A/N: Ah! Sorry I'm late! I got all wrapped up in a Buffy-a-thon. Heh. I checked the other day and noticed that after all that complaining I did about there only being 6 pages of Kairi x Naminé stuff that this fic actually was the one that brought us to 7 pages! Woohoo! We reached our goal already! Next goal is for eight. Everyone get your typing fingers ready.
Dedicated to Aer and adorabletheodore.
Disclaimer: See Chapter 1.
There's just something about women. The way they walk, the way they talk, the way they smile, the way they cry. I used to think about my mother and Sora's mother and other women I knew in a strange way. They slept with men. They kissed men. They washed dishes for men. I couldn't imagine why any one would want to do any of those things. It seemed so degrading and also so inevitable. Would I end up crooning under some man, telling him how special he was because he was born with a penis?
Sure I liked plenty of boys. Sora and Riku were my best friends and I imagined my self with either of them intermittently. I loved them. But the idea of being "the girl" was always that inescapable dread. I hated that I loved men the most when they behaved like girls were supposed to, sensitive, and that everyone myself included thought they were special for it. Why couldn't I have been born a boy? I would have been a great one, considerate, handsome, and doting. I could have any woman I wanted. Sometimes I think I was born with the heart of a boy.
Maybe I'm too concerned with appearances. When I think of girls being with other girls I think "Do they think they're boys?" Do they both want to fuck like boys? Do they want to strap colorful dildos to themselves and rut? It was so silly. I was so disillusioned. I'd never loved someone like that before. I didn't know that 'making love' to someone wasn't about personal identities, or what it looked like, it's about showing someone how much you loved them.
~Scarlet Lyrical * Chapter 4 ~
"Where are we going?" Naminé flipped and flopped sweetly over the crackled pavement on the Back Street, "Are we even allowed back here?"
Essentially you could divide the town we lived in into four sectors. Downtown, where I lived, the "suburbs", where Sora, Riku, and Naminé lived, the factories, and the Back Street. The Back Street was a long row of ancient houses on a fifty-some year-old street with the original brick showing through in some places. These homes used to be seaside, the homes of fishermen and vendors. Then came big money business men, building branches of their factories on our cornfields and a dam. The water was brought back over forty meters. Suddenly the seaside fishermen of the Back Street had homes bordering on a nice open field. Zoning laws prevented it from becoming the site of anything productive. For kids like us it was a place to escape to.
Riku, Sora, Naminé, and I squeezed our way between two homes of people we knew to not own guns and into the field. The sun was getting low by now. Out in the distance only the orange haze of a sun could be seen.
"Not that this isn't nice or anything, but why are we out here so late?" Naminé crossed her arms stiffly. She shivered.
"Well, since we're all buddy-buddy now. We decided to put you through initiation," Riku smiled as he wriggled out of his coat and laid it on top of her shoulders. She didn't make a move to put her arms in the sleeves.
"Since when is there and initiation?" Sora piqued up and shuffled over towards me, rustling damp grass all the while. His hands were stuffed rather stiffly in his pockets, "This isn't just an excuse for an orgy is it?"
"What are you talking about?" Riku slipped one of his pretty arms around Naminé's shoulders, "I'd stay away from that one if I were you. He's got a dirty mind."
"Yeah, I'll bet." She giggled and shrugged his arms off while giving me a sly look.
"Shut up Riku. You're such a prick sometimes," Sora started walking towards the dam, "Would sell your best friend down the river to get laid."
"What are you so pissed about? I was just kidding around." Riku jogged up besides Sora to talk with him while they walked.
"That's just it. The minute a girl walks into the picture, I'm a laughing stock." Sora walked faster, "I should be a little more important than someone you just met."
Naminé silently started to slip her fingers into the sleeves of the dark jacket and watched as Sora and Riku started to become harder and harder to spot in the gathering darkness.
"Sorry if I caused you any trouble." Her fingers curled around the sleeves, "I can go if you want."
I smiled, "Don't worry about them. They are just being over dramatic. Besides, there's a real reason we brought you out here."
Naminé smiled her sweet smile that creeped into her eyes. I imagined her at sixty-years-old with a delicate web of wrinkles around her pretty blue eyes and laugh lines. They looked good on her.
"We must be freaking you out. What with the barging into your house and dragging you out here." I smiled a little, "We're a small town. They don't teach you about boundaries in a small town."
"No! I like it. Boundaries are lonely." She looked down in that endearing way of hers, "You can come around anytime you want. I don't mind."
"Really!" My voice came out more enthusiastic than I would have liked and I swallowed it," I--we will do that. All the time. Every day. Well not every day. Unless you want every day."
She swayed from side to side, "When ever you want. I'd love to see you." Naminé finally lifted her eyes from the ground and looked to me shyly. "You had something to show me remember.
I remember hearing something once about when two people meet for the first time the reaction is like chemicals. Sometimes its violent, spreading chaos and destruction to everything it touches. Sometimes it does absolutely nothing. Other times it's like magnesium in the flame, a brilliant white light that scars the back of your eyelids with its shadow for days. And by god Naminé was blinding.
