blue. Isa glanced at it, his brow furrowing, then tucked it into his pocket.

Lea watched him, then watched the the curl of the cigarette melt into the smoke from the bonfire. “Xemnas?” he asked.

Isa’s expression tightened. “Yes.”

“Is he…” Lea cleared his throat. “Is he why you wanted the annulment?”

"I don’t see how that’s any of your business, considering the impression you made.”

“Me?” Lea said, taken aback. “Are you joking? He looked at me like I was taking his catholic daughter to prom.”

“The first thing you did when you showed up was insult me,” Isa said. “And the second thing you did was insult him. What was he supposed to think?”

Lea opened his mouth, then shut it.

He raked a hand through his hair, giving it a firm tug. “You’re right,” he mumbled. “Jesus. I would've thought I was a scumbag, too. I was a scumbag.”

Isa stared at him, his face unreadable. Lea fingered the cigarette, and he grimaced at Isa; one part apology, one part embarrassment.

“I just…I was really freaked out about seeing you again. And when I get anxious my mouth sort of goes on without me.” He passed back the cigarette, and the hint of a smile itched at the corner of his mouth. “I don't need to tell you that, though. And for what it's worth, I'm sorry.”

Isa looked almost surprised. “Well…good,” he said.

"I wanna make up for it," Lea said. "Maybe make a better second impression."

As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized what he'd asked.

They hadn't talked about leaving a door open. Actually, Isa had told him point-blank that he wanted Lea out of his life the second their hands were washed clean of all this.

He swirled his miniature, the tremor creeping back into his fingers. "I mean...if you want that. I'd like to fix it."

Isa's looked at him for a long moment. Somewhere under the uncertainty and the caution was a flash that ran deeper. A sliver of the old Isa.

He took a slow drag.

“I might," he said. "Want that."

Lea's nerves funneled into a bigger, dumber smile. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

They lapsed back into quiet, more comfortable now than before. Isa passed him the cigarette. The bonfire slowly swallowed a log.

“The annulment isn’t for Xemnas,” Isa admitted, “but it should be. He deserves more from me. I don’t know how he can still be so patient, after all this time.”

“What about you?” Lea said. “Do you want more?”

Isa swept back his hair, his mouth thinning in frustration. “It's...difficult. Opening up. He's proven himself well worthy of that trust, and still, I...” He breathed a deep sigh and perched his chin on his knees. "I don't know."

Lea passed back the cigarette, and he gave Isa a gentle nudge. “Get there on your own time,” he said. "If he cares about you, he’ll stick around.”

"I suppose," he said, and he stubbed the cigarette out in the dust.

“Not a fan of the 2008 vintage?"

"Not a fan in general," Isa said dryly.

A whisper of bitterness soured Lea's buzz. “I know," he mumbled. "Kicked all your bad habits, right?”

Isa's eyes drifted closed. “You weren’t a bad habit,” he murmured.

Lea's gaze lingered on him, then turned back to the stars, his mind wandering.

A warm weight leaned into his side, and it went blank.

He glanced down in disbelief. Isa had tipped drowsily into his shoulder, apparently dozing. The miniature in his lax grip was leaning precariously towards his lap, and Lea extracted it from his fingers to set it aside.

Lea watched him sleep, and despite the nicotine buzz and the loose warmth in his joints, he felt stone-cold sober.

There was a sudden collision in his chest, like flint struck against steel. It flared bright and hot for a fraction of a second before the glow faded back into night.

It scared the shit out of him.

“Hey,” he said, giving Isa a firm jostle.

He slipped down Lea’s shoulder, his bleary eyes cracking open. They found Lea’s face, and he looked up with something Lea could almost mistake for tenderness.

Then he came to his senses. Isa sat straight up, putting a few extra inches between them.

“We should go back,” he said.

Lea told him to go on ahead, and when he was alone he dumped out their flour tin and poured bucket after bucket of sand over the bonfire, until the embers were reduced to lifeless dust.

It had long since gone from late to early by the time they got back to their motel. Lea didn’t even bother changing; he just stripped down to his jeans and collapsed into bed.

Isa dragged himself into his own sheets, deflating like a slashed tire. Lea watched his shoulders rise with his breathing, and for all that he felt like he’d been wrung out by the hands of a giant, he couldn't stop thinking. I'm not interested in a discussion. Don't make this difficult.

