I honestly didn't know if I would be writing a second part to this or not, but apparently I love sequels? That's where this is coming from, if anyone cares to know.
Run Away
The clicking of the redhead's heels catches everyone's attention as she enters the diner. Of course, the local perverts give her cat calls and wolf whistles as she fixes her hair from when the wind messed it up just moments ago. The blond hostess—who used to be the waitress a couple of years ago—smiles sweetly at her as she approaches the podium. "Am I late?"
She looks over to the booth where a single well-dressed blond is sitting with a sad smile. This woman doesn't even know them, and yet she looks at the both of them like she knows their entire history. "Nope. He's still here, surprisingly. Will this be separate or together."
The redhead entertains the idea of saying separate, but she can't do it. "Together."
"All righty then. Enjoy your dinner."
She gives the hostess a warm smile, then let's her feet take her back to the beginning and the end: their booth. Except this time she doesn't know if it'll be another end or another beginning. The thought chills her to the bone, but she knows to keep that feeling out of her expression.
After a few shouts from the waitresses who are practically patrolling the floors, the last few catcalls die down. She sighs to herself as she pulls her purse out of the bend of her elbow and places it in the booth, then takes a seat beside it.
"You're late."
It sounds more like a simple observation than an accusation, but she knows that that's what it is. It doesn't make her angry like he probably expects it to. Her eyes dart to the empty plate sitting in front of him. "You ate."
"Yeah, I guess that's what you do when you get tired of waiting for the other person to show up and order with you: you eat alone while everyone stares at you like you're being stood up," he smiles, though the annoyed glare bleeds through it like permanent marker on notebook paper.
Kairi rolls her eyes at his behavior. If he's going to act like this, she could very well go home. He does realize that she doesn't have to meet with him if she doesn't want to, right? She has a life now—a very demanding one at that. He's the one that didn't want to be in it. He is the one who taught her how to live without him. "A literaldisaster happened at work right as I was about to leave. Apparently I have damage control tattooed on my forehead." He snorts, quickly averting his eyes in a very specific way that always lets her know he's beyond pissed. It bothers her because she isn't obligated to explain herself to him, but she did. The least he can do is accept it. "It's the truth, Roxas."
"I never said it wasn't," the blond responds with an edge in his voice.
This really bothers her. Who is he to get mad at her for being late? He's not her boyfriend or her friend. He's lucky she even returned his call in the first place. Kairi opens her mouth to say this…but the brief flash of fury quickly fades. It isn't even worth it, really. She decides that even though she had no control over that freak accident and owed him no explanation, an apology wouldn't hurt. If it were her—which it had been before—she would be upset with him for not being on time. "I'm sorry."
Roxas exhales deeply through his nose, letting his eyes slide shut. At the sight of his relaxed features, she understands that that's what he wanted all along. She's glad she kept her mouth shut. "Thank you." Moments later, he opens his eyes again. "I'm sorry. I had a bad day at work and I have no right to be taking it out on you."
The redhead blinks in surprise. Roxas isn't a monster, but he's never apologized for having an attitude when he was having a rough time in the past. He would either scream at people or isolate himself completely, then ignore the fact that it happened and jump right back into his happy-go-lucky antics whenever he was feeling better.
Suddenly, Kairi felt a lot better about meeting up with him.
"I appreciate that. And it's okay."
He smiles at this, but it's tired. Exhausted, even. It's the middle of the day and he looks like he hasn't slept at all. "How are you?"
Her response doesn't require any thought at all. "I'm okay. Better than okay, actually. It feels like everything is finally falling into place for me," she smiles. It's not hateful, sarcastic, or boastful in the slightest. "How are you?"
The blond nods slowly as he smiles, "Life could be better, but I'm not really complaining."
Kairi tucks her hair behind her ear as the awkward silence passes over their booth. She's confused. She has no idea why Roxas asked her to meet him here, or why he had deemed it an emergency. His shoulders are relaxed, as is his posture, his smiles are genuine, and he looks better. The fatigue she sees could very well be from his insomnia, but…how can that be? Isn't he on sleeping pills because of his girlfriend?
"Are you gonna order something?"
She nearly jumps out of her skin as the miffed-looking waiter taps his pen against his notepad impatiently. Kairi knows exactly who he is and she does notlike him one bit. He's painfully obnoxious, rude, and generally unpleasant to be around every time he serves her. She has half a mind to tell him that he should look for another job if he hates this one so much.
Again, it isn't worth it. She's starving. "Double cheeseburger, extra lettuce, light mayo, no ketchup, a side of potato wedges, a slice of strawberry cheesecake, and a large coke."
