Quoshoopy
'Boy As Prophet: Part One'
Kairi noticed absolutely nothing different when she rolled out of bed that morning, absentmindedly scratching a bothersome little itch behind her ear, rolling her shoulders once, twice. Good to go, ready for another day.
When she moved into her bathroom and washed her face and brushed her teeth, she still noticed absolutely nothing different.
And even when she moved into the kitchen and saw Riku seated by the island counter, chowing down on a pan full of brownies Kairi had hidden so carefully in her refrigerator... Well, even that wasn't really all too far away from the norm, was it?
"Hello, Riku. Good to see you're making yourself at home. ...Like always," she said blankly.
And Riku responded with a very intelligible, "Mouf."
"...Yanno, there's like, a thousand calories in just one square inch of those damn brownies."
"Gobbfufair." Swallowing his current mouthful of mousse-frosted brownie, Riku nodded several times, quite agreeably and all, just before saying, "'M boyfriend's a dick."
"Mm. I should hope he has one, yes."
"Don't get me started on that. So what's up?"
"Oh, I don't know."
Another brownie descended into the bottomless pit of Riku's mouth, sparking another string of, "Munfinunorganleff'nnnies, m'naoooming?"
"Sure, take your time. I'm in no rush." As though to prove her statement, Kairi lazily picked up the remote on the countertop and turned on the TV across from her in the living room. Riku still couldn't help but cringe at the sight of Kairi watching TV-- she clearly just wasn't a master at the art of watching the screen. Instead of being an active watcher, she just sort of allowed her eyes to glaze over, her mind obviously wandering way out in left field somewhere.
Sigh. Time for Dr. Riku to step up to plate. Damn. Dealing with girls is rough.
"Okay. I thought it was a good sign when I walked in, the afghan was gone, and you were still asleep. But if I can eat your special mocha brownies and not be castrated for it, something's still on your fine little femme head." Almost as though in an effort to prove his own polite interest, Riku even took the time to cut Kairi a tiny little half inch piece of brownie. "Do share."
"Riku, I don't suppose you were planning on turning straight anytime soon?"
"Nah, can't say it's big on my list of things to do, really."
"Mm. That's a shame."
"You're not that low, Kai. Come on." Of course, one look at the bedraggled girl was all it took to send Riku into a brief chuckling and snorting fit, which he tried to poorly cover up by saying, "Heh, okay, so maybe you are."
Whistling off-key, Riku absentmindedly rifled through a small stack of magazines and newspapers Kairi had strategically placed on the countertop, trying to keep himself entertained while Kairi was busying rummaging around for some orange juice. And sure enough, Riku managed to find something that did indeed hold quite a bit of his interest, pulling out a sheaf of sketch paper with some hesitant little concept sketches dancing across the paper.
Some slender, long-haired girl in the beginnings of an ornate gown, still obviously very much in the planning stage.
"Hey!" Kairi frantically snatched the stack of papers away from Riku, scowling at him moodily and tucking them under her arm. If it hadn't been for the glass of orange juice, she might actually have managed to look somewhat intimidating. Then again, she was Kairi.
"Who's the naked chick?" Riku asked cheekily, popping another small corner of brownie in his mouth and munching away.
"WHA! Ehuh, n-no one! No one! There is no naked chick, Riku! They're concept sketches, okay? For a costume. She doesn't just pay me to draw her naked, for crying out loud!"
"Christ, Kairi. It's not a big deal. She was classy, whoever she was. If I were straight I'd probably have a major boner just by looking at your little drawing."
"Riku, cut it out."
"Hey, hey, I was just kidding. ...Kairi..."
"I'm sorry, okay? It's just... Bleeeh." Kairi stared numbly at the next unusually small piece of brownie Riku handed her, not knowing exactly what else she could do other than just take it and make the best of it."...Thanks, Riku."
"Always here to help. Oh, hey. While you're up, could you get me some milk?"
"...Sure, whatever."
"That's my girl." Rather than saying something stupid like, "Weren't you the one who swore off TV in the ninth grade because she swore it rotted minds?," Riku instead took a much, much wiser approach, taking one look at Miss Mary Tyler Moore prancing across the screen in her fine seventies attire and saying, "Hey, you know who she reminds me of?"
"Hm?"
"Ohhh, a certain little redhead. Not to mention any names."
"Riku, go fall in a ditch."
"Love is all around, no need to waste it-- you're gonna make it after a-all!" Laughing at his own joke, Riku drummed his fingers on the counter, his head picking up a very slight bobbing motion to some song that clearly only he could hear. No doubt the result of a long-overdue sugar high.
"Oh hey, your lezzie boss woman called earlier. Said you had the rest of the week off as long as..." Frowning slightly, Riku tapped his chin thoughtfully for a moment before snapping his fingers and continuing, "Ah. As long as you check in on Friday afternoon with an update on Aerith's comission. ...Whatever the hell that entails. Is she that chick in the picture? The one who's paying you a fortune to make her a Halloween costume?"
"It's not just a Halloween costume, Riku. She needs for this childrens' fundraiser... um... thing. Listen, whatever it is, it's important. She's probably the nicest client I've ever had, which is absolutely shocking when you think about it. Money makes people rotten, I swear."
