Gotta Knock a Little Harder – Yoko Kanno

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It was funny, Riku thought, that someone as universally loved as Sora could be so untouchable. He'd watched him these long months, from the corners of his eyes, and begun to notice the way that, despite all the people that liked him, despite his crowds of admirers… the guy didn't really… have anyone. He literally didn't seem to like touching a lot, tended to keep a personal-space bubble clamped into place at all times, and, morbid though it sounded, Riku found it all kind of fascinating. He took to following the brunet's crowd on its outskirts, sometimes receiving curious glances, but it wasn't unusual for Sora's crowd to fluctuate, fill and empty of the people that wanted to get near him and then left eventually, with a small core of girls and guys at the centre that seemed to be the closest thing the guy had to real friends. It was… hard to explain, to an outsider, how someone so popular and magnetically attractive could still be so isolated, yet somehow, this was what Sora had managed.

A little spark was lit in Riku's curiosity. Like so many before him, he wanted to know more about the enigmatically, energetically charming brown-haired creature, but he wondered if any of them had done it for precisely the same reasons as he was. From what he'd observed, a lot of them wanted a slice of the glory – popularity by association, that sort of thing, or just the attention of the boy. And the guy knew how to talk, knew how to engage a person and be friendly and boppy, but at the end of the day, he always walked away from all the invitations, always spurned those that would follow him, and it seemed like the ones considering themselves his true friends were simply the ones that refused, even after the couple of years that this had been happening, to be deterred.

Riku made it his mission to be part of this group.

He started out by being stalkerish, following the boy when the other clingers had fallen away, attracting a couple of odd glances from him, but, to begin with, nothing more. Then he started trailing Sora to the campus library during his breaks, whenever their free time coincided, knowing that the brunet enjoyed the quiet building, possibly because of the lack of contact it afforded, with Nazi-like librarians prowling the stacks. He'd sit as close to him as he could, never minding the glares that started being sent his way, pretending to be utterly, pleasantly oblivious.
Eventually, confrontations started taking place. At first, it came from the direction of the core-group – a redheaded girl and her brown-haired friend blocked his path one day on his way to the caf, demanding that he back off, Sora didn't like stalkers. Riku had neatly side-stepped them, responding that all he wanted was to be the guy's friend.

"Sora doesn't want you," the redhead had stated coldly. Riku had smirked, walking backwards, shrugging carelessly.
"I don't want him," he'd responded. He wasn't bothered; they were hypocrites for getting on his back anyway, considering the way he was merely echoing their selfsame persistence from way back when.

Eventually, it was Sora himself, bright, cheerful, happy Sora, that grabbed him by the neck and hauled him around a corner one day to demand, "What the hell are you doing? What do you want?"

Riku had straightened himself out, eyeing the boy coolly. "Who says I want anything?"

The boy threw his hands up in exasperation. "You've been following me for three months now. It's getting kind of creepy, I can tell you!"
A silver brow had quirked upward. "You've been noticing me for three months? I only started stalking you proper the last month and a half."
Cheeks faintly coloured but unshaken, Sora triumphantly snapped, "So, you admit you've been stalking me?"

Riku had shrugged his bag on more comfortably, starting to walk away. "Well, sure," he tossed over his shoulder. "How else do you suggest I get closer to you?"

He'd left the boy looking gobsmacked, not entirely certain why his words had so obviously affected him, but smugly pleased that he was at least beginning to chip through the massive door Sora had put between himself and the world. He just couldn't figure out why no one else had cottoned on to it – it seemed blatantly obvious to the silver-haired male that something in Sora's happy little personality was deeply flawed.
Another month down the line, things reached a culmination. He was becoming accepted in the core group. They had got used to seeing him around, and for some reason, Sora had fallen silent on the subject of being disturbed by his presence. Riku got to know them all, even started to consider them as friends – all but the elusive heart of it all. Sora could see the walls of his followers falling one by one, and knew that they weren't going to protect him any longer. Riku focused his attack, started dogging the brunet's steps, agitating Sora beyond normal levels, until, one day, he snapped. It was quiet snap, but heartfelt.

