Pretty Little Boy

'Up in Smoke'

Cool glass pressed gently onto Sora's forehead as he leaned against the car window. Really, it would've been better if he could just sort of seep through it and get out of the damn vehicle, but that wasn't happening. No, Sora was stuck safely inside the car, under the watchful eye of his brother who was a safe driver. Who was driving them back to their safe house.

Where he would no doubt light into Sora on how unsafe he was.

Sora couldn't help but be mildly surprised that it was Cloud who had picked him up from the hospital and not their mother. He hadn't asked about it, though, for it only took one look at Cloud for Sora to know that talking was not advisable. For that matter, neither was breathing.

To put it quite simply, Cloud was livid. He was so angry, in fact, that he hadn't even spoken a word to his brother at all. The entire car ride across town in the middle of the night had been in dead silence. A small part of Sora couldn't help but be grateful. He had some thinking to do. Big, serious thinking.

For one thing, Riku hadn't been at the hospital when Sora had woken up. The doctor there told him the plain and obvious facts. Sora had nearly drowned. He was still so drugged up on ecstasy that he'd probably been unable to coordinate his body enough for swimming. That would probably explain the giggling lights he seen before it all went black... But why hadn't Riku been there? It was the first question that had popped out of Sora's mouth and the doctor had frowned slightly before pushing his thick glasses up the bridge of his nose and switching the subject.

Sora may have still been foggy from the whole drug business, but he wasn't completely stupid.

However, as important as Sora thought it was that he find out where Riku had gone to, as Cloud pulled the car into the driveway... Well, Sora was more worried about what was going to happen in the next five minutes. There was still no talking even as both boys climbed out of the car and proceeded towards the front door. A light drizzle of rain had been falling from the sky when they'd left the hospital and it looked as though that same rain had just followed them home.

Even though it was his house... even though Sora had spent his entire life there... he felt terribly misplaced at that moment. Without even bothering to turn on the lights, Cloud tossed his car keys on the hallway table before walking straight into the living room and collapsing on the couch.

"You know, Cloud, if it was too much fucking trouble for you to pick me up, you could've just waited for Mom to get home," Sora sneered. When there was no response from the dark room, he took it upon himself to follow Cloud's own path, standing over the couch with his fists clenched.

What does he think he's doing? He doesn't even care what happened! He's not going to yell at me or anything... What sort of brother is he?!

"You don't even care, do you?! You don't care...! You know what, I wish I had just drowned. At least then I wouldn't have to come home to this sh--"

"...please..."

Sora's eyes widened. What was...?

Cloud was crying?

No, he wasn't crying... Cloud was sobbing. He hadn't been angry in the car... He'd been trying to keep himself from crying. Once Sora stopped talking he could hear the muffled whimpers his older brother was making, even as his face was buried in the cushions of the old sofa. And Sora just stood there numbly, not saying or doing anything. He was torn between wanting to consolidate his brother and make everything right again... He wanted to fix it all, everything he had messed up... But at the same time...

Sora was just... mad.

At everything and nothing in particular, both at the same time.

"Do you know what happened to Riku?"

Sora's questioned seemed as though it would go unanswered, for Cloud didn't move from where he was sprawled on the couch. Narrowing his eyes, Sora turned to leave, heading for his room. If all Cloud wanted to do was cry, Sora wasn't going to take part in it. He wasn't a baby.

"Sora." But Cloud was still his older brother, and that tone made Sora stop in his tracks. "Don't you know what happened? Don't you get it?"

"Cloud, do you know where Riku is?" Sora asked, unable to keep the panic from his voice. What if Riku had died? What would Sora do without him? He needed Riku...

"Why do you care?! Fuck, Sora, he messed you up! He messed you up big time and nearly got you killed! You could have died..." Cloud's voice cracked, and even though Sora couldn't see the blond very well in the dark, he could guess that Cloud was crying still.

"Riku's my friend! Of course I'm worried about him!"

"Sora... What sort of friend drugs you up and rapes you?"

Blue eyes wide, Sora jolted backwards, nearly slamming into the wall. "H-h-he wouldn't..."

"He did, Sora... He did..."

"He didn't rape me, Cloud," Sora hissed. Why was he being so defensive? Was Cloud right? ...But Sora loved Riku so much... He knew what he had with the other boy went far beyond friendship. Riku would never...

"What, are you going to throw that whole 'can't rape the willing' argument at me?" Cloud's voice was rising and he was no longer crying. Sora honestly couldn't figure out how his brother was reacting, but as far as he was concerned, it was way out of line. "Sora, drugging someone up and then having sex with them is never a good thing."

