15 - he can't run, but he CAN hide

What was worse, running in scorching sunlight or foggy not-quite-warm-but-not-yet-cold October weather? Simple answer, running always sucked and Quinn was never going to get better at it.

Ciel was a couple of meters in front of him, looking much more graceful than him with his stupidly long legs and steady tempo. How anyone could run steadily on the moist forest floor was a mystery to Quinn.

The long awaited Coach Owens makes us run through the forest day had finally come this Saturday, where groups of students were just told to 'run the usual path', one that Quinn was in fact not familiar with, while the coach apparently waited back at the running track. And while the idea of running through the shade of Oakwell's surrounding woods had sounded beautiful during mid September, the wet muddy forest ground was less than ideal now, in the early stages of autumn.

Quinn had lost his breath after a minute or so, and now he'd been following his roommate for an impossibly long time, on the constant verge of death. Or passing out. Or throwing up. Ciel thankfully slowed down just a little now, looking around before turning around to face Quinn.

"You doing fine?" he asked, his voice too steady for someone who'd been running for at least one million hours.

"Do I look like I'm fine?"

"You look miserable." Ciel looked around again, craning his neck to get a better view of the forest path behind him, then a smile, almost mischievous, appeared on his face. "Now is the time, then."

With a couple of swift steps, Ciel hopped off the forest path and slipped between some bushes instead, disappearing between shrubs and greenery. Quinn blinked, hesitated, before quickly following Ciel into the unknown.

The thicket here was dense, bushes and trees standing close to each other, and yet Ciel seemed to know exactly where to take a turn, what branches to push away, what stumps to slip past to arrive at a tiny little clearing far enough from the main path. Certainly a calculated spot to escape the Saturday running club.

"Rest," Ciel said, his voice lowered. "We can stay here for a bit and then catch back up later, I know a shortcut back to the track."

"Not the first time you've done this, huh?"

"Oh, Quinn, if only you knew." He exhaled, a grin on his lips, as he sat down on a thick branch. He stretched out his legs and rolled his head back and forth.

"I don't know why I had imagined you to be one of those goody two shoes all this time. Like the kinda guy that would never do anything that's not allowed?"

"Come on, I hate this place as much as the next person. I, like anyone else, have found my ways to survive this shitshow. Besides, I don't think coach has never noticed random students going missing in the woods every now and then. As long as they come back, who gives a shit?"

"And do they always come back?"

Ciel hummed, closed his eyes as he thought. "Actually, I think someone went missing in the 80s. Oh well. I get the incentive of walking into the woods and never coming back out again."

Quinn let out a chuckle, then sat down on the branch next to Ciel, the wood creaking and cracking under the added weight of the twig that was Quinn's body. He stared into the woods, imagined getting kidnapped by mothman or something. Or falling into a hole and having someone drop a rock on you. Or like, dying in any other way. Not that he wanted any of that to happen, but he could think about it nonetheless.

It was silent out here, save for the rustle of leaves and small animals scuttling past, squirrels and mice and birds going about their day climbing up trees and rocks and digging through the ground. Far, far, far away, if you really were to try and listen, faint voices of students echoed over from the path on which they were supposed to jog.

Far, far, far away from Quinn and Ciel and their own little silent universe.

"Hey, uh, Quinn?" Ciel's voice had changed just now. Softer. A bit more high pitched. A tiny little more effortless, natural, comfortable. "There's... A thing I wanted to say."

"Oh?" Quinn didn't look at him, continued to stare into the depths of the forest, now a blur of oranges and reds. Not much green anymore. Quinn had gotten so damn sick of all that green.

"So. Basically." Ciel inhaled, paused for a second, cleared his throat. "I don't hate you." His voice had dropped again.

"Okay. I mean, yeah. I figured. You talk in a mean way sometimes but then you kind of do a lot of nice things for me, so I had already assumed that you don't super hate me."

"Oh. Yeah." He chuckled, something relieved in his voice, and something insecure mixed into it as well. A strange weave of emotions that Quinn was probably too dense to really pick up on. "I should probably apologize for the way I acted towards you in the beginning, though."

"You acted just fine, I mean, you were kind of mean to me, but in the end you've been my personal tour guide since day one." Quinn shrugged, attempted to bring something calm and chill and nonchalant into the conversation, as though that had ever worked. "Sometimes you remind me of my sister. Is that weird?"

