Special thanks goes to archy the cockroach for her fabulous uploading skills while my computer is regurgitating everything XD Thank you!
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Suburbia
'Explode'
Saturday afternoon was like a wild bitch-slap to the face and it occurred to Riku that the following school year may very well be a hell of long nights and boring weekends spent completely and utterly alone. With no prospects of doing any for that evening, he'd woken that morning and set himself the one, silly little goal of finding the bird that had gone missing from his photo album. In all honesty, he really didn't have much of a connection with the stupid thing, but he figured it was rightfully his and therefore rightfully meant to be kept with all the things that were once rightfully his parents'.
Thinking this, Riku nodded. Yeah. That was right. And he surveyed the room around him and the boxes half-open and the dangling stick-figures on the closet door and his mother's perfume and pumps and skirts and suddenly-- right there in the rumpled bed of Mayako's guest room-- he realized that this was all still very, very surreal. It was surreal when he brushed his teeth and the mint tasted like fish paste. Surreal when he walked downstairs and opened his mouth to speak to a persistent little neighbor-girl who wasn't there. Surreal, yes, when he was upstairs, skulking around the door to his aunt and uncle's bedroom. His uncle was rummaging through his wardrobe, wearing a decent pair of slacks and a nice undershirt. Golfing, he'd said earlier. He was going golfing.
That was the sport of kings, wasn't it? Hey, if this guy's a king, I wonder if that would make me a duke or something. A lord. Lord Riku. Lord Riku the Wise. Lord Riku the Irreversibly Fucked Up... This is an intriguing concept. I should keep going with this.
But at that moment, the uncle looked up, caught sight of the kid in his doorway and smiled-- one big, easygoing gesture that Riku figured was supposed to loosen him up or something. Open him up or something. "Hey, Riku," he said. "Made any plans for today?"
"No..." Green polo shirt clutched in one triumphant hand, Riku's uncle turned to face him-- suddenly thoughtful, suddenly a bit more wary. On some level, Riku had a feeling he knew what was coming. Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, Riku opened his mouth, let it hang there stupidly for a moment, before tossing out the words-- "Hey, that bird. You know, the paper one?"
He looked up to see what reaction that had gotten. What kind of shocked and startled expression it had spurred into being.
What he got was a rather amusing image of his uncle getting his head stuck in his polo. Riku snorted-- a noise which he promptly attempted to disguise as a cough when his uncle's head successfully popped through the proper hole and he turned back to face Riku, laughing along as though they were the best of friends.
Hell no, you bird-stealer. I know you did it.
"Sorry Riku, what was that?"
"The stork I showed you a couple nights ago," Riku said, hands finding their ways into his pockets. Baggy black cargos and sleeveless hoodie combined, he was the picture-perfect Saturday morning summerteen. It was a little sickening to think about really... Clearing his throat when his uncle turned towards the mirror, Riku took another step into the room, trying to catch a glimpse of his face. "The one you saw. ...It was in the photo album? You know where it went?"
"It's missing?" his uncle asked. Innocent as ever, pulling at the polo and tucking it into his neatly pressed kakis.
"Yeah."
There was a pause. And bam, RIku had it. That fleeting look of guilt and that tiny little flash-in-the-facial-pan of sorrow. He could only smirked as his uncle moved past him, heading back through the bedroom door with a waved had and an over-the-shoulder kind of comment. An over-the-shoulder kind of lie, is more fucking like it.
"Well, I haven't seen it around, but I'll keep my eyes peeled for it, m'kay?"
"Right."
x x x
"Hey!"
Riku was in the coffee shop when he heard it. Sora had swung by at around noon and breathlessly asked him if he was up for hanging out after work. "Meet me at the coffee house-- few doors down from Cid's-- I'll head there after work and I wanna see you there, okay? If you're not there, I'll never forgive you!"
So, with a threat like that, of course Riku was there. He'd gotten there half an hour early, actually, seeing as he'd left well before Sora's scheduled 6:30 release in fear of getting turn about in the neighborhood somehow. ...Again. ...Well, at least he had pants on him this time. Once at the designated spot, he'd grabbed a strawberry smoothie-- though he would never figure out why a coffee shop made smoothies-- and settled into one of the many oversized leather sofas speckling the place, more than prepared to wait out the time until Sora was bound to come traipsing happily through the door.
But back with the voice. That was the real oddball thing about it all. Because Riku most certainly didn't expect to be confronted by anyone except Sora. And Riku most certainly, certainly didn't expect to be confr--
"Hey, I know you!" It was, shock of all shocks, a girl talking to Riku. And probably even more shocking than this was the fact that it wasn't Kairi. Instantly, Riku was on guard. He didn't exactly know any other girls aside from Kairi. Part of his brain pointed out that that was rather pathetic. And another part of his brain pointed out that his aunt was, indeed, a girl.