And as Cloud grew more confident, Sora grew less so. What if Cloud was right? What would that mean for Sora's relationship with Riku?

"What do you know, Cloud?! You don't understand me or Riku! You never even gave him a chance!" Sora was panicking now and Cloud knew it. His younger brother wasn't just trying to argue with him, he was trying to argue with himself. But the more Sora talked, the more he talked himself into a corner. He couldn't remember exactly what had happened, but the void was there and everything Cloud was telling him was making sense...

Where was Riku when Sora needed him?

Riku... Please help me understand...

The house was still dark as Sora stormed away, muffling his own growing sniffles as best he could while keeping his arms extended in front of him. Though really, he no longer cared if he ran into a wall or a steam-truck. His own brother had turned against him in the blink of an eye.

Fingers dancing across the numbers on the phone, breath coming out in choked sobs. The last thing Sora really wanted to do was let Riku know he was crying. The older boy would probably think he was a baby or something... He'd probably laugh and tell me what a loser I am. Or something. A hand slamming the phone back down. Shoes slipping off small feet, flying across the room and hitting the wall with a dull thud.

It wasn't enough, it wasn't enough. It was loud enough, it wasn't real enough. Please tell me none of this is really happening...

Sora's fists clutched as his hair, pulling mercilessly at the chocolate locks. Clenching, unclenching, falling into sync with Sora's unsteady breathing. For someone as sweet and simple as Sora who never really cared if he didn't understand things... this misunderstanding was sending him through a loop.

All he wanted was Riku. All he wanted was for Riku to show up, give him a reassuring smile and swear that he wasn't guilty of the crimes Cloud accused him of. Cloud knew nothing, Riku knew everything. Sora knew nothing, Riku knew everything.

Fingers flew over keys again, numbers traveling through wires and cables down an impossible path, sorting through thousands of combinations and looking for the right one. Where are you Riku? Cradling the phone against his ear, Sora perched on the corner of his bed, tucking his legs under him and squeezing his eyes shut. If he tried hard enough, he was sure he could picture Riku standing in front of him, calming him, soothing him, telling him it was all okay.

"Hello--"

"Riku!"

"--we're not available right now, but--"

One angry boy flinging the phone across the room in a rage. It hit the wall, it hit the floor, falling beside his old ruddy shoes. Where are you?!

Clamping his teeth down firmly on his bottom lip, Sora refused to cry anymore. Crying was for little children. Crying was what made people annoying. Riku probably hated criers. And yet without his sobs, the entire house seemed dead. There were no cars streaming past outside, no wind rustling the leaves of the palms that were clustered all over the islands. If Cloud was still awake, he was silent too.

Who cares about him anyway? All Cloud ever did was put other people down. Like Riku. Where are you, Riku?

Suddenly, the silence was broken by the slam of a car door. Sora's eyes flew open, his teeth releasing their death-hold on his poor bottom lip. Thorough a partly opened bedroom window, Sora could hear everything. There were keys being removed from someone's purse, rushed breathing as low heels worked to make her body fly across the sidewalk, jamming the key into the front door lock with such brutality that it was hard to believe that the person was Bryna.

What would Sora's mother say? The eternal question. Do something wrong in what society calls 'the real world' and it always goes back to this. Coworkers joke and jibe about it, friends poke fun. 'What would your mother say?' For Sora, the question was even more real than the clap of a shoe as it hit a wall, the muffled thump as it hit the floor. For Sora, the answer actually mattered.

"Where's Sora?!" The two words filtered through his bedroom door with ease, alarm and sick worry ringing clearly through Bryna's voice. Obviously, Cloud was still awake and probably still right were Sora had left him in the living room. His response, however, was not as loud as Bryna's voice had been and Sora could hardly pick any of it up.

"...the doctor said... It's probably better if... try telling him... stupid." The wall opposite of Sora began to look very interesting as the hurried footsteps of his mother rushed down the hallway, headed straight for his room. Fixing his eyes to one point on the wall, he took a deep breath and awaited the opening of the door, the cries of his mother as she held her baby boy in her arms and asked him where she went wrong.

But it never came.

Instead there was a knock, timid and quiet, almost as though the action itself was too much. Nonetheless, it was loud enough to reverberate off Sora's walls, hitting his head with such a force that he thought he might as well just roll over in some grave rather than suffer such a pounding headache. Was this was he'd wanted? This insane solitude?