"Your sister is mean to you?"

"Plenty of times, yeah. It's a genetic thing, I think. We got that from dad, maybe." Quinn now finally turned towards Ciel, whose eyes were fixed onto some point in the woods far, far away, wistful and almost sad. Ciel was really damn good at looking sad, with his foresty eyes and these elegant mysterious glasses that he couldn't even take off when running, like they were two windows set in front of Ciel's eyes to prevent his soul from spilling out of them.

"I'm still sorry, I guess. I don't really... like having people around me."

"Like a cat," Quinn concluded.

"Like- Sure. Like a cat." Ciel cleared his throat. "No, seriously, Quinn. Let me apologize to you. I should've treated you better, I was the first person you met and I probably should've tried to-"

"I mean, I guess you just primed me for the way everyone else around me was gonna treat me. Imagine if you had been nice to me and set false expectations."

"Quinn. My god, you need to shut your mouth for half a second, I'm trying to be honest with you here!"

"Well, don't be honest with me!"

"I want to be honest with you, though! You deserve an apology from me."

Did he though? Quinn wasn't one to really do apologies. Not one to give them, not one to receive them. There was always something that made them feel- strange. Bad. Not enough, or maybe too much.

He'd learned to end arguments and disagreements in other ways. With his mother, they'd always silently hugged it out. With his father, they'd ignored each other for a day and then pretended like nothing ever happened. With James, they just let their grudges fester. With Grace, they'd silently sit together until one started cracking jokes again. With Shane, they'd- Well.

Quinn drove the heel of his shoe into the dirt.

"I don't like apologies," he said plainly.

"That is- Hm." Ciel furrowed his brows. "That doesn't sound like a super healthy thing to say, I'll be honest."

"Eh," Quinn just answered, stretching his legs out a bit. They hurt. Somehow. Maybe all the walking from classroom to classroom hadn't been good for his poor frail body, or maybe running for like half a minute before falling back into a lazy job once a week was doing irreparable damage to his bones.

"Well, I said what I wanted to say." Ciel sighed, eyed Quinn, who now got up to stretch his whole body. Everything cracked. Quinn had just broken about thirty bones, probably. He continued to move each of his limbs to potentially break more.

"I appreciate that. I also don't hate you."

Ciel scoffed, shaking his head with a grin tucking at the corners of his mouth. He'd changed. In the past weeks, he'd changed a lot. Now Quinn had already assumed that Ciel didn't hate him, he'd been too helpful, too caring for that. Not in words but in actions.

He still didn't like it when Quinn was in the room, still didn't like it when he didn't stay away for long enough, but like, sharing a room with a stranger was shit for someone who wasn't used to it. And Ciel obviously wasn't.

He'd become less grumpy in the evenings though. Not in the mornings, which Quinn couldn't blame him for. He'd become more talkative as well. Which didn't mean much for Ciel, he still was no chatterbox for sure, but every now and then, he'd slip out a 'How was your day?', with a short but earnest conversation following. Little comments and anecdotes scattered about, more smiles.

And every now and then, a sigh, a groan, a mumbled 'I hate this place'. A misery that comforted Quinn, reminded him that he wasn't as alone. Oakwell wasn't just an enemy to him alone, no matter how badly some wanted to convince him that he was the only one struggling.

"You know, I think you'd make a good dancer," Ciel now said out of nowhere, and Quinn stopped in his tracks of pacing in a circle with his arms swinging back and forth.

"Oh? Because, like, I have sexy legs and great proportions and all?"

"Because it'd probably be a great way for you to move and let off all your excess energy. Y'know, turn all that-" He gestured at Quinn rather vaguely. "-into something more productive. Also, you're too confident. It would be a fun way to humble you." Now he eyed Quinn, and a grin snuck onto his face. "Not to discredit your legs, though. If you stopped tripping over your own feet, you could almost be elegant."

"Oh my god, Ciel! That's almost flirting!" Quinn stopped, propped his hands on his hips, did a little pose with his legs sticking out. Long indeed, and certainly a tripping hazard if you were a lanky idiot like Quinn.

"You wish. You're not really my type, you know."

Oh. Oh! Ah! Wait!

"Wait, what is your type?"

"Bit early for a conversation like this, huh?" Ciel got up, stretched his arms out, then nodded towards the bushes they'd climbed through to get to their resting spot. "Let's start to head back. Don't wanna make it too obvious that we're doing fuckall."

