A. N. : This one had been a long-time coming, though it's probably a surprise for literally everyone other than me. Warnings for mentions of death, natural disasters, and survivor's guilt. Volkner's Luxray is female in this for no other reason than it flowed better with at least a set of different pronouns. I don't know a thing about the anime.
The bell rings, and Volkner opens his door to a ghost.
Riley was supposed to come back a few days ago. When he didn't, when Volkner didn't even get a call or an answer or anything to reassure him and the tv kept on going on and on about the typhoon in Hoenn, when the videos of disaster and chaos and wrecked ships among wrecked houses burned themselves in Volkner's eyes to the point that seeing them could almost make him sick –
Volkner assumed Riley wasn't coming back.
By the look on his face, so did Riley.
Standing in the entryway and staring at each other gets old fast, so Volkner simply steps aside and lets Riley in. No word was uttered after the tired « hey » of a man who should be dead that greeted Volkner barely a minute ago, and when the door closes, the silence becomes almost suffocating. Almost palpable. Weighty, like deep-sea water threatening to crush the both of them under its pressure.
Riley still hovers awkwardly in the hallway, like he hasn't been here many times before and he still needs to wait for the host to lead the way. He really is too polite. Right now, it almost makes him feel like a stranger. Like he doesn't belong here anymore. Like a ghost.
Volkner starts walking.
It's a fine house he lives in. He got it with the job, and even if he mostly lives in only two of the rooms – three if he were to count the few times he gets tired of takeout and tries his hand at cooking, only to remember why he never does it in the first place – he can enjoy the place just fine. He found uses for the other rooms. The rest of Sunyshore would probably disagree with these uses, more likely to make their current gym leader live in a cupboard, rather than suffer from whatever plans and designs he's been working on and pinning to the walls of his house, and the inevitable city-wide blackouts that will result from them.
It's a fine house, and Volkner likes it even if it is too big for him.
It's a fine house and the time it takes to reach the living room from the main door is unbearable right now. Living in a cupboard would be better than this. Than trying not to look back at Riley every step of the way and failing, because he shouldn't be here at all and there's nothing telling Volkner that Riley won't disappear for good if no one watches him.
And at the back of Volkner's mind are the old myths he heard someplace or other, whispering at every glance he spares Riley that this was the wrong choice and he will now pay the price. The way to the living room feels as long as the trek from the underworld to the world of the living.
Unbearable.
Riley finally reaches the couch and crashes in it, burying his head in a cushion and not bothering to lift his feet from the floor, in an undignified way that really goes to show how exhausted he is. Volkner has only seen him sprawled like this a handful of times, none of them so terribly crushing as today.
Volkner breathes out, the sound almost deafening in how out of place it feels. But silence is worse, much worse, and Volkner's hand twitches restlessly. He needs to do something.
« Want any tea ? » he asks the amorphous body of Riley. A muffled sound emerges from the cushion, which Volkner takes as a yes.
He keeps the kitchen door open as he puts some water to boil, eyes constantly straying outside of the room, to the back of the couch. He can't see Riley from here. Shaking his head, Volkner grabs a chair, reaches inside a cupboard – he is pretty sure the tea is in here, somewhere at the back, entirely forgotten since the last time Riley was here. Eventually, Volkner does find the pack, trapped behind a box of cookies he will have to throw away right now, before he forgets and they remain here for another few years and end up developing a life of their own.
The pack of tea is a pretty thing, originally a gift from one of Riley's travels to Johto, back when he hadn't yet figured out that he really is the only one of Volkner's friends, of which Flint is the only other representative, to drink the thing. Volkner's drink of choice is coffee – or, as Flint calls it, « vaguely brown milk » – while Flint mainly drinks what is commonly referred to by all who know him as « a crime ».
Volkner has never brewed tea in his life. He guesses Riley will just have to bear with leaf juice for now, until he feels good enough to move from the couch.
Nothing seems to have changed in the living room, at least going by what little Volkner can see from where he stands, so he takes some more time to grab his phone and ring up Flint, all the while trying to figure out how much of the tea powder he should put in the mug. Flint picks up, asks what's up, and Volkner pauses.
Things he could say jump to his mind – « Riley is alive and on my couch and he looks like hell and you know I'm terrible at comforting people, please help », or « Riley is alive and here and I don't know how to make his tea, please help », or even « Riley is alive and I thought he was dead and I don't know if I'm glad or terrified and I need you to please come here and tell me I'm not hallucinating him. »
What he says instead is « Get one more pizza when you're done at the League, mushroom and artichoke, no ham, » and when Flint asks who's joining the Monthly Pizza Night, answers « A ghost, » and hangs up.
