Vagrancy

★PROLOGUE|LOSS★

Vagrancy: Mental wandering; Reverie

Tori can't believe it.

Twenty six years, just gone. In the blink of an eye no less. She'd always known that life was hypothetically fleeting, but she’d never truly wrapped her mind around the idea losing her best friend since diapers. Having Andrew around had always seemed a given.

And now he's gone. His brilliant soul snuffed, forever, by an asshole who'd drank one too many.

“God, ” she sniffs pitifully. “It's all my fault.”

If she and Andrew hadn’t fought, hadn’t argued like they had, he might still be alive. He might not have gone rushing into the night, probably crying, and gotten into the accident. He'd have been home, with her, safe, and sound…

Tori pushes her mousy brown hair out of her cerulean eyes, silently cursing the wind, and simultaneously grateful for the shocking cold of it against her flushed cheeks.

Her feet are on autopilot. She doesn’t really want to return home just yet, can't bring herself to face the emptiness she knows will be waiting for her there. Not for the first time, as she wanders Boston's nighttime streets, she thinks about just how lonely it is here.

She misses the starlit skies of her native Alaska. About now, the Aurora Borealis should be visible in the sky back home, and she wishes she were there to see it. It's a common enough occurrence in her home town, one that happens every winter without fail. And yet, her eyes had always been drawn to it.

For as long as she can remember, she'd been so enamored by it. Tori had spent the entirety of her formative years daydreaming about what could be out there, what mysteries the cosmos might possibly hold. She'd always had her head in the stars, so nobody in town had been surprised when she announced that she was going to go to MIT, and become a cosmologist.

Nor had it been particularly shocking when Andrew had announced that he was going to go with her. He'd claimed then that he hadn’t known exactly what he'd wanted to do with his life, but supporting Tori was always going to be his primary concern. She wasn’t allowed to leave without him, he'd said.

And so it was that they'd gotten a tiny apartment together, and moved to Boston. Andrew worked two part-time jobs while Tori had gone to school, as the pay from Tori’s work study program hadn’t really been enough to support them.

They spent years together like this. Through her uneasy first years, in MIT, and even her frustrating later years. He’s held her hand and ranted with her about every time she'd received an unfair mark, and he'd always taken her side. And when she began working directly under her professor, and starting working towards her doctoral thesis, he'd been right there to remind her that her professor is just an asshat.

Eight years they'd struggled together, for eight years she'd taken him and his feelings for granted. She hadn’t even known, and God, she really fucking should have… But she really hadn’t any idea that he was in love with her until he was springing it on her twenty minutes before a date.

She hadn’t known how to respond, wasn’t sure what to say. He'd asked her to give him a chance, had revealed that he'd been in love with her since they were kids. And she'd immediately shut him down.

Just a brother.

That’s all she'd ever seen him as. And when she'd told him that, she'd crushed his world. She'd taken his beautiful, kind heart, and smashed it into a million pieces.

And yet he'd still asked for her in his final moments.

As her feet carry her further away from the hospital, and towards the local diner, she can’t help but recall that single, terrifying and heart-wrenching moment in which his heart had finally stopped.

“Don't blame yourself,” he'd told her, “and don’t miss me either. We'll see each other again someday.”

And just like that, he'd flatlined.

Stupid Andrew.

How the hell is she supposed to do either of those things?

The diner is mercifully empty, and Tori is easily able to claim a seat at the counter. Joe, the cook, greets her merrily.

“Usual?”

“Yeah, ” Tori mumbles.

She isn’t sure if she expected that seeing Andrew's former boss might hurt, but as she settled into her stool she realizes that it undoubtedly is. She frequents this place so often, and is such a creature of habit lately, that she never even has to actually order anymore. Which is probably a good thing considering that, right now, the last thing she really has the energy to do is talk very much.

The bell over the door chimes, the crystalline sound echoing over even the stove’s open flame, the clattering of utensil against skillet, and skillet against burner. With mild interest, Tori notes that the new arrivals are all men who look as if they could easily be movie stars, or models.

There are three of them, and they each strike her as unusual in their own way.

One of the shorter males, round-faced and with cherry colored hair, wears a simple hoodie and pair of ripped jeans. But it's the colors that truly catch her eye. She's never seen anyone get away with wearing anything quite so yellow before, and the color of his jeans is an unusual, nearly powder blue. And when he smiles at his taller companion, she notices a set of charming dimples display themselves upon his cheeks. His bright, amber colored irises shine with an almost inner sort of light.

The other male that is around the same height as the first is muscular. Tori would have to be blind not to notice the bulge of his biceps, especially since his tight and deep, midnight blue muscle shirt leaves little to the imagination. The sleeves to a bright, purple coverall are tied snugly about his waist. And his short, white hair is tipped with a light blue. The same color as his eyes.

The third male is taller than the other two, and incredibly lanky. He's also the least colorful of the bunch, she notes, with dark hair, a white turtle-neck sweater, and crisp grey slacks. His hair is pushed back, obviously styled with some kind of product. But she marvels at the fact that those strands don’t look hard or greasy in the slightest. Rather, his hair shines brilliantly beneath the diner's meager lighting. His eyes, a startling shade of lilac, dart about the diner as if he is on alert, full lips pressed into a flat and stress-ridden line upon his face.

They walk to a booth in the back, mumbling amidst each other so quietly as they slide themselves in, that she can't really tell what they are saying.

“Here you go,” Joe announces, setting a plate of pancakes before her with flourish.

Tori turns her attention to the food, eying it with disinterest. To be honest, she isn’t really hungry. She knows she should eat, but the desire to simply isn’t there.