If anything, wakes are worse than funerals. Nam's family would at least have the decency to close the caskets at the funeral, but since it's, like, the preface to the funeral or something, they're cranking out the big guns.
Two coffins. Demyx is on Naminé's left, directly facing Roxas. He wonders briefly if this is their family's twisted version of revenge, and then thanks God that he's so high that he can barely see the body. He folds his hands in his lap and sinks down into the pew, directing his eyes at his lap so that Kairi—looking resplendent in a LBD that's far too skanky for such a serious occasion and twice as nosy—can't see how glazed his eyes are getting.
"Don't lose it." Hayner warns him. He has a hand on Roxas's elbow and the other on the pamphlet that Demyx's parents are giving out to make them feel especially horrible. It's a pretty bad photograph—Nam and Dem's school pictures from about three years ago. They look completely different. But that's maybe 'cause they're dead, Roxas thinks, and he has to stuff his knuckles in his mouth to keep from laughing.
Pence tries not to look him in the eyes and muscles his way in on Roxas's personal space, squeezing him between himself and Hayner. They both wind their arms around Roxas's quaking shoulders and halfway succeed in making it look as if they're comforting a traumatized boyfriend instead of a well-we're-not-really-friends-but-hey-he's-pretty-cool-and-I-knew-him-in-middle-school buddy who's going through a bad trip.
Roxas twitches. A girl up front starts crying. She clings to the coffins—one hand on Demyx's and another on Naminé's—and moans something horribly cliché, like "Don't leave me!" or "Why? Why? WHY, GOD, WHY?"
Why indeed, Roxas giggles to himself. He bites down on knuckle, but everyone hears the snort ringing through the quiet church. He swears he can feel Nam's girl-body squished next to him, her own gritty chuckles sounding off next to him.
Or maybe it's his phone, unless Naminé's punk-ass voice is coming from beyond the grave. Thank god that the recording on his phone was warped to hell and back from being dropped all the time. There is so much static that, as first, he can't tell what she's saying, but then, with a hoarse giggle, Nam's punk-ass-lesbo-bitch-flannel-wearing-can't-sing-for-shit voice croons, "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy, when skies are grey."
Naminé's mother goes apeshit and starts clawing at the back of her pew. "My BABY!" she bawls, nearly throttling her husband. "It's my BABY!"
Sora spazzes out against his own pew that he's sharing with Kairi and Riku and snarls violently, "Turn that shit off!" Roxas attempts to oblige; his hands fumble his phone out of his pocket and finger the push-pad. The phone continues to ring obstinately.
"You'll never know, dear, how much I love you." Naminé wails, and all he can think of are the Greek tragedies they were forced to read in middle school, and how Nam singing about sunshine isn't too different from the chorus singing about the death of Oedipus.
Hayner sighs like his father, pushes at Roxas shoulders. Pence hauls him up by his lapels and clamps a hand on his hipbone to keep him upright. "Get out of here, man," and it's like a Greek chorus.
To his credit, no one tries to strike him blind as he staggers out of the cathedral.
[x]
He meets this girl right outside. Her hair's cut close to her head and her dress is a little too short, a little too tight. She's got skin that's a little sallow, a little pinched, a little unhealthy.
She looks, Roxas thinks, like she knows how to have a good time.
"Sometimes, when I go to funerals it's like it's raining inside." The girl says. She pulls at her dress, damp and sticky against her skin with sweat and exhales, puffing her bangs up against her forehead. They're brown and crudely cut, like she'd snipped them off when she was mad and wasn't looking in a mirror. She's attempted to pin them straight with a few barrettes, but it's really not working. She elaborates, "Probably 'cause all them kids don't cry, ever. They keep it in and then it's like 'shit, they're all dead' and realize that they're dead too, or dying or somethin', and they go out—poof!—like candles."
Roxas says, for a reason he can't name except for that's he's high as a kite (and he just might start to check her out), "My best friend and my girlfriend and my best-friend-girlfriend's brother's wake is today. Dual suicide."
The girl's eyes widen. "For real?" She steps forward eagerly, hands fisting in her sweaty yellow dress. He remembers his mom saying something about women perspiring, but it's not true for this girl, this sallow-skinned chick in a sundress in the cold. Her knees are as red and rubbed raw as her mouth. This girl, this greedy little woman who looks like she should be studying biology at some cheap university and turning tricks to pay for tuition, is waiting for something gruesome to brighten up her pathetic little day.
She's a monster in cheap flats.
