Happy Families
Chapter Seven
Such a Pushover
All the while during the odd ensemble's (odd ensemble including one scantily-clad yet undeniably pretty girl who was popping bubbles with some strawberry gum; two middle-sized boys with fly-away hair, one which who was insane and one of which who was not; one teeny, tiny little child in mis-matching socks chasing candy wrappers on the pavement; one lamp-post sized male with hair like ketchup and a lop-sided smile) walk to the park, Roxas had been lying to himself.
His hands had been in his pockets, head to the floor, watching his shoes.
Slap, slap, slap they went against the concrete, and buzz, buzz, buzz went his brain, humming steadily like a heartbeat.
Aerith had always brought him up to believe that lying was wrong (and his biological parents before her, presumably. Roxas was still hazy on the details) yet he couldn't help it. Lying was much easier than admitting the truth; a form of escapism, almost.
Naminé had her drawings and Kairi had her parties and Axel had his firelighter and Sora had his blitzball games (member of the school team, don't'cha know?) and Roxas…
Roxas had his lying.
Really, he reasoned with himself, it would be cruel and unjust to take away Naminé's drawings and Kairi's parties and Axel's firelighter and Sora's blitzball because they loved them so much. And it was a love, deep-rooted like the foundations of a house; take them away and they would eventually collapse.
Their eyes even seemed to sparkle while engaging in such activities – a truly sickening sight.
And so, comforted by this slightly warped logic (because lying wasn't really the same as art or socialising or sport or even burning things) he continued to feed himself lie after lie. Almost like an impatient school kid feeding pieces of munny through the slot of the school vending machine trying, in vain, to get a carton of orange juice between English and Math class.
Both of their efforts were proved fruitless, though – in the end Roxas would get no comfort from his dishonesty, much like the irritated kid would get no calcium-fortified, artificially-flavoured juice, so what was the point in even trying?
This will be okay… Roxas thought, examining his shoe-laces. This will all be good and merry and joyful and…
…
Did Axel just brush his hand against my leg?
"Don't touch me, Axel."
"Why not?"
"Because you smell of dead things."
"I found a burnt squirrel in his wardrobe yesterday," Kairi chipped in, accompanying her words with a few more token pops of her gum. "It stank."
"I had nothing to do with the untimely death of that squirrel!"
"Suurreee you didn't, you pyromaniac."
"It was the squirrels own fault! It shouldn't have been in my wardrobe to begin with!" Axel cried, raising his hands to his face as though that would shield him from Kairi's wrath.
Still, despite his fervent reassurances, Roxas couldn't help but agree with Kairi. The boy did seem to exhibit signs of zoosadism, and no amount of wild arm-waving could change that.
"And neither should those firelighters," Kairi countered, the argument between the two redheads easily comparable to a particularly vicious tennis match – one person hit the ball, and the other immediately hit it back with a swing harder than before.
"That's something else altogether."
"Yes. That 'something else' would make Aerith have a heart-attack."
"…I just reeaalllyyy don't like squirrels," Axel mumbled after a while, kicking the concrete beneath his feet. "So what if it just sort of happened to catch me in a bad mood and I just sort of happened to set it on fire? Stuff like that can happen to anyone, you know?"
"True. Odd how it always seems to happen to you most of all, though," Kairi muttered in disbelieving tones, popping her gum over and over; pop, pop, pop.
Roxas winced.
"I like squirrels," Rikku giggled inanely, finger in her mouth, adorable mannerisms enough to turn even in Maleficent – self-proclaimed 'Mistress of All Evil' – into goo. "They're cute and have fluffeh tails!"
"Squirrel? Where?!" Sora cried, looking around wildly.
(Incidentally, on the street he found an empty paper bag, a skittles wrapper, several pot-holes in the road, an over-flowing trash can and a couple of people walking their dogs, but no squirrel.)
Hell yeah, this is going to be juussttt fine.
You keep telling yourself that, Roxie old boy. Better be careful, though – all the denial might give you wrinkles!
God, even his own mind was against him on this one. Then again, one of Aerith's personal philosophies – the one she had always told the kids over a nice cup of warm milk and some oatmeal cookies – was 'always hope for the worst'. That way, the woman had been fond to explain, whenever something really good happens, you'll be even more grateful for it.
"Whoooooo! We're here!" Sora cried jubilantly, thumping Roxas on the back with all the force of an articulated lorry.
"Ow…"
As it was, Roxas had nothing to be grateful for.
Instead, he morosely cast his eyes towards their final destination, adapting the sorrowful air of one walking up the gallows.