The same question played on loop in his brain until he could taste it on his lips.

"Isa,” he murmured, “did you...really believe it was just a fantasy to me?”

At first, he thought Isa might be out already; he wouldn’t have been surprised. Then, slowly but surely, Isa turned to face him. Lea’s eyes had adjusted to the dark, but he could only see half of Isa’s face over his pillow.

“I don’t know,” Isa said. “We were just kids. Even if we meant it then, what does it matter now?”

“I wanted to come after you,” Lea said. “I thought you didn’t want me to.”

“Lea,” Isa said, his voice gently chiding, “what could you possibly have done?”

He was seventeen. He was broke. He was heartbroken.

“I don’t know,” Lea admitted. “I could have scrimped for a plane ticket, or packed a bag and taken my car cross-country, or…or fought your dad in a duel to the death, or…”

Isa let out a small huff of laughter that made Lea’s heart twist in his chest. “Very practical options,” he said.

Lea wanted to reach for him. The impulse took his whole arm, and he had to clench his fist under his pillow to force it down.

“I could have called,” he said.

Isa was quiet for a long time. The darkness pressed down on them.

“You could have called,” he said.

When they fell asleep, they fell asleep facing each other.

Notes:

Chapter 3: Don't Do Anything Stupid [Original Ending]

Notes:

If you’re reading this fic for the first time, **please jump to straight to chapter four.**
Chapters three and four are nearly identical (aside from a few line edits) but the ending has been re-written. I genuinely consider the new ending to be the true ending, and I think it’s a much more fitting close. Chapter three will remain as originally posted, for those who want to return to the story as they remember it. For anyone experiencing it for the first time, I’d ask you to jump ahead.
--
CW: this chapter contains references to past parental abuse, past parental death, and some non-explicit sexual content. please feel free to inbox me for more specific content warnings.

Chapter Text

After Isa’s mom died, Lea called the house phone over and over again, listening to the cold, hollow voice of the answering machine until he knew it by heart.

You’ve reached the Wolff household. We thank you for your support and your condolences. Our family is making adjustments during a difficult time, so please be patient in awaiting a call back. Leave your name and number…

He must have called hundreds of times, waiting for the moment that Isa could be alone with the phone. He left messages on the machine until it reached capacity, and he would call until they cleared the mailbox and he could leave another.

Finally, he steeled himself and decided he was going to hammer on the door until someone answered or he broke it down. He didn’t care if Mr. Wolff was home. He wasn’t scared of him.

Still, he rumbled his junky car around the block and left it on the street corner, thinking he’d circle around the back of the house. For once, the blue SUV was gone.

“Be home,” Lea muttered, making a beeline for the front door. “Please, please be home.”

He went for the handle first and gave it a hard shove. It was locked.

He hammered on the door until his knuckles burned. “Isa!” he shouted. “You in there?”

There was no response. Lea rattled the door again, then drew back and slammed on it with his open palm. He circled on the stoop like an anxious animal, craning his neck for the second-floor windows.

The curtains to Isa’s room were drawn, but he could see light in the bathroom window. They never left lights on when they went out, even if it was just around the corner. Mr. Wolff was obsessive about conserving energy.

Lea circled the house and hopped the back gate rather than fiddle with the busted latch. He backed up through the yard until he had a clear view of Isa’s window.

“Isa!” he yelled.

There was no response, but Lea caught sight of the curtain stirring, just for a second. Almost like someone was checking it.

“Isa,” he shouted again, “I’m not leaving until I see you, and if I have to stand here and scream until the neighbors call the cops, I fucking will!”

The curtain was torn aside, and Isa yanked his window open. “Shut up!” he yelled. “Jesus Christ, Lea, my dad could be back any minute!”

“I need to see you,” Lea said.

Isa’s mouth moved wordlessly. He looked angry enough to choke on his tongue.

“I want to see you,” Lea said again, and he didn’t even bother to hide the naked desperation in his voice. “Please.”

Isa bent over the windowsill and ducked his forehead into the frame. His hands raked through his hair. His shoulders rose and fell.

“Fine,” he said. “Just come around front, or I’ll call the cops myself.”

