Alec couldn't sleep. It was too hot. It was not actually that hot, but it was warmer than September was supposed to be. Across the room, Xander lay on his stomach on top of the sheets in only his boxers, snoring lightly with one arm and one leg hanging over the edge of the bed. Alec looked up at the ceiling once more and heaved a sigh. Between the heat and, more oppressively, the thoughts crowding his head, he couldn't sleep. Enough was enough. Grudgingly, he dragged himself out of bed, feeling the sheets stick to his skin and peel away in a shudderingly gross manner. He didn't feel like making an effort, so he found his loosest, lightest shirt and the first pair of jeans his hand came in contact with. So dressed, he headed downstairs as quietly as possible and moved to the front door. Then he stopped. He turned and went to the kitchen and found a scrap of paper to scribble a note. Went walking, will be back. He stuck the note on the fridge, hoped that if someone needed to find him it wouldn't be Daizi, and headed back to the front door where he slipped out, shoes in hand.
A tiny breeze drifted through the dark, silent neighborhood, teasing him with a breath of fresh air. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he started walking. The three street lamps along the road gave him little pools of yellow light, but the bright moon and stars provided most of his light. It wasn't actually that dark out. He picked up the pace, crossing the street to walk up one side of the block and down the other. It didn't matter how fast he walked, though. He couldn't outrun his thoughts. What was he going to do? Everything was all messed up. Nothing was right. Everything was topsy-turvy and inside out and he had no idea how to fix it or even if he could.
"Well, aren't you a curious-looking fellow?"
The cool, smooth voice slid through the night like a silken thread. Alec jumped so hard he almost stumbled off the edge of the sidewalk and spun around to see who had spoken. At first, he couldn't see anything. A red spark flared in the darkness, drawing his attention to the figure sitting on the short wall along the front yard by the sidewalk. They were small, whoever they were, a slender frame in dark pants and an even darker shirt. As Alec peered through the dim lighting, though, details began to emerge. The shirt wasn't black but a smokey grey shot through with silver thread that glittered and shimmered as they moved. They were barefoot, one foot sticking out of the shadows to reveal dark skin that wasn't really brown, but neither was it really black. At least, that was how it looked in the odd moon- and starlight. A hand lifted to their face, and the red ember flared again revealing a face that did not have the expected rounded features of someone of African descent but rather sharp, angular features. Alec had read books that described features as being "Elfin," but this was the first time he'd ever seen anyone who actually make him think of such a description. Sharp, mischievous, delicate, but not fragile. The Elfin features smiled, and dark eyes sparked in the ember. A cloud puffed from between thin lips. Alec flinched, but instead of the sharp, acidic scent of a cigarette or the earthier tones of a joint, it smelled almost sweet and savory at the same time. He coughed, mostly from surprise, and stepped back.
The figure tapped out the end of the cigarette-type item and pulled out what looked like a tissue. They licked it, stuck the white stick into it, and tucked it away in their pocket. A little gross, but effective and more conscientious than just tossing it away to litter the ground. "I didn't expect to see anyone else out here so late."
"I, um, hello," Alec greeted awkwardly, instinctively checking his escape routes. The road was empty. Not a car or a person in sight. Not even any lights on in any of the houses.
The silken voice chuckled softly. "I don't think I could physically overpower you and drag you anywhere, if that's what you're worried about, love, not that I blame you, but what are you doing out alone so late if you're worried about such things?"
Alec opened his mouth and closed it again, unsure of what to say to this strange specter in the dark.
"Ah. You have something weighing heavy on your mind," said the voice. The figure slid off the fence and stretched. Now Alec could see him more clearly, and he was shocked at how small the person really was. He was maybe a little taller than Peter, but not by much more than an inch or two, but built incredibly slender. Pale hair - white? grey? platinum blonde? - hung over the left side of his face down just past his chin with the right side being drawn up in almost a spiky effect. It was nearly anime protagonist style, but shorter and more subdued. He looked up at Alec and smiled, his eyes twinkling once again. "How about if we walk together, hmm? Perhaps you will find the answer you seek." When he spoke, an accent colored his words. It sounded almost Russian, but it wasn't quite that. Alec couldn't put his finger on what it was.
"Why- why would you want to walk with me?" Aec stammered. "I should actually be heading home. I mean, it's a bit of a walk, and I shouldn't... well. It's late."
The stranger gestured a slender hand. "You live right over there," he commented, indicating Dark and Daizi's house across the street and three doors down. "I saw you come out. Lying really doesn't become a gentle soul like yours, but..." He looked at Alec, and for a moment, Alec felt like his soul was being weighed, "you've found plenty of reason to do so in your life, haven't you?" He flashed a quick smile and raised his hands in a shrug. "Still, if you do not wish to have a listening ear, I understand."