...But Mayako didn't count. He wasn't even that sure if Mayako was really a girl. She was just... Mayako.
But wait, she said she knew me. That's not right. How the fuck could she--?
"...You do?" he asked. His face just screamed brilliance. Not. He tried to shut up his head, but it wouldn't listen. So instead, he poured every little ounce of his being into focusing on the girl who was randomly speaking to him.
The girl in question was in front of him then, not particularly tall, but from Riku's sitting position, he still had to crane his neck at a bit of an odd angle in order to catch a good glimpse of her face. A pretty face it was, framed by a head of hair that reminded Riku an awful lot of chocolate-covered gummy bears. Really, for the hair to remind him of chocolate-covered gummy bears was alright, seeing as the girl's hair was brown. But her eyes were green and Riku had never exactly had green chocolate before. He had a feeling it would severely dampened the entire chocolate experience.
But after a blink and another brief study, he decided that yes, this girl was definitely like a chocolate-covered gummy bear-- eyes included-- because she was so... fruity. Not the unbearable fruitiness that the pop media used to portray all flamboyantly gay men-- hell no-- but that sweet tang of fruit chew and chocolate wrapped into one delightfully yummy candy form. The girl smiled. Riku felt exceptionally mushy all of a sudden and wasn't entirely sure why. He just felt the sudden urge to grope something and was a bit put-out that Sora wasn't around.
The realization made him want to beat himself very, very painfully until he was through and done being a completely wimpy moron.
"Yeah, you must be Riku, right?" she asked. Her voice had softened since she first spoke to him and a sweet kind of nervousness made her blush a little, smile a little more, say, "Sorry to scare you like that-- I'm Olette! I, um, I know Kairi, you know? She's told me about you. She said I should say 'hi' to you if I saw you around town, and, well, here you are!"
"Sure enough... Here I am..." Riku was about to give the girl a smile, just to show what a nice guy he could be, but then he realized that his smiles still weren't quite up to par with everyone else's, so he kept his mouth screwed into some half-assed loopy line and just settled for-- "Nice to meet you?"
Clearly, this didn't really deter Olette in the slightest, for she promptly turned to one side, picking someone out of the crowd with those chocolate-covered-gummy eyes of hers and flagging him down. As she did so, she called out something. A certain something that it took Riku a moment to register.
"Hayner, over here!"
And a certain something that it took Riku another moment to really, really register. And then it hit him dead on and there was no denying it.
Hayner?
"Yo, what's up?"
"Hayner, this is Riku-- Kairi's friend!"
"Ohhh. Uh. Hey." Quite unlike Olette, Hayner gave off absolutely no gummy vibe in the slightest. If anything, his tone was a wary, cautious one. Not quiet in any sense of the word, but challenging. Almost as though Hayner were about ready to punch Riku square in the jaw if he even so much as showed the slightest sign of stepping out of line.
And was that a glare Riku saw? ...Yes. Yes, it decidedly was. Well. O-kay. All shapes and sizes of people in this neck of the woods. For lack of a better, more original thing to say, Riku decided to play it simple with Hayner.
"Hi," he said. Yep. Real simple. Real clean. Straightforward and gusty, but not enough to land him in a fist fight with the guy.
Perfectly oblivious to the grit, crackle and spark of testosterone in the air, Olette giggle delightedly and took a drink which Hayner offered her-- something that looked like a coffee version of Riku's smoothie, topped with whipped cream and drizzled caramel. Frappuccino? Was that what it was called? Riku sure as hell didn't know. Frappuccino and cappuccino were two words that sounded too similar and it was all too goddamn confusing. They should have just settled for calling it a coffee smoothie.
Regardless of what it was called, Olette's coffee smoothie was waved about in the air with the motion of her hand as she flicked one finger out towards an empty table, looked at Riku, smiled that smile, and asked him, "You wanna come sit with us, Riku? We're waiting for Pence over there!"
"Uh, I'm waiting for someone, too, actually."
"Well let's wait together! Kairi told me you were totally awesome, but she said you also weren't very talkative. Still, it was pretty easy to pick you out of a crowd, you know what I mean? Your hair's so different! It's gorgeous!"
Hayner seemed to bristle at this comment, his eyes flicking to Riku's perfectly styled hair and narrowing. Riku got the distinct impression that Hayner was mentally hacking his hair to bits. If he wasn't so sure of his own badass nature, he might have been intimidated. As it was, the other boy was just getting on his nerves.
"Uh. Thanks."
