Yaoi. And if themes of suicide offend you, it may be a good idea to stop reading at Cloud and Leon's half. Um, enjoy!
Thanks – babymar-mar, kimi-sama, Praetor, Uzumaki-sama.
Degrees of Separation – 1 - Between Ashes
'Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end.' - Semisonic
Sora lay in that place. Dream punctured but body too warm to move.
He was back in Decay.
It was so late that it was early, because the club was deserted and the stillness rushed at him, the lights static and all directed into one spotlight on the centre of the dance floor. By the bar, bottles were suspended in the air, ground scattered with cigarette butts and scuffs from steps, slides across the years. If there was music, Sora never dreamt to sound.
But somebody was dancing. In the shadows and with a precision you could hardly even watch. He danced around the light, playing with it, letting it catch in the hollows beneath his ribs, over his collarbone. Every time he reached the centre he twisted away, just before he could be caught. The whites of his eyes glinted in the darkness, like glass, or mirrors. A thinning reflection told a smile beginning to slide.
The bottles fell in slow-motion.
Sora woke up slowly, with a hard-on and some bemused disappointment. He never had recurring dreams.
---
Kairi sat on the doorstep with gravel pressing into her palms. Trying to give up biting her nails for nobody even knew how long, and it was working. Even though she had to practically sit on her hands most of the day. It was working. She picked up some stray stones and tossed them in the general direction of Sora's bedroom window, smiling a little, picturing him struggling into crisp uniform, half-undressed, thinking of her.
Maybe.
There was something achingly comforting in this morning, sears of blue sky cut into angles, plane tracks drifting overhead, all the noises of white clapboard life. Lawnmowers and breakfast and kids spilling out, awkward with new uniform, into the autumn semester. Kairi would have denied it, but after Decay, any regularity was a relief.
To the drift of melting butter and toothpaste, the front door swung open.
"Wasn't it awesome?!"
Turning to Sora, she knew, right there, that they'd never talk honestly about that night, of awkward pauses and the weird sense of not existing at all. Insanely optimistic, Sora was, always had been(always will be), the master of letting it go. She stood to meet him and the two immediately fell into steps they'd been matching for years, down Sora's drive and into the street. After two months in sneakers, black leather cast them stumbling.
"We did it."
"Tidus and Selph are going to go insane that we didn't ask them. You think we should say?"
"I think we should keep it to ourselves."
Because Kairi wasn't sure if she could keep talking, if she could keep smiling and laughing whilst she remembered the mess in the mirror once she had crawled home, a little girl playing dress-up in clothes silly and clownish make-up. She had stared into eyes at first defiant, then tired, finally crumpling to frustration. Guys at school, in the street. They often looked. But she wasn't like those Decaying girls, couldn't move or think or walk like them. She clung to the thought of that silver haired guy, who had looked, had looked and smiled before turning away. Still. Telling Tidus and Selphie how awesome it had been. She wasn't sure if she could lie about that. She turned to Sora and raised her eyebrows, resorted to the two aged syllables she knew would seal silence.
"Secret?"
Secrets had swollen but the trust remained the same.
"Sure, if you like."
No silver convertible broke this silence, just Sora's laughter. "I don't care anything about this last year. Anything but maths first period."
Their shoes in identical precision. From a distance one. Kairi tried to swallow the words but they spilled out regardless.
"Anything but no lessons with you."
---
If there was anything worse than having maths double period, first thing on Monday, it was knowing that he had maths double period first thing Monday for the rest of the year. Maybe if Mr. Hegan could have accepted his class' turmoil, things would have been better. A joke about boredom, about dread. But Mr. Hegan could imagine no greater pleasure for twenty five pupils than ninety minutes of Pythagoras to begin the week. Mr. Hegan wasn't just enthusiastic about maths. He was fucking poetic about it.
If Kairi weren't in this class, Sora thought that ok, he could die now.
He slumped into the warmth of a window seat, surveyed the view with a kind of helpless acceptance. This sweaty chair and scrawled desk the scene of hours of boredom to come. He could see almost the whole town from here, from those three slow flights up, and the view was sweet but still. The two school soccer fields were separated by the ridiculous drive which almost every classroom faced. Used only once a year, for the annual November town parade, which ended in a mass of floats and pet beauty contests and fireworks scattered about the school grounds. The drive itself was lined with ashes, the groundsmen's baby, all set up and newly gravelled and gods forbid you actually walk up it. It remained closed for three hundred and sixty four days a year, cordoned off by almost unbelievably pretentious signs: Proud Property of the Governors, Headmaster and High School. For Parade Usage Only. DO NOT ENTER.
