Weiss Kreuz Fan Fiction ❯ Reminiscence of Antiquity ❯ Deviation from the hackneyed ( Chapter 4 )

Title: Reminiscence of Antiquity

Chapter: 4 - Deviation from the hackneyed

Rated: PG (yeah… I got nothin')

Warnings: Eventual shounen-ai ( AxY & KxO)

Legal stuff: Well... I think it's obvious but I'll state it anyway. I down own them! Please don't sue me? I'm poor... seriously...>_>;;

Thanks to: My editor. Shaeric Draconis. The Squall x Zell + Aya x Yohji Yaoi fanfic group. Creators of Weiss Kreuz. My fellow Gypsies everywhere.

AYYA! Vive la Resistance!

Author and Editor notes: Still a slightly difficult chapter to write because I don't like actual dialog very much and this chapter if full of it. As a side note: the plot only gets thicker from here on out. This chapter was built in order to get you to chapter 5 >.<! Oi, hope you like it anyway. Review please? It's very important that I know what you think so I can decide on continuing or not, thanks!

~*~

The school bell rang and informed the student body that classes were to begin in ten minutes. Ten minutes? No sweat! One could make it to their locker before dashing off to their class within ten minutes if nothing got in their way.

"Thank the gods. For once I'm not going to be late to class." Yohji grinned to himself in relief.

"Oro! Yohji!"

Open mouth, insert foot. The elder teen made a mental note to backhand Karma later when he got a chance.

"Ken!" The blond forced a smile when he turned to see his classmate running towards him. It wasn't that he -wasn't- happy to see Ken it was just Ken had a tendency to keep him talking until they both were late for their morning classes which was exactly what Yohji didn't need right then.

"You're alive?" in Ken talk, that meant: "How did things go with the parents?" The boy obviously didn't waste any time getting down to business, now did he?

"I'm grounded until my next life. What did your brother have to say?" If he could get the subject off of him, Yohji discovered, the better things might be.

"Oh, he just asked me what I did and stuff." Now that was an interesting thought.

"What -did- you do, anyway?"

Ken made a funny face as he glanced down at his watch, "Just hung out with Omi and Auska. Where were you?" Good question.

"Drunk." Duh.

"Obviously." The soccer player rolled his eyes and shook his head.

"So..." Yohji used his conveniently handy conversation skills to divert the subject away from him once more, "What did you guys talk about?"

"You, mostly." And another mission failed for Kodou Yohji, who mentally smacked himself... repeatedly.

"What about me?" Not that he -really- wanted to know. No wait, scratch that. He actually -did- want to know what they were talking about for the pure and simple fact that Omi and Auska just looooved embarrassing their "little Amir" to no ends. Should they have started talking about his last birthday party he was going to have to do a hell of a lot of denying. 'A lot' being the understatement of the year.

"Well..." Ken started as he glanced over at Yohji who waited apprehensively for his reply, "We talked about your tattoos a lot. Omi and Auska said you've been getting them since you were ten... that really true?" They talked about his tattoos? Well that was a relief... sort of.

The blond shifted his jade eyes away from Ken as he considered the question, "No... not exactly."

"What do ya mean, 'not exactly'?"

Yohji stopped walking for a minute to lifted up his hair with a sigh so Ken could see an odd little tattoo, which lay across the back of his neck. "This is my first tattoo and I've had it since as long as I can remember, which happens to be before the age of ten. "

Ken turned his head sideways and wrinkled his brow as he gazed at the odd little thing, "What is it?" Another good question. Ken was getting proficient with those.

"Writing, I guess." Elegant fingers dropped the locks of hair to let them fall back into place about his shoulders in the softest of golden waves.

"Looks like a bunch of scribbles if you ask me."

"Yeah, looks like that to me too," came the retort, which was spoke with the faintest of grins.

"What does it mean?" All right, who was this boy asking all the good questions and what the hell did he do with Ken? Yohji looked the brunette over a couple of times just to make sure he wasn't a pod person. After a minute of inner debate, the gypsy decided that the person walking next to him was the real Ken and it was safe for him to continue their conversation. No sleep and no breakfast did funny things to Yohji's thought process.

"Haven't a clue." And wasn't that the truth?

"You mean you've never had it checked?" Ken was gawking and Yohji could only do his best to suppress the urge to laugh.

