black and bitter

ch2


As we enter through the double doors to where the quaint little circle of chairs is set up, I notice that everyone is looking in our direction. It's not a nosy stare or even particularly directed, just slight curiosity at who the next poor souls are to walk in through the doorway.

It should make me feel better, to be stared at with understanding and tiredness instead of shock and pity. But it doesn't. I don't want to be understood by these people. I don't want to see my tiredness, my lifelessness reflected in similar eyes.

Too similar. Too goddamn similar.

We sit down quickly enough, finding two empty seats next to one another without difficulty. Kairi pulls my limp hand from my lap to grasp in her own. I swallow down my anger, my feeling of disgust, and fight the urge to snatch my hand back. The way she plays with my fingers, lacing them through her own, makes me want to cry.

I still let her hold on, though.

Trying not to make eye contact with any of the (kindred souls? no, I don't want them to be) other people in the circle and failing, I see another couple sitting across from us nod and smile tentatively.

Fuckers. I don't want to deal with this. I don't want to deal with this STD, with this life, with this joke of a girlfriend, or with this sympathetic pair who thinks they can smile at me as if they truly see us eye to eye. Because they don't. Their faces are exhausted but content; they were brought to this meeting by means other than one of them cheating on the other and bringing the damn disease to their bed.

I tighten in my seat; I move to stand up and march right out, maybe go and see if I can swallow down some of Kairi's now-cold coffee left in the car. Just to remind myself of the bitterness, of the taste.

Kairi sputters as I wrench my fingers out of hers and as I start towards the door.

"RIKU!" she calls, but I could care less. Let her have her Life Support meeting. It'll "be good for her".

I almost make it to the door, distracted by my snarling thoughts, as a hand grabs my shoulder. Shocked at the human contact, the stranger easily tugs me back to the circle, smiling easily all the way.

Smiling. Radiating happiness and sincerity and all that gunk. Brown, spiky hair, clear blue eyes, white teeth.

... what the fuck? Who invited the ray of sunshine into this doom-and-gloom rainy mess of HIV/AIDS meeting? And the kid is smiling too, beaming at me as he drags me to a chair and sits me down.

Confused and as blank as I am, I can't help but relax, bit by bit. Here's one person who is smiling like we're friends, like nothing's wrong. In his smile, I can see no feelings of "understanding" or "sympathy" and I almost feel normal, almost human. It puts me more at ease and I slouch into my new chair which is situated a few away from Kairi's – enough to give us distance and yet not enough to put her across the circle from me.

Perhaps he had seen us together before and keyed in with some astute observation that I was sick of this woman and needed to get away; or maybe he hadn't seen us and had just given me a random seat. It doesn't matter; I'm starting to like this kid already.

And he is a kid. Younger than I am, for sure, and I'm only 24. He's got a childish grin and blue eyes that sparkle; they damn twinkle and I'm pretty sure most people lose that trait after their childhood. He's short and thin, with tan skin and white, perfect teeth, and I idly wonder who the fuck he is.

He's too... healthy, too sunny, to be as sick as the rest of us. To be as sick as me.

He reminds me of the beach. Kairi and I never went to the beach often; she always hated getting sand everywhere and continuously complained at the coldness of the water. So we eventually stopped going; knowing me, though, had we gone just a few more times, I'm sure that the beach would have easily become my most favorite place to be.

No. No, the beach doesn't belong in a place like this, a place where a resigned air tinges the atmosphere and the sadness of all the members depresses everyone else.

Then I see it.

Over the past two weeks, instead of talking to Kairi and getting into arguments and saying things that we did and did not mean, I ignored her, glared at her whenever she came too close to me, and studied up on my latest life disaster.

It takes me a moment to comprehend what it is I'm actually seeing, because it's more of a subtle clue than anything else. Tanned cheeks supporting an unhealthy pink, blue eyes still glowing despite exhaustion. He seems to be swathed in clothes that are too big for him, but I know they must have fit him once.