While she spoke, Kairi's fingers busily set to work pulling the few tangles out of her auburn hair, combing it this way and that, searching for split-ends unconsciously and almost damn near obsessively.
"...You don't have to do that, yanno," Riku drawled.
"Do what?"
"That whole... Hair thing. You're not going in to work today, remember?"
Kairi simply shrugged it off by lifting one shoulder, fingers busily combing and pinning her hair back, each with a separate task, its own agenda. After a moment, Riku heaved an airy little sigh and grumpily slid the pan of brownies away from him, crossing his arms and plopping his head moodily into the makeshift pillow they formed.
"Riku, do you ever spend a day at your own house? You know, working on pottery or something? Making a living?"
At this, Riku all but bristled defensively, narrowing his eyes and spitting, "Hey, hey, chickie girl whatever-you-are. Tourist season is the big season for me. That's summer, when the big craft shows are. Does it look like summer? No. No it doesn't. Off my back, woman." ...And then he helped himself to another brownie.
"Freeloader," Kairi muttered.
"Workaholic," Riku retorted.
"Am not."
"Are too. And a terrible cook, I might add. These brownies are shit."
"You're lying."
"Damn, you saw through my scheme. Mm, mocha brownies. You know, you could make these brownies even more special if you added a little bit of--"
Clearing her throat, Kairi smiled tightly as she snatched the half-empty brownie pan away from Riku's wandering hands and marched it straight back over and into the waiting refrigerator. "Thanks, but I think the brownies are just fine without being 'special' brownies, Riku," she replied cooly.
"A little high never hurt anyone."
"Why are you here."
"Just spreading the love, babe."
x x x
"There's someone I want you to meet."
That had been Sora's reason for going to see Cloud that day, though really, he figured he didn't need much of a reason anymore to see the blonde. The two of them had somehow forged their bizarre relationship out of absolutely nothing, from being passing strangers on a bus to... well, to good friends, it seemed. But then why was it that Sora's heart had somehow, for some reason clenched painfully inside his chest when Cloud had brought up this guy he wanted Sora to meet? To be perfectly honest, Sora didn't want to meet anyone. He wanted to spend his afternoon pondering over a cup of tea with Cloud, dammit. Not Cloud and some loser he knew nothing about.
His fear was only increased tenfold when he found out where exactly it was that Cloud lived. The two of them had had a light lunch at a cute little diner sandwiched in between two massive corporate buildings in the downtown branch of the city, Sora tagging along with Cloud to his apartment afterwards as promised. To meet this stranger. Yeah. But Sora could only swallow thickly and pray Cloud wouldn't ask any stupid questions when he nearly froze outside of Kairi's apartment complex.
Oddly enough, it was Sora who popped the first stupid question.
"W-what are we doing here?" His words came out as more of a terrified little squeak actually, but he forced himself to ignore Cloud's quizzical look and curious response.
"Well, I do live here and I thought we'd go meet Sephiroth like we'd planned on...?"
Needless to say, Sora was absolutely relieved when he saw Cloud's finger move over and past the button for the fourth floor in the elevator. Instead, it landed on the fifth and pressed gently inwards, sending the box trolling up the line.
"Sephiroth?" Cloud called out into the dark and dreary apartment. Even when he flipped the light-switch, it really didn't do a whole lot to help the sad situation at hand. The place was clean-- absolutely spotless, to be more precise-- but it looked almost as though nobody lived there. No posters, no mirrors, no nothing on the walls. The counters were empty and clear, the chairs neatly tucked under the small and conservative kitchen table. the only thing that seemed to defy this emptiness was a small collection of framed pictures assembled on an end table in the living room.
Cloud excused himself for a moment, slipped off quietly into an adjacent room that Sora grudgingly figured was the bedroom. Sure enough there came some quiet words from Cloud-- "There you are... Sorry, I didn't know you were asleep... That's okay, you can go back to bed..."
Forcing the words and the soft tone out of his head, Sora instantly honed in on the pictures sitting in the living room. At first, he had absolutely no idea just who the hell these happy people were all supposed to be. Then again, I guess you're supposed to get that feeling in a home that isn't yours. If you knew everyone, wouldn't that be weird?
Oh! The pictures were of Cloud. Well that was shocking. Sora had thought Cloud was a complete asshole to everyone but him. Granted, now that he thought about it, that frame of mind was more than just a little self-centered. But still. It was strange seeing the Cloud Sora knew so well around other people he didn't know at all.
...Like that girl. She kept reappearing in all the pictures. Some pale, slender little thing with this amazingly long, soft-looking hair. Some of them looked like standard tourist photos-- "And here's me and Shirley standing next to the Eiffel Tower... and here we are standing next to Notre Dame... Oh, look! Here's us at Stonehenge!" But there were others, more personal, more intimate somehow.
Sora's favorite had to be of Cloud and that strange girl sitting on the edge of a fountain. Sora wasn't sure who had taken the picture, but it gave this feeling of being completely candid. Cloud and the girl beside him had both of their heads bent over a map Cloud was holding, which, to Sora's endless amusement, just happened to be upside down. They both appeared to be studying the map very hard though, possibly wondering why none of the words made much sense. Sora could see it now. "Wait, are you sure we bought the English version? Maybe this is Hungarian."
