Quoshoopy
'Familiarish'
"Aw, you don't really wanna go into that crap, do you?"
"Well... yanno, I'm okay with it as long as Selph is there and all."
Two AM and the local weather station was on its ten minute break. 'Your Local Weather on the Eights' only came on every ten minutes, obviously, so many figured that they had it pretty easy. With both legs slung over the sides of a collapsible metal chair, each employee seemed riveted to the bleachy-blonde and blue haired man in the center of the room.
Charismatic and outgoing as all hell, Tidus had long been a favorite of nearly everyone involved in the Traverse City weather department. Even the meteorologists loved him, and as everyone knows, it's very difficult to please a meteorologist.
That early morning hour of the dead, it was all about Tidus. For Tidus was finally leaving.
"I still don't get it man. Every damn guy always leaves for some girl. Every damn one! First it was Seifer, then it was ole Wakka... Now you, man."
"Hey, don't look so down! You even got a big ass cake out of it, so cheer up already!"
Across the room and tucked in a corner sat Cloud Strife. He seemed every bit the quiet and crowd-wary individual, so almost everyone left him alone. Tidus had been friendly at first upon his arrival, of course, but quickly gave up after discovering that no warm response would ever come from the cold and silent guy who handled the stressful job of being the local station's weather reporter.
Which was strange in itself. That had Cloud talking for a minute and a half every ten minutes, and other than that he was nearly dead silent while working.
He had regarded Tidus that evening --when the fragmented little goodbye party began-- with the same indifference with which he always did. He'd chipped in with the rest of the workers to form the two hundred dollar pot given to Tidus as a farewell gift. He'd nodded his head once and said a simple, "Good luck" on his way into the lounge that evening.
But since then, Cloud had not spoken a word.
And for the rest of his shift, he still planned on saying nothing else aside from what he was paid to say.
His mind was far away, back somewhere in the fog of frequent memories. He was thinking, oddly enough, about that weird little brown-haired boy he'd met on the bus a week ago.
Was it a week ago, he wondered slowly. Feels like just a few days ago. But he hasn't called me, has he? ...Not that I thought he would...
Through the neatly pressed fabric of his black slacks, Cloud could feel his trusty mp3 player pressed against his leg and he thought back once again to his old playlist. His old music. ...Their headphones and the one of which had been in...
Sora. Right.
Sora's ear.
What'd ever happened to that kid anyway...?
'I need your lovin' like the sunshine and everybody's gotta learn sometime'..., Cloud thought abstractedly. What'd ever happened to that damn kid...?
x x x
Sora was outside of the tiny, grubby little house he lived in, buried somewhere in the back, fenced in and secluded area. He kneeled in the dirt and huffed and puffed, both hands wrapped around the thick neck of one of the many weeds cluttering up the backyard.
He was infuriated.
Never before in his entire life had he been depressed. He'd always had his Kairi, he'd always had his Riku. He'd always had their old trio to fall back on and he'd always believed they were inseparable. But shock of all shocks- there he was. Alone. For the first time in his life.
And man did he hate it.
"Stupid... weed!" Sora grunted as he tugged once again at the thick thing stuck in his yard, a regular jungle in itself of overgrown plants and trees. The branches hung too low, the weeds grew too wide, and the flowers bloomed too rarely. In fact, most of his backyard was moss. There were only a few clumps of grass scattered here and there.
But in the mid-October afternoon, falling leaves did nothing to better the yard's condition.
His knees sank into the black soil as he whined in frustration, heaving mightily, chapping his hands and feeling the burn on his palms... right before he flew across the tiny lawn with a yelp and slammed into the fence. And all Sora had to show for his painful work was a handful of shredded leaves and a bald stem sticking up from the ground like some sick antennae of some underground alien.
Eww.
Sora sniffled. He rubbed his eyes with the backs of his hands. He whined and pounded the shredded leaves into the dirt floor, he whacked his head back against the fencepost and he hated himself for nearly crying.
And he didn't notice the other man's presence until the voice reached his ears.
"You're doing it all wrong," the voice said.