"What?"

"Sora... wh-what happened?" Even though he couldn't see Bryna's face, Sora knew that she was having a hard time keeping her voice in check. There were thin fractures in her speech, bumps and cracks that weren't normal in his mother's voice. A fleeting picture of Bryna speeding down the highway, tears coursing down her smooth face, nearly tore Sora's heart clean in two.

"Sora? ...Please... talk to me, sweetie. ...I want to help you."

"God, Mom! Just leave it alone!" No, no, stop! That's not what I want to say... But try as he might, Sora couldn't force the words through his mouth.

"Sora." Clear as a bell, it was obvious to anyone with half a brain that Bryna was done. She was just fed up. She was tired, she was worried to death, she was hungry, cold, and her eyes stung. The last thing she was going to do was lose her little boy like this.

"I don't care who you hand out with. You are free to choose your friends and nothing anyone can say or do is going to stop you from that. But you're my son and..." Bryna swallowed, ignoring the tears that threatened to spill over. She was losing it again...

"Please! I don't want to lose you!"

I don't want to lose you either, Mom.

"...Go away."

There comes a time in every parent's life when they have to learn that their children are becoming their teenagers. That their teenagers are becoming adults. And it goes on and on for as long as any parent lives, the memory of their child, of their baby, and what those days were like. And they have to learn to let go and just watch sometimes. But letting go of Sora would mean she would have no one left to cling to and no more children to raise and love and dream for. Bryna would just have her boys she would worry about and cry about when they finally left her.

It hurt and Bryna had known it would.

But sometimes you can't hold the hand of your little baby, no matter how much you love them and worry about them. So she let go. And she went to her own room as Cloud went to his. And no one spoke or said a word to each other in the process. There was no reassurance or a soft smile.

But in Sora's mind he still had hopes of Riku appearing out of nowhere and of his beautiful sea-green eyes dancing as he laughed at Sora's worried state, telling him he shouldn't have gotten so upset. That it was no big deal.

He wanted Riku there, just being Riku. But what if this Riku wasn't the Riku Sora thought he was? Sora blinked numbly at the wall, pouting slightly as his mind ran itself in circles blowing whistles and ringing bells until Sora's headache grew so bad, it felt like someone was trying to cleave poor Sora in half.

Creeping towards the doorway, Sora slowly turned the doorknob, shoving his weight down on the door as he opened it to keep it from squeaking. A dead, empty house greeted him with all the enthusiasm that a bird had when greeting a cat. Cats destroyed happy birds. Apparently, Sora destroyed happy houses.

Thankfully, his eyes had grown used to the dark and Sora had no trouble in making his way silently down the hallway and into the bathroom. He had a feeling that no one was asleep in that house, but he didn't want to draw attention to himself anyway. Being cornered in a bathroom while having words and complaints pelted at him like stones wasn't exactly something Sora ever wanted to experience. Instead, he slid open the door to the medicine cabinet, staring at its surface.

The mirror showed a rather tired looking boy, staring ahead of him without much care for anything, it seemed. The mirror however, was very wrong. Sora did care. He cared because it was just his nature to care. He had to care.

But it was also his nature to be happy. ...He wasn't happy.

What the hell is wrong with me?

Other than a hazy outline of who he was, the mirror had nothing right. The bathroom looked lighter to Sora in real life than it did through the mirror, his eyes were bluer, his skin less pale... The mirror had it all wrong. Certain of this fact, Sora turned back to the task he had at hand, rifling through various bottles and small boxes until he found was he was looking for, squinting at the label in the dark.

"I don't get it, where'd she go?" The words left Selphie's mouth quickly, concern spreading across her cute face. Sora watched with mild interest, although he really didn't care too much for Kairi and Selphie's cluster of other friends. They were way too--

"She OD'd."

"...She wha?"

The girls were silent. It was shocking, them being who they were. So shocking, in fact, that Sora actually looked up, concerned by the sudden quietness that filled their booth at the restaurant.

"She purposely took too much medicine, Selph. Overdosing."

"But why?!"

"Because she was sad? I don't know! I don't know..."

Sora pushed the memory away with a vengeance, popping the cap to the medicine bottle open and tipping it to the side. Two capsules of extra-strength Tylenol would do the trick. For small children, only one. For children six and under, ask a doctor first. Sora knew the label, he knew the drill. He didn't listen often in health class, that much was obvious, but he remembered some things. Don't take too much, that was all you had to be careful about.