A gentle tapping on his shoulder jerked Sora out of his mental ramblings before he was really given the chance to get going.
"AH..."
"...Sora?"
"Yes!"
"...Is everything okay?"
"Yes!"
"Are you sure?"
WIth a half smile and a nervous laugh, Sora spun on his heel and pointed one finger at a picture frame accusingly. "...Your pictures," he said. "You look a lot friendlier in these pictures than you do now, yanno. You're always so cold to people. But not to me. How come?"
"No..." Caught off guard, it took Cloud a minute to pick up his metaphorical little head and pop all the thoughts back in there, to try and make sense of them. He didn't get much though. "No reason. I'm not... cold to other people..." Well, if that wasn't a lie, I don't know what was.
Heaving a tired sigh, Cloud flopped lifelessly onto a worn, but comfy looking sofa, arms stretched out around him on either side. He closed his eyes and tried, for just a moment, to relax, to figure out when he'd gotten so tense and why. But then there was a little shadow across his eyelids, and when they slid apart he found himself staring into the two large baby-blues of a curious little Sora, poking his nose jokingly.
"He-ey Mr. Frownie Face. I want some soda. You have soda?"
"I have wine, if you want to start drinking like an adult."
"I'm plenty adult to drink wine, if that's what you're getting at! It's just gross. I hate wine. And beer."
"Such an innocent."
"Such a happy boy."
"Coffee, tea, what?"
"Oooh, coffee! Do you have cream?" Cloud shook his head. "Sugar?" Again, an apparent no.
"My coffee is only as black and bitter as my lonely heart," he said with a smirk.
"God, you're so-oo emo. All the time."
"Like you're one to talk."
"So who is that girl in all those pictures with you? Sister, girlfriend...?"
"An old friend." Sora simply continued to look at Cloud expectantly, forcing him to tack on clumsily, "An old... girlfriend, really. Sort of."
"Cute." Sora blinked his eyes, laughed at himself for a moment and then tried to clarify as best he could, "You guys were cute together, I mean."
"Yeah, she uh... She was French," Cloud added lamely, clearly just carrying on the conversation in that direction to be polite. But either Sora didn't notice, or he didn't care. Either way, Cloud forgot to be bothered by it as Sora's face suddenly lit up with excitement.
"Whoa, really!" he exclaimed.
"Mm."
"What the hell were you doing over in France, huh? Daaang, I don't think I've ever left this stupid country. Riku dragged me hiking across it this one God-awful time, but still, that's totally not the same. France, France! Awesome!"
"It was okay."
"You speak French?"
"...A little."
"Wow! Say something for me in French!"
"No, really, it's not that big a deal..." Cloud trailed off. Oh, but Sora could tell. For a second, he almost felt experience somehow, elite somehow, that he could tell Cloud's pain was not so very far off from his own.
"...You guys have a major falling out or something?"
"Sort of."
"You're closing up on me," Sora said quietly, unable to pull off a tone that didn't sound accussatory. He didn't mean for it to come out that way-- of course he didn't blame Cloud for wanting to keep a private life private and all, but still... Sora was beginning to realize just how little he knew about Cloiud that didn't involve a weather station and a battered old bicycle.
"I'm not... trying to..."
"Hey, don't worry about it! I was just kidding."
"...L'eau claire."
"Huh?"
"L'eau claire. 'Clear water.' You asked for something French."
"That sounds like eclaire! Eclaires aren't clear water! That's pretty though. I like it when you say it. Most French men sound old and stuffy-nosed. How come you don't?"
"Well, I'm probably not pronouncing it right. I haven't spoken French in a long time."
"Why?"
"Because... I haven't been to France in a long time?"
"Well yeah, but if it's pretty and if you like talking it, you could, oh, I dunno, talk to yourself in French. It'd be kinda cool, 'cause then if someone walked in and they were all like, 'Why the hell are you talking to yourself?' you could say, 'I wasn't talking to myself, I was just practicing my French so I don't get rusty! I have a cousin who lives in France and it's very important that I keep my French skills fluid and l'oh-claire-ish.'"
Cloud could only laugh at this, forcing Sora to grin-- That's the Cloud I know!-- and go, "Say something else in French!"
"I don't know..."
"Please?"
"Peaut-être tu reviendras. Tu prendras par l'épaule... comme hier, quand je voulais..."
A pleased little smile stretched lazily across Sora's face as he leaned back in the kitchen chair, legs still crossed beneath him. "...Pretty. What's that mean?" he asked innocently.
x x x
"Cloud, over here!" It was too bad we figured it out too late, I guess. Too late in the game to fix it up. But it was never her fault. Nah, never her fault. She was never broken. She never needed to be fixed up now that I think about it...
"Hurry up, Cloud!"
x x x
"Nothing. Just some line from some stupid thing... It's nothing."
"Are you sure?"
x x x
"Look, Cloud. Look at all the people out on the water!"
"Morons."
