A/N: Title is original, I know -_-
Ok, so this story has been kinda swimming around in my head for a few months now, and this particular word document has been sitting on my computer for many weeks now (lost track of exactly how long). Anyway, with the school year winding down and finals the week after next, I'm going to be kind of swamped until then, and the first part of my summer will probably be fairly crazy too but hopefully by mid-June or so things will slow down enough that I can actually sit down and write out this story from start to finish. Seriously. I'm really trying to break this problem I've had since I was a kid where I just can't ever finish any project I start.
Otherwise I'll just absolutely adore anybody who reads this and even more so if you leave a review! Or I'm perfectly content with the anonymity of being an unknown writer and can go crawl back under my rock, either way.
Disclaimer:my boys belong to Squeenix and Disney sadly. I do, however, own an awesome purple laptop (no joke, it's really the main reason I bought it) and a craptastic cell phone. (Both of which have nothing to do with this story, other than my laptop is where I wrote it)
I also make playlists for everything I write, so if you're interested in the playlist I made for this chapter, drop me a PM :)
This is also entirely self-edited. I really should get a beta. I normally make RL friends edit my stuff but none of them know I write fanfiction so these things go entirely un-betaed. Oops.
My tumblr is also a good source for finding why I disappear for such long stretches of time:
theinsanefox . tumblr . com
Enjoy, my darlings~!
I stepped out of the airport into the fading afternoon light where I was greeted by the sunset my sleepy little hometown was famous for. I briefly thought about fishing around my carry-on for that pair of Dulce and Gabbana sunglasses I had splurged on recently, but decided I didn't want to be that asshole that walked around with his shades on when it was nearly dark. My fingers twitched for the cigarette I was dying to light, but knew I could not bear to deal with my brother's disapproving look if he saw me smoking. It was bad enough I had to come back to this God forsaken place, there was no way I was going to make this trip any more miserable than it had to be.
Looking around, I finally spotted Cloud leaning against a shiny black truck towards the end of the line of cars. I wasn't sure if he had seen me, so I just grabbed my luggage and began to silently make my way towards him. I managed to grab his attention just as I reached the truck and started waving my hands in front of his face. Not one for words, Cloud nodded his greeting to me as he went to help me throw my bags in the bed of the pickup.
"Where's your motorcycle?" I asked as I hoisted myself into the passenger seat.
I could see the ghost of a smirk on my brother's face as he got situated in the driver's seat. "I couldn't exactly carry your fat ass and your bags on the back of it, now could I?"
Rolling my eyes in response, I turned to stare out the window as we finally pulled out of the airport to begin the hour and a half drive home. The rest of the drive was done in silence, which suited both of us just fine. Cloud had never been one to waste words, and I was hardly in the mood to chat up the brother I had mostly estranged myself from. I was not so sure my family had even expected me to come back after what happened, but I suppose I should just be grateful they still loved me despite what a fucktard I had been.
Just when I though I couldn't take the sight of anymore corn fields or herds of cattle, Cloud finally went to turn the truck into the driveway. We both fumbled around awkwardly as we made to get out of the cab of the truck and grab my luggage from the bed. Before we went inside, I looked Cloud straight in the eye and finally asked the question that had been plaguing both of our minds, "How is he?"
If Cloud's face were capable of expression, I would have sworn that the look he gave me was something akin to anguish. But whatever it was disappeared before I could really put my finger on it.
"Not going to lie, Roxas. It's pretty bad. He's somewhat better than before, but who knows how long it will last before he has another episode." At this point, Cloud could only stare straight ahead, fingers twitching nervously at his sides.
"Oh," was all I could think of to say. I knew I was the worst fucking person in the world for not being able to expand on that, such as asking when I could see him or what I could possibly do to help, but I just couldn't bring myself to form the words.
It was at this point that I realized Cloud was already halfway to the front door of the house, so I finally forced myself to follow him. Looking up at my childhood home in the quickly fading evening light, I was at a loss for words. When I left, I had been blinded by my hatred of the place, of feeling completely suffocated in this Podunk town and wanting nothing except to get the fuck out. Now I all I could feel was lost. Some weird mixture I could only describe as apprehension combined with longing with a touch of remorse added in for good measure.
"Fuck," because really, when in doubt just say some random expletive.
Taking a big deep breath and feeling as if I was about to walk into my own funeral, I grabbed my bag and made the plunge through the front door. I had barely put my bag down before I was greeted by Mickey, the large, black cat the family had had since I was a kid. The fucker jumped off the railing on the stairs onto my face, meowing loudly by way of either greeting or asking me where the hell his food was. How this cat wasn't dead yet was beyond me since he had to be at least 17 years old, and just like always, I felt my eyes beginning itch in response to my allergies. Just one more reason I hated the damn cat.
"Get off me, Mickey!" I growled, grabbing him from my face and plopping him none to gently down on the floor.
As the cat hissed angrily at me and ran off to God knows where, I heard a small thump come from the kitchen down the hall before hearing a cheerful female voice call out, "Roxas! Is that you?"