A fever. Tiredness. Weight loss.

He is just as infected as us, just as hopeless as everyone else. Shock. Disbelief. Sadness that not even someone like him can't escape from the world's unfairness. But he doesn't show his condition at all and I probably wouldn't have even noticed had I not been looking so closely.

I wonder where he draws the strength to still smile like everything's alright.

"I'm Sora," he volunteers as his small person plops down in the vacant chair next to mine.

Sora. Blue eyes that reflect the sky flash through my mind and I cannot believe how eerily appropriate his name is. I give myself a mental buzz.

"Riku," I reply, holding out my hand to shake. My lips tighten slightly when he energetically gives my limb a shake; his boyish hand is hot, feverishly warm, and I wonder just how sick he really is. I wonder just how long he's had this... disease, how long he's been attending these meetings.

It's not something I find I can ask, though.

A small movement of red flickers in my peripheral vision and I spare a moment to glance over at Kairi. She's staring at us hesitantly, body leaning forward as if she were on the verge of getting up to join us. When she notices my piercing look, she deflates slightly and stays where she is.

Sora gives a few curious looks between the two of us but I can see he won't pry. So far, this kid is the most awesome person that I've ever met in the history of my life. Period.

"So I saw you were ready to bolt," he tells me with a slightly amused voice. "Since I haven't seen you before, I bet you're new – the newbies always feel stiff or angry their first few meetings, but it really does get better."

It sounds so much better when he says that than when Kairi tries to convince me that "it'll be good for me". I smile wryly at him.

"It's not that I think these things are useless. I guess all these people who come here regularly say differently; I just don't want this to be useful to me," I reply, slouching slightly in the chair and casting another, if slightly less judgmental than the first, glance at the people around me.

Sora smiles, as if what I just said makes some great sort of sense to him. "You don't want to admit that you've passed the, uh, prerequisites to getting into this meeting, huh?"

And what do you know. He does get it after all.

Instead of snapping at him, instead of raging at his ease with the subject and of my reluctance to admit my own problem, I feel myself loosening at his tone; it speaks of good humor and hides no traces of tenseness or pity. So I shrug and find myself latching onto the easy, nonchalant mood. "Yeah, that's pretty much it."

He snickers and slouches similarly in his own chair. "For someone in denial about HIV, you're pretty laid back."

Amazingly enough, he's right. At this very moment, I can't seem to muster any of the anger up or the hatred. Probably because Kairi seems almost a world away right now – apparently, a few chairs and good company can make all the difference.

... hm.

Maybe it's a good thing that I'm lightening up, but still. What the fuck? Is this kid some kind of miracle worker or something? How the hell is he turning me from brooding, angsty Riku to laid back, take-it-as-it-comes Riku?

Un-fucking-believable.

"And for someone who has a life-threatening disease that has completely fucked up his life, I could say the same." I shoot back, amused.

... and there's that insistent good humor, popping up again. I'm getting the weirdest inkling that if I had just said that to any other HIV infected patient besides this kid right here, I'd probably would've been given several dirty looks and maybe a punch to the cheek. Or the eye.

Sora gives me an amused nod, conceding my point, and our small talk elapses into a small silence, one which is easily broken by the tiny chatter coming from everyone else.

My eyes rest on my bare hands. Usually, I wear gloves, but considering I had been moping and shooting angry glares at Kairi all day and hadn't left the apartment once, I'm not surprised I didn't remember them. Still, my hands look too pale, too different for me to stare at for long.

I suspect I'm just not good with change.

He finally breaks it again, to say, "But you're still here, though. Even if you want to deny it."

I quirk an eyebrow. "You had to keep me from leaving two minutes ago."

Blue eyes shine, though from amusement, the raging fever, or the annoyingly cheap fluorescent lights overhead, I'm not sure. "I guessed you would've probably come back eventually. You seem like the type to storm out and then storm back in. But I figured it would be easier for you to adjust if you just stayed from beginning to end."