"Aww, but why would you say that?" Her voice sounded kinda pitiful then, didn't it? But it was still her beautiful voice with that corny French accent. No, not corny. Not... Not stupid. No, she didn't needed help. She was fine the way she was. Always just fine, always beautiful, accent or no.
"There's a storm coming. They don't belong in the water."
"But that is where you are wrong," she said. Her hands came together, one clasped in the other and falling gently against her chest, the picture-perfect romantic staring out onto the English Channel. "They go in the water now because of the storm. The waves are fun, even if they are dangerous. People like dangerous things, fun things. Different, wild things. Don't you feel the same, Cloud?"
"Hm. Doesn't matter. Are they even allowed to be swimming here in the first place?"
But she just laughed, didn't she?
"Does it matter?"
x x x
Get out of my head already, damn you... Ugh, what was it Sora said? Am I sure? Sure about what? Oh well...
"Yes."
"Cloud... are you okay?"
But suddenly Cloud was terrified and he didn't know why. Because of this strange, foreign emotion niggling the farthest reaches of his brain, Cloud was almost completely out of his senses when he did what he did.
"Sora..."
If anyone outside the two of them had been present in the room at that moment, they would have called the ensuing kiss thoroughly unremarkable, perhaps even a bit of a let-down. It was as though their lips had simply grown a little cold and they were just pressing them together in an attempt to warm them up. It was that brief, that chaste-- and it was seemingly just that meaningless. But it was the afterwards that changed them both, in the moment Cloud pulled abruptly away, stung somehow, but not enough to put more than an inch of air between them.
"I'm so sorry," he whispered.
Sora could only stare numbly at the pair of sheer blue eyes opposite of his, shining with regret and... and... What is that? Want, need...? Want, maybe. Not need. Never need. But still Sora made no movement to stop Cloud as the blonde reached up a tentative hand, pressing his calloused fingertips against Sora's lips softly and brushing sideways. Completely and utterly weird, yes, but there was something in the action that managed to break Sora's heart and fortify its sad and lonely little self all in one fell swoop.
Was Cloud just... trying to wipe his kiss off of Sora or what?
"You don't have to be sorry," Sora said. The movement of the skin beneath his fingertips caused Cloud to snatch his hand away before turning his gaze towards the floor. God, please don't hate me... And Sora so desperately wanted to use that moment to put a hand on Cloud's shoulder, to smile and say he understood because he did understand-- he really did! He, Sora, the oblivious optimistic moron actually understood someone else's fucked up life because he was finding more and more that his own getting to be just the same.
And he would have, he could have, he should have taken that moment... Had he not suddenly winced in pain and collapsed forwards, slamming his forehead sharply on the corner of the table with a dull thud, sending the world sideways-- calloused fingertips against his lips softly and brushing sideways-- into some hazy gray darkness.
Sora's last coherent thought came somewhere between utter unconsciousness and the registering of Cloud's startled cry and calling of Sora's name, begging him to be awake. It wasn't anything mind-boggling, anything life-altering. No new world views or ways in which he could return to the world of the living and save both himself and Cloud from the unavoidable DOOM that awaited them in life. No, no, no.
It was just Sora pondering the color of the gray around him-- wondering if it was more of a blue-gray or more of a green-gray. He wasn't quite sure.
It was gone before he could find out, replaced with a dream that made almost as much sense as the color gray.
Peaut-être tu reviendras. Tu prendras par l'épaule... comme hier, quand je voulais...
Maybe you'll come back. You'll grab me by the shoulder... just like yesterday, when I wanted to...
x x x
He sat on the ceiling.
No. Correction. He stood on the floor, but the ceiling had become the floor, the floor the ceiling. In fact, the ceiling felt strangely familiar. It was almost the exact same shade as the ceiling of Kairi's apartment. One single look up was all it took to confirm it-- yep. There was the smooth hardwood, the plush, stylish rugs, leather sofas. All upside down and apparently just dangling in the air, suspended precariously by little baby threads. He held out one hand, palm facing upwards, and was surprised to find his skin speckled with rain, droplets sliding down from the pseudo-ceiling with an unnatural slowness about them.
Really, the entire thing made Sora terribly dizzy, and he had to sit down for a moment to gather his wits back about him. Water began to gather in shallow puddles, a steady drizzle continued to fall. Soon the puddles were pooling together, a growing mass of water, shallow at first, but growing deeper still.
Deeper still.
"Cloud?" Sora called out. He didn't honestly know why he didn't call out for Kairi-- he was in her apartment after all. But then there he was, a shadow of something just beyond the doorframe. Turning away and moving deeper into the bedroom.
"Cloud!"
And cannonballs rained down from above, but suddenly they were harmless. Cloud's mouth was the only thing that gave him away-- he smiled. And next to him stood Kairi, not just any Kairi, but a younger, livlier Kairi. Her socks didn't match, her eyes were bright enough to set something on fire, to blow it all up. But she was so happy.
And just before the cannonballs could hit the water, they were turned into blitzballs-- hundreds of little tiny blitzballs content to just bob merrily around the surface, jostling one another for space. In spite of himself, Sora laughed. He looked up at Kairi. Despite what he knew he'd done to her, he smiled. He looked towards Cloud. To spite him, he held out both hands, he grinned, he called out his name.