"Oh yeah! And just who the heck are-" Eyes now open, Sora's words died on his tongue as he stared in shock at the blonde man standing over him. Well-dressed, black slacks, polished shoes, and a red button up shirt, black sports-coat slung over his shoulder. It could only really be one person after all. "Yagh! You!" Sora exclaimed.
"Yep. The one and only."
It was the man from the bus, of course. Standing there in Sora's backyard, smiling warmly and just as though it was the most natural thing in the world for him to show up there out of the blue like that. Sora instantly found himself absolutely terrified- not of the man himself, exactly, but of the fact that he'd never called him. Of the fact that Sora was capable of being such an idiot.
Of the fact that he was capable of finding the number once again, writing it down, and still refusing to do nothing about it. He wouldn't even remember me... He wouldn't want to talk to me... I wouldn't know what to say... Sora had thought up all these excuses and more just not to talk to the guy. But clearly he was proven wrong.
Sure enough. There he was. The curious blonde, standing in his backyard.
"Haaaah... What're you doing here?" Sora asked lamely, blinking owlishly up at the man and laughing nervously.
"Well I just happened to be in the neighborhood, walking around, and all of a sudden I see some kid flying around out of the corner of my eye." Despite Sora's angry interjection -"I'm not a kid!"-, the man simply smirked and continued. "So of course I had to come see what happened. And son of a gun, it's the little weasel who stood up my phone call."
The man grinned widely, showing off a set of pearly white teeth hidden behind the soft pink hue of his lips. Combined with the brilliant blue eyes and cornflower hair, Sora was easily floored for several moments as he stared in shock.
"Ah..." Sora focused determinedly on the ground, willing himself not to stutter and make even more of an idiot of himself as he quietly and slowly said, "...Wow, you must really hate me for that, huh?"
"Not at all." The man smiled and leaned down, hands on his knees, amusement in his eyes as he said, "But what I do hate you for is killing all these plants."
"They're weeds!" Sora yelled, waving a fistful of green shrubbery around wildly.
The man sighed exasperatedly and flung his coat off to the side, over the fence, one hand clapped to his forehead, one at rest on his hip. The dramatic pose was completed as he said, "Clearly you know absolutely nothing about gardening."
"Oh yeah, like you'd know anything about it." Sora pouted furiously and crossed his arms, still leaning sulkily against the worn old fence. He was surprised to find that the man wasn't at all put-off by Sora's childish little antics that usually annoyed people away like magic. In fact, if anything, it only seemed to amuse him more and more.
As though to prove this point the man chuckled softly and cocked his head to the side. He looked around the yard slowly, taking in its tattered state, his eyes drawn to the little red house that sat plopped amidst it all. He had an air of being perfectly confident, perfectly content, and perfectly perfect at anything and everything he did.
And so Sora wasn't the least bit surprised when he said, "Actually I do know a thing or two about it. An old friend of mine used to garden, you know. It was practically her only passion in life." His voice had grown quiet and the yard grew still. Sora stared on silently and almost skittishly, watching as the man unbuttoned the cuffs and rolled of the sleeves of his red shirt.
He crouched down before the heap of evil plants that Sora had been fighting all afternoon and inspected them with his fingertips, lifting leaves and peering underneath and over. Finally he blinked at looked over at Sora.
"You've been pulling out flowers, Sora."
He remembered my name! Sora thought delightedly. But he quickly smothered the delight with a considerable amount of effort and shrugged, saying, "They looked like weeds to me."
"Well, some of them are. But all you've been pulling here are flowers that just aren't in bloom. You do know flowers don't bloom in autumn, right?"
"If you want 'em so bad, why not just take 'em yourself and make your own garden," Sora replied rather moodily, still pouting and still feeling the pain from his little bonding time with the fence.
"Not a bad idea. But these are yours. And you could use them, it looks like."
"Oh for crying out loud, if you're just gonna show up and-"
"Add a 'c.'"
"...Huh?"
"A 'c.' Add a 'c' to 'loud.'"
"...Uh... Cloud?"
"Perfect."
"What is?"
"My name."
"Oh. ...What's your name?"
The man groaned and rolled his eyes. "Cloud."
"Ohhh! I get it now!" Both of them exchanged looks and both of them burst into laughter, Sora's loud and vibrant, Cloud's more of a deep and soft chuckle. And that was all it took.