Whoa. I seem like the type to do what now? Since when did people look at me and say, "Yeah, he's the type to do so-and-so" ?

"Adjust?" I settle for asking, interlocking my pale fingers and bringing them to cup the back of my head.

"Y'know," he shrugs with a flippant tone, "like, hear the stories, listen to what people are feeling, get used to the probing questions and the overhanging aura of unhappiness that never seems to leave some people."

I snort, closing my eyes and wishing those damn fluorescent lights would stop burning my eyelids. "Sounds cheery. I don't want to adjust, however."

I can hear Sora's smile in his next soft words. "No one really does, man, because when you adjust, it's like you gotta admit something to yourself. And when it comes to STDs, well, no one wants to admit anything to themselves. It's still something we all go through, though, whether we like it or not."

No. Serious is bad. Serious is grouped together with unhappiness and Kairi and cheating and broken fantasies and fatal diseases. I don't want that. I can't have that.

So I try to keep the light conversation up. I answer, "Whether we like it or not... that's kind of ominous-sounding, you know?"

I peek open my eyes and expect to see maybe a disappointed Sora or maybe an angry one. People never like to see blatant denial in their faces.

He's smiling, though. It's a sadder smile than the one I saw minutes before, and a little heavier than the one I heard in his voice. But he smiles like he understands.

And for once, I don't hate that, because, as I reason with myself with a mental breathy laugh, he probably does.


When the meeting actually begins, everyone quiets down appropriately. The group leader, Mark, seems like a nice guy, if not extremely sickly and uptight looking. When he first introduces himself, I stifle back laughter as scenes of RENT flash through my head (not so much his appearance, but rather just the whole scene itself).

He gives his name (Mark Doughtery) and then talks about some of his likes and dislikes – one of his hobbies being film making. I think my lip is trembling from the effort.

I can see Sora looking at me from the corner of his eye, but he smiles with amusement after Mark talks about his film experience. I know (somehow, I don't know how, but I know) that he's thinking the exact same thing I am, that he probably has already thought the same thing tons of times during other meetings.

If we had been anywhere else, I would've grinned at him conspiratorially. A conspiracy of sharing a joke that isn't really funny but actually is because of the people sharing it and the circumstances they're in.

It would've been fun.

"Now, we have some new members this week, so even though we've been through this a whole bunch of times, let's all introduce ourselves," Mark urges, nodding to the person to his right to start it all off. It's Kairi, whose face is now looking like a cross between "deer-in-the-headlights" and hysteria.

She clears her throat nervously and her eyes dart to the door slightly and anger rises in me at the thought of her even being the slightest bit apprehensive. How dare she?

She was the one who insisted so annoyingly that this meeting was good for us and that she, for instance, would be happy to get everything off her chest and to talk to other fellow sickies. A logical part of my mind argues that she has the right to be nervous, especially when forced to finally confront her problems aloud with someone other than me or family.

The angry part of me tells the logical part to shut up and fighting ensues.

"M-my name is Kairi and I have HIV," she blurts out quietly. I think she's waiting for people to clap for her declaration, but I don't really think HIV support groups do that... what's there to clap for in that statement, anyway?

There's some even clapping coming from beside me and I whip my head around so fast to catch Sora in the act. He's looking straight at Kairi with a small smile and clapping his hands together steadily. Hesitantly, others begin to join in, but the clapping doesn't raise past a small smattering of uneasy applause.

Sensing her mistake, Kairi tries to balance embarrassment for her assumption, gratefulness to Sora, her lone savior, and a pleading expression aimed towards me. I feel oddly triumphant at the first, growl at the second, and ignore the third.

Too soon it's my turn and as I get to my feet, the sudden urge to fly outta here comes back with a vengeance. I fight the scowl off my face and stuff my (too open, too vulnerable) hands into my pockets, glancing coolly at the inquisitive circle.