Feeling my heart swill, I started making my way down the hall with slightly more determination than I had approached anyone else thus far, "Yeah, it's me!"
Once I stepped through the open doorframe into the kitchen, I was smothered in the surprisingly strong hug of my rather frail looking baby sister. I could tell she had tears in her eyes that were begging to fall, but being a Strife, she was too stubborn to let that happen. One thing my family did not do was fucking cry- at least not in front of anybody else.
"Hey, Namine. I'm home," I finally buckled and returned her embrace. I may have been a complete dick to the rest of my family over the years, but I still fucking loved my sweet younger sister. I had always thought she was too good for this fucked up family, and she was really the main reason I had agreed to come home. She was only nineteen, she should be in college and enjoying what was supposed to be the best years of her life, not home babysitting our sorry asses.
I opened my mouth, about to say something more. Probably to give some lame ass excuse for why I had been absent the past several years, or maybe to beg her to forgive me for being the shittiest brother in existence and abandoning her like I did everyone else I had ever loved. But bless her little heart, Namine moved to shut me up by waving a soup ladle in front of my face. "Don't worry about it. For now, let's eat. I made your favorites—or, at least, they were your favorites last time I saw you."
Looking over her shoulder, I saw the steaming plates of bloody rare steaks and fresh mashed potatoes and homemade chicken noodle soup. Her thoughtfulness held an iron vice around my heart. If I had been feeling guilty before, now I felt as if an old friend had come up to me on the street to say hi, then proceeded to punch me in face, breaking my nose and cracking my head open on the pavement below and left me to bleed to death in front of everybody. I was a horrible person and didn't even begin to deserve such a wonderful sister.
"Yeah, those are still my favorites. Not everything has changed."
Blue eyes crinkled in delight as Namine grinned, those damn tears threatening to fall again. "I'm so happy to hear that!"
With that, we sat down to eat our dinner, Namine asking only non personal questions that I only gave the most basic answers to while Cloud ate his food in complete silence. It was a family reunion at its fucking finest.
As I was helping Namine clean the dishes, we heard a knock on the front door, followed by Cloud grumbling, "I'll get it," before ambling off to answer it.
Curious, I stopped what I was doing in attempt to hear who was at the door, but it didn't take long to figure out as soon as I heard "Is it true? Is he back?" all but screamed from down the hallway.
I don't think Cloud even got the chance to respond before I saw a familiar brunette racing into the kitchen, those God damn yellow clown shoes unmistakable. I honestly could not say I was surprised that Sora was one of the first to figure out I had returned since he was my cousin and I figured somebody in the family grapevine had blabbed.
If I had thought Namine's hug was suffocating, Sora all but fucking tackled me to the floor. My siblings and I may have been taught never to cry in public, but Sora was the oddball of our family since he was currently bawling his eyes out like a teenage girl. "You asshole!" he cried. "Why did you leave? Why did you come back and not tell me? Fuck you, Roxas!"
"Sora," I groaned, forcing him off me so I could stand back up. "I'm sorry, ok? Why don't you get a grip and let's go somewhere and talk."
Sniffling, Sora nodded his agreement. "Ok."
I met Sora's gaze with a steady glare. "Good. Now wait here and I'll go fish my coat out of my bag."
Of course I decided to be my usual dick self and took my good sweet time getting my favorite leather jacket. I just had to go and add insult to injury wherever I could. While I was happy for the excuse to get out of the house for a few hours, I was hardly looking forward to spilling my guts to my cousin. If anybody could read me like a fucking book, it was Sora. I had no choice but to tell him why I left. Or part of it anyway, no reason why I couldn't save at least a piece of the story for another day. Or another month or maybe even another year.
By the time I got back downstairs, Sora had gone from sniffling to glaring at the floor. At the sound of my shoes hitting the wooden floor, however, the brunette jerked his head up just in time for me to none too gently grab him by the shoulders and steer him out the front door. Through mutual agreement we got into Sora's ancient little sedan that groaned painfully when turning on and made loud clunking noises as my cousin shifted from park to reverse to drive. We didn't even have to speak to agree to swing by the twenty-four hour convenience store down the road to pick up cheap beer and cigarettes before heading out to what had been our favorite place to drink and get stoned in high school.
The sight of the beach after hours did something funny to me that I couldn't quite explain. Maybe it was a stab of nostalgia, or maybe it was just my body going into withdrawal since it had been almost a solid 24 hours since my last cigarette. Either way, I was not so sure I liked it, so as Sora grabbed our bags of goodies from the back seat and made his way down the path that lead through the dunes, I finally lit up the Marlborough I had been dying for since the moment I landed at the fucking airport.
The nicotine did wonders to calm my screaming nerves, but unfortunately it didn't stop the irritable feeling I just couldn't shake. I decided to blame it on being back in this town I had sworn never to step foot in again before following Sora down to the beach.
Sora was already sprawled out on an old towel and was smoking a joint by the time I sat down next to him. He wordlessly offered me a hit which I graciously took before I leaned over him to grab a beer from the twelve pack we'd just bought. Neither of us spoke until we were pleasantly baked and three beers in each.