The pitches had been sprinkled for a new season, a new rush of hope, a new championship they could win, but wouldn't. A bus full of fabled city kids would draw up, crush a few coaches' hearts, pull away back out to bigger lives.
Another line of trees split the grounds from the road down which Sora had walked to school since he was five years old, then with his mother clutching his hand, then by bike, finally with Kairi, metallic red growing rusty and abandoned, replaced for the way she laughed at his jokes, the way they could talk about nothing for ever. Every so often cars crawled by, lazily obeying the triangular signs local parents had erected, 10mph Protect Our Children. Roofs stretched out, his own house, hers. The main street of precious shops, all china and that pot something stuff his mother used to scent the bathroom.
Then, the ocean. Sora's whole life story neatly contained in one Kodak shot. Only(and we did) - you couldn't see Decay from here. Decay was behind the school, on the outskirts. A fable amongst the adults, maybe a symbol of departure, something a little imperfect in their faultless little town. They had once -
Sora looked up as the rabble settled. Mr. Hegan had arrived. He lay down his file and beamed. Mr. Hegan had spent his summer wondering whether or not his wife was fucking the guy next door, and doing the Times crossword. It was good to be back.
He frowned a little, Sora saw, taking the register. Glanced around, shrugged, started smiling again. Turned and wrote six letters on the whiteboard.
AB² plus BC² equals AC²
"You should already know this formula from last year, but can anybody-? Yes? YES! Pythagoras! A, B and C referring to a triangle's angles. When we put two angles together, we have-? Exactly! A line. So, AB, BC and AC - a triangle's sides. For the next fortnight, we'll be studying this theorem, moving on to trigonometry, sin, cos, tan-"
Back to Decay.
Teasing the light, you couldn't learn to move like that, never predictable, always changing just when your eyes learnt to follow. And casting absence of music an advantage, when you could write it yourself, leaving moulds of your body in the air.
"Sometimes it's easy. Certain numbers give exact figures. You see? Four squared plus three squared is five squared. Sixteen plus nine, twenty five. And we call these numbers Pythagorean triples. You'll definitely need to remember that one. Pythagorean triples."
That was all it was. Admiration. Body deceiving you. And in the shadows. He looked androgynous, anyway. Anyway. It was a dream.
"Pythagorean triples are rare. Usually, it's messy. Usually, you're going to have to use your calculator. All the sides, messy. All the answers inexact. That's harder, obviously. But that's the way it usually turns out."
But when you woke up, remembered. You still felt it. How good it felt. Strange. In sleep. Lies to Kairi keeping you up. A stranger dancing in your head and you're free.
"In that case, I'd like your answers down to just three significant figures."
Kairi faced around in her chair and raised one disbelieving eyebrow. Teachers had been enthusiastic before. Mr. Hegan recited maths instructions like they were Shakespeare.
And what did you think of, dealing with it?
"So, I've got your new books here, two each, one for class work, one for home. Write your names, my name, subject-"
In the shower? Were you thinking of Kairi?
What Sora would remember was Kairi's low whistle, a sound he'd never heard before, air of impression catching where her lips were dry. Before he could nudge her, before he could ask what was up, he saw.
"Somebody's walking up the sacred drive!"
For the strangest moment, it was as if daydream and life has collided in fluid, elegant steps, even from a distance, nobody else moving like that, just one foot in front of the other. But in Decay he had looked so old, and so jaded, and so cool.
"The parade one?"
And he still did, even in uniform, white shirt tails open, collar parted two buttons down, blue blazer a little too big, billowing out in the wind behind him. The breeze cast his hair to liquid iron, draping aqua gaze. Sora's mind reeled between the last seconds and that night. Now it was a natural flicker of spotlights, the sun sliding between those ashes, ashes before Decay, his body and everything touching changing, black light black (don't you wonder what he looks like in the) light and a wash of white as he stepped into the sun. There could never be a mistake. As the books spilled out of Mr. Hegan's hands, as Kairi's heart gave an unfamiliar wrench, as the classroom erupted into disbelief around him, Sora kept his eyes fixed on the stranger who had been in Decay that night, the stranger who had stared towards them. The stranger surveying the school with a wry little smile. From neighbouring rooms, Sora thought he could hear the distant cheers of other classes. Pride and joy. Almost every classroom facing it. Every classroom facing him. A school already half in love.
With a slight shrug, he disappeared into the entrance hall, pupils half hanging out of the windows to watch.