The dirty sign a little way up the road read 'PUBLIC PARK. NO LITTERING'. Or at least, the sign used to say 'PUBLIC PARK. NO LITTERING'. Now it said 'PUBIC ARK. NO PLZ LITTER', courtesy of some cheap spray-on paint and a complete disregard for the environment. Several people had also decided to take the new instructions seriously, if the amount of sea-salt ice-cream wrappers dancing around in the breeze were anything to go by.
Children today think they were so witty...
"Come on, Sorwa! I'll race you!" Rikku cried, running forwards with her little chibi-like arms outstretched. "See ya later, looooosssseeerrr!"
"What? No way!" Sora cried, hot on her multi-coloured heels.
Kairi laughed a little, tilting her head to see the tall brunette and short blonde dash through the park gates, random pieces of trash speared atop the fancy Victorian railings, twitching slightly like not-quite-dead-but-slowly-dying bugs on a car windscreen.
"Heh. Children," she said in an aloof manner, as if she were a million light-years away from Sora (who, in reality, was actually a good 54 days older than her. The calendar said so).
"You're younger than Sora, Kairi," Roxas pointed out, watching as the boy tripped over his large, clown-sized yellow shoes and landed in a heap of arms, legs, heads and bruises.
Kairi shrugged, popping another bubble. Roxas winced yet again, resolving to invest in a pair of earphones if he was going to be around the red-head whilst she popped her gum. To add salt to the wounds, Roxas also happened to be running very low on sleep and sugar, two things he was absolutely dependent on. The sugar more than anything else.
"Whatever, Roxanne. Just because he's older don't necessarily mean he acts it."
Well, there was some truth in that, judging by the way Sora was flailing around on the floor with his face contorted up into an almighty 'DX' of eternal agony.
"Think you better go and nurse him back to health, Kai?" Axel grinned, nudging Kairi in the ribs.
"Oh please," Kairi 'pfft'd, rolling her eyes – lined, yet again, in Roxas' eyeliner. God, it wasn't like Kairi was even intentionally trying to piss him off this tim- No, wait. Judging Kairi's character, yes, it was highly likely she was trying to piss him off. Go figure. "Sora's like Tigger. He'll be up again in a few seconds, you watch."
Obediently, Roxas and Axel watched, staring a little as the boy bounced back to his (over-sized) feet like a spring. In a matter of seconds he had shaken the worst of the dirt off his clothes and was already running after Rikku, thundering along with elephant's footsteps.
"Told you."
"Hrmn."
"Can we go on the swings first?!"
"Okay."
"No, wait! I wanna go on the slides!"
"Okay."
"NOOOOO, WAIT! I wants to go on the climbing frame!"
"Okay."
"Or…" Giggles. "Maybe I'd rather go on the swing first after all!"
Roxas growled, joints in his arm already beginning to tire. Rikku, doe-eyed and petite as she was, was proving to be a real pain. And, if I wished to take the time to inject some well thought out humour in this paragraph, the previous statement was quite literal. Roxas was in pain, wincing a tad as the little girl tugged mercilessly on his arm. He thought he might understand her demonic pulling if there was something truly exciting going on, like a public execution or a witch burning. Alas, those days were long since gone (a shame, really, because that meant setting fire to Kairi was illegal). However, there were no guillotines or burning corpses.
As an alternative there were rusty swing sets, some of which were looped over the top bar. There were a few slides, dirty and graffiti'd, one covered in baked-on eggs. There was a climbing frame, piercing the grey blue sky as it hovered, ominously, over the park. There were also a few beer bottles strewn here and there, some kicked-about park benches and some piles of rubbish, all littered around the trash cans, but not actually in them.
But there was still nothing of interest there.
Certainly nothing to warrant the separation of Roxas' arm and shoulder, at any rate.
"No, Roxas, I think I'd rather go on the round-a-ma-bout instead!" Rikku declared, dragging Roxas behind her like a rag doll.
Roxas blinked.
"There's a round-a-bout?"
"Yeah, stupid!" the blond girl chirruped, gesturing to said round-a-bout.
Holy cow… Roxas mused, not even sure why the cow was so holy in the first place. Nevertheless, he pressed on with his eternal train of inner monologues (talking to himself was the only way to be assured of decent conversation). That… That thing (I refuse to call it a round-a-bout) is covered with so much dirt I wouldn't let a plague-bearing rat sit on there, let alone a young girl!
"I'm sorry, I must have missed the round-a-bout under all the filth."
"Awww, that's okay! I know you have mental disabilities 'nd shizz."
"…What?"