And to shock him, Cloud stepped forward, obediently, plunging up to his knees into the water.
"If me being like this brings me closer to you..."
"If me being in danger brings us closer together..."
"Don't rescue me."
But the cannonball-blitzball-- things. They weren't so harmless anymore. They were pounding holes out of the floor-- the ceiling?-- breaking up the world and furniture falling down around them, drowning the water. All that expensive leather...
Cloud stopped in his tracks, hesitated. And suddenly he was like that kid caught in the middle of the street, cars coming at every direction...
"Cloud, come here!"
No sign of movement. Even the rain, the water, the falling world had just frozen dead in its place.
"...Please, Cloud!"
A faltering little smile and a rose tossed over the water. Catch, Cloud whispered. But Sora missed, reached up for the flower and fell backwards instead, falling in over his head, submerged in water. Opening his eyes beneath the surface, Sora could see the rose hit the water just a few inches above him, the petals shooting apart from one another, leaving a plain and battered green stem sinking down to meet him.
Things started moving again, but they were too distorted by the surge of water for Sora to tell what was going on. He didn't even know why he didn't push back to the surface-- he needed air, didn't he?
But suddenly the water grew still again, eerily calm and crystal clear. The only thing that forced Sora into admitting that, yes, the water was still there, was a jet of bubbles that lazily streamed from his mouth when he opened it to speak. Granted, he didn't know what he'd been planning on saying, but being underwater made talking pretty much pointless, he figured. Then, looking up, he could see Cloud standing just above him, suspended somewhere above the water, not falling through. Some kind of godlike grace or something? On Cloud? Yeah right.
His arms, Cloud's arms, reached downwards into the water then, liquid parting easily around his hands, his wrists, his forearms. Both arms, reaching out for Sora. Not just one hand. Both.
Sora had to close his eyes when things moved again, when furniture started falling from the ceiling and the rain started falling in torrents on the surface. Cannonballs and blitzballs and leather sofas-- the water was too distorted to see Cloud's face anymore, but his arms, his hands, were still there waiting, even through the hell of the end of the world.
Don't rescue me.
Crash.
Don't rescue--
Crash.
Me.
Don't--
Crash.
Me.
Don't crash on me.
x x x
When Sora came back around from his otherworldly experience, he was relatively disturbed to feel something very cold, very slimy, and very smelly dribbling down his cheek. He instantly ruled out three things. Tears, because they weren't that smelly, blood, because it was that cold, and drool, because, slimy as Sora's drool was, it just wasn't that slimy.
Well, Sora discovered that he was only partially right on that last one as he opened his eyes. No, his drool wasn't that slimy. But cat drool? Apparently so.
Situated on his chest was the worst looking animal Sora had ever had the misfortune of laying eyes on. The thing was balding in about ten thousand different spots on its body (pretty much making up its entire body, yes) and had virtually no fat or muscle attached to its knobbly bones. A smattering of telltale drool ringed the cat's tiny mouth and whiskers, and when its tail moved, it did so in an unsteady, jerky pace, twitching uncomfortably and dangerously close to Sora's crotch. In that instant, Sora feared he would never be capable of having an erection again.
So it only stands to reason that he began bursting into hysterical cries of, "Cloooud! CLOUD!"
"Sora!" Cloud came hurrying frantically out of the kitchen, phone in one hand, a damp washcloth in the other. He looked far more haggard than Sora had ever seen him before, but seemed relieved to meet Sora's eyes, despite his weary little shout of, "Sephiroth! Get off him!"
Wait a minute. THAT was Sephiroth! That thing!
Cloud looked towards the ground, towards the hand holding the phone, then the hand holding the washcloth. He put both on the kitchen table and hurried back in to daintily pull the (sorry excuse for a) cat off of Sora's chest-- yet he did all of it with a determined air which said, 'I'm not going to look at you because you might burn my eyes out with hate!'
Sora was worried.
Cloud was just embarrassed.
"Are you okay?" he finally managed to ask. He was looking pointedly at Sora's shoes, not Sora's face. And in the back of his mind he was again noticing their yellow color. How peculiar.
"I'm fine, I just... I'm really, really sorry about that. I don't know what happened, I just..." Sora trailed off numbly, not entirely certain Cloud was even listening to him, judging by the way the blonde's gaze remain so fixated on nothing important. What the hell is he looking at anyway?
Huh. I don't think I've ever seen anyone with yellow shoes before. So... bright.
Are my feet really that big? ...Gah! Way to be self-conscious Sora. Way to sound like a stupid girl.
His legs are so skinny and girly. But not in a bad way. Just in a different way. They're hardly even hairy. Christ, he sure doesn't look like he's in his twenties-- that's for sure.
Ugh... how embarrassing...
How embarrassing...
Thankfully, Sora took the time to notice the clock at that moment. Two forty-two, two forty-two-- no, three, two forty-three... Three! Doesn't Cloud have to be at work by three? At this, Sora jolted completely upright, nodding his head urgently and saying, "I'm fine, really, really! You're gonna be late!"