"He's going to be in so much shit," somebody whispered.
The maths set were huddled on one side of the room, still gazing out, now at nothing. Mr. Hegan, too, a discarded pile of textbooks sliding from his desk. He adjusted his glasses and blinked, eased himself from off of Kairi's desk.
"It's been a decade since anybody stepped on that outside of parade day," he said.
"And what-?"
"Expelled. Straight off."
"I heard it was an accident, and they still got chucked out."
"But if the kid's new..."
"Well, I've never seen him before. He looks kind of old..."
"Maybe he'll be-"
The classroom door swung open. Twenty-eight pairs of eyes shot around, though nobody really needed to look. Sora could have drawn the image with his eyes closed; where his shirt was unbuttoned, the hard shadow of his collar bone, an easy posture, one elbow against the frame, an eyebrow cocked and that same wonderful, self-confident smile.
"... Hi."
Mr. Hegan had never been a smooth man, but on the verge of his middle-aged crisis, it was never too late to begin. He turned around, stumbled over a pupil's leg, and smiled.
"You must be Riku."
Afternoon sun dimmed a little. Skin began to dry.
They never fell asleep embraced, but there was always some vague contact, the scrawl of themselves, maybe a bigger comfort. That everything was different, but nothing had really changed. He lay on his side, one of Leon's hands resting at the base of his spine. Bad sleeper, the bed too small, room too light. Every time he closed his eyes a hundred flashes told the window's lines in different colours. Sometime, Leon began to laugh again. Sweat sharpening his bangs, Cloud twisted over, pushed Leon's hair away to kiss him lazy. The brunet usually loathed contact after sex, but the flick of tongue against his own said that this, a few moments, were ok.
"You should laugh more. I wish you did."
"I'm trying."
"You still thinking about that mall janitor?"
"No, but..." His body trembled against Cloud's, remembering the guy's face, his stammered apologies. That had been funny enough. "I was just thinking..."
"What?"
"I just fucked you in the same bed where my parents'd read me goodnight stories."
Laughter to silence to drifting to dreams. They moved closer together and the amusement seeped out of their breathing. Cloud watched Leon, grinned back at closed lids. It was strange, for Leon out of everybody in the world. He was the only person Cloud had seen who slept smiling.
Sleep a temporary, half-hearted death.
Is that - phone?
The room bled back into view. Leon was lying on his back, telephone receiver in one hand, not saying anything, maybe just finished, hanging up now and hell, never sleep in the afternoon when it leaves you like this, the breathing in and out and grit and time anonymous. Cloud's voice came out muffled and thick.
"Who was that?"
"Hoax."
"What did they say?"
"They just laughed. Don't ask me."
"Time?"
"Four fifteen."
Leon's eyes were closed no entry. The bed's pressure shifted, and Cloud heard him stalk down the hall, the bathroom door slam and lock. Seconds later, the distant patter of a shower. Afternoon naps always left Leon feeling like shit and the blond collapsed back, scrubbing at his eyes, just a Leon thing, just a stupid thing, nothing personal.
Nothing ever personal.
When he rolled onto his front, Cloud could feel the slight bruises which would form at his hips. Everything so wonderful and then quick replies and casual dismissal. He would never have complained, but Leon really did have this unique ability to make any brief tenderness burn to fuck-and-run.
The phone started ringing again.
And Cloud didn't even think. No moral debate, conscience absent. All automatic, he reached over the side of the bed and yawned down the line.
"Yeah?"
Cloud would later wonder, how Leon could ever have mistaken it for laughter(all this has left me with is - that noise - to live with), the sound crumbled amongst bad static, rushing down the line from some broken place thirty minutes from sight. Cloud thought first of some helpless, dying animal which had found Leon's number and was capable of using a telephone, what the hell, the absurd shit crowding into his mind to dim the real possibility, the certainty, that this distant mass of sobbing and words, that these tatters were a person.
A person who felt.
"- I'm sorry - that we were the same - the only one - we were the same. Not just you - don't give yourself the credit, not all of it - long time coming - but everybody finds somebody better -"
An awful sense of familiarity which Cloud couldn't quite place.
"- long time coming, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You're only the half of it, anymore than that and I think –"
"Who are you?" he whispered.
"What? You're not-? Leon?"
Dead. The dial tone exploded in Cloud's ear. He didn't move. Even when some safe, recorded voice told him to dial a number or hang up the phone, he didn't move. Even when Leon entered, half-wrapped in a white towel, damp bangs teasing his eyes. Even when Leon's scowl began to curl. He didn't move.
