Chapter Text
Tom pulls his coat a little tighter around himself as a small child rushes past his legs, quickly followed by another in hot pursuit.
“Greg,” he calls out, dubiously, “Remind me again why I’m surrounded by children of the corn?”
“Well,” a voice somewhere to his right replies, “When I was a kid, my mom always took me to these things. I think on reflection it was maybe like… Somewhere she could drop me off to keep me busy for a few hours? I dunno, I had a lot of theories about mazes that I liked to debunk, so to speak…”
“Theories about mazes? What the fuck does that even mean. What kind of strange maze obsessed child were you? Did you do the crop circle thing, too?”
“No man, like, you know,” he hears, now somewhere over to his left, “There’s that theory— Wall following? Where you put your hand on one side of the maze and just follow that wall, that’s supposed to get you out. Stuff like like that? I liked to see if it was true and time how long it took me and stuff…”
Tom shakes his head, “That sounds…” he pauses, smiling a little fondly, “Fucking adorable, actually, you weird little corn freak.”
He hears Greg exhale a laugh somewhere back over to his right, “Yeah, well, it was fun, okay? I like mazes… Irrespective of their principle material. They’re cool.”
“And what was so special and cool about this one that you decided to drag me in here only to swiftly abandon me?”
Tom looks down at the ground, toeing an errant husk of corn with his shoe. The second they stepped foot in here Greg took off at a sprint like an excited kid. Tom’s been following his voice ever since.
“Ah, well…” Greg begins, sounding sheepish, “Supposedly there’s a mystery prize at the centre and stuff like that just really entices me,” he says, sounding a touch disappointed in himself and Tom wants to laugh. Instead he covers his mouth with his hand and clears his throat.
“Does this mean that providing I offer up a mystery prize you will do the dishes every once in a while—“
Tom yelps when he feels a hand curl in the back of his coat and suddenly yank. For a few seconds all he sees is green amidst a rush of leaves and corn before finally he looks up to see Greg staring down at him, grinning triumphantly.
“I would happily do the dishes, man, but you always load the dishwasher before I get chance…”
“Greg, did you just pull me—“
“Technically, yeah, and I think that sort of counts as cheating? I potentially sacrificed the mystery box for you, dude.”
Tom blinks up at him indignantly, “Well I didn’t ask you to, Greg…”
Greg shrugs, brushing debris from Tom’s shoulders, “You implied that you were lonely.”
Tom feels the corner of his mouth tick upward before he catches it and reinstalls his frown, “Did I also imply that my Armani needed some extra flourishes in the form of leaves and twigs?”
Greg smiles a little wryly, “Yes, definitely.”
Tom rolls his eyes, looking all around them before spotting a larger area further along to their right. In the middle of it stands a podium with a box atop it wrapped in silver paper.
Tom jerks his head in the direction of it, “Hey, isn’t that the middle? AKA, the prize zone...”
Greg blinks at him for a moment before slowly looking over, watching as a small group of kids all run up to it at once and begin fighting over it.
He shrugs, smiling, “Oh well, maybe next time.” He looks back to Tom, unbothered and eyes glittering, “I think the best part of a corn maze is who you get to make out with along the way.”
Tom arches an eyebrow at him, “And who exactly have you been making out with along the way?”
”You, obviously,” Greg says, hands already on the lapels of Tom’s coat as he pulls him in to kiss him before he has time to protest, crowding him back into the corn stalks.
”You are very ridiculous,” Tom says into his mouth, wondering distantly whether their balcony is big enough to grow a hedge maze on.