A/N: Yeah. So. I've apparently decided to make my contribution to the RikuRoku fandom, fic wise. So, yeah. Oh my god the doc saved wrong, so I fixed it I swear :|
Warnings: So, Roxas is a smoker bc I've always headcanon'd him as such. Uhm, I think that's all the warning needed here.
"I thought I might find you up here."
Roxas startles a little at the sudden voice to his side. The clock tower was a restricted area, that never stopped him from sneaking through the barricades and sitting on the edge high above the city, but it normally did keep others away. But if his friends were looking for him, it didn't often keep them out.
"What do you want, Riku?" his tone was ever so slightly exasperated and he digs into his pocket for his pack of cigarettes, pulling one out and putting it to his lips.
"Just to talk." Riku sits a couple feet away from him on the ledge, facing the clock instead of the infinite sky, but Roxas could still feel eyes on him, knowing Riku was still watching him.
"Could you not have waited until I came back down?" His words were muffled around the cigarette he was currently lighting. Not that he had been planning on coming down any time soon. He was trying to avoid this conversation.
"You mean when you decided that coming down wouldn't mean facing the problem?" There's an unamused chuckle to his side and Roxas doesn't bother to hold back his frown as he mentally curses Riku for knowing him that well. "Not a chance. You run away too much."
Roxas takes a deep drag from the cigarette, exhaling the smoke in a sigh and figuring Riku just didn't know what he was talking about. He drags the silence on for another moment, taking another lungful of smoke before replying. "Maybe that's the only way I know how to cope."
"Nasty habit, that." Riku's full gaze was on him now, and Roxas's face morphs into a scowl.
"What do you want me to do then?" He shifts around to look Riku in the eye, pulling the cigarette out of his mouth, trailing smoke as he gestures. "We can't all get what we want."
"Not if you don't try, you can't."
Roxas is startled into laughter, but it wasn't amusement, not truly, there was a darker undertone there. His gaze shifts to look over the edge at the ground far below and a self deprecating smirk settles on his face. The cigarette finds it's way back to his mouth as he absently fiddles with the bracelet on his left wrist. Ever since he was old enough to know what a soulmate was, he kept the name covered, even more so now. Hiding the name from both the world and himself.
"What are you running away from, anyway?" Riku's voice was soft and curious.
Roxas's hand quickly falls away from his bracelet as if burned and he removes the cigarette from his mouth again to flick the ash out into the open air. "Nothing. I'm not running away from anything."
"Bullshit you're not. You wouldn't spend so much time up here alone if you weren't running from something."
Roxas looks back to Riku with a glare. "What do you know?"
"Next to nothing since you don't talk to anyone. If you don't want to talk to me, fine, but Sora's getting worried."
"Sora doesn't have the time to be worried. He's too busy spending all his time with Kairi." The unspoken and you lingers in the air for a moment and dies on his lips and Roxas finds he's scowling again, unsure if Riku even heard the silent words.
"That doesn't mean he can't worry. You two used to be close, you know. I thought that was what being twins was about."
"That has nothing to do with this." Or it had everything to do with it, Roxas wasn't sure. He knew what names were on the wrists of the other three, and since figuring it out he'd been slowly backing away, keeping his distance.
"Then what does this have to do with?" Riku's frowning, Roxas realizes and he's suddenly aware they're about to have a fight.
He stubs out his cigarette on the brick next to him and shifts to face Riku again, one foot on the clock tower, the other still hanging in the air, straddling the parapet, eyes narrowing into a glare.. "So what? You can go running back to my brother and tell him? Tell him why I'm spending all my time sulking up here?"
"No, of course not. We're worried." Riku's frown tightens, his eyebrows pulling closer together.
"You want to know what I'm running from? You want to know what my problem is?" And Roxas is moving again, shifting his other foot to the clock tower and standing, pacing in front of Riku, frowning down at his feet and rubbing his forehead. "You really want to know why I keep leaving, why I'm pulling away?"
"I wouldn't be asking if I didn't."
Roxas stops in front of him and lifts his gaze to meet Riku's, frustration in each set of eyes equaling the ones looks back. "You. You're the problem." And Roxas turns on the ball of his foot and stalks away.
It's not like the name on Riku's wrist matched his anyway.