Both men stare at her in complete awe, jaws slack. She raises an eyebrow as she looks from the waiter to Roxas, then back to the waiter. "That's…that's all." The man, looking a bit dazed, nods as he quickly jots something down and disappears without a word. Kairi turns her attention back to Roxas, who is still staring at her like she stepped on someone's pet. "What?"
His mouth curls up into the goofiest smile she's seen in a while, and he starts to chuckle. She presses her lips together to keep herself calm. The façade crumbles the second his loud snort echoes around the diner, and she has to cover her mouth to keep her ugly cackle under wraps. Soon, the both of them are giggling uncontrollably while simultaneously trying not to draw attention to themselves. Why is he laughing hard enough to snort? She hadn't even said or done anything funny.
"I don't know why I'm laughing," he admits as he struggles to catch his breath. "I've just never seen you order so much food. You used to eat like a bird and now you're ordering like you're eating for two." A few more chuckles escape him as he reaches for his half empty glass of soda. His carefree smile suddenly sinks into a stressed frown as his eyes return to hers, looking panicked. "You're not...?"
Kairi glares playfully. "No, I'm not eating for two."
"Oh," he mumbles, pulling the glass up to his lips. It's clear that he's trying to be nonchalant, but the subject clearly bothers him a great deal. At the same time, he looks sort of relieved. Kairi feels bad for him.
"I'm eating for three."
But not bad enough to spare him of the hilarious joke.
The blond immediately chokes on his drink. Kairi laughs to herself as he waves a hand in the air and quickly snatches a napkin from the container. "Don't do that!" he coughs violently, wiping the soda from his mouth and chin. It takes him a while to calm down, and even now he's still struggling to stifle a few stubborn coughs. "God, don't do that."
"You have to admit that was funny," she grins again.
"That was cruel and unusual punishment," he frowns.
"I see you're still dramatic as ever," she chuckles. When she sees he's no longer interested in joking or laughing, her smile fades. Okay, maybe it was a little cruel to joke about being pregnant. Or…very cruel. Oh God, that was such a fucked up thing for her to do considering their history. "I'm sorry."
He sighs heavily, looking even more exhausted as he pushes his fingers through his hair. "No, it's fine. Under any other circumstances it would have been funny. I think it's just feels like a low blow since I came here to talk about Naminé."
Correction: the joke was beyond fucked up. Why did she do that to him? "You…what?"
Roxas shocks her by making direct eye contact with her. His eyes are serious and focused. No Bullshit mode activated. She almost feels intimidated, but she can't take her eyes off those incredible blues. "Yeah. I came to talk about a lot of stuff, actually," he said as he folds his arms on top of the table.
Kairi nods as she sits up a little straighter. They have each other's undivided attention now. She has no clue what a lot of stuff could even mean. Hopefully nothing that would cause the ghost to come back. She had just gotten rid of that nuisance.
"I'll start from the beginning whenever you're ready to hear it."
The redhead gestures to him with a perfectly manicured hand, taking a mental note of how different everything is from the last time they'd met in this diner, in this booth. They both looked a little worse for wear before, but now they looked healthy and genuinely happy. Could this be because of the new woman in his life? Is she...better for Roxas? The thought of another woman bringing Roxas any semblance of peace makes her sick to her stomach. She thought she was over this.
"Before we last saw each other, I was in a very bad place. Mentally and physically. I was having trouble sleeping, I wasn't eating right, I was struggling with a sleeping pill addiction, I had just lost my job, and I was so stressed that I was losing a lot of weight. Throughout all of that, I'd managed to push any and all thoughts of you and Naminé out of my head. I thought letting everything sit the way it was until I missed you enough would fix everything, but in reality…"
"You were too stupid and too afraid to actually confront the problem," Kairi finished for him.
Roxas glares, though it doesn't hold half as much intensity as it had in the past. "I—!" After a few beats of silence, he rolls his eyes. "I deserve that. Because that's the truth. I was stupid and afraid."
The person sitting in front of her no longer seems familiar. Roxas isn't trying to pick a fight or place any blame. She doesn't recognize him at all. She smiles at this. "Continue. I won't interrupt again."
"I was gonna anyway," he snaps playfully. Playfully. Who is this guy? "A very long, very sad story short, things got bad for me. I became someone I never wanted to be, did some bad things, used some people, and it had all collected together in this huge…pot, for lack of a better metaphor, and this pot started boiling. And then you texted."
He gets a far away look in his eyes, then laughs to himself as he lowers his head and gently shakes it. "When you texted me to meet you here, I took that as a sign to just get over it and come back to you. I thought I was ready to come back because I missed you. Every fucking day, I missed you. But when I saw your face…I just got angry again. I wanted to scream and cry because I hated that you were okay and I wasn't."