One capsule, two capsules. There.

Three, four, five... What the? One by one the pills lazily rolled out of their bottle, pooling together in the cup Sora's hand had formed. ...Six, seven, eight...

Eyes widened and now brimming with fresh tears, Sora let out a silent shriek, flinging the bottle of Tylenol and the pills already in hands away. He just wanted to get it as far away as possible. Instead, the bottle hit the mirror with much more force that Sora had ever thought he was capable of delivering to anything, causing the image to shatter and crack, glass shards breaking free of the medicine cabinet door and flying everywhere.

Noise, noise... there was so much noise... There were pills scattered all over the floor and in the sink, water droplets already eating away at their surface and letting lose the medicine within. Medicine that was supposed to make people feel better, to cure their aches and pains. What if I had put all those in me? Medicine that could kill, that could destroy lives with less thought and time than it took to make most.

Sora was vaguely aware of a dull pain on his cheek and reached a still-trembling hand up to investigate. A stray fragment of glass must have caught him in the side of the face, for a small and shallow gash was there, blood welling up in the wound and hurting like hell. Snatching his hand away, Sora stared numbly at the blood on his fingertips before turning on the water in the sink, medicine drowned in a torrential downpour as Sora quickly washed his hands and face before grabbing a towel and carefully cleaning up the rest of the mess.

The shattered mirror showed him fragments of an exhausted boy, tears streaming down his face as he looked at himself and continued to cry. He didn't know why he was crying, whether it was because of the deed he'd nearly done or because Riku wasn't there. Maybe it was because he was running through everything he'd said and done and was realizing how wrong it was, how wrong he was.

Maybe it was because he was stubborn and didn't want to give up. That was, after all, why he had thrown the medicine away in the first place, was it not?

-------

An hour later, Sora dazedly awoke from a troubled sleep. His window was wide open and the first thought that came to his tired mind was that someone had finally decide to break in. Well let them come, dammit. Let them rob Sora blind and let them find out that there really wasn't anything worth stealing in the entire house. Just as long as they left quietly so Sora could return to nursing his throbbing headache.

But the bed creaked and shifted as another weight was added to its surface, dipping Sora slightly towards whatever freak had come into his room. To say Sora was petrified would certainly be wrong. He was scared out of his mind and he wasn't even fully awake yet.

"Sora, it's me." Wait! Familiar voice! ...Riku! Too bad Sora was too tired to do much more than let out a few mumbled noises that were really supposed to come out as excited squeals. Wow... absolutely nothing is coming out the way I want it to, is it?

Riku smiled. It was that smile that Sora would kill for and that he had hoped for all night before finally crashing on his bed, his face still damp from his tears and still aching from where the glass had cut him. But Riku was there and he was real. More real that crying, more real than stupid noises Sora made on purpose by flinging things against walls...

Had Sora been wide awake and feeling like his old self, Riku would surely have found himself gasping for air as he tried to survive the biggest bear hug of his life.

"Are you okay?" It was obvious to Riku that Sora was far from okay. The boy at his side that had once glowed with his innocence and life was now nothing more than a tired shell of that happy little spirit. And Riku missed that spirit.

But he'd be damned if he let the world know that. It would mean--

"Sora..." Riku cupped Sora's face in between his hands, studying him closely. Brilliant blue eyes? Dull. Tan skin? Pale. And hot. Not the pleasurable heat that Sora let off that Riku was absolutely addicted to, but a sick heat. The sort that made mothers worry and jab thermometers in their children's mouths. Worry spread throughout Riku like wildfire, starting in his brain and burning straight down to his heart in one painful burst of spark and flame.

...But he'd be damned if... It would have to mean...

"I'm just tired..."

"Like hell you are. You look like shit."

"...Thanks." Sora's eyes struggled to stay open and focus on Riku. Already the silver haired boy was becoming a blur that just happened to stand out slightly against the other blur that Sora believed was his ceiling.

"Sora, what happened?" Riku ran the side of his thumb over the small red gash on Sora's face, his troubled expression only growing more so as Sora's heart-shaped face screwed itself up in pain and tried to turn his head away.

"Nothing... mm... broke... Was an accident." Riku shook his head and bent down, kissing Sora's chin lightly, the heat from his skin engulfing his lips and setting them aflame even though the kiss itself lasted no more than a second. Sora was already well on his way to falling back asleep and there was no doubt that in that condition, Sora needed rest. Resting the back of his hand on Sora's damp forehead, Riku winced and pulled away from the startling blaze of heat.