"I shit you not."
She smiles, rocking back on her heels in a satisfied way. Curling her hair behind her ears (she's got tiny ones, like babies do), she says, "You wanna go some place, soldier?"
[x]
Her name is Selphie and she goes to the community college with Demyx ("did, at any rate," she says, laughing). She's a Psychology major and wants to be a social worker, but, as she tips the Budweiser carefully over the grass, "it's not really possible."
The best thing about her is her accent. Selphie is from Georgia, a girl unused to the dead-eyes-dead-feet of New England. She moans from time to time about people being unfriendly and sits in Roxas's lap while some man with an attitude problem that she knows from her familial psychology class named Squall tells them to please take them damned feet off the coffee table.
Roxas, because he's even higher than a kite by this time says to Squall, "Come shake that ass over here, sugar."
Squall makes a face. "Don't make me cut your dick off."
Roxas smiles, squirms, almost knocks Selphie into the cowboy next to him—whatisface, Irvine, yeah, that's it—and says cockily, "You like it."
The room is hazier than it should be. Squall is looking at him like he's something that their non-existent cat dragged in and Selphie isn't looking at him at all. Irvine, who takes Chemistry, is licking Selphie's neck and alternately working his hand down Roxas's jeans, scraping his knuckles up and over his zipper.
Squall, beautiful, beautiful, normal Squall says, "Leave that kid alone, Irvine. Look at him. His eyes can't even focus."
"I'm focusin' all on you, sugar pie!" Roxas cooes. He attempts to release himself from Selphie, who's halfway out his lap in some bizarre position, her face plastered to Irvine's while her bony knees bite into Roxas's hips. She mewls in protest and flaps a hand towards his chest, telling him wordlessly not to move.
Irvine avoids Selphie's mouth and sticks his hand down her dress. She doesn't seem to mind, even when his hand wanders from her breasts to Roxas's hipbone, trailing like spiders up towards his collarbone.
Squall snaps, "That's enough, okay?" and practically hurls Roxas away from Irvine and Selphie. He leads him back to a dilapidated kitchen, tapping a fork on the counter and asking Roxas how he feels, if he's alright, if he needs to get on home.
Squall has a voice that's soft and throaty like cotton. Like thunderstorms. Like hills.
"Focus, kid, focus. C'mon. Do you need an ambulance? That's kind of too bad 'cause I didn't pay the bill, so the phone line's gone off."
Roxas is going, going, gone. His eyes and bloodshot, the baby blues huge in his skinny face. "You wanna hear something awful? You wanna hear something you probably never heard before?"
"Look, kid, I think you should—"
"My best friend fell in love with me. She was beautiful and I kind of thought I was, but then I kissed her brother 'cause I, I don't really know, but he felt like air. Like breathing, you know? Like being healthy. And Naminé—that was her, is her, sorry—got upset and really, I don't know how it all happened. It snowballed, I guess. They ended up dead and I'm kind of already dead."
He says this all in one breath, exhales and says lightly, "I kind of wish I could curl up with them in their graves."
He says, "I hate feeling like I'm alone when there's so many people around me."
Squall rubs his shoulders and says something awkwardly that he misses because his mouth is buried in Squall's flannel covered chest.
[x]
He memorizes Irvine's hips on hers. Selphie's back arching, her mouth ripped and raw and red against her teeth. She claws at his back, whimpering and screeching. Some of Squall's growling Swiss music is playing in the background, all about killing and leaving towns and growing up to die in gutters. Roxas asks him to change it. He says he hasn't got much else, and Marvin Gaye is appropriate to the point where he feels like he might vomit.
Selphie keeps saying over and over and over again, "No. No. No."
Squall palms his back and his hands shake towards the door, his eyes closed like curtains. His hand around the knob, he says, "Roxas, you wanna-you wanna come with m-you know what? Let's go some place."
"I want to decompose." Roxas says slowly. He presses his face to the counter and toys with the salt shaker, pours it in hills (like Squall) over the checkers. "Squall, will you use me as fertilizer?"
"Shut up and put on your shoes."
[x]
He has to tie Roxas's shoes for him. Up and over, through the hole—it takes ten minutes because he can't sit still.
It feels a little bit like being little. Five years young, and he's sitting on wooden chairs in the basement with Demyx tying his laces because he doesn't remember how and Naminé laughed at him when he asked her to help. His nose is red and runny and Demyx has to periodically stop and wipe his sleeve across his face, impatiently telling him to stop the waterworks, it's alright.