Sora leapt to his feet and bounded over towards Cloud, extending his hand cheerfully, sticking the other the pocket of his grubby jeans and he grinned brilliantly. "Well," he said, "looks like we're finally properly introduced then, huh, Cloud?"
The other surveyed Sora's hand quizzically for a moment, almost as thought he wasn't entirely sure what to make of it or what to do in response. After that moment though, Cloud smiled and clapped his hand against Sora's, the two of them shaking warmly as Cloud said, "Yeah, I guess so."
"You really know stuff about gardening then?"
"Some," Cloud said. Both of them turned to look at the deranged mess of Sora's wreck of a yard. Sora sighed. Cloud shrugged.
Sora glanced at the man's hands, he grinned and jokingly prodded Cloud's arm. "You don't have a green thumb. How do I know I can trust you with my precious garden?"
"How can you not trust me with this thing? Looks like I'm all you've got."
"Hey!"
With that, Cloud laughed a little and gave a determined nod as he said, "Alright, Sora. Here's what we'll do. I tell you what to pull out and you pull it out. Got it?" With the look Sora gave him, Cloud could only smirk and hold his hands outwards in a helpless gesture. "I'd do it myself, but I'm in my work clothes and all."
"Well we sure are bossy, aren't we?"
"You know it. Now then. Start over there with that crazy vine thing crawling up the side of your house."
"...There's a prickly bush in the way. I'm not going back there."
"Oh yes you are. If that vine keeps growing, it'll cover your whole house and tear it apart, bit by bit. You'll end up with your roof around your ears and your fists in your hair, screaming like a goddamn girl."
Needless to say, Sora gave into that little statement of fact. (Well, it was more or less a statement of fact. It wasn't entirely true, yet it wasn't entirely a lie either, for if Sora's house really did fall down, he truly would scream like a little girl.) Cloud promised he'd be back in jeans and a t-shirt as he disappeared moments later, having given Sora a long and drawn-out list of plants that needed killing in his absence.
When Cloud returned, he found Sora sprawled on his back beneath the shade of a huge scraggly old tree, fast asleep without a care in the world. Hands on his hips, Cloud drew closer, a wary look on his face as he silently and frantically searched for any signs that Sora was breathing.
"...Haaaahhh..." Sora sighed quietly. He squirmed on his back, he smiled to himself. The leaves, the sunlight, and the occasional hair-rustling breeze were the only disturbances as Cloud squatted down beside Sora and peered curiously at the sleeping boy.
"Sora?" he whispered.
"Mmmffglefraggm."
A slow and easygoing grin spread across Cloud's movie-star face as he said, "Are you dreaming, kid?"
It's said that when people are asleep, you can ask them things. Supposedly they'll tell you the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help them... Well, you get it. Cloud didn't know if you had to put the sleeping fellow under hypnosis first or what, but for a lazy Sora slacking off of the job, he was willing to risk it.
And sure enough, it paid off.
"Mmmffggyeeaa-p." The 'p' came as a pop, finished with Sora smiling slyly in his sleep and licking his lips.
"And what are you dreaming about, Sora?"
"Mmmmfffgyeeeaaagh, you pervert!"
But sometimes things only pay half up front and then they leave town with the other half. Such was the case for Cloud as he went reeling backwards away from a rather playfully flailing Sora who was suddenly and startlingly wide awake.
"Listening in on what I'm thinking, huh?"
"No, of course not!"
"Yeah, yeah you were! Uh huh, you were!"
"I swear I wasn't." Cloud laughed, keeping the vengeful little Sora away with one hand as he fell back into a sitting position on the mossy ground. "...Actually, I thought you were quite dead."
"Dead!"
"But now I'm certainly not worried in the slightest. Now it's just very clear that you're lazy."
"I'm not lazy!"
"You're lazy."
"I'm not lazy!"
"Ah, but you're right, I guess. You're not lazy, you're simply indolent."
Sora wrinkled his nose and blinked owlishly up at Cloud, who'd rested his defensive hand on top of the mass of spiky brown hair on Sora's head as the boy questioned, "...Indolent?"