"Had it checked? Like for herpes or something?" The rueful grin played across the boy's lips and only received him a smack upside the head from Ken.

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean and no,..." he laughed a little as he rubbed the back of his head, "I've never had it looked at."

"Why not?!" Ken complained and Yohji stopped again to look over his friend. Why the hell was Ken so interested in his tattoos? When the brunette stopped and looked back at him, Yohji was forced to really think about what he had said. Why -hadn't- he ever gotten it checked out? Sure he was a little curious as to what it meant but...

"I guess I never cared." Or something... "I mean, I have so many tattoos that it never really mattered what the one on the back of my neck meant. It's not like I see it enough to really stop and think about it, you know?" That seemed like a reasonable enough answer.

"Never cared?" Ken looked confused, big surprise there. "Man, if I had something written on the back of -my- neck -I'd- want to find out what the hell it meant! It could be really cool, you know?"

Yohji shrugged at the idea, "It could be cool... then again... it could be something really stupid like 'I was here'."

"Well you'll never know unless you get it looked at." Ah, good point Ken. "Why don't we go ask one of the language teachers and see if they recognize the writing?" Wow, Ken was really on his game today, wasn't he?

"Because class is going to start in a minute." Pointing to the clock above the soccer player's head, Yohji frowned a little; he -really- didn't want to be late for class.. again.

"After school then!" Damn that boy was insistent.

"Fine, fine." Yohji gave up, waving a hand in other's direction with a sigh, "After school we can go check it out but right now I gotta run. I really can't afford another tardy." The idea of getting detention or punishment for being late, again, was -not- exactly his idea of a good time. In fact, he was pretty sure that he didn't need the added stress to his life, which would only result from that particular situation. So, after saying his good-byes to Ken, the blond made a mad dash to his first class and somehow, by the grace of god, managed to be in his seat when the final bell rang. It was then that he made a note to give thanks to some god later.

"Today, class, we have a pop quiz, so, please put away all binders, books and notes and get out a number two pencil." The teacher announced with a grin that could only be described as wickedly sadistic.

Upon second thought, Yohji decided to scratch the idea of giving thanks. Whatever god was watching over him had a real sick sense of humor, or so concluded the youth as he grimaced over the idea of taking a quiz on something he didn't study with a nightmare of a headache straight from the bowels of hell. It became clearly evident in the precious few seconds he had before the offending quiz was placed on his desk that today was just going to be one of those days. To hell with the backhanding; Karma was going to get an all out ritualized beating.

~*~

"Sorry, guys, I've never seen that kind of writing before..." The teacher leaned against his desk and crossed his arms as he looked at the two who sighed in their defeat.

"Well it was worth a try..." Ken shrugged but he couldn't rid himself of the disappointment he felt. Why was he so disappointed that he could figure out what a tattoo meant? Who knows? It probably rooted from the fact that Ken was a curious creature and constantly needed his curiosity quenched.

"Well, the writing looks rather old. Old enough to be a dead language so maybe you should go check some of the history books in the library." The elder suggested.

"Ah, good plan, we may just go do that. Thank you again Sensei." Yohji bowed then rose quickly to glance at his companion in the short-lived quest, "Ready to go?"

"Sure." The other frowned then he bowed to the teacher, gave his thanks and left.

Following his friend, Yohji couldn't help but feel a little bad for the guy... even if it was just a stupid tattoo. The green-eyed one rubbed the back of his neck out of habit and thought a little about what the teacher had to say. History books, huh? Where would they begin? So many books about so many different things; how in the hell did anyone expect them to find anything on a language they didn't even know the name of?

"Hey Ken..." Yohji spoke at last, causing his friend to pause a little in his stride.

"Yeah?"

"Did you want to go check the library to see if they have anything on ancient languages?"

Ken made a face, "I really can't stand book research; I'd rather talk to people." Well that made everything slightly more difficult. "It's too bad we don't have any connections, ya know?"

"Well..." Yohji looked around as he spoke, as if the walls and floors could give him answers that he didn't have, "Let's just check first and if they don't have anything then I guess I could give Aya a call..."

"Who's she?"

"He," The elder teen corrected, "is an old friend of mine." Yohji could see the question was clearly written across his friend's face, 'Who gave their son a girl's name?', though he decided not to humor Ken this time, mainly because he didn't have the answer himself.