"Wait," Alec said softly as the other started to turn away. "Why would you want to listen to me? We're strangers."
The stranger tapped his chin thoughtfully. "Aren't we all strangers until we chose to become friends?" he remarked. "In truth, the air hangs heavy and I cannot sleep, yet I am too tired to do anything productive. A walk and a talk sounds far more interesting than trying to count cricket chirps."
Alec hesitated. It was a really bad idea, everything about this, and yet... there was something about this character that intrigued him. He didn't seem like an objectively "good" person, not with that mischievous twinkle in his eyes, but Alec felt no tingle or warning of danger in his gut. He was as close to neutral as any person Alec had ever met. Finally, he nodded. As long as they stayed close to home - like he already planned - then it should be okay. There was no way someone as small as this fellow could kidnap him without Alec being able to get off a few good screams, at least. They started walking, Alec keeping on the road side of the sidewalk to give himself more space to run. The other didn't seem to notice, or perhaps just didn't care, as he walked along occasionally tapping a fence lightly or pausing to look at a particular landscaping piece.
Finally, Alec broke the silence. "The thing is, there's this girl at my school who approached me back on Monday, and she wants to hang out. Her name is... well, I guess it wouldn't matter to you want her name is. Anyway, my brother, he thinks she's bad news. She's older than us, so we haven't had too many crossings of paths, but sometimes older boys would pick on him or others to try to impress her or her friends. Teenagers are weird. That's bad, of course, but people are allowed to change, aren't they? And she never asked those boys to do anything. However, my good friend told me that she - the girl that approached me - is really bad news and full of red flags, whatever that means. Those two clearly have a history, and, I mean, I trust her judgment - my friend - but I thought I'd just give the girl a chance. Just a chance. I only have two friends, so I thought perhaps it might be time to discover more people. The thing is, as soon as I started talking to Crystal, my friend just... she froze me out and started acting like I personally stabbed her in the back just for talking to this girl. I'm not asking those two to be friends, I just wanted to hear her out."
"And then?" the stranger prompted after Alec fell silent for a few steps. "I'm sensing this wasn't a one-time thing and the story continues."
Alec sighed. "No. I wasn't really interested in this girl, but she didn't seem absolutely awful, so when she wanted to talk to me and set up a date this Saturday, I agreed. That put my friend's nose even more out of joint, and..." He looked down shamefully, watching his feet as he walked. "I guess I started hanging out with this girl to kind of spite my friend and my brother. Why should they get to dictate who I hang out with? I mean, literally every school day I hang out with my two friends, and I've been stuck with my brother for better and worse since birth. Aren't I allowed to have more than two friends?"
There was a long pause interrupted only by the scuffling of their feet. Or rather, the scuffling of Alec's shoes. The stranger's bare feet didn't make a sound.
"Has it been worth it?" he asked softly. "Do you enjoy hanging out with these new people?"
Alec bit his lip, resisting answering, but answering now or later would not change the answer. "No," he admitted. Just admitting it allowed the emotions he'd been trying to ignore rise to the surface.
They reached the end of the street. Alec glanced both ways, crossed, and started walking back. The stranger walked with him without questioning why they didn't just walk around the block. As long as Alec could see the house, he was safe.
"You have entered your rebellious phase," the stranger said once they were across the street. "Nearly everyone experiences one sooner or later. It is a terrible time of hormones and testing boundaries you don't yet fully understand, and there is no shame in feeling the things you do, only in what you chose to do with them. It's like anger that way. Some things are harmless and hurt no one, except possibly a few feelings, but others can set you on a very bad path, and you don't even realize it until years later." He sounded almost cheerful as he spoke, calm and cordial instead of judgemental or even soothing. "I let my rebellious phase set me on a rather long and tumultuous path that eventually lost me the use of my left eye."
Alec gave him a sidelong glance. "Seriously?"
"Oh, yes," the stranger chirped, tapping the side of his head where he wore his hair down to cover his left eye. "It took nearly ten years, but I can trace it all back to one absolutely idiotic choice. Not to say that is what will happen to you, just take it as a bit of a warning, if you will, that sometimes consequences don't show up in the timeframe we expect. They can also cause quite a bit of trouble for the people we care about."
Alec sighed in frustration and ran his hand through his hair. "Except what I'm doing won't hurt anyone else! It might hurt me, maybe, but that's my business, isn't it? I mean, I guess it might involve my parents, but I think I'm a little old for them to be dictating what kind of friends I can have, aren't I?" He hesitated uncertainly. "Of course, they've never actually tried to tell me what to do, just offered advice. I guess that's not really dictation."
The stranger gave an odd little smile but did not respond to that. Instead, he said, "This friend of yours, the one you truly believe to be your friend, they will not be hurt?"
Alec looked at him sideways. "Why would she be? Like I said, I'm not asking her to be friends. She's not involved. They don't even have to cross paths."