"It means lazy."
"Dammit, I'm not lazy!"
"You're... nice... Sora," Cloud said with a little smile. The words came out slowly and almost sounded a bit foreign coming from him. He said it almost as an afterthought, as thought it should be said in the same manner as stating that it looked like the rain was letting up over across the sea in France. "Really."
"...Aww, uh, hey man, seriously, it's... ah..." Sora laughed nervously, flapping his hands around in little circles as he tried to brushed the compliment off before he could blush and look even more like a girl. Instead he said, "So hey, what's the best thing about me then, huh, huh?"
"...You have a very expressive face."
"...An expressive face."
"...Um. Yes."
"Well what the heck's that supposed to mean!"
x x x
"So like, I was thinking that I really wanna focus on this part here," she said, lifting the hem of her pair of shorts, and jabbing at her suntanned flesh with one finger before trailing it down her leg and saying, "focusing less here, you know?"
"Yeah, you just wanna tan up here, right?" The other girl pressed her hand against Girl One's thigh, nodding like she understood and furrowing her brows like it was a deep and complex mathematical equation.
Kairi sat watching this interaction numbly, quite without any feeling whatsoever, much as she had been operating for the past week.
She sat primly, neatly and ever so perfectly, back perpendicular to the chair, the degree between her stomach and her knees a perfect ninety. Her hair was pulled back into a bun, her body was tucked back into a crisp white blouse and tan suede skirt, her hands held firmly yet gently at her sides, a pocketbook situated comfortably between one arm and her hip.
If the female body was indeed a mathematical equation, perhaps Kairi was carrying her own answers with her the entire time without knowing it. She was pulled back and harnessed into whatever was the ideal and perfect number, body, and form. The absolute zero of perfection and, if she had her two cents to put in, absolute hell.
"But like, I don't know how to do it."
"Do what?"
"You know. Like... not tan here, but up here."
"Just cover up the part you don't want tanned, duh! Use, like, a towel or something."
The bus pulled up and the two girls left, gibbering excitedly as they slung their backpacks over their shoulders. Kairi blinked. She cocked her head to the side. She'd been so sure it was October...
Tanning in October? I don't get it...
She stood up from the bench and slowly dusted off the back of her skirt, the bus was waiting patiently, but she smiled at the driver and shook her head. It pulled away without her and Kairi once again found herself... confused.
It is October, isn't it?
There weren't any trees to tell her one way or another. No trees in this part of the city. Nothing but a cool, middle-of-the-road temperature that could mean anything. She stepped into the curb and urgently hailed the next taxi cab, sliding inside quickly as she said, "Could you swing by the park, please?"
"Sure thing!" the driver said cheerfully.
Tanning in October and female taxi-drivers. What next? Kairi leaned back into her seat, her eyes dropping closed as she tried to keep herself floating somewhere above her thoughts. She was feeling disheveled. Lost. Completely obliterated since that one night. That one stupid night.
"...Don't take this the wrong way or anything, ma'm, but... haven't I seen you before somewhere?"
Kairi opened her eyes. She blinked slowly and regarded the driver in the rearview mirror. A fringe of black hair falling above brown eyes, which, at that moment, were regarding her own reflection as well, a puzzled expression mixed in with the warm color found there.
"...Nope. Sorry. Can't say you have." Kairi turned to look out the window, the movement sharp and robotic, no feeling in it.
Usually when you look out a window, you put some feeling into it, you know?
"Are you sure, ma'm?"
"Yes. I am. And please stop calling me ma'm. I believe you're older than me."
"Sorry, ma'm. It's formalities. They pay me a huge assload of dough to do it."
"Well you don't have to do it for me. You'll still get paid the same."
"But if I broke the habit now, ma'm, I'd be screwed if, like, the president or somebody got in here and I started calling him 'dude' or something. I mean, I'd totally lose my frickin' job, yanno?"
"Well how about if you make an exception this time?" Kairi gritted through her teeth.
"Oh I know where I've seen you before! In a bathrobe! Last week and all. You know. In the middle of the night you had some crazy guy show up, right? I knew it was you!"
"W-what?"