"No charge!" Olette was still smiling-- even when she swung a tiny little hip into Hayner's side, earning a yelp and a glare from the boy. She laughed a little, covering her mouth prettily with one hand and saying to Riku, "But I have to apologize for my loser boyfriend here. He has no social skills!"
"Wh--HEY! That's so not true!" Hayner snapped. Inside his own head, Riku was wondering what on earth Sora had ever seen in this punk. God, what a pain.
"Anyway, Riku, do you know anyone else around town? I'd be more than happy to introduce you to the gang, if you want!" Smile, smile. Olette and her gummy-eyes. Smi-ile.
"Um..."
"Say, if you're one of Kairi's good friends--" The girl tapped one finger on her chin thoughtfully, taking a small little sip of her... coffe-smoothie... before nodding once and looking to Riku again, continuing with "--you probably know Sora, right?"
"...Uh." Don't look at Hayner. Don't look at Hayner. You fuck up every lie you make. So don't even lie. Keep it simple. Don't look at Hayner. You might punch him. Riku's glance shifted away from Olette towards Hay-- FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, NOT HAYNER-- towards the floor. "Y-yeah, I kind of know him."
"I never get to see him anymore... He's always busy. I try and swing by the bookstore sometimes, but he's always too busy to talk, too busy to go to lunch or anything." Riku studied his shoes and continued listening to Olette talk. It wasn't so bad. It was probably better than sitting on Hayner and beating his face it, really. "It really makes it difficult," Olette was saying. "We never get to do anything as one big group anymore. He's always missing. And I worry about him..."
If Riku was stupid, he would've missed the way her voice caught just so, the way she caught herself and shut herself up. Riku looked back towards her then and saw the exact same expression he'd seen on his uncle earlier that day. That look-- being smack dab in the act of doing something wrong. The guilt. But then it was gone as soon as it'd shown. Olette was smiling once more, the act a bit more somber, but still so originally hers.
"You should drag him along with you the next time we all get together, okay?"
"Um, I'll... try."
The silence that followed was broken by Hayner, and if Riku hadn't set his mind to disliking the kid who so obviously disliked him already, he probably would've been grateful towards him.
"If Pence doesn't show soon, I'm outta here," Hayner muttered.
Whether Olette either heard or cared, no one really knew. Because at that particular moment, a certain Sora strolled right on in and three pairs of eyes hone in on him right at that very, very particular moment.
Not surprisingly, Olette was the first one to smile, the first one be warm about it, to say, "Oh! There's Sora! Sora! Over here!"
And-- though this was considerably more surprising than Olette being kind-- neither Hayner nor Olette seemed particularly shocked when Sora... turned around and walked right back out of the coffee shop. Riku blinked. He scrambled for the words, suddenly felt as though he was the one responsible for fixing it, for figuring out, for excusing the both of them.
"Uh, I gotta go, we have somewhere we have to be."
"You guys can't hang for a minute?"
"No." Riku tried to look apologetic, but it was a difficult thing to do-- looking apologetic while trying to smother the 'What the fuck?' expression currently residing on his face. "Sorry, we're late. Some other time?"
"Okay, Riku. Don't worry about it. It was nice meeting you!"
"You too, Olette. And Hayner."
"Yeah. Later."
Jogging across the parking lot was a painful experience Riku never wanted to experience again. The heat that swelled up from that thing was unbearable and the mad sunlight glinting off every single car roof was unforgivable. Unbearable, unforgivable... This hardly seems like the most fucking livable place to ever exist.
"Sora! Sora, wait up!" He grappled with Sora's shoulder for a moment, but the thing suddenly felt so scrawny and bony that Riku half expected his hand to come away with some mangled limb in tow. Needless to say, he dropped his arm and simply leapt the extra leap that put him in hurried step beside Sora. "I'm sorry, I didn't know."
Sora blinked. Looked up-- dazed and confused, like what Riku had said was either in another language or had been about random as someone pointing out that bonobo chimpanzees engage in oral sex.
...Yes, almost as random at that, but not quite.
Yet after a moment and another blink, Sora drew the two of them to a slower pace and asked, "...Know what?"
O-kay. Sure, Sora. We'll pretend you didn't just bitch out and run as soon as you saw those kids. Why the fuck not? Jesus. It was all Riku could do not to roll his eyes, not to snap and jerk and pull at Sora because he didn't know what the hell his problem was and because he wanted to hel-- ...That was probably the worst part. The wanting to help part. Riku didn't like helping people very much.
"I didn't... know... that... sitting with other people would upset you?" he tried. Lame.