The stranger stopped walking and looked up at Alec. "You haven't had many friends, have you?"
Alec blushed and scuffed the pavement with the toes of one shoe. "Is it really that obvious?"
The stranger chuckled and started walking again. "You have a brother, yes? And you care about him? Yes, I thought you did. What if your brother got in with a terrible friend, one that pulled him into things like drinking or drugs and things like that, would you be upset?"
"Of course," Alec said instantly.
"Such it is with friends. Friends are like siblings who choose to be with you and choose to care about you. The good and close ones, that is, and those are rare. Now, I do not know this girl, perhaps she is trying to control you, but somehow I doubt this. I would guess that she acts this way because she was hurt, hurt terribly, and now she fears seeing her friend be hurt. If you are hurt, she will be hurt, and she will have to deal with you while you are hurt and trying to heal, and you being hurt hurts her as your brother being hurt hurts you. In a way of thinking, it is selfish, as she wishes to avoid pain, but are we all not a little selfish from time to time?" He smiled and shrugged. "Are you not possibly being, just perhaps, ever so slightly selfish in your own treatment of your friend?"
Alec turned bright red and rubbed the back of his neck. "It is possible," he admitted grudgingly, his insides twisting guiltily. No, it wasn't just possible, it was true. He'd been so upset about how this whole affair had been affecting him, he hadn't thought about how it would be affecting Sloan - really affecting her and not just his assumptions. He'd thought he could live in a bubble with his friendships. Perhaps that wasn't as true as he'd thought. No, he'd never truly thought it was true, he hadn't thought at all. He'd been deliberately trying not to think. That was, perhaps, even worse.
Another smile, but the stranger chose not to follow up on that. "You chose to do the opposite because of spite you said. Spite is truly not the worst way to decide how to live your life, believe it or not, but it is not so good when this spite is directed at people we love. I think there is also something more? Another reason why you are with this other girl?"
"It's not because I am attracted to her," Alec said quickly. That was one of the reasons why he'd been avoiding having this conversation with Dark and Daizi. Firstly, he knew he was avoiding hearing things he didn't want to hear and knew they'd say, but also because he was so completely unattracted to the girl that he couldn't stand even the idea of someone thinking that he was.
"A fully blind man can see that," the stranger replied dryly, catching Alec off guard.
"Well... there is also curiosity," Alec admitted. "Why did she single me out? Why does she want me around? What could she possibly want from me? I am not a star athlete, incredibly popular, or the most beautiful person at school. I am just an ordinary face in the crowd to someone like her, and if my friend is even partially right, then I think I am not far off in thinking she wants something from me. But what? I have nothing to give her if friendship is not her goal, which seems to be true, or not true, whichever way that goes. She has no desire of friendship toward me."
They had reached the end of the street. Once again, they crossed to the other side and started back.
"So, curiosity drives you," the man nodded. "Curiosity is the greatest and the worst gift ever given to man. It leads to our greatest discoveries and our biggest disasters."
Alec heaved a sigh. "I suppose you're right. Curiosity is not the best reason to be flirting with such emotional danger." He paused, listening to his footfalls once more, rubbing his hands on the insides of his jean pockets. "It's just..." He spoke softly, feeling as though he was sharing a deep secret. "I suppose the truth is I really, really wanted her to actually want to be friends with me. She approached me. I'm the one who does all the work, usually. I'm the one who soothes over ruffled feathers when he makes someone mad. I'm the one who talks to the people who need talking to. I'm the one who puts on the friendly face whether I want to or not and put my best foot forward. There was a brief time, right after the school talent show, that people were interested, but that was only after I proved I was someone worth being interested in. That idea was mine, too, and it came out really well. But, this time, for the first time this year, someone approached me first before I did anything to prove myself, and it felt... nice. It felt good." He paused for a while, thinking. "I suppose that's not completely fair. My friend, she approached me, though I guess it was also kind of her school job. My other friend, he was assigned to us when he transferred to our school. Otherwise, I don't think we'd ever have said two words to each other."
"So in other words, you were tired of being the one to do all the work," the stranger said with a faint smirk.
"Well... yes. I'm probably not being fair again, but that's what it felt like," Alec admitted.
The stranger shrugged. "It's alright to feel like that, but the only way it's going to change, really change, is if you start asking the people already in your life to fill your needs just like you fill theirs. It feels weird and awkward, but that's how friendships work. If the friends you already have aren't willing to at least try to give back the same as you give them, then it's time to go shopping for new friends. But first, it is only fair to give them a chance. Don't you agree?" He smiled up at Alec.