"Why did you leave?" Sora finally broke the silence that had blanketed us for the past hour and a half.
Shrugging, I took a long gulp from my beer to buy myself some time before answering his question. "Small town life really got to me, you know? I couldn't walk five feet in this fucking town without the next person I ran into being able to rattle off my entire life story to me."
Sora leveled me with pointed look that, considering I was pretty baked at this point, made me feel kind of creeped out. It was the same disgusted look I gave myself every time I looked in the mirror these days. And since Sora and I had those same cobalt blue eyes, watching him glare at me really made me feel like I was looking at my own reflection. Unfortunately I was the bitch that lost at our little staring contest, unable to keep looking at him.
"Don't look at me like that," I growled.
"Like what? Like you're a fucking jackass and you know it?" Sora countered.
"Shut up. You know how much I've always hated this place. It's a fucking poison that slowly kills me every time I breathe in the air here."
"Whatever," Sora finally sighed in defeat before going back to taking long swigs of his nasty ass beer.
I knew this conversation was far from over, but was happy for the reprieve from the game of Twenty Questions I knew Sora was intent on playing. I could almost see the gears grinding away in his head, trying to make sense out of everything, so was hardly surprised when he decided to skirt around a slightly different but still very relevant issue. "So how long are you in town for?"
I knew he was going to hate my answer but gave it anyway, "Just a week. I have work and classes back home that I can't keep missing."
Most people at this point would have gotten angry, started cursing, punching me, something to that extent. But Sora has this thing where he doesn't really believe in getting mad. Instead he just gives you this really sad, disappointed look. Quite honestly, I would have preferred him punching me in the balls to that look. That look just kept rubbing in my face what a horrible human being I was. Hastily, I looked away and chugged the last of my beer.
"Did you at least tell any of our friends you're back in town?" Sora's question was so soft I might have missed it had I not seen his lips move.
I still could not meet Sora's gaze as I replied, "No."
"Not even Axel?" Sora seemed genuinely surprised by that fact.
"Especially not him," I sighed. I didn't need to tell Sora that Axel had been my breaking point that finally pushed me to leave this soul sucking place.
"You should at least call him, text him, something," Sora said matter-of-factly. "You at least owe him that much."
At this point I flopped backwards into the sand, letting my head hit the ground with an audible 'thud'. "Can we please drop the subject, Sor? I'm too stoned to think about this shit right now."
"OK," Sora agreed.
We spent the next few hours just lying there, waiting to sober up enough that we could honestly drive home without causing some kind of huge accident. Dawn was just beginning to break by the time we stumbled around to pick up all our trash and drag everything back to where Sora had parked the car.
By the time we pulled into my driveway, I was suddenly hit with a wave of exhaustion I had been fighting back since I got off the plane yesterday. Just as I made to leave the car, however, Sora grabbed my bicep to hold me back.
"Wait a sec," he said in this rather commanding tone. "Sit down and don't you dare say anything until I finish."
Confused, I complied and sat back down in the passenger seat, giving my cousin a curious look.
"We're having a bonfire at Riku's tomorrow night. Not that you remember or anything, but it's Kairi's birthday. Whether you choose to tell people you're back before we get there or not is up to you, but I'm not giving you a choice in the matter. You're coming with me. Believe or not, everyone still cares about you and it would mean the world to Kairi if you came."
With that, Sora released me and shooed me out of the car so he could go home and crash since he obviously wanted to do that as badly as I did. Dazed and confused, to coin a horribly clichéd term, I turned around and dragged myself through the door and up the stairs to what used to be my bedroom before I had essentially run away from my childhood home.
Much to my shock, I found that nothing had changed since I left, other than someone had obviously gone through and cleaned up after my slobby self. Walls still the same shade of light blue, same skateboard bum sheets I had in high school, even the same posters dotted the walls. What really hit me though was the sight of the Struggle trophy still proudly sitting on my dresser, next to a framed picture of me with my former best friend and partner in crime, Hayner.
Upon further inspection, I realized that all of my photos were still in my room. I had refused to bring those with me when I left because some part of me knew it would be too painful to look at the faces of the people I had abandoned. I rarely talked to any of them, if ever, so I suddenly realized tomorrow night was going to suck. Somehow I had a feeling that they would all be more pissed off than happy to see me, despite what Sora said. Then again, maybe either Sora or Namine had already blabbed to Kairi that I was back and therefore trigger the gossip line so that they would all have about 15 hours to get over their anger. But most likely somebody was going to punch me in the face the second I walked into the party.
A certain red headed somebody to be specific. If he didn't have a reason to hate me, I don't know who else did. And when the time came that he would throw the punch at me, I would just stand there and take it because I knew more than anyone how much I deserved it. Our last night had been the prime example of what an asshole I am.
I didn't even bother undressing or brushing my teeth. I just collapsed face first on top of the sheets, hoping to God that I would accidently smother myself in my sleep rather than face tomorrow.