Squall tied his shoes and Roxas burst into tears.
He looked appalled. "Pull yourself together, you're a fucking mess, you know?"
Hoisting Roxas up and out of the chair, dragging him towards the door as Selphie screamed, "NO STOP DON'T LEAVE ME". Rummaging for keys to the tune of "PLEASE DON'T STOP" and locking it behind them.
Selphie bleats, "oh please" and they piled into the car, Squall's eyes shot to hell and back.
[x]
They go to the grocery store. While Squalls examines heads of lettuce, Roxas finds his way over to the Good Living magazines and the clementines, which Naminé used to eat. He presses his ear to the bar holding back the fruit (why aren't i behind there ha ha ha) and asks, "Hello? Hello?"
Squall asks him what the hell he thinks he's doing.
"I have a bad connection, ma'am." He says sullenly, and falls face down on the floor.
[x]
And Squall, because he is but a mortal (like Mary, queen of Scots and whores), walks away with his head lowered to the ground.
[x]
Someone's grandmother almost pummels him to death with her pumps and screams. He watches from the ground, his eyes sluggishly traces the brightbrightbright blue of her veins against her hanging skin, the pasty eyelids jumping against her bifocals.
She keeps shrieking, "My goodness, young man! My goodness!"
Roxas hisses, from where his cheek is pressed up against the tiles, "You need to shut up. Okay? You just need to shut up."
"My goodness, young man, what an absolutely foolish thing to do—you would've been killed if I'd had the cart with me—"
"Her voice," Roxas practically screams at her, "is in the ground and I can't hear her when you keep shouting so why don't you just SHUT THE FUCK UP?"
Grandmother So-and-So gasps and tinkers away, mumbling things under her breath. She was leaving, now, and Roxas wishes she'd kind of stay because he's starting to hear things that aren't Nam or Demyx or his mommy. There's a faint buzzing noise in his ears, the feeling of his tongue sticking to the roof his mouth, a slight quivering in his arms and legs.
This, Roxas thinks, is what it's like to fall apart.
[x]
He doesn't see anything. He doesn't feel anything. Everything is compacted into little I-think-maybe-this-is-happening spots, I-am-here-and-this-is-now-so-logically-what-occurs-is-this moments.
He knows that he's currently on the floor of a grocery store on the corner of Traverse Way and Main Street. He knows that, for the most part, he is completely alone. He knows that he is still tripping face, and that Selphie, that sweaty yellow dressed girl from the funeral, is currently being fucked over by Irvine.
He knows that this, for all extensive purposes, is supremely messed up.
The results are as follows: a) he should not get high anymore, even for quote-unquote 'good reasons' b) he needs to get off of the floor, because it is dangerous c) Squall is a complete douchebag, leaving him alone like this and d)Irvine is a complete douchebag, just because he is.
His cell phone vibrates in the pocket of his jeans. You have, his phone says cheerfully, one (1) new message!
"Fuck you."
The phone vibrates repeatedly. You have three (3) new messages!
I have zero (0) friends! Roxas thinks, and he thinks it in bold because he wants too, and because it's halfway funny.
The phone vibrates in his pocket, over and over and over again like Selphie, clawing at Irvine's back in a way that means she wants to leave scars that'll hurt, in a way that means don't mess with her (that one's a hellcat), her mouth red and raw and pulled back against her molars, flashing her wisdom teeth and she screams. "NO. NO. NO. NO."
He thinks calmly of Selphie, gruesome and gorgeous (and molested) in her tight yellow dress that was too small for the current climate. He thinks of her rocking back on her heels, becoming part of her own little horror story. He wonders if she's still screaming. He wonders if she'll cry afterwards. If she'll hate herself. If she'll hate him and Squall for leaving, pretending nothing was going on.
He thinks of Naminé as she used to be, leaning against the cupboard and saying matter-of-factly, "You ignore all the things that you hate, and that'll get you one day, it'll swallow you whole."
Roxas closes his eyes against the tile and prays to whoever's listening that he won't wake up.
[x]
But he does, and it makes it worse.
In a hospital bed with an unfamiliar ceiling with his mother asleep in the chair next to him and a heart monitor ticking away while his father—back from visiting whores in Nevada—leans up against a wall, his briefcase tucked against his shin. With Sora&Kairi&Riku taped up against the wall with his father like dispensers, their hands fitting perfectly in each other's palms, even though Sora was a tool and Kairi was a slut and Riku was someone no one wanted to be but everyone wanted to have.