Finally deciding to do the clever thing and simply bring the pack of tea to the living room, and then just ask Riley how much of that thing is supposed to go in the mug, Volkner leaves the kitchen, walks around the couch, and stops.
Riley hasn't moved since last time, but he's been joined by Luxray, who sits on the floor with her head on Riley's back, staring at Volkner like he is somehow responsible for her spot being taken. He puts the stuff on the table, scratches Luxray's ears in an effort to appease her.
Lucario isn't here, he realizes. Usually, Riley would let him out of the Ball the second he leaves Salamence's back. « You wouldn't leave Flint locked up somewhere while you're out having fun, would you ? » he'd said one time Volkner asked him about it. Of course, since Flint had been in the room then, Volkner had answered something around the lines of « Sounds like some fucking holidays if you ask me, » and had laughed at Flint's spluttering outrage.
He got it, though. Still gets it – he knows himself well enough to be absolutely certain that he wouldn't be able to live without Flint watching out for him like the good big brother he always denied playing at.
Riley hasn't let Lucario out in the time he's been here – how long has it already been, it felt like an eternity but surely that can't be it – and somehow that's the thing that makes Volkner sit on the floor, next to the couch, and put his hand on Riley's head.
« Do you want to talk about it ? »
It's a question Volkner hates. It's been asked to him about a million times, whenever the boredom and the blackouts and everything else come up in a conversation with anyone who isn't Flint or Riley. Thing is, there's never anything to talk about, in his case. That's kind of the issue. The nothingness.
Riley literally stood in the middle of a storm. It must have felt – Volkner has no idea how it could have felt. He thinks that unknown is the real ghost here. The thing that needs to be exorcised.
Volkner's hand keeps on petting Riley's hair even as his head turns just enough to get his face out of the cushion. They don't look at each other. Volkner doesn't think he could bear it, the moment already almost too intimate as is.
Talking isn't really Volkner's thing. But he only needs to listen, and to keep his hand combing through Riley's hair.
« I killed someone, Volk'. » Riley's voice is awfully low, with a distinct trembling, like it is being crushed by all the weight of the words, dragged against the ocean floor like a pebble. Volkner can't say he was expecting this start, but he waits for whatever is going to come out next. His hand doesn't stop.
« It was – I – I was waiting for my ship, and this man was just. He was going around, asking for a spare ticket. He – he wanted to see his family in Canalave. He wanted to see his family, » Riley whispers this last part. Pauses. Inhales, then « I gave him my ticket. Thought I could always buy another, that it wouldn't be too bad if I was a day late. I wasn't feeling all that good, anyway. Should've known – I should've – the earth started shaking first and it was. The air was so dry. Then it wasn't anymore and the waves looked like buildings and it was chaos and they said the ship drowned and I – I – I should've been in it, Volkner. It should've been me in that ship. I killed that man. I should've – »
Riley doesn't finish this last sentence, but they both know what he was going to say. That's the biggest problem with Riley, Volkner knows. His kindness knows no bounds, at the cost of erasing his own self. Riley is kind, but never to himself. Maybe that's why they fit so well together, the two of them. One is too kind, the other too selfish. They complement each other.
Volkner doesn't really see a way to comfort Riley, not when this whole thing – the typhoon, the drowned ship, the dead man – is almost too big for him to really grasp at all. So he does what he knows best, and speaks for himself.
« Y'know, even if it's tragic for this guy and his family and all… I'm really glad you didn't get in that ship. Would've missed you, I think. Flint sure as hell would've. » A pause, then « It's good to see you alive, Rye'. »
It's good to have you back, with me, he doesn't say, the words too heavy for him.
His hand is still petting Riley's hair, and that's how he notices the shaking at first. Just a slight tremor, that grows in intensity until it devolves into full-blown sobbing, then crying, as Riley reaches out with an arm and grabs Volkner around the shoulder. It's an awkward position for a hug, or for anything at all really, but it's fine. Riley is fine. They're fine.
They cry into each other's shoulders until Riley falls asleep.
When Flint arrives with the pizza, Volkner vehemently denies the possible redness of his eyes, instead playing up Flint's fear of ghosts and the mystery guest until he gets a kick in the shins. Riley is gently woken up, and Luxray climbs up the couch the second she sees an opportunity. Volkner sits on Riley's other side, while Flint monopolizes the armchair and shares whatever dumb things happened in the League while Riley was away, moving on to childhood stories when he runs out, that Volkner insists are inaccurate and shouldn't be believed, except for the one where Flint was almost kidnapped by a Drifloon while Volkner complained because he too wanted a turn at the cool balloon and didn't understand why Flint was crying.
Flint doesn't ask Riley about Hoenn, not on that day.
The tv remains resolutely turned off.
Riley falls asleep on Volkner's shoulder once again, and Volkner lets him.
It's fine, for now.