"Axel told me I shouldn't be too hard on you," Rikku said apologetically, tracing shapes on the floor with the tip of her shoe – an R, an I, a K, a K and a U. RIKKU. "He says it's not your fault if you act stupid, it's just how you were born. I'm sorry. Being dropped on your head must hurt a lot."
Roxas' eye twitched, attempting to hold his fury in. At least, until his mouth opened.
He failed rather epically after that.
"Axel said what?! I'm gonna kill him, that fucking bastard! I'll pull out both his stupid eyes and use them as marbles and then I'm gonna squish them into pulp and make lemonade with his innards and then… And then…"
And then he paused, a grain of common sense filtering through the barrier of rage that had formed around his brain. He wasn't going to kill Axel after all, mainly because…
"Where the hell is he, anyway?!"
Rikku hummed, clacking her tongue against the roof of her mouth. "Went tah get ice-cream with Kairi and Sora."
"What?! He goes swanning off to God knows where to get ice-cream-"
"He went to the shop at the end of the road, actually."
"Whatever," Roxas snorted, waving Rikku's four-year-old knowledge aside with a flippant shake of his hand. "He goes swanning off to the shop at the end of the road to get ice-cream and leaves me here all by myself! The stupid bastard-"
"Awww, it's not that bad. I'm sure he'll gets some ice-cream for you as well."
Roxas paused, wondering whether to go into another rant about how he didn't want any of Axel's fucking ice-cream (but his free-falling sugar levels stated otherwise) and didn't want to look after a fucking four-year-old (even though she was quite sweet, really), but bit his tongue.
It might have been Rikku's pout...
…
It was definitely Rikku's pout.
Damn, he was going soft.
"Yehs, he'll got you lots 'nd lots of ice-cream 'cuz he likes youuuu."
"Likes annoying me, perhaps."
"Yeah, that too," Rikku agreed, clacking the heels of her shoes against the round-a-bout. "So are you gonna push me now?"
Roxas froze, staring as the girl slowly began to lower herself into a sitting position.
Sitting.
Sitting on that disgusting, worm-ridden, drink-spill-covered, litter-strewn piece of crap!
"No!" Roxas cried, making Rikku pause, looking bemused. "Ah… Um… Don't sit down on that, you'll get all grimy and horrible."
"But I can't stand up!" Rikku squeaked indignantly, rolling her eyes as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. "If I fall off I'll hurt myself and get all dirty 'nd Aerith will shout at youuuuu."
"You'll get dirty if you sit on that anyway," Roxas sighed, shrugging out of his jacket. His favourite jacket. His jacket with all the cool zippers and pointless pockets that made him feel a special snowflake and all that jazz! Well, in the name of love and war some sacrifices had to be made.
He held the jacket up – and not just any jacket but, The Jacket - with an air of martyrdom, watching as his 'daughter's' eyes lit up. "Put that on the bench and then sit on it so you don't get dirty, okay?"
"Yayyyy! I love you, Roxas!"
"And I hate Roxas because he's such a pushover, so I guess that balances it all out."
Anybody who knew Marluxia Kando would tell you that he was a really weird boy. Infact, several people had doubts that he even was a boy, although his gender was instantly confirmed as male every time he spoke in a voice far too deep for his general appearance.
His hair was pink (natural, he assured everyone) and it hung in luxuriant waves that shone when it caught the sunlight, his steely blue eyes were lined with curtains of thick, ebony lashes and a thick aroma of roses seemed to follow him at every step, but only because he worked part-time at a florist's, devotedly making corsages for proms and bouquets for funerals.
He certainly didn't look like the sort to work at a florist's, not with his regulation gothic 'uniform' of black, black and more black, with maybe a few hints of sanguine and crimson thrown in for variation.
Rather, what with his paper-pale skin and bloodshot eyes, he looked more like the sort of person you'd find on a park bench either A) stoned, B) drunk, C) sucking people's blood or D), dead.
And, funnily enough, that was where Marluxia found himself that particular sunny morn; sat on a park bench. However, au contraire to what I said previously, he was not stoned, drunk, exhibiting signs of vampirism or dead.
He was merely bored.
Kicking cans about street corners grew tiresome after a while, and even spraying crude messages on signposts with his posse of 'omg we r gofs nut poserzz' (namely: Larxene Rieko and Saïx Sato) lost its appeal.
And now we appear to have run full circle and come right back where we started, mainly with the idea that Marluxia Kando was weird and Marluxia Kando was bored.
And, incidentally, Marluxia Kando was the sort of guy who'd insult little girls if he thought it was funny.
a.n: ehehehe. sorry it took so long to update D:
