"Please buy me an ice cream, Phillip. I forgot my wallet, but I promise I'll pay you back later," she pleaded her younger brother, who stood before an ice cream stand, purchasing a waffle cone filled with vanilla. They were near the park, just out for a casual stroll, when the siblings had happened upon a convenient concession stand that conveniently sold frozen goods.
Phillip smirked as he paid the man and accepted his cone. "Why should I, Deneve?" he asked her, licking the snack to irritate her.
It worked, but Deneve swallowed her anger and pride to achieve her goal. "Because I'll man-check you," she smirked back. Basically, a man-check was code for checking to see if he was a man by punching him where his balls should be.
Phillip hung the hand that wasn't holding his ice cream to his side, near his family jewels just in case his elder sister decided to follow through on her word. "Give me one good reason."
"I just did."
"That was a threat, not a reason."
"I'm your older sister."
"That doesn't count."
"Yes it does," Deneve frowned. "You should respect your elders, and I'm your elder sister."
"I don't think buying you things falls under the category of respect," Phillip replied with another taunting lick of his vanilla ice cream. "Besides, with all the sweets you eat you'll get cavities. See? I'm trying to keep you healthy."
Scowling, Deneve considered using violence to force her way, but Phillip had grown taller and more muscular. Her punches barely fazed him anymore, unless she landed one on the area of every mens' Achille's heel. Now the brat was becoming more difficult to reason with because he learned from her tricks.
"Healthy-smealthy, everyone dies and life is short so let me enjoy it," she told Phillip through pursed lips, "plus you're not the boss of my life. That's our parents' job, not yours, little brother." On the verge of losing her temper, Deneve pulled up her collarbone-length curly golden hair into a ponytail in preparation for a possible showdown of physical strength.
Regarding his irascible older sister carefully through brown eyes, Phillip licked his ice cream slowly and carefully as though considering his options; buy his sister ice cream or fight. A gentle, cool breeze did nothing to cool Deneve's temper as she glowered at her sibling, her blue eyes noting the wind ruffling Phillip's brown hair which was styled like the Beetles, and they waited in the tense silence for Phillip's decision.
Calmly, he set the ice cream on the counter of the stand. "Keep an eye on this for me," he told the Japanese man behind the counter, not taking his eyes off Deneve. She fought dirty like a street fighter.
Eyes locked on each other, the siblings marched in fuming silence until they stood in the middle of a huge clearing of grass, surrounded by trees. The beauty was lost on Phillip and Deneve, who stood a yard apart facing each other and waiting for one of them to attack first.
"This is pointless," Phillip tried to reason, body tensed for an unexpected attack. "We're both trained fighters and it's stupid to fight over ice cream."
Deneve kept her facial expression hostile, and her voice frigid. "I think we both know this goes deeper than ice cream." Beginning to casually saunter in a circle around him, Phillip mimicked her movement, his face difficult to read.
"Then what is this about?" the brother asked, tone light. He acted as if they weren't about to beat and kick the crap out of each other.
"You tell me."
"I dunno. You tell me, fattie."
Red blinding her eyesight for a moment, Deneve snapped, "I am not fat, you unfeeling block of a bastard. I happen to be of average weight."
"Which is amazing considering how many sweets you consume," Phillip added dryly. "Yesterday alone at a birthday party, you ate three slices of chocolate cake with heavy frosting, three scoops of ice cream, and a giant rainbow-colored lollipop the size of my fist."
Deneve bristled. "I hadn't eaten breakfast, okay? Get off my case. The dentist and orthodontist haven't found any cavities yet so why should I change my eating habits?"
"Because it's unhealthy."
Changing direction, the sister stopped attempting to circle her brother to attack him from behind, and chose to stride toward him, hoping to attack from the front. Phillip backed up, but he couldn't cover as much ground without looking backwards or turning around, leaving his back exposed to Deneve. "So? Like I said, everyone dies eventually and I want to enjoy life," she retorted.
"You'll die faster than everyone else if you keep eating that much sugar. Don't you want to see your kids have grandchildren?"
"No," she snapped. "I'm not going to have any kids. This world sucks so why subject my flesh and blood to suffering? I don't want to be alive to watch them suffer through the agony of life."
"Life's not all bad," Phillip answered guardedly, his arms raised in preparation for a punch.
"Well, you're an optimist, but I just—" Deneve suddenly lashed out with her leg instead of her fist, kicking her brother's kneecap. Cursing, he grabbed her leg and twisted his sister around so fast she landed on her back, flashes of white and black stars exploding in her head.