"...That's not what-- I'm not upset," Sora huffed. Tan arms came up and his own fingers buried within his messy hair. His elbows stuck up at some awkward angles and it took Riku a moment to realize that an awful lot about Sora was just awkward. He couldn't tell if it was an endearing quality or what-- but he didn't really care.
What he cared about was that Sora was clearly upset and had just said he wasn't. Am I corrupting the kid or is this just an off day?
"I thought you didn't lie," Riku muttered after a painstakingly long lull in the conversation.
"I-- Riku, I'm fine, sorry. I just got a little weird." The kid was possibly bipolar, he was suddenly grinning like such a manic. "I'm not upset. Just weird, is all."
"Just... weird?"
"Weirded out. You know. Spooked?" One shoulder lifted lightly, making the position of his elbows in the air all the stranger.
"Oh. Spooked. ...By?"
"It's not important. Forget about it." Where the two had been standing at a the intersection was suddenly full of stopped cars and dead traffic. It was in the moment that the red hand turned to the glowing 'WALK!' man that Sora and Riku paraded across the street and somehow abandoned the better part of their awkwardness and confusion across the way they'd just come.
Sora's elbows hung at a better angle, his shoulders looked firmer, his smile a little less insistent and buzzing with a doubt. "You look like you're feeling better today!" he told Riku, happily slinging an arm around the taller boy's shoulders.
"A little more awake, I guess. At least I've been getting sleep, right?"
"Sleeping is the best fad to ever exist." Fad? The fad of sleep. Brilliant idea, Sora. All us lazy kids can be hipsters. "Oh hey, I got you a present!"
...Well that snapped Riku out of it. His head jerked towards Sora, who was burying his free hand into the front pocket of his shirt. Really, with a kangaroo pocket like that, the shirt should have had a hood. Hoodless and sleeveless was what it was. Weird. A weird, weird shirt. But weird shirt or no, Sora had a thin paperback out a moment later, clearly from the used bookstore he worked at, judging by the dog-eared pages and slightly worn spine.
"A... huh?"
"Ta da!"
It was in Sora's hands, then Riku's, passed with an ease and turned to the front cover. An acrylic painting in blue and yellow stood out against the black background, though it was so abstract Riku couldn't quite tell what the painting was actually of. But he could damn well read and picked out the title in bold orange print.
'POMES ALL SIZES.'
...He could only pray that typo was on purpose. And he couldn't really tell if it was endearingly weird (like Sora) or just plain weird-weird. Either way. Riku felt compelled to state the obvious.
"...It's a poetry book."
"Not just any poetry book. It's a Jack Kerouac poetry book. I marked my favorite ones," Sora added helpfully. "You should check those ones out first."
"It's awesome." And for a moment, Riku forgot his lesser skills and let a smile slip. "Thanks," he said. And shockingly enough, he really meant it.
Sora swung his head to the side, gave Riku a grin and tugged him down and closer with the arm still draped about his shoulders. Riku half expected the kid to ruffle his hair-- which would have been terribly annoying and mood-shattering-- but Sora did no such thing. He just conked his head against Riku's shoulder, laughed lightly and tugged once more, batted at Riku's arm, roughed around. Riku rolled his eyes and made to give Sora a playful shove, but nearly sent him sprawling smack dab into the lane of oncoming traffic. And so their play-fight began and ended, Sora declaring himself the victor and Riku muttering a rather noncommittal and non-bitter, "Whatever."
The two turned a street corner, the sidewalk now sheltered by the sun from overhanging trees and towering privacy hedges. Riku felt the weight of the small book in his hand, the weight of Sora's arm which had snaked around his own-- he was pleasantly weighted down to the ground, no more medicinal highs or fogged-up psychedelic planes. No need for a catastrophic episode of blue rain pandas there. Just Riku, just Sora, and just the book between them.
The book and the words Sora said with a little, thoughtful smile. "So anyway, it's a little breezy outside today. Much better than it has been lately, huh? ...Wanna go fly kites?"
"...Kites?"
"Yeah! Don't tell me you're one of those losers who thinks they're too old for it! Heehee, I can tell your inner child is just dying for the chance to go fly kites with me, widdle biddle Wi-kuuu!" It should really have come as no surprise to Riku when he found himself in some sort of twisted half-nelson that didn't quite make the cut of one, seeing as Sora was far too short and a bit too weak to really drag Riku's built form down and pin him under an arm or two. ...So really, Sora was just sort of dangling off his neck. Awkwardly. And a bit uncomfortably, Riku had to admit.
"Ugh, get off!"
"But you kno-ow you want to, ri-ight?"
"Want to bash your skull in!"
"Why you'd never! Don't be silly, Riku!"
"Just watch me, for god's sake. Get off my head!"