"Don't change topics on me now, come on! You've teased me too much now! I'll tell you my type as well!"

"I don't really care too much about your type, Quince."

"Don't Quince me! Come on! Personally, I like blue eyes!"

"No shit. I don't care. Now move your sexy legs and get out of this bush."

"Don't leave me hanging! I'm a nosy bitch, I need to know this kind of stuff!"

"It's none of your business anyways?"

"One trait you like about someone, come on."

"I like girls who won't take shit from idiots that ask them dumbass questions."

Ah! Girls! What a feminist! "Is that all?"

"All you need to know. Run."

Ciel's voice was bright, a smile audible in his tone. A pleasant sound, one Quin could've gotten used to.

At least Ciel saw this as friendly banter. Dev would've probably jumped up in rage the second the word 'flirt' had fallen. But Dev wasn't here. Thankfully.

Dev was on the tennis court and hitting the stupid tennis ball with his stupid tennis racket and Quinn could see him all the way from the race track on which he now stretched.

Ciel's shortcut had made today's club activity so much more survivable, and now they were stretching and moving around aimlessly to cool off their body or whatever use it had. Ciel was better at it than Quinn, so he just tried to clumsily copy his movements as he threw attempts of deadly stares over into the general direction of the tennis court.

"Are you trying to stare him to death so your tutoring gets cancelled?" Ciel had noticed Quinn's gaze into the distance, and followed his eyes.

"Maybe," Quinn mumbled, now having given up on stretching, just swinging his arms back and forth as the tennis game in the distance was called to an end.

"How have things been going, by the way? Made any progress with your domestication?"

"Hell no." Quinn scoffed, his gaze now breaking away. "It's kind of useless. And he just gets mad at me for everything." Not that it wasn't deserved, plenty of times.

"Dev and getting mad? This is so strange hearing that from you. He always seemed like a bit of a doormat to me. Easy to push around, does what he's told, painfully loyal to his weird art friends, according to Felix. Would probably jump off a bridge if Nicolas Benson asked him to." Off a bridge, maybe, but not into a lake. "Not that I've ever talked to him much but he's always had like, scared deer vibes."

"How much do you know about him?" Quinn asked, his eyes back on the tennis court, now trying to spot any other familiar figures in the distance. "Nico, I mean."

"You call him Nico? He won't like that."

"Why, though? He offered to call him that."

"Did he?" Ciel's eyes narrowed, scanning Quinn as though his face would hold any answers. "Are you close?"

Quinn shook his head. Not close. Had talked to each other twice. At the lake, and then when Nico was carrying around that slightly terrifying yet impressive self portrait. Not that Quinn hadn't attempted to talk to him after that. He'd greeted him every now and then, though Nico usually couldn't hear him, always being distracted by his friend group, caught up in conversations and jokes that made him laugh out loud, enough to drown out Quinn's quick hellos.

"From what I've heard," Ciel said, his voice carrying something careful, "he's not the nicest person ever. Thinks very highly of himself. Very quick to judge others." That sounded more like Dev than anyone else, though.

"He was nice to me though, when I met him."

"Well, yes, but-"

"And it's not like anyone else really made an effort to be nice to me, you know."

Ciel fell silent for a couple of seconds, then he cleared his throat.

"I don't think- Whatever. Maybe you're right, or maybe you're not. I don't like him. But I don't like most people here."

"Me neither." Quinn's eyes wandered back towards the small figure over at the tennis court that was Dev, stretching his arms as he talked to someone else, before he turned around in Quinn's direction.

Could Dev see him? Could he tell that it was Quinn looking at him? Was he able to see Quinn's face, his expression, his eyes? Could he maybe feel it? Quinn stared at Dev, and maybe for two seconds or so, Dev stared back, before he turned his back towards him again.

"Maybe you dislike the wrong person," it came out of Quinn's mouth, more a mumble towards himself than an actual accusation of Ciel. And yet, he replied, a sad sigh, then with a careful tone:

"Maybe you do as well?"

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WC: 2609

thank you so much for reading this chapter! if you enjoyed it, leave a vote and some love!

we're going a bit more chill this time. now that we've (technically) met every important character, what are your thoughts on them? do you have a favoruite? a least favourite? how do we think will these characters and their relationship to quinn evolve👀 i'm curious to hear your ideas and thoughts so far!