Rolling out of the way, Deneve narrowly avoided her brother's large foot stomping where her stomach had been, his intended stomp damaging nature, not flesh. Quickly, she rolled to her feet in a crouch but Phillip had expected that and Deneve shut her eyes as his fist collided with her left eye. Grabbing his arm, the blonde fell back, dragging her brother with her.
Landing on her back, she pushed her feet into his stomach, kicking so Phillip flipped over and landed on his back. Deneve nimbly continued the roll until she landed on her feet, quickly whirling around to face her brother. She kept her swelling black eye shut, glowering with her right eye.
She despised him so much right now.
She wanted Phillip to just vanish, go away, so she could nurse her wounds or forget about the problem.
But what she wanted and what was happening were two very different things, and Deneve would just have to deal with the current tight spot she had landed herself in.
Phillip got to his feet, lowered in a ready crouch before he tackled his elder sister to the grass. Openly cursing her brother and his existence, Deneve allowed herself to snap and become a berserker, losing control to her animalistic wrath. She punched, kicked, bit, scratched, twisted, screamed, and raged alternately and Phillip returned the favor.
After what felt like an eternity of buzzing pain and white hot anger, suddenly Phillip stood and ran away.
Sitting up, Deneve screeched after his retreating form. "That's right! Run away!" She sucked on her bleeding bottom lip and spat on the grass. It was red. "Coward!" she added for good measure.
Then Deneve lowered her head, her golden hair curtaining her face, and she sighed tiredly. "I'm a terrible sister." She and Phillip never got along well nowadays, although they had been practically inseparable in childhood, but those days were over.
As she stared at the grass, the resentful anger and adrenaline rush faded, leaving a terrible aching, hollow hole in her chest. The blonde blinked away unshed tears and wiped her bloody lip. "I have to be tough," she scolded herself. "Time to check for injuries." Mechanically, Deneve delicately inspected her own body but her mind was replaying the fight over and over like a rerun of a horrible soap opera.
A black eye, split bottom lip, plenty of bruises and cuts, but no broken bones; Deneve considered herself lucky. Usually she or Phillip broke at least one bone or ended up in the hospital when they fought nowadays.
Composing herself with a long exhale, the blonde limped back to the ice cream stand, grimacing as she put weight on her twisted ankle. "Damn that boy," she muttered, ignoring the Japanese man's gawking, as she snatched Phillip's mostly melted ice cream from the counter. Deneve limped to the nearest park bench.
She plopped down and stared hard at the melty vanilla beginning to drip over the edges of the waffle cone. Deneve sighed. She couldn't eat it now; it reminded her of Phillip. Licking her wounded bottom lip, Deneve knew she should ice her ankle and black eye, but the Japanese ice cream man would probably charge her for ice, and she was currently yen-less.
"Today is not my day," the blonde told the melting dairy product, then eyed the ice cream considerately. It would go to waste to throw the treat away, but Deneve couldn't eat it yet she thought of a better use for it. Squeezing her left eye shut tightly, she spread her legs apart, leaning forward, and stuck the melting, cold surface of the ice cream on her closed, aching black eye.
Maybe it wasn't the cleanest or most brilliant idea she'd had, but it was resourceful. At that moment, Deneve didn't particularly care Phillip had been licking the ice cream earlier. It was cold. It slowly stopped the throbbing in her left eye.
She hadn't sat in that position for more than a few minutes when someone noticed.
"I always assumed one was supposed to eat ice cream through the mouth, not the eye," a flat male voice commented.
"Eating and icing are two very different things," Deneve responded dryly, lifting her head and lowering the ice cream cone, to glance at the heckler through her right eye.
A white, baggy, long-sleeved shirt, equally loose faded blue jeans, the stranger made for a bizarre figure. He had a vampirish-ly white complexion so pale that his skin almost seemed translucent. Worse, his black eyes were framed by heavy black bags around his eyes. Then there was his spiky black hair that defied gravity. The dude looked like he'd rolled out of bed.
"I see. You were in a fight very recently. Maybe ten minutes ago," he stated, his thumb resting on his bottom lip pensively. Deneve didn't answer. She was too busy wondering how someone as young as this stranger –he seemed about her age, maybe attending college out of high school—could be so hunched over. Or the lack of footwear on his bare feet.
Deneve felt the melted vanilla on her eye run down her cheek and drip on the dirt between her legs. Sticking her tongue out, she tried and failed to lick some of the ice cream trailing down the side of her face. The blonde gave up and ignored it.
The strange young adult shuffled to the bench and literally crouched beside Devene, who wondered what kind of lifestyle this stranger had. Strangely, he sat poised on his feet, legs curled against his chest, with one thumb resting on his bottom lip much like a child. Deneve couldn't help but stare incredulously; the bizarre, dark-haired stranger didn't seem to notice or care.