"Roxas, I was far from okay. I was a mess because of you," Kairi admits. "Things were terrible for me too. I was stressed to the max about literally everything, and I didn't understand why you'd left me alone to deal with all of that—"
"I thought you said you weren't going to interrupt again," he smirks.
Kairi snaps her mouth shut and pulls an imaginary zipper across them. He gives her an appreciative look.
"I know you weren't okay. Believe me, I know. But back then I didn't. At first glance, you looked fine, so I automatically assumed you were better off than me…better off without me. It made me angry and I wanted to hurt you. I made up in my mind that I was gonna pull some lie out of my ass about cheating on you and be done with you. I quickly realized that that's notwhat I wanted when we started talking. It hurt to look at you, but hearing your voice again was exactly what I needed to knock some sense into me. So I came clean and told you everything, knowing it would hurt more than any lie I could tell you, but also knowing that it was what you needed.
"Talking to you made me realize how stupid I was being. Yes, the miscarriage took a toll on me, but I can't even begin to imagine what it's been doing to you all this time. You…carried a living being inside of you and you loved her, and then she was just…gone. I won't pretend to know what that feels like, but I know I should have been there to help you through it. Instead, I chose to run away and I'm sorry for that. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you, but I knew that the person I was back then wouldn't have been any help. He was bitter and angry and more toxic than you've ever seen."
Kairi nods as he finishes. It isn't until the silence stretches beyond her level of comfort that she speaks up. "I understand. And I forgive you. I think if you would have stayed, it would have been worse. Neither of us were stable enough or mature enough to handle a loss that big in a relationship that…draining." A giggle escapes her. She feels ashamed for being amused at a time like this. "You sucked the life out of me."
"Ditto," he winks. It's followed by an adorable grin and an easy laugh, all of which she's missed so much over their time apart. And just like that, something sparks between them again. She doesn't know how to handle it. "There's more, though, if you want to hear it. Fair warning: it gets deeper and darker from here."
Her mouth opens to respond, but the waiter returns with all of her food on a large tray and begins to sit it all in front of her one item at a time. His movements are rushed and come off as aggressive, especially when he slams her drink down hard enough for it to spill over onto the table. "Enjoy. Or don't, I don't care."
Kairi isn't going to leave a tip for this asshole.
Roxas looks annoyed as his eyes follow the waiter as he quickly moves to another part of the diner. But when his tired blue eyes return to hers, his face softens. He's still waiting on her to either confirm or deny. "I can handle it," she tells him, grabbing a fry off of her plate and sticking it in her mouth because she doesn't know what else to do.
He takes a deep breath. "After our talk, I got to thinking. I spent most of my time alone in my apartment just thinking. I replayed that talk in my head for hours and I realized that blaming you was dumb. That miscarriage wasn't your fault. It was never your fucking fault."
That uncomfortably familiar sting of pain returns to her chest after all this time. It feels like she had just escaped a spider web, only to fly right into another one. She wants to be angry, but she can't. What he's saying should take a weight off of her shoulders, but it doesn't. Instead it just adds more. "I don't really understand why you blamed me in the first place," she mutters quietly and bitterly.
"Because it was easy." Kairi's blood begins to boil at that point, but she decides to let him finish. "As fucked up as it is to say that, it's the truth. It was way too easy to blame you and play the victim. Since she was inside of you, that must have meant you did something wrong or ate the wrong thing or stretched too much or skipped some vitamins. When I sat down to actually think about everything, I came to the conclusion that the problem had been me all along. I wasn't taking care of you like I should have been, I was the one stressing you out and putting unnecessary pressure on you. I wasn't doing my part, but I lied to myself to try and escape that. That kind of thinking was what made me crash and I um…"
He pauses to swallow, suddenly looking uncomfortable. Kairi waits with baited breath to hear what he has to say. She wants to reach over and grab his fidgeting hands to calm him, but she stops herself from doing so. This is probably something that he needs to do on his own. She can't pacify him like she used to. Kairi continues to eat.
"I started to really face myself. Blame myself, really," he spoke softly, avoiding her eye. "My actions, or lack thereof, caused me to hurt two people that I loved with all my heart and I couldn't handle it. I was disgusted with myself for ever having blamed you, and like I told you before, I hated myself for it. That's when I convinced myself that you were better off without me, that you blamed me too, and that you wanted me gone for good. And I tried to kill myself."
Kairi freezes just as she's about to take another bite out of her burger. Her hearts starts to beat a little too fast as she lets it fall out of her hands and back onto the plate. "No…"
"Kai, I'm okay now—"
"No!" she growls through clenched teeth, though she manages to keep her voice low. "I would have never wanted that. Even if it was your fault, even if I was better off without you, I wouldn't have wanted you to kill yourself. Having you break up with me was one thing, but if you weren't on this planet anymore, I don't know what I'd…"
Kairi flinches as she feels someone grab her hand. It takes a while for it to register, but when it does, she sees that that person is Roxas. His thumb brushes over the back of her hand and it calms her. His smile also helps her rapidly beating heart settle back into a resting rate. It was such a small gesture, but it meant so much to her. This is the kind of support she's always wanted from him.