"Aww, don't cah-whyyy, bay-bee---yaaah! RIKU!" And really, Sora shouldn't have been all that surprised when he ended up slung over Riku's shoulder like a sack of cotton, swung around in a dizzying loop as Riku made a lazy show of spin, spin, spinning on the sidewalk corner.
"You say something, Sora?"
"P-Put me down!"
"I thought we were gonna go fly kites?"
"I'm not a kite!"
"Really now? I couldn't tell."
Letting out quite the beastly little snarl-- "Rawr!"-- and taking to pounding on Riku's back stubbornly with his fists, Sora soon had the older nearly collapsing in a laughing fit, nearly toppling over on his ass in the process.
No. Not nearly. But quite really toppling over on his ass in the process, and dragging Sora right along with him. Thankfully there was a rather nice and cushiony flower bed right there to break their tragic fall.
"Gotcha, Ri-ku." Ah, and there was Sora, looking every ounce triumphant and poised on Riku's chest, arms crossed and victorious. "Now are we gonna go fly kites or what?"
"...These flowers are awfully comfortable."
"They're gonna kill us if they catch us, Riku. ...Hm. ...Actually. I think they're outta town anyway."
"My point exactly."
Sora laughed, flopped down on to Riku's chest and seemed perfectly content to just nuzzle against the warmth of skin and fabric alike. And as long as Riku could breathe, he had absolutely no problem with that arrangement whatsoever.
So that was how they stayed, the better part of twenty minutes in a peaceful silence and relaxed warmth. Riku felt himself drifting somewhere towards sleep, right before he felt a rumble against his chest and realized that it was Sora speaking. ...A weird experience, to feel sound, but not exactly an unpleasant one, either.
"Mm... Hey, Riku?"
"Yeah?"
"You don't like Hayner and Olette better than me 'n Kairi, do you?" Sora's fingers were on him now, trailing nervous lines and patterns down and across his chest. It wasn't necessarily any kind of sexual thing. It was just Sora. Just Sora and just Sora being nervous. Sora saying, "I know it sounds stupid to ask... but I should've let you hang out with them instead if you'd really wanted t--"
"No," Riku insisted. "Really. I'd much rather be here squashing some stranger's flowers with you than out at coffee with them. Any day."
Sora seemed to think about this for a moment before laughing and nodding and smiling like a fool. "Good!" he chirped. "But... Kairi told you about Hayner... didn't she?"
"She... didn't really tell me much. J-Just that I shouldn't hang around him."
"That's stupid. You can hang with Hayner if you want to."
"I don't want to, Sora. Geeze, what's it going to take to convince you that I like hanging out with you, Stupid?"
"A kiss." Sora grinned. "On my chinny-chin-chin."
"You're such a fruit." And still, Riku could only comply. Smooch. Right on the chin. Sora let out something that sounded suspiciously like a giggle, followed by a content sort of "Mmm..." sound and a happy hum.
"'Angel mine, be you fine, angel divine!'" Sora crooned the words like a ballad and he grinned like he'd just said the most clever, most endearing little thing the world had to offer. In actuality, it was just quoted poetry, but as far as Riku was concerned, he may just as well have the most endearing little thing the world had to offer. Nothing at that moment could possibly have been cuter than Sora sprawled across his chest with flowers in his hair and a goofy little smile written in pink ink across his mouth.
So, in a way, Riku really did feel like shooting himself when he heard the words barreling out of his mouth and take a clumsy and staggered swipe at what little peace he'd built up for himself. "Why on Earth do you spend time with me?" he heard himself asking. Fucking vocal cords. Never fucking listen.
"Honestly?" With a bit of a squirm and a crack of a joint somewhere, Sora propped his elbows up on Riku's chest-- something that should've been uncomfortable, but wasn't really so bad. His head rested on his hands, his fingertips drummed against his cheeks, and thought was his only concern-- thinking his only means of getting anywhere and figuring out how he came to be there. And thinking got him this:
"Well, for starters, you're really hot." Smile. Grin. Chuckle. "But really, really? You're real. You feel a lot and... that's nice. And you're not afraid of me."
"...Don't mean to be the bearer of bad news, Sora, but you're really not that scary."
"I'm not, am I?" It was almost a pleasant temperature outside in the shade, Riku noted. Sora's head was silhouetted up against the trees and the sunlight passing through-- exactly the opposite of how it'd all been when Riku had first met him. Sora blinded by the sun, now turned away from it, sheltered and saying, "It's a big dumb tragedy, all the stupid shit that happens around here."
"I imagine."
"You're lucky. Living on an island must have been great. If you ever got too sick of things, you could just go to the ocean and look at it for however long you wanted because it was always right there and always open and wide and... stuff."