"What were you fighting about?" he asked, boldly wiping away some of the ice cream from her cheek and licking the vanilla from his index finger.
Wondering how she should react, Deneve raised her eyebrows. "Well, the ice cream cone in my hand," she sighed, "and my unhealthy eating habits. According to someone, the amount of sugar I consume isn't healthy." Her voice had become low and irritated.
"That depends on the amount of sugar consumed," the rumpled-looking guy responded. He repeated his gesture of wiping the ice cream from her face and licking his finger. "How much do you consume?"
"Um…" It was difficult to think with the stranger cleaning her face in an odd fashion. "Yesterday I ate…three slices of chocolate cake with lots of frosting and sprinkles…three scoops of ice cream, a rainbow lollipop this big" –she held up her fist—"and…oh yeah, a handful of gummy bears."
The stranger's hand had frozen on the side of her face, his thumb about to wipe away vanilla that was threatening to run down her face again. His plain, expressionless face revealed his surprise if his widened eyes were anything to judge by.
Deneve felt her face heat up. "What?" she muttered defensively, jerking her face away from his hand. She couldn't look at his face. "I have a mouthful of sweet teeth." After hearing Phillip's accusation and witnessing this random guy's reaction to her sugary addiction, the blonde felt extremely embarrassed and disgusted with herself.
"I have plenty of sweet teeth."
Jerking her head up in astonishment, she stared at the now smiling stranger who seemed oddly delighted. Her self-loathing had evaporated into curiosity. "Really?" she asked, her face brightening, but the movement stretched her black eye too much. With a soft hiss of pain, Deneve covered her left eye and dropped the waffle cone filled with liquid vanilla.
"Stupid male," she murmured under her breath.
"Boyfriend?"
Deneve grimaced. "Worse, brother. Boyfriends I can get rid of, brother unfortunately I have to live with."
"You and your brother fought over that little vanilla ice cream cone?"
"And my eating habits," she sourly reminded the stranger. "Oh yeah, what's your name?"
"Ryuzaki. What is your name?"
"Deneve."
Leaping from the bench to a standing position, Ryuzaki shoved his hands in his pockets and glanced at her expectantly. "Follow me. I'll buy you some ice cream and then get those wounds treated."
"Thank you. That would be…amazing," the blonde smiled, wondering if Ryuzaki had a sweet personality that came with his teeth. It astonished her that a total stranger could be so much more understanding than her little brother; also that a stranger would buy her ice cream whereas her own sibling refused to do so.
Gingerly, Deneve stood and hobbled alongside Ryuzaki toward the ice cream that had been the catalyst for the chain of events. At the stand, the black-haired weird guy, with startling gentleness, dabbed the ice cream from the blonde's left eye before buying her ice in a bag.
"What is your favorite type of ice cream?" he asked. Ryuzaki didn't seem to notice the Japanese ice cream man was nervously eyeing Deneve.
"Hmm…" she licked her bottom lip, her tongue lingering over the tender split. "Vanilla."
He bought two, keeping one for himself, and after a quick call to someone on his cell phone, Deneve frowned. "I wonder why he bought vanilla…he really doesn't like it too much…"
"Your brother?"
"Yeah."
"Why?" Ryuzaki asked, clueless.
The blonde scowled, ignoring the pain in her bottom lip as the skin stretched. "You know those annoying things siblings do just to piss you off?"
"No," he told her seriously as they headed for the streets.
He must be an only child, Deneve reasoned. "Well, things like my brother bought the vanilla ice cream I really like just to push my buttons because he knew I didn't have my wallet. That's an example." She felt her breath taken away as the ice touched her black eye.
Lapsing into silence as they reached the streets, a sleek black limo waited near the sidewalk and an old man who gave off the air of a gentleman had the door open. Deneve kept her astonishment to herself as she climbed in after Ryuzaki and drove off. Instead, she focused on spinning her cone as her cold tongue trailed along the base of where the cone began and the ice cream ended, slowly working her way to the zenith. The blonde momentarily abandoned the makeshift ice pack on the seat to her right since Ryuzaki sat on her left.
Okay, this is weird, Deneve decided as she pretended to be absorbed with the vanilla. A pale rich kid going out in public dressed like he left the house after rolling out of bed? Wonder why his parents never stopped him from always staying in that hunched position...This guy is not ordinary. He's so pale, kinda like those vampires people are going gaga over these days.
"What do you think?" Ryuzaki suddenly asked, his attention entirely focused on the girl sitting beside him.
Finishing her last bites of the cone, Deneve nodded. "Tasty."
"I was referring to your opinion of me, not the ice cream."