"Yeah, I was actually driving home after hauling some loser all the way across town. Like... all the way across. It was a royal pain in the ass, seriously. He insisted on going to the absolute edge of the stupid city limits and all- some way backroads kinda neck of the woods, you know? Then that kid practically attacked my cab when I was on my way home, begged me to drive him out somewhere and wait for him. Promised he wouldn't be long..."
They'd been puttering along through the city traffic and the driver paused her speech to turn around and shoot Kairi a chipper little grin, saying, "That was you, wasn't it?"
"...Um. It might have been, if the boy you were driving was my old boyfriend. He broke up with me that evening."
"...Oh. Hey, I am so sorry. I didn't mean to like, drudge up nasty old memories or whatever, ma'm."
"You can probably stop with the ma'm now, don't you think? You're not very polite anyway," Kairi said quietly and quite mechanically. The driver went silent and turned back around, a small frown riddling her face as she tried to focus on driving again, just as Kairi tried to focus on what was outside her window.
Who does she think she is, butting into other people's business like that! 'Oh, the first time I saw you, you were in a bathrobe! Teehee!' Brat. But then it was Kairi's turn to frown. Maybe I'm being too hard on her. ...Maybe I'm being too hard on... Oh, no I'm not! This is stupid. I've got to stop talking to myself. I think I'm going crazy. I feel like I'm going crazy...
Some time later, the cab came to a halt by the park. The trees stood as they always did in October, leaves turning a healthy mix of red and gold, setting fire to the city in the most harmless way possible. They'd soaked up the sun all summer long and now appeared burnt and dying from it. Always wear sunscreen, kiddies.
Kairi allowed herself a small smile, feeling reassured and a bit more stable than she had in quite a while.
Overhead a flock of geese flew low to the ground, the black and white V etched into the sky like a stubborn seasonal tattoo of some sort, heralding the coming of winter.
"Thank you. I think can walk from here." She stretched out her hand to pay the sulky girl who sat in the driver's seat.
"That'll be ten eighty- wha? HEY! Get back here! You can't just-!"
But Kairi was already gone.
And the girl was pleasantly surprised to find that Kairi had overpaid her by fifty dollars.
"...Stupid rich girl..."
x x x
"...So... why do you listen to Bob Dylan anyway? I mean, he's so... old. Not that it's bad or anything. And uh..." Sora trailed off, laughing nervously and suddenly staring very intently at the steaming pool of tea in his mug.
The two had been working in Sora's backyard all afternoon, until the sun disappeared and autumn reared its pretty little multi-colored head and doused them in cool evening breezes that sent shivers down their spines. Sora's solution had originally involved cocoa, but he'd only soon realized that he'd polished off the rest of his cocoa several days earlier, during one of his little depressed mood swings.
...Yes, the cocoa was gone. As was most of the food in his house. Except for the herbal teas, of course.
But as Sora was pulled back to the here and now (or the then and there, if you will), he studied the man across from him as Cloud gave him a small understanding smile, blue eyes almost glowing in the dim kitchen light as the two sat opposite of one another at an old card table.
Cloud spoke and Sora listened. It felt like a well-practiced ritual and it felt advisable. For Sora, it felt monumental somehow, though he didn't yet know why.
"It's because he's different. The man's a genius." "How many people do you know who listen to Dylan?"
"Well... you. And..." Sora paused, his brow furrowed in concentration. Finally his smiled and shrugged his shoulders aimlessly. "...Yep, that's about it. Just you."
"Exactly." Cloud tapped a finger against his chin for a moment, think and murmuring, "Tom Waits..."
"Teh wheh?"
"Tom Waits. I listen to him too."
"...Er, does he sound like Mr. Dylan?"
Cloud nearly laughed out loud at Sora's calling old Dylan 'Mr. Dylan.' Instead he took a swig from the mug in front of him, composed himself as best he could, and said, "Sort of. Bit of a deeper voice though..." He hummed a few notes and Sora understood what he meant, the sound coming out being significantly lower than Cloud's normal voice.
"Have you ever heard of Waltzing Matilda?" Cloud asked.
"No, is it a song of his?"