"My name's Riku," I say quietly, and it hits me.

I suddenly realizing that I am introducing myself to a support group for HIV. That I'm introducing myself because I belong here, with these people, who are altogether similar and different from myself. That I can't hope to high heaven anymore that everything will just go back to normal. Saying my name, talking about my hobbies, threads me to these people, to this life, and it's too late to take any of it back.

My pretend world is gone, gone, gone and I can't even believe how dependent I was on it. I'm at a loss to do without it, how to live my life, how to even take a first step on my own, in real time.

I'm so fucking lost.

The amusement from earlier is gone; even the deeper hatred, the anger. I can't hide behind them anymore, pretending to avoid this issue.

I...

I–

"Riku's an artist," Sora pipes up from my side, bouncing up to stand next to me. He turns sunny, questioning eyes to mine and asks, "Right?"

I– wait, what?

Dumbfounded, I can only stare at him. Mark looks at us both expectantly, as do the rest of the members, but I can't even open my mouth. M-my brain has just shorted and- and...

Fuck. What?

Grinning, Sora points unnoticeably to the cuff of his sweater and, still blank, I take a swift look down at my own sleeve. Ink stains. I guess that's what I get for just grabbing a shirt from a pile on my floor, really.

"Er, actually," I finally recover, blinking rapidly to regain full control, "I'm an architect, but, uh, close enough." I'm just shocked that he even noticed or guessed that close to begin with. Small details like that weren't something that either Kairi or I paid attention to, probably because we both knew that if we looked too close...

Well, things tend to alwayslook perfect from afar, at any rate.

Sora laughs boyishly, like he just lost a friendly game of cards. "Ah man, I was almost right!"

I... have never met anyone like this kid in my entire life. He's like one of those characters in a book, too good to be true, and criticized for being so wonderfully perfect; one of those people who you wish so hard it almost hurts to exist, even though you know it's impossible.

He's the exact opposite of my entire life -- bright and optimistic, humble and simple, observant and truthful. The beach, where everything is actually alright instead of you just pretending it is.

I clear my throat and say before my mind can even register it, "I'm, uh, also, really a big fan of the beach." And now I gotta sit down before my mind collapses and my body follows and before I catch those strange looks Kairi's giving me (because she knows, knows that we haven't gone to the beach in years, that I never even went as a kid) from her seat, which never seemed so far away as it did right now.

And Sora crows happily, "Me too!" and I can only be further amazed.


So in this chapter, Riku really jumps around from angry and self-depreciating to kind of relaxed and amused. Please note that I didn't just randomly change his moods -- I think of it like this. To Riku, all these emotions are there, yes, and he feels them, but he also uses them; if he's mad, then he doesn't have to think. If he's relaxed, he can put his problems out of his mind. If he doesn't act like he has HIV, then maybe he doesn't.

He uses these varying emotions as a sort of shield, as well as a normal outlet. With Kairi, of course feelings of anger and self-hatred are going to pop up first and foremost. With Sora, well, Riku's learning that something about him just kind of puts him at ease -- it'll be interesting to watch as Riku shifts from using his happy emotions from Sora to hide, to actually feeling them, enjoying them.

I've never actually been to a support group meeting, so I hope this wasn't too bad. I put them in a traditional circle, but I can't say I really know how they work. As for the clapping thing, er, yeah, I'm not too sure with that, either. Please be kind with these smaller details, though correcting me nicely would be great so I can learn.

Well, that's my goal, anyway. Hope you enjoyed the chapter; I should update next week, either Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. Um, I hope. Thanks for dropping by and any type of feedback is greatly appreciated.

Sorry that Riku's got a dirty -- uh, conscience?mouth?mind? At any rate, his language is pretty much gonna stay the same, crude or no, through the story, I think, so uh... here's your slightly belated warning.

incessant insanity