Running Up That Hill

A/N: I received a request to do some more LxC after putting Chlorine up. I hope you enjoy.

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Running Up That Hill

Part One:

Dust

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The traveler was a pretty young man, but there was definitely something wrong there.

As if, at some point, a stone had been thrown, and part of him cracked. As if the yellow age of the world around him were seeping in slowly, sifting under his skin. He was, in some means of spirit, dusty.

And there he was, covered in it: a boy no older than nineteen, skin only lightly touched by the sun, wandering along a desert road.

He was a patchwork mirage—a shifting image with a threadbare t-shirt, shredded jeans, dented sneakers, and some old leather jewelry—all caked in dirt and knowledge.

Every now and then, as cars passed by, he would stand by the shoulder and watch, big blue eyes wide and near-haunting.

Each car and truck that passed by, sweeping past with a new shifting layer of dust, was filled with little worlds. Each world, rushing by, felt the shift of that figure in the dust, that impermanent boy, watching them back before moving on.

He walked for a long time, stopping eventually at a pile of warm rocks with a resolve to let his sun-baked bones have some rest. His old canvas bag, dangling from one shoulder, seemed like a tattered old standard, born along by tired determination and nothing else.

Soft hands reached into a side pocket, retrieving a small canteen—too heated from the sun to do anything but keep a body working—and bringing it up to his chapped lips.

He relaxed for a brief moment, looking out into the wasted distance.

He had no idea where he was going.

He was absolutely unconscious of any sort of future, because there wasn't one.

And in that moment of quiet aimlessness, he heard the rumble of an engine.

He looked up from his makeshift seat, and found his world in mid-collision.

There at the shoulder, grumbling more than purring was an old, hand-me-down, use-me-up pick-up truck with the passenger window rolled down.

There at the wheel, straightening from where he'd leaned to lower the window, sat a matching driver.

He looked to be his own unique calamity, gray-eyed and brown-haired, with a familiar look and a harsh scar.

Scars like that told more stories than there were grains of sand.

He said, "You lost?"

And the traveler said, "Now that I think about it."

Pretty-boy Pick-up nodded like that was completely normal.

And the dusty little world-wrecker found himself moving for the door handle and hoisting himself in.

"Leon." The driver offered, turning his eyes back to the road as his new passenger strapped himself in.

"…Cloud. Are you planning on taking advantage of me, 'Leon'?"

"No." Leon snorted, pulling back onto the road, "I've got shit luck with blondes."

It doesn't hurt me.

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A/N: If you liked it, review. This should continue, but I'd like to know your feelings.

The song used in this, and the many chapters to come, is "Running Up That Hill", by Placebo.