"That's true... there's no water here."
"There's no nothing here." Double negative. Riku thought to point it out. Then he thought again and just didn't.
"There must be something," Riku said, more for his benefit than Sora's. If he could make it through another month believing that there was something there worth staying for, perhaps that would be enough time bought in which he actually could find something worth staying for. A complex process, to be sure, but one that was bound to get the job of satisfaction and contentment over and done with. Riku wanted to be okay. Really. He did.
"There's a lake." Sora had spoken it as an afterthought. A bit of a reluctant afterthought. Riku picked up on it, yeah, but it wasn't enough to rule out the punch of the overall statement-- a lake. There's fucking water here.
"Really?"
"I could show you, if you want. But I don't think you'll like it."
"Why wouldn't I?" A lake is really just a small kind of ocean... right? And as much as I fucking hated the ocean when I was there, if that place was my life on Earth as was, this place is my life in hell as is. I'd kill for ocean. Even just a piece of it. Riku was trying to sit up then, Sora sliding back, Sora looking away when he said it-- "Come on, I wanna see it."
"Okay." Simple as that.
Sora detached himself from Riku, rolling onto the flowers, the grass, the dirt and earth, and pulling himself to his feet. Ever the perfect gentleman, Sora mustered a grin as he reached down to help Riku up, but was promptly shoved to the side with a playful laugh and tackle. The two went on like that, joking and jibing for some way-- slamming into each other just to see who could knock who over first, who was stronger, who was weaker, and who had the boniest and most painful hips to send a boy sprawling.
Preoccupied as he was with his chipper kind of company, Riku was a bit surprised when Sora drew to a halt. They must have walked a mile, at least, from where they'd initially set off towards the fabled 'lake,' now tucked in amongst a throng of town-homes and private circles and dead-ends. There was a large gap between housing complexes, a grassy slope and bike trail leading down towards a park of sorts-- a loop of sorts. Around... the 'lake.'
"Here it is." And it-- the lake-- was the most disgusting thing Riku had ever laid eyes on. The thing was a murky brown-gray, dotted by an occasional blob of something that was most definitely not seaweed and clotted throughout by fogs of algae and pond scum. It stunk of bird shit and the generic sort of refuse that comes from old trash cans, from the yellow sludge that congeals in the bottom of the can over time.
Yes. It was, without a doubt, incredibly... indescribably... depressing. And Riku instantly found himself wishing he had never hoped for an ocean of any sort in the first place.
Staring out at what Sora claimed to be Light Infantry Lake, Riku could only blink stupidly and mutter a lame sort of "Oh." And Sora, picking up on the disappointment he had seen coming from figurative miles away, seemed to keep his mouth shut if only to keep from saying 'I told you so.'
"Sora?"
"I told you you wouldn't like it." One sneaker lifted and scuffed brutally against the black tar of the bike path-- cracked and moss-filled and falling apart. Sora's head was bent down, thumbs through his belt-loops, almost as though he was embarrassed just by having had the nerve to show Riku the lake and expect anything other than absolute horror. "Come on," he said after a long, drawn-out kind of moment. "Let's get outta here."
From shade to shade, Riku and Sora ambled along at a drag of a pace. Riku felt the need to say something, but didn't know what it was. Didn't know what he could say that wouldn't sound stupid or weak. So instead he said nothing at all. One thumb hooked through his pocket, the other hand hung freely at his side. And, side by side, the boys stood at the intersection, at the crosswalk, cars streaming past and heat pouring down. And while nothing felt perfectly right, neither could honestly say there was anything really... wrong with it, either.
It wasn't right, no, but they belonged there nonetheless-- in all the heat and sweat and drudge of it all. Sora got to thinking this and Riku got to thinking this. And for a split second, the two of them shared a thought. Whether they realized it or not, who knows. But they did and they smiled for it.
"Riku... You know, if you want..." Sora's open mouth curled at the corners, voice caught and trying again. "If you want, we..." Throat cleared, hands fisted, but his feet kept the same pace of one right after the other. "If you want to, we could go out sometime. Like, I don't know... on... a real date or something. Not to the lake. Out for dinner. At a nice restaurant..." Sora scrunched up his face into some kind of concentrated expression, thought on it a moment, and then nodded.
With a triumphant grin, he tilted his head over and up to face Riku. "Yeah," he said. "I wanna take you out to dinner at a nice Italian restaurant."
For a minute, Riku didn't know whether to be shocked or just pleased. But what the fuck am I kidding? I mean...
"...I'd like that."
"Really?"
"I'd only say it if it was true."
"...Yeah, you're right. You're a horrible liar anyway."