Looking towards the clock as well, Cloud cursed, apologized, and disappeared into his bedroom for just a brief moment, reappearing not half a minute later with a tie draped over his shoulders, now clad in a pair of dark slacks and a neat button-up shirt, though the buttons were still far from buttoned.
...Suddenly, Sora's shoes seemed to interest him too, seeing as he stared at them the entire time Cloud hopped around looking for his work shoes, apologizing and tying his tie and buttoning his buttons and looking for shoes and apologizing and tying and buttoning... Somehow Sora felt he should be laughing. Somehow Sora felt bad that he wasn't.
Meanwhile, somewhere down the hall, a woman was complaining loudly to her son-in-law in spitfire Spanish about the mattress they were trying to cram into the second of two elevators (the first, naturally, being blocked by the woman's insane amount of pointless carpetbag luggage.) ...Or rather, the mattress her poor son-in-law was trying to cram into the elevator. He only spoke maybe ten words of Spanish, three or four phrases-- "Thank you, no thank you, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, please don't hit me, Moira!"-- none of which could help him in his current situation.
All of this was completely unimportant to both Cloud and Sora, who came hurrying down the hall at breakneck speed, taking one look at the disasterous situation the elevators were in and speeding right on by, despite the pleading look the tragic son-in-law shot their way. The pair took the flight of stairs down to the floor below them, the fourth floor, racing down that hallways and towards the empty and mattress-less, luggage-less, Spanish-mother-in-law-less elevators.
"Sora, you don't have to run after me, really!"
But I need to tell you something, dammit!
Clearly a great many things were happening all at once, for as the son-in-law had been cramming the mattress in the second fifth-story elevator and as Cloud and Sora had been shooting down a flight of stairs, huffing and puffing and I can't believe I passed out his table after all that-- I haven't even explained to him, told him it was okay, told him-- and I can't believe I did that, what an idiot, for God's sake, just--
Yes, while all this had been going on, Kairi had just been walking out of her apartment door, fully intending to deliver the mail she'd picked up by accident. In the moments of calm before the storm, at least her thoughts were somewhat sane. Well, at least some loser benefits from my stupidity.
She ambled over to the apartment door beside hers and knocked once before simply sliding the small stack of mail under the doorway. ...Well, it wasn't like anyone said she was very close to her neighbors.
And yet that was when she heard the frantic voices coming from the stairwell, distant at first, but growing closer and growing louder...
"Who cares if I'm late. If you pass out on me, I'll be in deep shit."
"Says who?"
"Listen, are you sure you're okay?"
"I'm fine. I swear."
...That... voice...
"Okay..." The frantic footsteps stopped suddenly (we're retracing our footsteps in the story, in case you couldn't tell-- revamping a few things here and there, no Spanish-less elevators just yet, just them, just the stairwell.) Just Cloud standing there, searchingly, stupidly, and feeling all the worse for it. "Um, about the--"
I should have told him it was okay... But that moment had passed by a long time ago. Cloud was going to be late, Sora didn't know what to say, and everything which hadn't been planned to happen was still perfectly and tragically as unplanned as ever. "Don't worry about it." Sora forced a cheery smile and nodded once, twice. "...Go on, already! You're late."
Oh God! That's Sora's voice! ...But. Who's he with? Nonono! No time for that now, Kairi! No time for questions! Time for hiding! Crap, crap, crap... Letting out a tiny little wail before hurriedly clamping her little hands over her little mouth, Kairi did a brief shuffling dance from slippered foot to slippered foot before nearly running smack into her closed apartment door.
"Right..." Down the hallway, Cloud was shooting Sora a quiet, doubtful look. It was sincere, but more sincere than he meant for it to be. It was meaningful, but more meaningful than he meant for it to be. In short, it was overkill and it only made him more embarrassed to realize that it was all just too much too soon. "Bye, Sora."
The door was closed.
...The door. Was closed.
How did her door close? Since when did her door close by itself? Growing absolutely frantic now, Kairi wrestled madly with the sad little door handle, beating against it childishly when it became obvious it just wouldn't cooperate. What the--? I locked myself out. I locked myself out of my own apartment. Riku's in the shower. CRAP!
In a last-ditch effort to save her sorry sense of pride, Kairi quickly scanned the hallway, her eyes coming to rest on her last hope.
Without any second thoughts, Kairi did the only other thing she could think of. She threw open the dumbwaiter door, crawled inside, and prayed for all she was worth that there weren't too many spiders living in its chamber. Clinging desperately to the fraying rope holding the rigged waiter together, Kairi listened anxiously to one set of footsteps hurrying past, heavier and louder-- He's wearing dress shoes. Not Sora. Damn, Sora. Leave already!
Kairi remained balanced on the soles of her feet for as long as she could, putting as much weight on the dangling rope as possible. She couldn't be exactly sure, but something told her that the moldy smell in the dumbwaiter was coming from the wooden surface she was perched on. Heck, I don't even know how these things work. ...Is it like a pulley or something?
Though she would realize how stupid it was at a later time, Kairi... wasn't exactly in a clear frame of mind. She wasn't exactly in any frame of mind. She hadn't been in one for several weeks. So when she tugged hesitantly on one length of rope, she naturally wasn't expecting a sharp jolt, twist and CRACK! as the wood splintered and gave way beneath her, tumbling down... down... down... before hitting the ground four stories below.