"Easy. I'm okay now. Let me finish."
"Go ahead," she whispers, desperately holding onto his hand as if he'll slip away if she doesn't.
His thumb draws a random pattern on her hand. It's soothing. "After my attempt, Xion suggested that I see a therapist."
Kairi can't stop herself from asking, "That would be your not-really-a-girlfriend girlfriend, right?"
"Ex-not-really-a-girlfriend," Roxas clarifies confidently. It's almost pathetic how relieved she is to hear him say that he's not currently with anyone. "But that's not important. I've been in therapy for some time now and…it's really helped me. I know now that the way we treated one another, no matter how bad it got, had absolutely nothing to do with us losing Naminé. It wasn't your fault or mine. And yeah, it didn't take a damned rocket scientist to figure that out, but I was being really stupid then. Now…I feel better than I've felt in years."
Kairi pulls out a thin, forced smile for the sake of keeping things lighthearted. She still has no idea what any of this means or why he's telling her all of this now. Is this the closure he's been denying her? "That's great, Roxas. I'm really happy for you." A dreadful silence looms over their booth once again and she inhales to prepare for the words she's about to say. "So you're...okay with the fact that Naminé's gone now?"
Roxas shakes his head. "No. Don't think I ever will be. But that's not going to stop me anymore." His hand releases hers to intertwines their fingers. She glances down at their hands like one would look at a foreign, yet adorable animal, then to Roxas. He kind of looks like the boy who stuttered terribly when he asked her out on their first date, but not quite. This Roxas looks confident and mature. "I know this is really sudden and a hell of a lot for me to ask, but...I haven't been able to sleep well knowing that you won't be there next to me when I wake up. I'm okay now, but I know I could be so much better with you. Please give my dumb ass another chance."
She tries to form words, but she can't. This feels like something straight out of her dreams, so it's hard for her to believe it. Although she had wished the absolute best for him, it was impossible for a person to pull a complete 180 like this…right? How is she supposed to believe that this change in him is real? How can she trust that it'll stay this way?
"I don't know," Kairi finally answers. "I'm not sure if this is what I want anymore. It's not that I don't have feelings for you. I do…I think? I don't know. I'm sorry, I feel like I've just wasted your time and I'm the one being stupid now."
Roxas releases her hand and fishes something out of his coat pocket. "You don't need to be sorry, much less explain yourself to me. And you're not being stupid." He places the item on the table. It's a silver key. "I moved to Stonehearst a while back; apartment thirteen, gate code 2307. Come find me if you ever want to talk. There's no time limit, no pressure, no ultimatum. Whatever you decide you want is fine with me."
He stands and turns to leave. Kairi feels an ache in her chest that grows with each step he takes, until he's gone. Her eyes sting terribly as she looks down at her half-eaten food, stomach still growling.
Aw, you know you love me.
She definitely can't decide on an empty stomach. Maybe the sound of her chewing would drown out the sound of that damned ghost.
"Fuck," she sighs, bringing another fry to her mouth.
-.-
In the middle of the night, Kairi is awaken by the sound of a door slamming shut. She flinches, but remains still in her spot on the bed.
"Fucking hell," a masculine voice hisses as the room floods with light and the sound of something hitting the floor hits her ears. She assumes it's his clothes "Can't one thing go right for me toda—"
The voice abruptly cuts off, and goosebumps take over her skin as her heart thuds in her chest. There's some more rustling behind her, and then the light switches off. She fights down an eager smile as the sheets move and the mattress sinks in behind her. Her body relaxes as he wraps an arm around her waist and holds her close. He sighs, and she can feel the tension leaving him.
"Everything okay?" she asks sleepily.
"No…but it will be eventually," he answers honestly. She wants to question him and help him feel better, but when he kisses her shoulder, she understands that he doesn't need it. Not right now, at least. "Welcome back."
The redhead smiles. "Give it another six months and we'll be back on our shit again."
They laugh. It's soft and hushed like what they have in this moment is a secret. Neither of them know if this will last forever. Their track record isn't the best and so much has happened between them, good and bad. Maybe they will have another problem in six months.
They don't care. Right now, this feels nice.
-.-
Okay, here's what happened. I was intending to make this whole fic five chapters long, and it was going to get ten times more sad than it already is, but after Skies Are Gray, I need a fucking break from sad lol. I needed a happy ending, and this sequel was totally and completely self-serving. Even still, I hope you enjoyed it.