"Yes, I agree," Alec sighed. He looked up at the stars twinkling in the night sky. "I guess I had this idea at the beginning of this school year that things would be different. That for once... I wouldn't be so lonely. That I wouldn't feel so sad all the time deep down. That maybe I could be different. That I could have friends. I don't need to be popular with the whole school, no, nothing like that, but after last year's talent show, I thought that maybe... I could see myself laughing and enjoying the company of two or three more people. That I would be a little more successful. That I wouldn't be so afraid all the time, that I could trust someone despite what my brother did." He paused briefly. "My brother did something he is very, very sorry about, and I want to forgive him, but a tiny part of me... it just can't. And... well, he's not like me. He's seeking more. He wants to go out and explore and experience, whereas I... I'm scared to go too far from the house without him. It's not fair to trap him here, and I don't think I could if I wanted to, which means that someday... someday I'll be all alone without him. I am scared of being alone, and I'm tired, so very tired of always being afraid. I thought if I could step out and try to do things different from the normal that maybe I could learn to be less cowardly, but in the end, I've just made a mess of things. I just... I didn't want to be me anymore. I thought that I could be... more. Less lonely. Less scared. That things would change from just me being a ratty kid with horrid fashion tastes from the wrong side of the tracks and a mother other kids thought was a prostitute." He paused again and slowed to a stop, still staring up at the stars.
The silence stretched on so long Alec glanced over to see if the stranger was still there. He was, and he stood with his eyes - or eye, if he spoke the truth - fixed on the night sky. Alec looked back up, watching the stars twinkle.
"Finding new friends," said the stranger quietly, "that takes courage, but that is not what you lack. No, you seem like a courageous fellow to me. You are not a coward because you fear. You are a coward if you run away instead of walking forward, or at the very least standing firm. These new friends you want, this new girl, are you so desperate because you fear to be alone? Many have this fear, it is not an unusual fear, and it can even be good to drive us out of our comfort zones, but to force a friendship just to not be alone, that is not good. It is good to wish for friends, but not when you wish to use them, hmm? And more than anything else in this world, the most important and most difficult lesson we must all learn is happiness with ourselves. Contentment, because only when we are happy with ourselves, at least mostly, only then can we have happiness with others and bring happiness to them. "
Alec took a deep breath, tasting a cool breeze as it wafted through, and let it out slowly. Using people as a distraction, using things, using even his own rebellion, all to distract from what he really felt. He hadn't thought of it that way, but he hadn't wanted to think like that, had he? He'd been avoiding exactly those types of thoughts even to the point of abandoning his first good and true friend and worrying his parents. He'd been so afraid of being alone that he'd fulfilled his own fear by driving everyone away and hurting people he cared about. It was foolishness. It was harmful. It wasn't him. He could be better than this. He needed to be better than this for the sake of his friends and family, but he wasn't sure he could face them. Perhaps that was where the courage came into play: actually talking.
He glanced down. "Thank you for talking to me. It really gave me a lot more to think about and brought me a bit of clarity."
"You are very welcome." The stranger slowed to a stop and looked up. "If I may ask a question of my own?"
"Of course," Alec agreed readily.
"Why are you out here speaking to strangers in the dead of the night rather than the male friend, your brother, or your parents? No, I do not mind, but you do not strike me as the type to trust easily," the stranger said with a slight wave of his hand.
"I'm not, but I've never seen you before, meaning I'll likely never see you again, which means I don't have to care about your opinion," Alec said before he could stop himself. He bit his lip, horrified.
The stranger's light laugh of pure delight filled the night air. "Now that is honesty!" he chortled, shaking his head. "Very good! And I do understand. It is true, it can be difficult to speak with those you see often for fear their opinion will change, but, no. I do not live around here, meaning you shall not see me again."
A reluctant smile wormed its way onto Alec's face. "Sorry, sir, and thank you. Truly."
The man gave a little mock salute. "I am delighted to be the unimportant opinion. Good night, my curious friend. May tomorrow find your mind clear."
Alec tried to return the salute and turned to walk across the street to his house. Somehow, their walk had ended right in front of Dark and Daizi's house. He glanced back as he headed up the walk, but the road was empty. He stood frowning, looking to and fro, but the stranger was nowhere to be seen. He shook his head, let himself into the house, and carefully locked up and touched the salt before taking down his note and heading up to bed.
The next morning, Xander found himself the first one up. He puttered around and got a pancake breakfast going, but to his surprise, only Alec came down to join him. Alec idly munched on a pancake, his brow furrowed with thought. Xander thought about commenting on it, but it was too early, and he had to pay attention to the pancakes. Not to mention he was a little annoyed they were still heading to the park to meet with Crystal. Did they really have to? He supposed they did, but it was still annoying.
Dark and Daizi still hadn't come down, and he was starting to get worried. Should they go check on them? Was it safe to do something like that? The thought of catching the two in some kind of delicate situation was enough to stop him from going upstairs. Instead, he waited downstairs.