And the only thing keeping Kairi from sharing the fate of the wood?
The little rope she was dangling to while hollering at the top of her lungs, "HOLYSHIT, HELP! Heee-eeelp!" in between one or two rather shaky little sobs (which, for the record, she still had no control over-- lack of frame of mind and all that.)
Ironically enough, Cloud couldn't hear her cries for help because the elevator door had just closed. He was busy trying to distract himself by imagining the poor sap and mattress in the elevator beside him. He was busy trying to distract himself and get his thoughts away from the kitchen floor, where he'd dropped them not so very long ago.
So it should only make sense that it was Sora who reached in moments later and pulled her out, no second thoughts, no questions asked.
Whether she was crying because she'd just lost one cute little silk-lined slipper or because she'd just narrowly avoided plunging down four stories on a rotting wooden board, Kairi wasn't sure. Perhaps she was crying because she was seeing Sora again for the first time in weeks and seeing Sora single again for the first time in seven years. Not as her boyfriend, but as her friend who was a boy.
For safety's sake, we'll say it was a combination of all these factors that lead to Kairi sniffling loudly in the empty hallway-- empty, except for her and Sora.
"Kairi..." And though Sora had every right to ask tens of thousands of questions-- What in the hell were you doing in there? Why are you crying now-- He settled for just one. "Kai, hey... A-are you okay?" Just one, followed by another. "...It's my fault, isn't it?"
Instead of responding, Kairi just proceeded to wipe dejectedly at her eyes and cover her nose, all in the same pitiful gesture. She sniffled loudly and proceeded to look to the floor, only crying harder as she noticed her missing slipper once, curling her one bare foot behind the other and rubbing her ankles together. She was painfully aware of the awkwardness growing between them and she honestly couldn't find any way to put the blame on anyone but herself.
Clearly Sora had come to visit a friend... who wasn't Kairi. Their meeting was no Sora's fault, but Kairi's for not getting out of the way, for locking herself out of her own apartment, and then for trying to foolishly convince herself that she could hide in a who-knows-how-ancient dumbwaiter.
"Why didn't you come back to me after Riku said no?" The question rolled off her tongue with surprising ease, somehow managing to work its way around the painful knot forming in the dead center of her throat. Though she still refused to meet Sora's eyes, she could see his hands at his sides, fingertips drumming in some sort of nervousness, arms moving awkwardly as though he didn't know whether to pull her closer into a hug or push her further away to put more space between them.
"...I..." He started, he faltered. "Kairi, listen, I wanted to, but..."
"But what?"
"...Don't think I never had feelings for you, Kai..."
"How I wish I could believe you."
"...You're a forgiver, Kairi. Please."
Sora... wasn't entirely sure what he meant with those words. They had just sort of made themselves up in his head and rolled along down a few tunnels and out his mouth. Maybe they were the byproducts of a new breed of microscopic mite. ...Maybe they weren't.
Regardless of the words or their origins, Kairi seemed moved nonetheless.
"Just say you're sorry, y-you big dummy."
"I'm sorry."
"I will ask you to explain it to me someday..."
"I know."
"And you will... when I ask, won't you?"
"Always."
"Thank you." A nervous little laugh ripped free from Kairi's mouth while she fanned herself with both hands, looking ridiculous and... well, quite like that absurd version of Kairi Sora had spent his childhood growing up with and making fun of. All in good fun. "Well!"
"You're okay, right?" Sora asked.
"Y-yeah, yeah. How about you, huh? Y-you're a little watery yourself." Now that Kairi mentioned it, Sora realized he actually was starting to cry a little. Perhaps more than a little. And Kairi had always thought it strange how easily it was to make Sora cry. But in that moment it was the simplest of things-- both of them laughing and crying at the same time and neither caring about which was what gender and which was required be social law to be the stronger, the braver, the more compassionate.
"Hehe..."
"Don't ever change!" Both of them blurted out the words at the exact same moment, the exact same breath, pitch, and depth to their voice. It was ruled out by the laughter shared between the two, followed by a promise.
"I won't!"
In the silence that followed, Sora instantly began to think of it, the last time he had stood in that very same spot, right outside Kairi's doorway with a very similar problem. I had a bad dream and now I think I'm in love with my male friend. Please help? And though he wasn't sure if it was okay and he wasn't sure if it was some sort of wound that shouldn't be re-opened, Sora... wasn't exactly sure where else he could turn to.
So he said it.
"I had another weird dream."
"...About Riku?" Sora shook his head. The two of them stood there another long moment, suddenly awkward, suddenly afraid. But... the moment passed. Sora laughed a little and pulled out his spare key dangling it between his thumb and forefinger triumphantly.
"I was planning on giving it back, you know," he said in all honesty.
Kairi just smiled. "Come on in. Riku's here, but he's taking a shower. We'll look it up, okay?"
"Okay."
The moment Sora stepped through the door and the moment it clicked shut behind him, he found Kairi in his arms once again, and for a split second he was terrified. His mind couldn't take two insane people kissing him in one day, after all. But Kairi's breath by his ear was not seductive, not the least bit sexual. It was, in the end, just Kairi standing on her tip toes, one foot in a little silk slipper and the other foot bare, whispering, "Things are changing, can't you tell? I can tell now, now that we're okay again. Things are changing... Isn't it exciting?"