"The hell did you answer my phone for?"
"They weren't laughing, Leon."
"What?"
"The person on the phone. They weren't laughing."
"It's just a hoax caller."
"Well, they knew your name."
In sex and arrangements, Leon's silent authority called every shot, but from this spot, under pained blue eyes and a tone he had never once heard before, Leon's shots were suddenly all so petty. So trained for nonchalance amongst panic, he didn't even need to find the composure. Emotion slipped straight and Leon shook his head all fine, to keep you happy. Their eyes locked, cynical grey on fraught navy, attached as Leon listened to dial-back, paused, nodded slightly.
"Yeah, I know the number. He's just this kid I used to know."
Funny how you knew the number straight off, then, Leon.
"He sounded pretty disturbed. I mean, why'd he call you?"
"Because sometimes he does shit like this. For attention."
"Do you know where he lives?"
"Vaguely. What?"
"You didn't hear it."
"I did, actually. And I thought he was laughing."
"I think we should go check up on him. He wasn't laughing, Leon."
Leon grimaced, cold and damp and exposed, conditioned air suddenly sharp against his chest. He let the towel fall, began to rummage for clothes, liking Cloud's eyes on him, on him even in the midst of all this over-reaction.
"You don't know how he laughs, Cloud," white T-shirt melting against wet skin. "He was laughing. Like he will in our faces if we show up. He'll laugh at me."
"You know where he lives?"
"Didn't I say that already?"
Like you ever thought it was laughter.
It was almost impossible to say no with Cloud looking at him like that, naked and ruffled and juvenile in concern. It was almost easier to abide.
"Whatever. But I'm driving."
Like you ever thought it was laughter at all.
---
"Why did he phone you?"
Cloud's stare burning his mask raw.
"If he's just some kid?"
Skin peeling back to leave a mass of flesh and capillaries and eventually just his mind, broken and looking like, not even knowing what it looked like.
"If he's who I think he is... I think I saw you. I saw you two together, sometimes."
And from the passenger seat, Cloud would see it all, see the flashes of past relentlessly worked away from action and habit.
"He came up to me, you know. A few weeks back. I didn't understand what he was talking about, the way he was ranting. He seemed crazy. But now. I - I think I understand."
A new tumour of desperate, clammy worry beginning to swell. Gods, what are we going to find?
"Don't say you broke him for me."
Leon finally turned to meet that intrusive gaze, only to snap his eyes straight back to the road. Cloud had been facing away all along, forehead pressed against the window. Not even looking at him.
---
Cloud smiled, amazed at how Leon had found the place(vaguelyjustthiskid) so easily.
The house was ordinary in almost every way, perhaps a little bigger, no cars in the drive. Leon pulled expertly up to the front door and killed the engine. Two seatbelts snapped back in synchrony, but it was Cloud who climbed out first.
The windows were mirrors, each dark, half concealed by white curtains. He walked around slowly, scuffing shoes along where grass met patio. The lawn had yellowed from the hottest summer for a decade, and a few dishevelled plants matted the perimeter, all dead or dying. A plastic green table sat collecting grime by sliding glass doors. Apart from that, the garden was completely empty. Cloud thought then of where he should be, Zack's, with a barbecue on and some marathon football game about to begin and a hundred kids racing around throwing coke cans at one another.
It was so quiet.
He pressed his face against the patio doors, covering the glass to avoid glare. The room beyond was dim and deserted. Bookshelves and television and chairs. Almost achingly normal.
Leon jumped about three feet when Cloud banged on the back windshield, emerging from the opposite direction as to which he'd left. The brunet rolled his eyes and opened the door.
"I can't see anything," Cloud nodded towards the house. "Think I should try the doorbell?"
"Maybe he left."
"He didn't sound like he was going anywhere. And that was his home number, right?"
Leon shrugged and lent against the bonnet, massaged his temples. His hair was still damp from the shower, and little rivulets or water had settled into his collar. The house was engulfed in shade, and fall wasn't far off. He sighed and stepped up to the door, and Cloud pressed the bell. In the mist glass their reflections were mutilated, pieces of each running into the other, bodies in shreds. Cloud pressed it twice and then he pressed it again, peering inside for some sign of life.
"I think the hall light could be on."
"So he babbled down the phone, went out, left the light on. Cloud-"
"- He said that it wasn't your fault, Leon. Did you hear that part? He said that he was so sorry. He was so sorry, and he was crying, and it wasn't a joke. It wasn't a joke and he's in there." Cloud clawed at his eyes, still blurry from sleep, still reeling from the phone call, still frantic at the thought that this was all just about to fall apart. "I mean, didn't you hear it?"