"Oops!" she flushed. "Um, you're not tasty. I mean, I wouldn't know that or anything because—I'm shutting up now." Deneve's blush deepened as she heard the old man driving chuckle, and she decidedly ignored him. "Well…you're definitely interesting," she admitted, holding the ice to her eye. "It's difficult to say…I haven't really made my mind up about you yet, Ryuzaki."
"I think you have, but you're leaving room to second guess yourself," he stated, watching her. "There's an eighty percent chance a person already knows the true nature of a stranger within a few minutes of interaction."
Deneve almost whistled, but remembered her lip injury. "That's a high percentage. People are more perceptive than I originally gave them credit for, but how come it seems a majority of them aren't perceptive? They don't pay close enough attention?"
"Yes." Ryzaki placed his thumb on his lip again. "Many times the important things are overlooked." If Deneve felt she was missing something glaringly important about her bizarre companion, it smacked her in the face now. Obvious answers to some of her questions flooded to mind.
Ryuzaki was pale because he rarely went outside or he spent most of his time indoors, gazing at a computer screen or a television; maybe he had insomnia, but he definitely didn't sleep much, if at all by the way his gaze seemed listless. However, an explanation for the wealth and his strange posture was still beyond Deneve.
Again, he commented out of the blue. "You have an unusual tomboy personality for someone with a sugar tooth."
The blonde shrugged. "I'm like an M & M: hard on the outside, sweet on the inside. I have to be. If I were sweet through and through, someone might come along and turn my inside bitter or try to steal my sweetness." Her blue eyes glittered curiously. "I wouldn't exactly categorize you as a sugar lover either, Ryuzaki."
"I am like…" the curled up young adult paused to think of an appropriate analogy. "Dars Bitter Chocolate." The chocolate was a Japanese product, lacking in sugar but still delicious.
"Interesting," Deneve mused, not pressing for the reasons behind it. "So you eat sweets to keep yourself sweet. Man, you must have a depressing or bitter life…I guess there's a lot of reasons a person could be a sweets lover."
"We are here," Ryuzaki mentioned seconds before the door to his left opened. The blonde had barely noticed the car stop or the fact she'd stopped icing her black eye. Hurriedly, she placed the chilly pack on her wound and waited for her host to leave the car first.
He didn't move. "Go in the hospital with Watari. I will wait here until you return."
"Alright. Thank you again, and don't get too bored. Strawberry short cake afterward?" Deneve flashed Ryuzaki a wide smile, which he returned.
"I would like that," he murmured, his usually blank face lighting up.
She slid out of the limousine with her heart performing gymnastics in her chest, spotting the old man who had driven them to the hospital. He truly did look like a gentleman, an English one. Sporting a black tuxedo, Watari, as Ryuzaki had called him, had a brush-like, white mustache, a receding hairline but kept his remaining white hair combed back, and wore wire-framed glasses. He gave off a kind, compassionate grandfather feel.
The blonde liked him immediately.
"Come, Miss Deneve, we mustn't keep Mr. Ryuzaki waiting." His half-lidded eyes twinkled with pleasant emotions.
She would have smiled if her lip hadn't been split. She trailed Watari into the hospital and glanced around to give the place a visual once-over as the old man spoke to one of the doctors or nurses. Glancing down at her clothes, Deneve realized that her baggy green pants and black t-shirt shirt had faired rather well under Phillip's blows and the lush park grass; her blue right eye detected only a few visible stains on her pants.
"Miss Deneve, I will be outside if you need me."
She paused in brushing off her pants to smile up at Watari, or try to. "Thanks for driving me here and putting up with me."
"No problem. I'm sure Mr. Ryuzaki doesn't mind your company." Somehow, the way he spoke those words, and how Watari carefully chose something, Deneve guessed her black-haired acquaintance didn't hang around people too often or have many friends.
Leaving her to her thoughts, the old man exited the white-wash building and the blonde tossed her mostly melted bag of ice into a trash bin. Alone, Deneve felt acutely more aware of her surroundings and more vulnerable. The sterilized, chemical-filled air made her more self-conscious; maybe some of it was that she swore she could smell a little bit of death lingering in the air too. The walls, the outfits, the floor—everything was either white or gray. Suddenly Deneve remembered why she'd always begged her parents to take her out of the hospital early, her healing progress be damned.
"Please follow me for your examination," a nurse briskly ordered the blonde, holding a clipboard. Without waiting another moment, the nurse pivoted and strode down a hallway; she didn't bother glancing back to ensure Deneve was following.
Sighing, she reluctantly hurried after the quick-walking nurse.
This fanfic was inspired solely by my only other current Death Note story saved under my favorites: Cake and Sarcasm. Thank you for inspiring me!