"Hey!"
"But it's tru-ue, Ri-ku."
"Maybe. But you're not allowed to say so."
"Oh?"
"It's just not allowed. Strictly prohibited."
"You're a fabulous liar Riku."
"Ew. 'Fabulous.'"
"Marvelous, spectacular liar!"
"More like it."
"Amazingly sexy liar."
"Keep going."
They came to Mayako's house as they drew near the end of the day, after a brief exchange of long-awaited cell phone numbers and promises of pasta and garlic bread. Sora stood out on the stoop, his hands shifting from his side pockets to the open air, and from there circling around Riku's waist and seeking out his pockets instead. Head pressed against Riku's chest and hands successfully in those back pockets, Sora smiled. "Sooo, this is the great Riku Wataya without the pills to pop and drugs to dull him down... And you said I wouldn't like him."
"Yeah, well, you don't really know me yet."
Sora just laughed, some sort of strange, barked, choked kind of sound. He leant up, brushed his lips against Riku's cheek, and shook his head before leading the taller boy back around the house. Behind Mayako's house and attached directly to the back of it was a screened, roofed porch that had been added on some years back. And it was the porch that Sora pointed to as they drew nearer.
"Let's go on the roof," Sora said. "We'll watch the sun set up there. It'll be cool."
Inside they went, up the stairs and to the second floor. By clambering out the bathroom window, they easily made it out onto the back roof, each staking their spot beside the other, legs bent and elbows resting on knees. They talked about everything and nothing in particular-- about the neighborhood, the sky, and the view from the rooftop. Sora was particularly chatty on that last subject, excited when he told Riku about some sort of lowly feeling people got from walking around on the ground all the time. How, by being up there on that roof, they were escaping it.
"Birds," he told Riku, "must be really, really happy people! They've got the sky-- and the ground, too, if they want it!"
Riku laughed, punched the boy playfully in the arm, but there was no stopping Sora. He was up, standing on the roof there, sure of his feet as he smirked at Riku's suddenly concerned expression. He held his arms out in a flyer's fashion, poised and ready to spring from the roof, to step into thin air.
"You know," he said. "I heard this one poem once. This Navajo poem. You know all about the Navajos, right?"
Riku lifted a shoulder in what was supposed to be some sort of shrug. "I know of them, if that's what you mean," he replied. How much was there to know about a bunch of old indians anyway?
"Well--" and Sora was up and walking, back slightly arched, elbows slightly bent as he spoke aloud, "--They had this poem of theirs. A chant, really. They put rhythm to their words. Shouted 'em, sang 'em, stomped around."
Sora was rising and falling on the balls of his feet, a smile spreading slow and easy like a sunrise-- "'Beauty is before me and beauty is behind me. Above me and below me hovers the beautiful.'" Sora was grinning then and he spun wildly to face Riku-- "'I am surrounded by it!'"-- rose onto his toes, held it strong in the twilit sky-- "'I am immersed in it!'"-- and tilted his head back slowly. He said: "'In my youth I am aware of it, and in my old age, I shall walk quietly the beautiful trail.'"
"...It's... different," Riku murmured. "From Kerouac's things."
"Kerouac is new and short and direct."
Falling back to Sora's sides, his arms seemed almost too long for his body, the shadows they cast too harsh, too dark against his summer skin. If he had ascended to some otherworld for some moment, it was obvious to Riku that he was back in full now-- real and awkwardly human on the face of the earth.
"Kerouac is all that," Sora explained-- careful, calculating. "But the indians are old and ancient and pure. They didn't talk about regret," he said, "because they knew nothing about it. No hookers, no cities, no drugs, no pollution. Anything and everything was minor and natural. They had honor."
While he had been speaking, he hadn't noticed as his voice tapered off into nothing more than a mutilated form of a whisper. When he sat down, the damp roof shingles dug at his skin through the fabric of his clothes and that almost unbearable lowliness was pressing down and in on him, even up on the roof as he was. Riku's arm sought out his shoulder, his warmth in the dark. And Riku felt the tremor as Sora blinked owlishly and spoke again.
"Riku?"
"Mm?"
"Have we all become honor-less?"
"Huh?"
"Honor-less. Do we just not think anymore? Or respect things or people-- anything? I mean, maybe we're all just stupid or something. Do you think so, Riku?"
What Riku wanted to do was to push him away. Not too far-- the boy would tumble right off the roof, for sure-- but far enough away so Riku could look him square in the eyes and tell him off about it. 'You should know better than to hit me with this deep stuff,' he would say. 'Go ask Kairi. She'd know. She'd tell you. She knows and tells you everything anyway.' But some part of Riku didn't want that. Some part of him wanted to shake Sora up, to dizzy him with some kind of brilliance, some kind of answer.