Sora wasn't entirely sure if he would call the whole muddle of his current life 'exciting,' but... Kairi had a point. Things were changing. And even as she flew away from Sora just seconds before the bathroom door was flung open, he still managed to get a good grip on her words and her warmth. He made sure to lock them away in case he ever needed them, because he'd learned from experience that he would, one day, need them after all.
Of course, all warmth and fluff was immediately forgotten at the sight of Riku combing his hair in Kairi's--
"...Riku. What are you doing! That is my bathrobe! Get out of it!"
"But it's pink and satin."
"Mine!"
"It looks better on me."
"Miii-iiine!"
x x x
The next day found Sora and Cloud situated in Sora's dinky little house once more, each of them trying to figure out a way to approach the topic of The Kiss without being too painfully obvious about it. Sadly, Sora wasn't well-educated when it came to such tactics.
"So uh... I-I was talking to Kairi and Riku the other day..."
"Sora, who was it you were seeing here anyway? I didn't see him around."
"Oh, um... just a friend, really. He's just a friend."
"Heh. Doesn't sound like a friend to me. Unless you mean the really friendly kind of friend who always has one hand in your pants."
"Riku! Don't say that!"
"Oh? You're all okay again?" Cloud looked up from his empty mug which he'd been studying closely for the past fifteen minutes, convinced that some sort of divine message would come leaping out from the formations of the coffee granules left behind. But still he couldn't keep his mind under control. I guess this means you won't be needing me around anymore, huh...?
"Yeah! We're okay, I mean. I guess things are still a little awkward, but..." Sora nodded his head several times before finally getting out the words, "It's good."
"Yeah..."
"I think I may have accidentally told them you were my boyfriend, though."
In the ensuing silence, it was all Sora could do to keep from closing his eyes entirely and just begging Cloud to "Leave now, before I humiliate both of us-- me for being an ass and you for knowing such an ass!" But instead, Sora just slid his fingertips around the rim over his mug, over and over and over again, a soft hum building up within the movement as he talked on at lightning speed...
"Sorry! I meant to fix it, but they wouldn't stop talking about it and then it got too late and I got freaked out so I left, but they still think that and please believe me, I really did try to correct them, but I sort of didn't talk loud enough or something, even though for a second there they were just kind of staring and everything but I didn't know what to say because I didn't want to tell them how bummed out I'd been because then they'd just be worried or angry or something and I didn't want to upset them but I just ended up making things worse and more confused and-- and-- and--"
Cloud honestly thought someone had taken some scissors to his windpipe, because suddenly he felt just about ready to keel over and die. Yep. Sounded like a plan to him, alright. But dying or living, Cloud managed to barely grate out the words, "...D-do you want to be?"
Sora blinked. Scared. Tragic. "...Be what?"
Cloud paled, then darkened. Pink. Embarrassed. And angry for being pink and embarrassed because those were very un-Cloud-like things to be. "Nnn-nevermind! Coffee?"
"Yes please!"
"Cream, sugar?"
"Why not!" Suddenly, a favor! The telephone rang out monotonously and Sora was all too happy to pounce on it, nearly sending his coffee mug flying in the proccess. "Just a sec!" THANK GOD FOR PHONES!
Cloud reached out a hand to steady the mug, but only found that his shaking hand didn't really improve the situation all that much. So of course the telephone worship continued between the two of them. Thank God for telephones.
"Hello!"
"Whoa there, didn't know you were that eager to talk to me, huh Sora? You sure you're not goin' all gay on me?"
"Oh, hey Tidus."
"...Love you too, man. In that great best-friend kinda way. Jackass. Hey listen, I was thinkin' we could get together today, huh? Whaddya say? We'll throw the old blitzball around, just get familiar with it again. Shouldn't be too hard for pros like us, right? HAH! Then later we could go look into that job, remember?"
"Uh, I-I'm not sure, Tidus... I mean, I've kinda got company over right now and..."
"Well bring 'em along! The more the merrier!"
"...I'm not sure if Cloud would really--"
"WHOA, Strife's there? Like, with you? Right now? Well come on, man! What're you waiting for! I'm sure that guy could use a little blitz-- help him work that ten-foot pole out of his ass, if you know what I mean."
"Tidus..."
...But in the end, would could Sora do? After all, there was no better way to kill the silence and tension between him and his male... whatever-Cloud-was, than to spend an afternoon playing blitzball with 'the guys.'
...Right?
...Wrong.
(x) (x) (x)
Cloud's French words (not clear water, but the line he later says) are actually from a line of poetry. ...I can't remember what poem it was, but I'll get back to you on it. If the conjugations of the verbs are messed up, deal with it-- I haven't taken French in a year and reworking that line was still difficult!
In the next chapter, we will not only see Cloud playing blitzball (and I use the term 'play' very, very lightly here), but we will also see Riku & Kairi's Afternoon of Shopping and Gender Confusion, and more of Kairi, Riku, and the strange company they keep.