With Olette and Pence and Hayner (like a cheap imitation of their high school's most famous and envied—Sora & Kairi & Riku—with their cheap hair gel and their Polaroids and their habitual disappearances and stuttering) balanced against the foot of the bed like they might just sink to their knees and start praying like the church he hasn't seen since the funeral.
It's nauseating.
And then, like an orchestra's crescendo, it starts up.
His mother, up and screeching about how could Roxas have done this to her, he used to be such a precious little boy, where did he go wrong and oh, oh, it was so terrible that her son was acting up, becoming a stoner, or worse, a hoodlum. His father, mumbling and blustering and probably asking why he was even there, seeing as "that boy" was obviously alive, thanks for nothing Sheila.
Sora&Kairi&Riku, standing like the grim reapers in brightly colored clothing, saying nothing with their mouths and everything-and-then-some with their eyes.
Olette and Hayner and Pence edge out the doors, like the main characters that they aren't.
And Sora, future-frat boy, most-likely-to-be-a-celebrity, nicest-eyes, nicest-body, most-liked, says calmly, "What the hell did you think you were doing?"
Kairi says, because she doesn't even like Roxas (can't stand him, not since elementary school when he put paste in her ponytail) and doesn't even like Sora, really, and probably just came to check out Olette, "Yeah. What the hell? We were worried."
Smoothly, Roxas says, "You lying bitch."
She shrugs.
Riku, an unlikely savior in tight jeans, holds up Roxas's cell phone and interjects, "Uh. Missed calls and messages. Voicemail, I think?"
His mother practically dislocates her elbow trying to snatch it away, and his father rolls his eyes sleepily, "Settle down, Sheila," before grapping at her windbreaker and tugging her outside in the way that people who don't want to cause a scene do.
Riku continues, "The number isn't logged in." He drops the phone onto Roxas's bed and retreats to the doorway to stand awkwardly in it, as if he's waiting for permission to leave. He waves a hand towards Riku like he's king of the friggin' hill or something, and Riku smiles gratefully and dips, out the doors like he'd never been there in the first place.
"Try not to kill yourself in here." Kairi trills, dancing up towards the bed with her knock-off purse swinging at her hips. She smoothes down the blankets and kisses Roxas directly above his eyebrow. "Okay?" She trips on her way out, swishing off with a flurry of Love Spell and canned pineapple juice.
Sora is the only one there, and he thinks that maybe he'll start leaving too, or at least fall asleep, but he lunges forward, picking up the phone. He flips it open and scrolls down, his eyebrows knitting together. "What the hell? Is this a joke?"
"What?"
"Your fuckin' phone, man. It's weird. You know?"
"Uh. No. Actually, I don't."
"It's kind of creepy, uh…" His face wrinkles and he shoves the phone into Roxas's face, lighting up his skinny face with the small sheen of the screen.
Over and over and over again, the same words:
Plz don't stop
"Seriously, what the hell?" says Sora, and he shrugs.
"Dunno. Some idiot, probably. No big deal."
Sora snorts. "Except for the fact that it is. I mean, you've gone all weird and you've become nasty, man. You leave Nam and Dem's funeral and you've all over the place and we don't see you for what, a couple of days? And then you show up a few days later in a friggin' hospital while your mom loses her shit and some ice-prick named Squall pays your bills." He exhales through his nose and says adamantly, "You've got some problems."
"Shut up."
"No, man, seriously, I wanna—" But he never finds out what Sora wants to do, because he fits the phone to his ear and presses pound.
He thinks it might be Selphie. Maybe Squall.
Instead it's some gravelly voiced, gin-and-grit-for-breakfast mouthed woman on the other line. She cusses him out for a good minute; he closes his eyes and thinks of Naminé, drawing pictures of her lover on his lawn and Demyx rubbing his neck nervously whenever he answered the phone.
He thinks of some girl with her heart torn out, ready to rip him to shreds.
"Motherfucker," the girl barks, "you've got some explaining to do."
And Roxas, his eyes closed against everything, wonder just how far in he is.
A/N: My mind said "Stop. Stop right now. Write your stupid play with your stupid stage directions for your stupid class. Do it. And then go do stuff for Physics." SHOWS HOW MUCH YOU OWN ME, MIND. HA! Good gravy, I'm spent. Any bad decisions, spelling errors, and general confusion can be sent to my frontal lobe, which isn't fully developed, and so is blamed for pretty much everything.
...on that slightly moronic note, review? Please-and-thank-you.