It was getting darker by the minute. I tried playing that childish game where I watched the sky hoping to catch some movement, and seeing nothing but a back drop.
We walked side by side in silence for all of about two seconds.
"What's your favorite color?" Naminé asked with a squeak after narrowly avoiding a large clump of brush. She laughed a little, "It can tell you a lot about a person's personality."
"Red. I like bright red, like cherry red." I smiled and looked towards her walking a little slower, "What's that say about me?"
Naminé stopped dead in her tracks and looked to her toes, "It means… you're unpredictable, wild . . . Passionate. Such a silly thing any way. I was hoping you wouldn't say red."
"Why, do you have a passionate dislike for the color or something?" I smiled to her, but she kept looking at her feet solemnly.
"No, no passionate dislike," she just sighed and looked up," I had a great line for blue though, but I guess now you'll never find that out." Naminé gave me the most adorable little wink that brought all the blood in my body up to my cheeks. I hoped it was dark enough that she wouldn't see. I knew it wasn't.
"Naminé?" I scooted closer to her, trying to be brave, "You going to tell me about your color?" Her long shadowy eyelashes grazed her cheeks softly. They reminded me of a doll's eyelashes, long and impossible. And interpretation of the ideal little girl.
"Me?" She smiled a little half smile, "I'm red too. Perfect match."
"Unpredictable," I moved impossible close to he feeling her breath over my face, "Wild," Her sweet eyes stayed lazily open, scanning over my face, "Passionate." I ran a stray hand to her folded jacket sleeve and rolled it around in my fingers.
"What ever are a pair of us to do?" Her little voice cracked slightly. She sighed and closed her eyes. A bubbling laugh escaped her lips and rolled around in the air. She opened her eyes shyly gazing through blonde bangs.
"Uh, we could," I licked my lips wearily and used the opening to enable more breathing. Suddenly all my breath had escaped me. "We could… come on!"
I don't know what I was thinking really. Wild? Unpredictable? Passionate? Maybe. Stupid? Definitely.
Before my thoughts, my reason, could catch up with the rest of me, I felt my feet slamming against the ground, the sleeve of a coat still clamped between my fingers. Luckily she followed, sliding her graceful fingers out of the too big sleeve and grasping my hand. I almost tripped.
Up the hill. It seemed like forever just to get to the water. Even worse we were going part side ways, and Naminé had flimsy little flip-flops on. Always dressing so daintily, so impractical. I loved it.
At the top of the hill, the pinnacle of the dam we were greeted by a sea of orange. Every drop was solid, neon, glowing orange water. It looked impossible, it looked like magic.
"Told you there was a reason." There was cement under our feet now. The dam. The sunsets there were always spectacular. I sometimes felt as though this place was the edge of the world, it actually made me understand how someone could think that the world was flat. I could imagine sailing away until I fell off the edge.
"Did I ever tell you that I hate orange?" Naminé whispered softly, "I've always thought that it was an obnoxious color. It's too hard on the eyes." she laughed a bubbly laugh and squeezed my fingers. I hadn't noticed our fingers were still intertwined and lit up like a candle. Her fingers were so warm and impossibly sot. I thought that they might brand me if I ever dared to let go, even though I couldn't think of a reason why I'd ever do a thing like that.
"Wanna swim in it?" I laughed at her scrunched up face, "It'll be like a baptism. Give us a piece of the hated enemy orange and be a complete rainbow."
She kicked her shoes off and made a determined face, "Okay." She smiled her sweet side-ways smile, "Into the fray."
I had a much harder time removing my shoes, without letting go of her hand. I was afraid that it was painfully obvious that I was trying to keep her within my grasp. I thought I even heard her giggle a little.
"Ready to get wet and cold?" Naminé asked with a little wiggling of her fingers, "And reborn?"
I squeezed her hand desperately, "I could go for the rebirth part," my voice was shaky and shallow.
"On three." She breathed out her pinched mouth and gave me a pretty little nod.
"One." Her pretty fingers swiftly slipped out of my iron grip and wrapped around my middle. I copied the gesture.
"Two." She turned towards me, breath grazing over my cheek. I couldn't help but look to her too. And by god our lips were so close.
"Three!" We hit the water hard and I didn't even know that I'd jumped. The cold was anything but sobering. It felt as though we'd fallen through the rabbit hole or into a birthday cake. I surfaced from the water to nothing but pure solid sunlight and Naminé, a floating head amongst it, still holding me close, only now with two arms.
I used one arm to hold onto the dam wall to hold us afloat and the other to pluck hair out of our faces while she clung to me like a drowning kitten. I let the hand rest on the back of her shoulder when it ran out of work.
"Kairi?" Naminé asked quietly and touched her forehead on mine.
I closed my eyes, "Yeah?"
"I really, really like you." She said with a small voice.
"Yeah, me too."