"Mmhm." Cloud hummed a few more notes. He shook his head. For half a second, Sora was sure he'd caught a trace of sadness behind Cloud's eyes. But it was gone in the next half second, replaced by nothing but a brick wall. Nothing but the words: "It's really...good."
"I'd like to hear it sometime," Sora said quietly. Brightening up a bit, he leaned forward, a giddy little grin on his face as he chirped, "Heeey, you know so much about all these old music singers and everything. So are you like, some sort of singer or something?"
"Hah! I wish!" Sora waited expectantly, his gaze clearly saying something along the lines of, Okay, if you're no singer, what the hell are you, man? Cloud blinked. "You mean you really don't know who I am?"
"...Erp, um... Your name's Cloud, isn't it?"
"Come on, you can't be serious! Don't you ever look on TV?"
"You're a movie star?"
"...Uh. Knock that down a couple notches."
"...You're a B-Movie star!"
"No." Cloud cleared his throat and set his mug on the table ceremoniously before flinging out one arm to the side and gesturing to the invisible map that may once have been behind him. "'And we can all expect some pretty heavy rain as this storm front pulls into Traverse City late in the afternoon today, so if you've got some cocoa and a good stack of CDs or magazines, today would be the day to break those out.'"
Arm falling back to his side, Cloud stared at Sora's puzzled little expression with shock. "...Seriously, doesn't it ring a bell or anything?"
"...Sorry, it doesn't really... But I don't watch that much TV."
"You don't?"
"Not really. I'm usually, uh... busy?"
"Screwing your ex girlfriend?" Cloud smirked. It had a trace of bitterness that might have made Sora wonder. But Sora didn't see it. He was staring into his mug again, quiet and pensive, a mix strangely alien to him. Cloud picked up on it and tried to apologize as best as he knew how. "...Sorry, man. I... didn't know it was still a sore spot."
"It shouldn't be... I just kinda... left her hanging. She used to go on and on about how TV rotted your brain and all. That's why I stopped watching." Sora cleared his throat. He lifted his mug to his mouth and pretended to take a sip, but he didn't dare actually do so. He couldn't even feel the rest of his throat past the lump wedged in there.
What's wrong with me..?
"I see."
"But what is it you do?"
"I'm a weatherman."
"Really? That's pretty cool."
"...You're probably the only person on the face of the earth who would actually say that." Cloud tried to smile again, but the action felt dead. He didn't know why, but he desperately wanted Sora to like being around him. Hell, he wanted Sora to like him period.
There was something he could neither describe nor exactly put his finger on. There was something so startlingly amazing about Sora that it made Cloud want to slice his chest open and bear his heart to the kid, black and bitter as it was.
He wanted to do so and see Sora do the same. He wanted to bask in purity of the other boy's own heart and relish how Sora it was.
The two were quiet for a moment.
"...I never had sex with her," Sora said a little softly, burying his face in his mug as he practically tried to drown himself with tea.
"I'm sorry about that."
"What, about not me having sex with her?"
"Uh, n-no, about bringing it up."
"It's okay. I'm fine now. But I guess I came off as a bit of a manic depressive when you ran into me on the bus, huh? I mean, super emo or whatever. I'm not though, seriously!" More nervous laughter. Sora started stirring the remnants of his tea like crazy, spoon clattering noisily against the side of the mug.
"It's okay if you are."
"But I'm not."
"That's okay too."
It should have been awkward. And perhaps it was. But by the time Sora had finished his mug of tea, he found himself glancing at the man across from him in an entirely different way. He wasn't some beatnik out to hug trees, no new Jack Kerouac. He walked somewhere on the lines and he'd trained himself to do so.
Sora found this almost painfully intriguing. And then he stood up and moved towards the counter to pour himself another mug of tea. He turned his head over his shoulder and offered Cloud a little smile of his own.
He wanted to think of something clever to say. Something very different. Something that was as unique as Cloud and just as deserving of his reception.
But all he could come up with was, "Want any more tea?"
(x) (x) (x)
Riku and Leon come in the next chapter, as well as more of the main pairing of Sora and Cloud. ...It figures that when I start having a ball writing Yuffie and Kairi together again, it has to be in a fic that doesn't center around them. Damn. But it's just so much fun, this scenario! Bwaaaaugh.