He rose from the bed and quietly made his way across the room and into the dark hallway. The bathroom was hardly two yards away from Sora's bedroom door, so in a matter of seconds Riku's feet came to rest on the linoleum floor, his eyes surveying the room and searching for a washcloth. Normally, he'd never allow himself to do anything so motherly. ...But it was Sora. There was no way Riku could just leave the boy in that condition without doing even one small little thing for him.

Riku's hand brushed against a wadded up towel as he reached for a washcloth in the back of the small linen closet the bathroom held. Rolling his eyes, Riku couldn't help but allow a small smile to flicker across his face. Sora was such a slob.

With hardly a second thought, he grabbed the washcloth in one hand and the towel in the other, planning on hanging up the towel where it belonged before soaking the washcloth in some cool water for Sora. It wasn't much, but--

"Fuck!" Riku hissed, releasing his hold on the towel as a small shard of glass bit into his palm. What the hell was--??

Riku nudged the door closed and turned on the light in the bathroom, finally getting a good look at the place.

Small silver bits and pieces of glass glinted cheerily up at him from across the ground, a plastic medicine bottle lying amongst them like some discarded toy after a child had finished playing with it. There were stray pills all over and lumps of wet powder sitting in the sink... Riku knew Sora was a messy individual, but he also knew that the boy wasn't quite that messy.

"Sora... What's wrong?" The question Riku knew the answer to already fell on the ground, making itself at home with the glass and pills, mingling with the fallen towel and its shattered contents. It remained there even after Riku finished the job Sora had started, leaving the bathroom spotless and holding a damp washcloth in his hand. The question would remain there for a long time, even after the floor was scrubbed and washed, even after the linoleum was replaced and Sora and his family had left the house all together.

Words and events stay with houses and the house will always watch and always be quiet while they happen, much like the bird will never really be singing its song while being devoured by the cat.

-------

Riku left Sora's house the way he'd come in, carefully lowering himself down from Sora's window. Thankfully, the house itself was only one story tall. ...But that was a far from comforting thought for all that Riku had to think of now.

No sooner had he turned to leave did he come face to face with a tall teenager, blue eyes blazing with something very closely related to rage.

"I think you have some explaining to do, Riku," Cloud said.

-------

"Sora... here. I brought you this."

"Mm... thanks..."

"...You're tired. Go to sleep."

"M'kay. G'night... Riku..."

"...'Night." Silence, silence, silence. Fading colors. Lots of darkness. A nice cool forehead. Could it get much better?

"...Sora..." Riku's touch. Too far gone to tell the difference between face, neck, and hand. "Please be okay. Please, please, please just be okay." Something warm and wet falling onto his arm. Riku's voice... but it wasn't... normal.

"Didn't... Didn't I ever tell you how pretty I thought you were? Heh... You're... so pretty, Sora. You're so brilliant, you're so happy... so full of light. ...You're my pretty little boy, Sora. So gorgeous..." More droplets of warmth trailing down his arm in tiny rivers, falling off in tiny waterfalls, forming tiny lakes on his sheets before melting into the fabric itself.

Something... smooth? Silk? It had to be silk, it was so soft. .Something was slipped carefully around his wrist, tied there gently and with such care...

"Don't let that light that shines in you go out... Please, Sora..."

Sora took in another fresh gulp of air. Saturday morning. He used to spend this time watching cartoons, goofing off with his friends, walking dogs or mowing lawns for cash. But all he felt like doing was sitting and staring. And apparently the rest of the house was fine with that. It would sit and stare too and it would remember.

At first he'd been unable to tell if it had just been a dream. But when Sora had become fully awake he'd noticed. He'd noticed the washcloth off to the side of his pillow where it must have fallen off when he'd rolled over in his sleep. He noticed the open window and the cool morning breeze drifting gently through it.

And Sora did spend his day sitting and staring. He stared at the small ribbon tied around his wrist, dark blue with small white polka dots; very simple, very... cute? He stared at it and ran through words in his head, over and over and over again.

............................................................................

Erk. ...One chapter and an epilogue to go. Now I'm going to go work or Raspberry Heaven or Lucky Thirteen, both of which I love and adore writing for. (Band camp starts next week, so I only have a week left to goof off before I really have to haul the laptop up to the football field at school and finish OftB.)

...Hurr. Polka Dots and Ribbons returns!! Haha...ha... yeah. I really need to re-write that some day....

Ori