"Does he know anything about languages?"

And cue the shrug, "Not sure but Aya seems to know a lot of random stuff so it wouldn't hurt to ask him if we run into a dead end."

"Fair enough." The brown eyed boy nodded and caused a smile to appear on the other's face.

"Come on, the library closes in an hour," and with that, they were off.

It took a total ten minutes to ride the bus to the nearest library and another good ten minutes of wandering around the place before the two stumbled across any books on ancient languages. Yohji hadn't done any real book research in years and he half doubted that Ken had ever done any at all. Ken just seemed like the type who would do a little researching, a lot of b.s.ing and somehow pull off a decent grade every time. Lucky bastard. Yohji was good at adlibing and making complete nonsense sound good but he never seemed to pull off a good grade with that talent so he was forced to actually do the research just to get a passing grade. Over the years he learned other little tricks like using his fabulous people skills to get other people to do the research for him so he would only have to lightly double check their work and get a good grade for it. Granted, he didn't learn a lot about history, authors, literary books or science projects that way but the amount of caring he had for all of that belittled its importance to him so, in the end, it never really mattered anyway.

This is not to say that Yohji wasn't a smart kid or well educated for that matter, quit the contrary actually, it was just that the things he deemed important were not placed in history or the function of hydroelectric turbines. There were other people in the world who, he decided long ago, liked to learn about that stuff and did so that they could go on to take jobs involving those subjects or fields of expertise. His calling in life, on the other hand, had little to do with what you could learn about in a science or history class and as a result, his focus on those topics was, well, scarce, to say the least. Turning another page in one of the books he had picked up, he found his eyes were beginning to hurt from all of the reading he had already done. Distantly he wondered if he might someday need glasses... not that he could afford it or anything.

"Hey Yohji...." The blond glanced over the top of his book at Ken who was surrounded by books already looked through.

"Yeah?"

"I'm not having any luck at all, are you?"

"No..." The eldest admitted, closing the book he had been looking through, "I say we call it quits..."

"And call your friend?"

There was a pause as green eyes flickered over to a clock. Aya -should- be off work so he wouldn't be bugging him and the man said he -could- call him anytime he wanted. So why was he so hesitant to call Aya?

"Sure... and call my friend..." He finally responded after a minute longer of mulling over his musings.

"Great!" The slamming down of the book and Ken's exclamation startled Yohji into looking over at him. The younger of the two was busy cleaning up his papers and pulling all the books together so he could go drop them off from where he grabbed them. Silly Ken. The ghost of a smile slowly curled onto the elder's lips as he watched his friend scurry about doing what he wanted to do since they started looking through the books. Ken was an amusing person to watch and that was part of the reason Yohji didn't mind him around all the time. Sure the soccer player could get a little loud for his tastes and sure he could be a little thick-skulled sometimes but despite all that... Ken was genuinely a good friend with a good heart.

"Hey Yohji, quit daydreaming and put the books away so we can get going."

"What?" The blond jumped a little, being pulled from his thoughts so suddenly.

"I said-"

"Oh, I heard you." The elder cut in with a smile as he rose to his feet and started collecting his books, "You just startled me so it took a second to realize what you said..."

"You're very strange, you know that?"

"Yeah... I'm aware."

Finishing their tasks in silence they were out of the library and at a payphone within a matter of ten minutes; record timing really though most of the credit went to Ken who seemed a little -too- excited to be getting out of the library. Punching in the number he had memorized over the years, Yohji dialed Aya's number then silently waited as the ringing began. Would Aya answer a call from a payphone to his cellphone? As the third ring went by the blond decided that it was unlikely, considering how weary Aya was of prank calls and things of that nature. When the sixth ring came in with no answer he pushed the phone away from his ear and prepared to hang up when suddenly he heard a distant voice come through the receiver.

"Hello?"

Pulling the phone quickly back he felt his stomach tighten, "Aya?"

"Yohji?"

"Yeah, it's me."

"Are you calling from a payphone?" Aya sounded worried and probably for good reason. Yohji rarely called Aya and the few cases that he did it was because he was in a really bad situation and needed someone to bail him out.

"Yes but only because I've been at the library with Ken since school got out."

"What's wrong?"