Leon let the words slowly fall into place. Leon heard the noises again, as he had been hearing them ever since he muttered "Hoax" and let the line die, noises spilled from a strange, fallen being gasping for some shattered pride he could have left. Leon understood that this was something which could no longer be ignored. Leon hoped, somewhere, that Cloud wouldn't be hating him, wouldn't hate him as he reached below one of the scattered plant pots, shifted the spare key(just so you can –hah– wait around to surprise me) out of its hiding place, which he had been told in secrecy, in trust, months ago. He hoped that Cloud wouldn't be hating him, even when he turned the key in the door and their reflections span to nothing and they disappeared altogether.
It was dark inside, and Cloud said nothing. The knowledge that Leon had been here many times before, had lied so adamantly. It wasn't a painful shock, more a slow hollow growing in the pit of his stomach, something he had known all along, hope searing into jagged little pieces which could now dissolve.
The hallway light was on.
It took Cloud only a second to see what was missing from this place, what defined it away from average. There were no photographs on the walls. Not one.
Leon took the stairs one at a time. On the banister, Cloud watched his own knuckles turn an ill, bone white. The walls were painted cream and they were empty. And he walked and the hallway light was on and Leon was two stairs ahead, always a little ahead, and when Cloud had first seen Leon, he had thought that nobody else could pull of that leather, and now, now Cloud didn't know what he was thinking.
Gods what
Leon knew where to go. There was only door closed.
what are we
Knew that door.
(now they were both laughing, the contrast of skin and tone and feeling, the cold of winter and the warmth of water beginning to fall.)
what are we going to find
He twisted the handle with an immediate urgency which took Cloud by surprise, because suddenly
Leon?
he knew.
(sometimes I feel like you've saved me.)
Leon vanished into the end. Cloud saw the shock of destruction, a red deep enough to be black, parts beginning to congeal against bleached tiles, the slash of water, Leon's cry, and he was there, the voice, the wounded, naked and shuddering in Leon's arms and Leon thrust the phone at him at Cloud and call an ambulance call an ambulance now I think we're too I don't know. And Cloud took it cradled the receiver like the last part of all he had left two times to dial three digits because that was when he saw a rusty handprint on the plastic and imagined listening to himself himself a lifetime ago warm and content when he picked it up from the bed and he had said yeah? and even then even then oh gods even then the kid was already dying.
---
He's really beautiful.
Cloud watched through frantic movements, between the green-clad bodies struggling with various pieces of medical equipment he didn't know the names of. All he knew was that the drivers looked distraught, harrowed, and above the siren he could barely hear what they were saying. He built a little cocoon of ignorance and instead focused on the boy, now wrapped in a blanket, wrapped with tubes and an oxygen mask but still beautiful, really. There was a peace to it, to Cloud and the boy, which neither would be able to recall
He was far unconscious, face flat, hair streaked red on silver grey in the damp. His chest moved and his eyes flickered against lids tight shut. Cloud wondered if that was technical, if you could dream half-dead. He didn't guess so.
He wanted to say that he was sorry. Not sure who to or what for. Hoped that he would find a chance. Maybe just sorry for himself.
---
There was blood beneath his fingernails and every comfortable stranger seemed to be staring. Magazines said, Be beautiful in seven steps! Get confident today! Cloud's face said, Anguish. And something in Leon's stomach churned and churned(guilt, maybe) as he sat deadly still and killed each facial muscle, one by one. Old legend. It takes forty-two muscles' contraction to frown, but only four to punch some bastard in the face. Two thoughts hit Leon; one, that the only bastard in the room was himself, and two; it was a shock that he hadn't developed some facial muscle exhaustion over the years.
He and Cloud hadn't spoken a word to each other. The ambulance assistant had required one ride with them, to be there as comfort if 'the patient' suddenly regained conciousness. Leon wanted to laugh, as if Riku would really want to open his eyes and find the sources of his hatred sitting and grinning a metre away. Cloud had barely seemed to hear the driver's words. He had swayed on the spot and unexpectedly stumbled forward, slamming the doors behind him. Leon had endured a long, silent drive, wishing that the car radio still worked, remembering how it had broken.
Now they sat amongst strangers and bad magazines and a receptionist quietly typing in the background, just drifting, waiting.
"His name was Riku, by the way."