The second he’d drawn the deadbolt and pulled open the door, Lea threw his arms around Isa’s waist and squeezed. He might have collapsed to his knees if Isa’s arms around his shoulders hadn’t stabilized him.

Isa’s breath came short and sharp in his ear, his hands curling into Lea’s hair until his scalp burned under them.

“We can’t do this here,” Isa whispered, the words coming out sandpaper-rough.

He pulled Lea to his feet, and then led him by the hand up the stairs to the landing, past a line of polished family photos hung in perfect alignment.

Lea ducked into Isa's room, and Isa shut and locked the door behind him.

"We don't have long," he said.

Lea barely heard him. He was staring at Isa's bed, where an open suitcase and a pile of half-folded clothing were disturbing the pristine bedspread.

Lea turned back to him.

He didn’t have to ask. Isa’s face flickered from guilty, to angry, to pained in quick succession.

“He found out,” Isa said simply.

Lea’s eyes flickered to the suitcase.

“My aunt,” Isa said. “She lives in Maine.”

Lea stared at him. The circles under his eyes were deep, and the light was out in them.

“When…”

Isa reached across his chest to dig his fingers into his shoulder. He kept his eyes on the floor. “Tonight,” he said, “on the redeye.”

Lea felt the world slow to a stop.

He took a step forward. Then another.

“Isa,” he said, reaching for his waist, “I’m parked around the corner. We can take your bag. We can stop at my place. We can—we can head up the coast, we can—”

Isa brushed his hand aside. “Then what, Lea?” he said quietly. “Where would we even go? We barely have enough for a motel room between us—what happens when we run out of gas? Or food?”

That brought Lea up short. “I don’t know, okay? We’ll figure it out together. Like we always do.”

“No!” Isa snapped, and Lea reeled back at the sudden venom in his voice. “You never think anything through, Lea! You live in this delusional world where we could survive on wide-eyed bullshit and dumb luck, and I—I can’t believe I—” he swallowed, his clenched fists starting to shake at his sides. “We’d be stupid to just go blundering out the door with no money and no plan. We’d be stupid to expect things to work out on blind faith. We were stupid to do this in the first place.”

All at once, Lea’s heart felt encased in lead. “What?” he said dumbly.

Something flashed across Isa’s face, but it was gone too fast to parse. He shouldered past Lea and started to jam loose clothing into the suitcase with no real rhyme or reason. “We’re fooling ourselves,” he said.

Lea grabbed his wrist. “What, then?” he said. “You’re just gonna let your dad ship you off to the other side of the country?”

Isa tore his arm away. “I don’t have a choice!” he spat. “I can’t believe I let myself get so swept up in a fantasy. I can’t believe I let you—”

Lea surged forward and kissed him. He took Isa’s jaw in his hands, and he didn’t care if Isa could feel them shaking.

He was stiff under Lea’s touch for a second, and then his mouth fell open and his arms locked ironclad around Lea’s back, his hands fisting into Lea’s jacket with an intensity that would have torn a weaker person to pieces.

There was the rumble of an engine pulling up outside, and they both turned to stone.

Isa’s hands dragged from his back to his chest, and he pushed Lea away.

“You need to leave,” he said raggedly. “Go out the back door. Go home.”

“Isa,” Lea said.

“Get out!” he shouted, and he gave Lea a rough shove, his face twisting into a snarl. “Just get out!”

Lea opened his mouth, but then the trunk of the SUV slammed outside, and their time ran out.

Something felt different the next morning, having breakfast together in the cluttered, cozy dining room off the motel lobby.

The receptionist was right: the coffee was good, if a little on the strong side; the kitchen menu was pricey for a place that couldn’t possibly make a profit off its nightly rates, but it was surprisingly edible. Their table was small, polished wood complete with a dark floral tablecloth and a frilly white doily, and one of the legs wobbled whenever they bumped it. Lea could practically taste the dust coming off the curtains pulled back from the window.

Isa picked at his omelet, his cheek propped on his fist. Lea stretched out a foot under the table to anchor the unsteady leg, and his knee nudged against Isa’s.

If it bothered him, he didn't say so.

Lea dragged a piece of soggy toast through the yolk of an egg. “You’re a real photographer now, huh?” he said.

Isa hummed. “I suppose so.”

“How does it stack up?” Lea said. “Traveling the world yet?”

The hint of a smile flickered over Isa’s lips. He reached across the table to spear one of Lea’s homefries. “Pay is inconsistent, clients are demanding, steady work is all bar mitzvahs or editing and restoration…”

“So you love it,” Lea said.

Isa’s smile broke through. “I suppose so,” he said.

“Good,” Lea said.

Isa took a slow sip from his coffee. “I’m working on restoring an archive for a local gallery,” he said, “but it’s almost finished. I don’t know what I'll do to kill time after that.”

Lea shrugged. “It’s just one day,” he said. “We don’t have much time left to kill.”

Isa looked down at the tablecloth between them, then out the window, towards the interstate. “It’ll be good to have a clean slate,” he said quietly.

Lea glanced up at him, casually as he could manage. He thought about the paradoxical sound of Isa’s laugh. About the hundreds of private ways he carried his tenderness. About his weight on Lea’s shoulder, unthinking and unguarded.

He looked down into the dregs of his coffee, swirling the speckling of loose grounds.

“Yeah,” he said. “A fresh start.”

Lea didn’t say where he was going on the way out of the motel that afternoon, and Isa didn’t ask.

He just needed to get out of his head for a while. He needed to get Isa out of his head for a while.

Being alone in the junker was a welcome change. The sticky, roiling heat of the afternoon was almost peaceful. The lines on the interstate warped in the heat, as if the road itself was indecisive. He could see out both windows when he looked around him, and no billowing, ice-blue hair obscured his turn radius.

He killed the junker and fed the meter in front of Xigbar’s shop, and the bell over the door announced his entrance like an overeager court herald. He spotted Xigbar outside the glass-paned staff exit in the back, leaning into the frame with a smoke between his fingers. At the chime of the bell, his silhouette went from salt-and-pepper ponytail to profile, and he flicked the cigarette to the pavement to scuff it out under his boot.

He shouldered his way inside. “Copper top,” he said, “right on time.”

“You promised me a touch-up,” Lea said.

Xigbar made an exaggerated gesture down the shop hall, towards the curtained studio. “Step into my office,” he said.

It had been a while since Lea’s last ink—bougie cafe prices never translated to the hourly pay, and he had rent to make—but pushing aside the heavy curtain into the dimly-lit studio felt like therapy. It'd been a while since he’d done that, too.

Xigbar gestured to the front-facing massage chair, and Lea peeled off his sweaty t-shirt while he prepped his work tray, hands moving deftly from wire-rack shelves to drawers like he was playing a familiar instrument. He flicked on the radio, and the dense crackle of old-school rock filled the studio.

Lea breathed out as he settled into the chair, resting crossed arms on the counter in front of him.

For a while, it almost worked. The steady pressure of the tattoo gun melted off all his tension, and he just lolled into the chair like a scratched cat for a stretch of time.

Then Xigbar got to touching up the color, and the burn got a little too fresh for blissful ignorance. Lea came back to his senses enough to remember Isa’s legs, scraped-knees and all, dangling from the counter beside him the first time he sat in this chair.

And why shouldn’t it? For one little spark, for a second of connection after a decade of resentment? For one day—just one day—realizing that the boy who had been his best friend was still someone he recognized, still flesh and blood, still hands and mouth and hair the perfect length to pull?

Why wreck himself all over again?

“Jesus, this piece was ready for some TLC. You’ve taken care of enough of these now to know better,” Xigbar said. “Just don’t do anything stupid, and it’ll be fine.”

Lea felt an itch of manic laughter at the back of his throat, and his mouth twitched up into a grin. “Easier said than done, old man."

He paused outside the door to their motel room.

Isa’s voice bled through the gap under the door, soft and a little muffled, but still loosely formed into words: “…wish I could. Genuinely, I do…”

Lea lowered his arm and leaned into the wall. Even through a layer of drywall, it sounded thick, weak; he didn’t want to interrupt, but he couldn't bring himself to walk away.

“Thank you for everything. I’m sorry I wasn’t—” he paused. “I’m sorry.”

There was a short sniff, followed by a dry, muffled laugh. “I’d like that. Goodbye, Xemnas.”

The room fell quiet. Lea wrapped an arm around his chest, the protective plastic pulling over his fresh tattoo.

Apparently Lea’s bad first impression would be his last. That is, assuming Isa really would stick around after all this. Assuming there was actually something left to salvage, when they’d wiped away Dry River’s dust.

There was no subtle way to enter, so Lea just looped back around the ice machine before he jarred the door open.

Isa was sitting at the end of his bed, his back straight and his hands folded in his lap. His eyes were ringed in red.

He got to his feet, ignoring Lea’s stare as he swiped at his cheek with a thumb.

“I need a shower,” he said.

Lea couldn’t summon up a single thing to say, so he just stepped helplessly aside as Isa brushed past him to slip into the bathroom. The hiss of running water followed shortly after.

He wandered towards the desk. Isa's mobile office was still mid-use, and a dark leather portfolio had joined his laptop, open to one stark print.

Since he hadn't been nosy enough for one day, Lea lingered over it.

It was a self-portrait, shot from behind. Isa’s back, rigid and severe, created a fortress; his hair, not yet grown to its current length, was long enough to tumble over his bare shoulders as he faced an empty wall.

A weight formed in Lea’s stomach. Transfixed, he turned the page, taking in shot after shot. The odd haze of color tinted an otherwise grayscale tableau, and Lea flipped through wide, lonely snapshots of empty rooms and indifferent structures and pristine landscapes. Even settings that should have been swarming with people looked abandoned, their human elements reduced to artifacts after some unseen migration.

It made him feel like he was drowning, looking at so much emptiness. He turned the final page, and the corner of an old polaroid peered out from the pocket on the back cover, protected by its own stiff plastic sleeve.

He tugged it free, and it was like breaking the surface of deep water.

The only human face in a sea of emptiness was Lea’s: frozen at 17, turned on his side on a dirty camp cot, the lantern light casting a tall shadow over the stone behind. His arms hung lazily over the edge, his eyes sick with infatuation and looking dead-on into the camera lens—looking through it, to the boy beyond.

The hiss of the shower suddenly amplified, and Isa’s voice broke through his trance.

“Will you hand me my razor?” he called. “It’s in the front pocket of my bag.”

Isa’s hand extended through a crack, a wisp of steam escaping alongside.

Lea crossed to the bathroom door. He set the polaroid in Isa’s upturned palm.

It hung there for a moment, suspended in space, and Isa’s silence intensified.

“Isa,” Lea said softly, “open the door.”

The door swung open. Isa stood in the billowing steam, stark naked, water still streaming from the slicked strands of his hair.

Lea stepped into him, finding Isa’s hip with his fingers and then Isa’s mouth with his mouth, and he got lost in the rich, bittersweet tang of bonfire smoke still clinging to his skin until the mirror was unclouded and the water had long gone cold.

When Lea woke, he woke with the warm pressure of Isa's body flush against his chest.

One of his arms had gone numb, and it would be torture waiting for the nerves to come back online. His hip ached from being pressed against the wall all night. All of him ached, actually, in a way that made him think about moving, stretching, dragging Isa closer...

Isa shifted, his breath deepening under Lea's hand, and Lea curled his fingers over Isa's collarbone and thought about kissing it.

It was out of his reach, so he dipped his head to the nape of Isa's neck and kissed that, instead.

Kissing Isa. 24 hours ago, he thought that was something he'd never do again.

With Isa's hair tickling his nose and his head numbing Lea's arm to the shoulder, he realized that he never once, not for a second, believed that Isa wasn’t the love of his life. Not when they wrapped around each other on a dirty cot. Not when they were states and years apart. For as long as he’s known it, it’s been Isa.

It never stopped being Isa.

He shifted again, this time with a low moan, and there was a rush of sensation in Lea's fingertips as Isa turned in his arms. His nose brushed Lea’s, and Lea could see the flecks of gold dust glittering in the emerald of his eyes.

“Hey,” Lea said.

Isa hands slid into the space between them, and his fingers traced a path from Lea’s chest to the hollow of his throat to the line of his jaw before winding into the roots of his hair.

“Hey,” Isa said.

Parted lips trailed the corner of Lea's mouth, and he felt like a man resurrected. 3000 volts spider-webbing through his chest, and something he thought was dead was jarred and stuttering and pounding against his ribs again.

They broke for air, and Isa's eyes were still closed, his hands trembling against the side of Lea's face.

"Lea," he said.

"Yeah?"