"I've had enough." His voice was soft, but his words burned. Riku had to lean close to hear them as they walked between classes.

"Enough what? Enough Calc?"

"Enough you," the boy answered in a mutter. "You need to – leave me alone now. You've made your point. Or whatever." He raised his head, gaze heated. "You're in, congratulations, you made the Everybody-Loves-Sora club. So can you now leave me alone?"

Riku snorted with laughter. "'Everybody Loves Sora'? Please tell me those idiots haven't actually made a club for you – oh, please." The brunet blinked, grew angry.

"Don't call them idiots, they're my – "

"Friends? Could've fooled me, sweetheart."

Sora flushed pink, glared, stopped walking and demanded, "If you don't want to follow me around like the rest of the puppies, and – and you don't want anything from me – then what the hell are you even doing here? Why all the determination to drive me insane?"

Mildly, the silver-haired male asked, "You think of them as 'puppies'?" He shrugged. "I'm not a puppy, I guess. I'm not interested in kissing your ass or showing you off. I just wanted to really know if it was possible to crack that tight fucking mask you've got going." He shrugged again, started walking. "That's all."

Sora's bag collided with his head, swung hard, filled with books that made Riku yell out and stagger down to one knee. He turned, feeling his skull for damage, spat, "What the fuck?"

"That's why?!" Sora's face was twisted with fury. He swung again, smacked Riku across the face, flattening him to the grass. "You've spent four fucking months following me around, just to see why I - ?!"

Riku, face throbbing and gasping, squinted up. "Why you what? What's the deal, Sora? You might as well tell me, now you've got me on my back and all."

"Why the hell do you care?"

"Who ever said that I do?!"

Sora stopped at this, scowling down at him. "So you don't? You don't care at all, then?"

Riku groaned, covering his face with one arm. "Sora, how the hell do you expect me to care about anything that you do, when all you do is repeatedly shut me down?" He threw his arm away from his face, tucked both behind his sore head, eyes flashing. "All you're doing," he said, words piercingly accurate, "is testing people. You're waiting until they're knocking hard enough against your walls to break through. If they don't keep hammering, they don't care enough – right?" Sora's expression had turned to one of shock. "You can't test all of humanity for the rest of your goddamn life," Riku continued, mercilessly. "You'll lose a hell of a lot more than you'll ever gain." His eyes were grim. "I'm not a fan of tests. I wanted to figure you out, and now I have. So it's up to you now, as to whether we're done or not. Are we done? Because I'm not going to keep trying to break through – not unless you come out to meet me halfway." He smiled suddenly. "See, that's the difference between me and the puppies. It's not that I don't care – it's just that I'm not going to pander to your idiocies."

Sora momentarily bristled. "Idio - ?"

"Or, emotional scars," the male rephrased calmly. "But if they're there, they can only be fixed if you want them to be, right? You can't just lock 'em away, Sora." The two of them stared at one another for a while, before Sora shook his head. The humour suddenly left Riku's face, a cold, sad wind wiping it clean.

"You're wrong about me," the brunet said, all anger suddenly gone. "I didn't want people – to knock them down. The walls. And… they're not even walls, it's – a door. I just… wanted someone to knock hard enough to make me want to answer."

Riku frowned slightly, studying the boy. After a long moment, he said, "Well, fuck that." Sora's head came up sharply, some powerful pain in his eyes. "I'm not the type to throw myself against a door, Sora, and hope the person on the other side is going to feel like coming out." Before the brunet could unlock, could gather himself and flee from this abandonment from the one person that finally seemed to get it… Riku lifted a hand. He extended a finger, and pressed at something invisible in the air. "Ding-dong," he sang. He smiled crookedly. "Works much better. Goes through the whole house. You're never left in any doubt that there's someone wanting to get in and steal your cookies."

Faintly, Sora echoed, "…My – my cookies…?"

"Hey, Sora, I've got a joke for you: knock, knock?"

Sora sank down to the grass, gathering his bag onto his lap. The corners of his mouth twitching up, he sucked in a breath and softly answered, "…Who's there?"