"Anticipation"
a [crappy] FLCL fanfic by kenning
Disclaimer: GAINAX owns FLCL, also a small chunk of my soul. Give that back, GAINAX.
Summary: Um... a rambling tour through post-Haruko FLCL and my own insomnia?
Warnings: Possibly spoiler-ific, considering when it's set. And just in case thar be readers weak of heart, I first watched FLCL in its entirety while under the influence of (prescribed, dammit!) codiene cough syrup. And it was subtitled. Proceed at your own risk.
BIG Warning: Un-Beta'ed, un-edited. FEAR.
Random Notes: This is my first fanfic proper*. Don't hurt me – a friend wanted FLCL and I couldn't sleep. I'm so very sorry... (* I won't be using that as an excuse. Crit me hard, please. – "Thank you sir, may I have another?")
***
Naota still sleeps in the same room. When he turned 15 he finally built up the courage to take down the top bunk, and after two years it still feels strange to come home and find it absent.
The silence at night doesn't bother him very much anymore, because he can plug his battered headphones into the small portable amp Naota bought off of Gaku before his friend left for a school in another city. He can just plug in, and play, and try to forget. Forgetting the silence and emptiness is easy, for a while. It's that after that short precious respite the memories coming flooding back. He finds it disconcerting, but doesn't stop.
Too much is different now. No one's heard from Mamimi in years, except through ocassional appearances of her photos in magazines and newspapers (sometimes a punk concert, sometimes Africa). Even Canti seems... hollower, now. The robot Naota's dad still half-heartedly refers to as TV-Boy has long since passed his initial stage of fervent helpfulness. He's been reduced to a quiet, almost absent servant - when Naota catches a glance of him Canti is usually staring at a plane or gazing after a passing moped. It's like he's waiting for exciting times to return, for something or someone to come for him and take him back to what he once was. To rescue him.
Sometimes, Naota catches himself wishing that, too.
He had a band for a little while, Eri taking up vocals and the ocassional small audience ooing and awing over Naota's skill and his strange guitar. They all wondered where he got it from, but he never said. Eri never says anything either, and Naota never bothers to ask to see if she remembers or suspects anything. Some things are best left unsaid, and Naota has raised it to an artform.
Eri dated him for a little while. They made out every now and then, when the hormones and the boredom took over. It wasn't enough, though - or maybe it just wasn't right. They're still friends, good friends. They don't talk much (lack of communication was what did the band in, quietly, in the end) but are perfectly happy with the kind of conversation that comes of shared silence and shared experience.
The steam no longer surrounds the town, and no one but the rare tourist ever comments on the interesting "sculpture" in the middle of the community. The outside world has trickled in, but Naota still feels separated, trapped. School, family, familiarity, they all tie him here. Maybe, as he once nearly admitted to himself, he's just hoping for something interesting to return.
The blue Rickenbacker bass was put carefully in a corner in Naota's room ages ago. When his older brother came to visit, with his cute but forgettable American wife in tow, Naota only shrugged when asked about it. It hasn't been moved at all.
If the slowly increasing pollution doesn't block the view of stars from Naota's window at night, he'll bring the guitar and the amp out onto the second balcony he helped build. Dad is usually too drunk to hear the music anymore, and Naota likes to think that if the lilting strains and ferocious power chords wake his grandfather from the sleep of the dead, it'd serve the old bastard right.
Naota plays until late, until the wee hours of the morning, until dawn. Perhaps with a powerful enough amp, with the right notes in the right order, he can reach her. He can call her back.
[fin]