The hands withdrew, and Isa shifted back. "What...what time is it?"

"Dunno," Lea said.

Isa sat up, and he grabbed for his phone on the bedside table. He blinked at it, then yanked back the sheets and climbed out of bed.

"Shit, we're going to be late," he muttered. "Get up, get dressed."

Lea propped himself up on his elbows.

"Late," he repeated.

Isa turned away from him to dig in his backpack, yanking out a clean button-up and a pair of boxers. "Yes, late," he said. "If we miss this, it could be weeks before the next available date."

Lea's electric high came thundering down to earth.

"Right," he said. "I—right."

Isa's fingers paused on the buttons of his shirt, and he squeezed his eyes shut for the space of one long, tight breath, his face disappearing behind the curtain of his hair.

Lea waited for him to say something—waited for him to say anything—but he was already closed up tight again.

They were going to be late.

For some reason, Lea expected the judge's chambers to be extravagant. In movies, they always looked big, important, polished; but he probably should have adjusted his expectations for a public family court. As it was, Judge Bartlet's office looked like it should have belonged to airport security officer more than an Arizona Justice, and it smelled more like hard plastic and carpet cleaner than old wood and leather.

The man himself lived up to every expectation. He was portly and serious, and Lea opted to listen to the tired drawl of his voice rather than the words themselves.

"Mr. Wolff," he said, "I understand your petition is uncontested. I have your decree for annulment as well as your signed agreement. Now, I requested a review on the basis of evidence, which I presume you have at your disposal."

"I do, your honor," Isa said, and he laid out a folder on the desk in front of him and started to draw out documents.

"The original marriage certificate, signed and dated," he said, "copies of the parental consent for marriage of a minor, which we falsified; copies of my petitions for name change and gender marker correction, which should be sufficient in identifying me; and a current state ID and birth certificate, demonstrating that I was a minor at the time of signing." He lined up each document on the desk as he listed them.

Since he wasn't sure what else to do, Lea dug out his driver's license and dropped it alongside. "We both were," he said.

"Mhm," the Judge said. "And evidence in support of the falsified parental consent?"

Isa pulled an envelope from the back of the folder. He slid it across the desk.

"A letter from my father," Isa said quietly, "disowning me shortly after my eighteenth birthday. He makes explicit reference to the marriage as a factor. I've highlighted the passage."

Lea stared at him, but Isa kept his eyes fixed firmly on the desk. "The legal name and title printed on his office letterhead confirms his identity."

"Office letterhead?" Lea exclaimed in disbelief, and Isa shot him a murderous glare.

"Mr. Castillo," the judge said firmly.

Lea clammed up, but his blood was boiling. Trust that shitstain to be impersonal about cutting off his own kid.

The judge unfolded the letter, lowering his glasses on the bridge of his nose. He sniffed, pushed them back up, and tucked it back into its envelope.

"All right," he said, "I'm prepared to grant you the annulment. This is more than sufficient to demonstrate voidability, at very least. As your petition was pre-filed, Mr. Wolff, I can finalize it today and have you both on your way."

"Wait," Lea said.

Two pairs of eyes turned to him.

Lea didn't know what to say. He hadn't expected to say anything in the first place. "I—I want to request a recess. I can do that, right?"

"This is not a hearing, Mr. Castillo," Judge Bartlet said dryly. "You may step out, but be expeditious, if you don't mind."

Lea knocked the cushioned chair out from underneath him and grabbed Isa by the hand, dragging him from his seat.

"What are you doing?" Isa hissed over his shoulder.

"Making this difficult," Lea mumbled.

He pulled Isa down the hall, past a flat bench, and into a dim alcove where a handful of buzzing vending machines had been squirreled away.

Flustered, Isa snatched his hand away and crossed his arms stiffly over his chest. "Well?" he said.

"I don't want to do this," Lea said. "I want to be married to you. Actually married to you. For the rest of my life."

Isa's mouth fell open. "Are you...are you out of your mind? Three days in a shit motel room and you want to just—we live hours apart, my job, my apartment—”

"Do you still love me?"

His eyes widened, and then glittered with sudden tears. He swiped at them furiously, his face flushing. "What—what does it matter?"

Lea caught Isa's hand between both of his and ducked his forehead into Isa's knuckles.