Leon wasn't one for beginning conversations, but this addled silence and those quiet clicking keys and everywhere people flicking through magazines, he was choking on it. There wasn't anything to say, so he had said anything. Cloud's eyes were still exhausted, unfocused upon an anti-smoking advertisement. He didn't turn or move, and Leon wasn't about to try again.
"It still is."
So unexpected, and those three words held all of the bitterness Cloud could muster, all of the resentment, a lament amongst the ashes of them, this one relationship they had both found which wasn't a cliché. Here it crumbled. Cloud was so tired. Tired of Leon's fucking refusals, Leon's little persona of being such a tough guy, such a tough guy when he couldn't even accept the reality tearing everything apart. Cloud didn't know anything about Riku, wasn't sure if he ever would. It was difficult to relate a name to the brief shards of ruin he had caught.
Something in Leon shifted. If this was how it was going to be, Cloud blaming him, Cloud blaming and resentful, well, two could play that game. Anybody watching would have seen the tightening of his jaw, eyes congealing from liquid to steel, old walls settling into hard-worn places, armour adjusting and fitted as tightly as ever. Then they would have seen Leon simply stand up and walk away.
Dully, Cloud wondered where he was going, if he would be back, if this was some final act of detachment to top all the hundreds of fucking thousands of others. Alone, the blond closed his eyes and let his head droop back over the chair, rubbing at his neck, letting it crick this way and that. The muscles there were always a little tense, always ready for the nurse's footsteps moving towards him, a folder beneath one of her arms, lips poised to -
"He's in a critical condition, but stabilised."
So stitch your smile on and act relieved, relieved for things you know nothing about. Maybe he just wanted to follow Leon and walk away, change time, perhaps. Saw another guy in a life split in two, the Cloud who would be playing football in Zack's garden, strong enough to deal, smart enough never to have to.
"I'm afraid," a sigh of having to do this so many times before, "I'll need to ask you a few questions. Your name, for starters - is that spelt like the ones in the sky? - ok. And your relationship with the patient?"
"I don't really know him at all. I mean, we've only ever spoken once. He's sort of... a friend of a good friend. That's Leon - he's just - he's sort of - he's around."
The stammering understatements were so ridiculous, he wanted to laugh.
"That good friend, that Leon's around here?"
"Somewhere. Yeah."
"Well," the nurse glanced up the corridor in both directions, twiddled her pencil. "I think it would be a good idea if you went and found him. Then I can ask you the questions together."
Cloud opened his eyes, detecting some annoyance in her voice, but it wasn't annoyance at all, just a jaded sadness where her eyes were deeper than his own. Seeing this every day. Maybe not everybody got as numb as he'd have guessed. She was younger than she sounded, blonde hair scraped back into a bun, glasses leaving little red crescents around her nose.
"Listen, Mr. Strife. Please don't leave. That boy, Riku had a reason, and he was lucky. I see - we just need to get to the bottom of it."
You see so many already gone. Lucky, having to relate that word to the spotless, empty clean of the bathroom and the sobbing and the contrast of black red against pitch white. Cloud already knew he never would. Would never be lucky. Could never leave.
"I'll be waiting," she said. "Ask for Nurse Trepe. Find him."
His knees cracked quietly as he stood.
Leon wasn't in the hospital bathroom. Every cubicle was deserted and only a man in tatters stared dully out of the mirror. Little lilac fossils of love scarred his neck, mementoes from a different life, though it couldn't have been more than three hours back. A cold, clinical smell of vomit seemed to hang, sent Cloud reeling down the corridor, enough of the hospital, of disinfectant and white uniforms and too much emotion contained within these clean, spotless halls. The settings betrayed in every face he passed. He wanted so badly to be the kind of person who could leave, could accept that this had nothing to do with him. Wanted to have listened, wanted time to have frozen when Leon placed a hand on the small of his back and fell asleep smiling. Wanted to scream how none of this was his fault, it really wasn't. Feeling had gotten him nowhere but to this dead, bright corridor, and the door at the end through which he burst. For an instant, sunspots exploded in front of his eyes, and in that one blind moment before miniature muscles adjusted, he loved the sensation, that he could be anybody.
School boy Riku. Mm. Heh, and is it forty-two muscles to frown? Or forty-three? :(
One line stolen from the very wonderful Six Feet Under, season 4.
Thanks for reading :). Sorry for the maths lesson (credit to school textbook, mass hatred), and I hope the suicidal Riku scene didn't fall to corny plot device or over-angst. I'd love to hear what you think. Good and bad. - Abs