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need somebody to remember my name

Summary:

Noé spends the day with a new friend before they're separated for a long time.

Prompt: Food Trucks

Work Text:

“Teacher’s given me some spending money today,” Noé told the boy with the changing blue eyes as he tugged him by hand down the street. The boy’s eyes were actually visible today, rather than swollen up or bandaged, which Noé thought was wonderful; today, hopefully, would be a good day.

“Spending money’s no good if you’re only going to use it to get an Uber after you get horrifically lost,” groused the boy. “You ought to just give it all to me.”

Noé grinned at him. “I sort of am!” he said. “I wanted to buy you something special today.”

“Oh yeah?” asked the other boy. “What?”

“I don’t know yet.” Noé squeezed the other boy’s hand the way Louis used to squeeze his when he had a nightmare. “I’ll find out when I see it!”

“Ugh, you’re so annoying,” the boy muttered, but he squeezed Noé’s hand back. “It had better not be a toy or doll or anything like that, I can’t bring those back with me. And if you buy dumb tarte tatin again I am going to scream.

“I know you don’t like sweet things,” Noé assured the boy. He knew lots about him, even if he didn’t know his name. He knew he hated sweet things, and hated even more to be seen caring about things or people, and above all to be seen as kind by anyone, though Noé was of the opinion that this boy was the nicest person he’d ever met other than Domi, Louis, and Jeanne. This placed him only above Noé’s teacher in his regard; this was because the boy was a total asshole and Noé’s teacher had killed Louis. 

Noé did not know very many people.

“Have you even been this far away from your teacher’s house before?” muttered the boy as Noé continued doggedly dragging him down the street.

“I used to live at his old house,” Noé informed him, “and besides you and me’ve gone into town before.”

“Once. And we got lost for eight hours and not only Sev notice that I was gone—though, to be fair, he’s an observant fucker—he covered for me so now I owe him shit.” The boy grimaced at the idea of being indebted in any way at all to ‘Sev’ (who, Noé had figured, was a fake nickname for the other boy in the house his friend lived in, the one who wasn’t his cute little brother Misha).

“I could fight him for you,” Noé offered. “My teacher’s been training me.”

The boy shook his head. “If you ever go anywhere near where I live I’ll fucking kill you,” he told Noé. “Swear on anything I’ll fucking murder you. Don’t go near that house.”

Noé frowned. “Why not?” he asked. “You come to my teacher’s house all the time.”

“My guardian will cut you into a hundred pieces and eat you up if you ever dare,” the boy told him. “Also, Sev will skin you alive. I saw him do that to another kid once.”

Noé was suitably impressed and dropped the subject; if he tried to fight a kid who skinned other kids, Louis would have told him, he’d deserve what he’d get.

Noé had picked up other fun tidbits about the two main other inhabitants of his friend’s house. Misha was five or six years old and tiny, a child, it seemed, who loved without reserve and lent himself well to being protected. The boy with the blue eyes complained about him incessantly, which meant that he adored him without reserve and would do anything to protect him. Sev, meanwhile, was legitimately hated; he was too quiet and creepy, he had come with the house that the boy with the blue eyes and his brother lived in, he knew how to pick locks and would wander aimlessly through the night, though, unlike Noé’s friend, he never snuck out. Sev and Misha weren’t strong enough to sneak out, like Noé’s friend could, and sometimes Noé thought the only reason his friend didn’t take up permanent residence in the shed in his teacher’s back garden was that Misha couldn’t come along.

Sometimes, Noé even thought that his friend might bring Sev, too, if only so that whoever it was that took care of them would lose three children rather than two. But this was rather unlikely; the boy had never once mentioned taking Misha and-maybe-Sev and escaping, and Noé didn’t know how to bring it up.

So instead he just walked hand in hand with his friend down the hot summer path until he caught sight of a park with a few brightly-colored vans in its parking lot, and immediately swiveled towards it.

“Hey, where are we going?” asked the boy.

“Those trucks look pretty neat!” Noé explained. “We should really check them out.”

The boy rolled his eyes. “What, and if some guy came up to you in a white van and offered you candy and puppies you’d just go in, right?”

Noé blinked. “Probably! That sounds really nice,” he said. “Do you know anyone who would do that?”

The boy groaned. “You are so stupid. And, yes, I do—and don’t you ever dare actually accept the candy or puppies or whatever, he’s literally evil.”

Noé tilted his head. “But…isn’t giving people candy a nice thing to…?”

“Not if you’re using it to hurt them, moron!” the boy snapped. “Which is what that sort of people do, have you lived under a rock your whole life?”

“No, I lived with my grandparents until they died, and then my teacher after he purchased me on the black market,” Noé said, and the boy started choking, as if that wasn’t a completely normal backstory to have. “Look, I think those vans are selling food!”

“What do you mean you were bought off the black market—Noé—Noé, get back here!”

The boy’s footsteps slapped after him as Noé hurried to where the vans were gathered around. People stood in lines at them, and menus detailed an array of amazing smelling food.

“Oh, it’s just food trucks,” Noé’s friend sighed. “You could have said that, moron.”

“I don’t know what food trucks are,” Noé said.

“Of course you don’t,” muttered his friend. “Okay, look, you’re going to buy us lunch from there, and you’re going to use your extra money to buy me a couple extra to-go meals and some dessert and then I’m taking you back to your home, okay?”

“Why would I do that?” asked Noé.

“You said you wanted to buy me something special!”

Noé blinked. “Oh, yeah…”

“God, you’re an idiot.” Noé wasn’t sure, but it looked like his friend was suppressing a smile. “Come on. Which do you think looks best?”

Noé looked at the menus. There were around five food trucks, each boasting a different sort of cuisine from places he’d only read about in books (one of which was, in fact, the country he was currently in). After a few moments, one of them, a brightly colored thing with a string of fairy lights hanging from it, caught his eye, and he tugged his friend over.

They ordered, and loitered around the window waiting for their meals, bickering over the stupidest of stupid things until the food came and Noé forgot all about their argument in favor of digging into the delicious meal.

His friend’s palate was a lot more delicate, and he picked at his own food like a baby bird, and so Noé just sat and scraped at his own, now-empty styrofoam container (it just looked so fascinating; was it edible? Did Domi know about it? If he gave her one, would she like it?) until his friend packed away the remainders of his food, complaining about his too-full stomach. They went back to buy the two other (cold) meals and two desserts—a handheld apple pie for Noé to eat on the way home and a slice of cake, wrapped neatly with a bag of ice to keep the frosting from melting, in a little bag for the boy with the blue eyes.

They made it back to Noé’s teacher’s house unfortunately fast—for whatever reason, whenever something interesting caught Noé’s eye, his friend would hook one hand through the collar of Noé’s shirt and drag him on until they were standing in the front yard of Noé’s teacher’s house and, to Noé’s surprise, the sun was setting.

“Thanks for today, I guess,” muttered Noé’s friend. “It’ll probably be a while before you see me again, the doctor’s raring up for something big soon, so.”

“I’ll wait,” Noé reassured him, smiling, and then leaned over and gave his friend a quick peck on the cheek, something that Domi had begun demonstrating for him a few weeks back. “There! Now you have good luck!”

His friend’s face blazed crimson, and he kicked him in the ankle, hard. “Eat shit and die,” he suggested, before snatching the bags he’d had Noé carry for him out of Noé’s arms and running off before Noé could kick him back.

Well, whatever.

It wasn’t like he’d be gone for too long, after all.