"Isa," he said, "I've been gone on you since we were 15. God help me, not even the past ten years could make that go away."

When he lifted his head, Isa was dumbstruck.

"If you want to do this, I'll sign it. Fresh start, clean slate, I'm on board. If you want me to go, say so, and I'm gone. But I...I don't want a life without you in it. I lived that already and I won't make the same mistake again."

Isa caught his breath. He squeezed Lea's hands between them until it hurt.

"You mean it," he said.

"Do you need me to get down on one knee?" Lea murmured. "Don't think I won't."

For another second, Isa stared at him.

Then his nails bit into Lea's shoulder, and Lea stumbled backwards as Isa threw his arms around his neck and fisted desperate fingers into the back of his shirt, and his grip relaxed just long enough for Lea to catch his breath before Isa caught his face in both hands and kissed him like the world was ending.

Even If it was, Lea couldn’t think of a better way to go.

Lea adjusted his rear-view mirror, catching the motel sign in the corner. If he ever came back here for another of Xigbar's pieces, this is where he'd stay. He fought the urge to salute as he peeled off onto the interstate.

There was a sharp click in the passenger seat, followed by the whirr of printing film. Lea glanced at Isa, who had his camera bag open in his lap and his polaroid raised to his eye.

Lea grinned out at the road. "You still have that?"

"Of course. These aren't easy to find."

"Oh, sure," Lea said. "Being a sap is just a happy coincidence."

They passed by a miniature strip mall, and Lea eyed it for a moment before he flicked on his blinker and veered into the parking lot of the drugstore.

"We'll never get home at this rate," Isa complained.

"Yeah, yeah. I'll just be a sec."

It didn't take him long to find what he was looking for. He tore open the packaging as he strolled out of the automatic doors, and stopped to brush the dust off the back window of the junker with the sleeve of his flannel.

He popped the cap on the orange marker and scrawled over the glass in wide, lopsided letters, then stepped back to admire his handiwork.

JUST AFFIRMED ♡

He climbed back into the drivers side with a shit-eating grin.

Isa twisted in the passenger seat, his eyes flicking between Lea and the back window. "You can’t be serious," he said.

"Deadly serious."

"If I have to take it back to get you to wipe that off, I will," Isa said.

Lea threw the junker into drive and cracked his window. "That ship has sailed, babe. You’ll need a real divorce if you want rid of me now."

Isa tried to bite back his smile, but he couldn't manage it fast enough. He reclined back in his seat, rolling down his window to let the dry, hot wind roar in.

"Well," he said, "at least we can do that online."

Chapter 4: Don't Do Anything Stupid [Alternate Ending]

Notes:

The original ending of Snapshots has been eating at me for almost two years. I love this fic, but something always felt off about the ending, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It hit me all at once a few months ago, and I had to get it out of my system. I finally feel like I found the ending that feels right for these two. Only the last thousand words or so actually deviate from the original, but I genuinely think it makes all the difference. Thank you all so much for your time and your kind words, and for letting this story into your heart. <333
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CW: this chapter contains references to past parental abuse, past parental death, and some non-explicit sexual content. please feel free to inbox me for more specific content warnings.

Chapter Text

After Isa’s mom died, Lea called the house phone over and over again, listening to the cold, hollow voice of the answering machine until he knew it by heart: You’ve reached the Wolff household. We thank you for your support and your condolences. Our family is making adjustments during a difficult time, so please be patient in awaiting a call back. Leave your name and number…

Finally, he steeled himself and decided he was going to hammer on the door until someone answered or he broke it down. He didn’t care if Mr. Wolff was home. He wasn’t scared of him.

Still, he rumbled his junky car around the block and left it on the street corner, thinking he’d circle around the back of the house. For once, the blue SUV was gone.

“Be home,” Lea muttered, making a beeline for the front door. “Please, please be home.”

He went for the handle first and gave it a hard shove. It was locked.

He hammered on the door until his knuckles burned. “Isa!” he shouted. “You in there?”

There was no response. Lea rattled the door again, then drew back and slammed on it with his open palm. He circled on the stoop like an anxious animal, craning his neck for the second-floor windows. The curtains to Isa’s room were drawn, but he could see light in the bathroom window. They never left lights on when they went out, even if it was just around the corner. Mr. Wolff was obsessive about conserving energy.