Yohji smiled and Ken tilted his head to one side curiously, "Nothing's wrong, I... I just need your help on something Ken and I have been working on. Are you busy?"

There was a pause before the slow response came over the line, "No. Do you want me to come get you?"

"That would great actually... you sure it's okay?"

Another pause. Yohji didn't like it when Aya paused like that, "Yes. I'm sure. What Library are you at?"

The youth filled him in on the details of where he and Ken were and then both said their good-byes and hung up. It was simple really, conversations with Aya that is. Everything was straight forward and to the point, which was great for most of the time. However, sometimes the green-eyed teenager just longed for someone to talk about nonsense with. He could talk nonsense -at- Aya and the man would sit there quietly and listen to him babble endlessly until he was done babbling but rarely did he ever join in on the nonsense babble.

Why was this? Oh, Yohji had a million theories. Perhaps Aya had nothing to say? Maybe the man didn't like talking? It was possible that Aya didn't know -how- to babble about nothing. Yohji sighed and leaned against the payphone; it bothered him a lot that in spite of how much Aya knew about him... he knew very little about Aya. Why? Aya didn't like talking about himself, the boy had assumed, or was it because there wasn't much to tell? He knew Aya lived alone and wasn't tied to anyone but his sister, whom he close to -never- spoke of. Other than that...

"Yohji?" Once again Ken's words broke up his clouding thoughts.

"Oh! Sorry..." The blond smiled and shook his head a little, "Got lost in my thoughts for a minute. Um, Aya said he'd be by in a couple of minutes... he doesn't work very far from here and he was just getting off work so... yeah."

"Excellent," grinned his friend who just leaned against the pay phone as well.

And then followed silence. Well... as silent as one could get in the middle of a city with people all around and a very bored Ken doing his best to keep his attention occupied with everything around him. Yohji, over the weeks of knowing Ken, had noticed that the boy was both easily distracted and had a low attention span. A -really- low attention span. Chuckling softly the gypsy shook his head and glanced down the street.

"What's so funny?" The question caught Yohji a little off guard.

"What?" He blinked as he turned to Ken who was staring direction at him.

"You were laughing, what's funny?"

"Nothing, KenKen."

"Hey! Don't call me-"

"Oh look, Aya's car!" Yohji cut Ken off before his friend had a chance to start in on an all too familiar tirade about how much he hated being called 'KenKen'.

"What? Where?" Speaking of easily distracted with low attention span...

"The black Porsche."

"Your friend owns a Porsche?" The question was both answered and ignored when the vehicle pulled up to the sidewalk and stopped in front of them before turning off.

Ken was trying desperately to look in through the tinted windows when the driver's door opened and out stepped a red headed man in a business suit. Lavender eyes turned to look directly at jade ones which only caused the owner of the jade eyes to smile in such a manner that Ken had never seen before. The smile was very very faintly returned as the man in his mid-twenties stepped away from his car and onto the sidewalk where the other two had been waiting. Ken, being Ken, couldn't stop staring at the pale skinned, red haired and lavender eyed person who Yohji called 'Aya'.

"Thank you for coming Aya..." Yohji had began with the deepest respect and gratitude in his voice. Ken could only lift an eyebrow at this and wonder how the hell these two knew each other.

"You're welcome" was the short reply before the eyes turned to Ken and went a little cold. What was -that- all about?

"I... don't get it." Ken was thinking out loud again. Yohji could feel a smile crack on his lips as he shook his head a little and looked down at his feet. Ken tended to think out loud a lot and it never ceased to amuse him. Especially because Ken tended to have some down right strange thoughts and most of the time they were entirely random.

"What don't you get?" Yohji finally broke down to ask his friend because he knew Ken wouldn't continue if someone didn't call him on it and Aya would never ask.

"How... do you two know each other? I mean, no offence or anything Aya but you seem much older than Yohji and you don't look like a gypsy and you couldn't exactly be a family friend, seeing as how Yohji doesn't really have any family and-" Ken stopped when he noticed the other two were staring at him blankly, "What?"

"Nothing." Yohji obviously did the speaking for Aya and himself, "It's a long story; I'll just have to tell you about it later." And with that said he ushered Ken into the car then crawled in after and waited for a minute as Aya got in, started the car and pulled away from the Library to begin what would be one of their greatest adventures ever.