But...
"I'm not sure," Riku said. "Maybe. Maybe we all got new and stupid over time."
From down below in the backyard itself, the flicker of a lightning bug caught against the tree, shone bright up against it, and then faded away once more. In the wake of a long-gone summer shower, the neighborhood found itself in the quiet dusk, a pocket of a world for the two boys on the rooftop.
"I hope," Sora said, "that there's a peace of mind that comes with death."
"A natural death. Not a tragedy."
"Yeah."
"And that we'll 'walk quietly the beautiful trail' and all that jazz?"
"...Yeah." Sora smiled. "Something like that."
Riku didn't want to see the stars come out. He tried not to be thankful when Sora said he had to go.
x x x
Mayako was out. Her husband was in the basement.
Riku had the second floor to himself an an unbridled sort of rampant need to find that paper stork. He didn't know why, really. Maybe the bird had somehow possessed him and had been puppeteering his body all day just to lead him to that one defining moment-- that one moment in which he set his hand on the doorknob to his aunt and uncle's room, twisted, and pushed in. Regardless, that was how he came to be standing in the doorway, moving through the doorway then, and well into and past the room's threshold.
Quiet as he could, he sifted through the sheets and stray clothing, checked under pillows, books, magazines and lamps, candles, cups, coasters and clocks. Still no stork to be found.
Riku's eyes came to rest on the wardrobe. The one his uncle had been fumbling around in that morning, pulling out that polo shirt and avoiding Riku's gaze and screaming guilt. It wasn't that hard to find, really. The inner-detective within Riku was a bit disappointed. There, near the bottom of a neatly folded stack of polos and tees, a corner of paper could just be seen protruding from the fabric. And, pinched and pulled between Riku's fingers, the paper revealed itself to be the bird, the stork, in all its happy, maternal glory.
And it was then that Riku heard the squeak of the floorboard. Then that he turned around to face his uncle, dazed and confused within the doorway. Dazed and confused and riddled with guilt.
"It's mine! Why did you take it?" Riku slammed his palm again the vanity behind him and it hurt-- fuck, it hurt, but there was nothing he could do about it. Why am I so angry...? He gagged, choked, felt something pry around his throat and squeeze slowly, tightly, blocking, sealing... Was it his throat or was he having one of those weird cliche episodes where his heart was-- for some bizarre and anatomically incorrect reason-- in his throat?
He couldn't remember what it felt like to almost die, so in panic he looked down at his feet, at his black sneakers with there colorful faces and smiles.
"It's not yours, Riku..." he heard his uncle tell him. Quiet, soft, easygoing. Like the gesture of a smile. Fake. "I'm sorry. I don't know why Nora kept it."
"What my mother kept or didn't keep isn't any of your fucking business! It's not yours!"
"Riku, it's not yours either," his uncle repeated. His voice was as slow and calm as he could make it, sound lingering over each syllable while he tried all the while to push his point home. He took a step forward, further into the room. Riku scrambled backwards, hitting the wall as Mayako's husband told him, "It's not yours. It wasn't Nora's either."
"Why would it be in her things if it's not hers?" Riku replied hotly, lividly-- his palm resenting him for the slam, his back resenting him for the hit. The slam, the hit, and something felt wrong with his pulse. Something felt like it was pushing his veins through his skin and about to rip them open and rushing for all the world to take in, a true-blue and blood-red like never witnessed before. They'd rope all around his weird little body and everyone could say how pretty and colorful he was while he felt like he was either being bled to death or being inundated with it-- with blood and water, milk and honey.
"It's just a memory, Riku. Nothing more. That's what photo albums do. They keep memories." His uncle was there, he was reaching out for the bird and Riku was holding it tighter, threatening to crumpled it in his hands, wanting to kill it and crush it and know that his veins were still inside his skin and could still keep him alive and killing.
That was a brutal thought. I should get rid of it. Fuck.
"That memory wasn't hers to keep," he heard.
"It's mine. It was in her things. The album was hers. Now it's mine. This is mine, too."
"No it's not, Riku..."
"Yes it is, okay? And if you touch my stuff again, I'll--" explode "--just don't touch my stuff again. Stay out of my way. And don't talk to me."
"Riku, did you even read the back of the card? Do you even know whose that is?"
M. Mine. ...No. Not mine. May's.
"...Mayako doesn't have any children."
"No. She doesn't. Does she?"
"I don't understand."
"You're not supposed to. It's not yours to understand."
"No, this is mine."
"It's more mine than it is yours."
Riku stared at his uncle for a very long moment. He was trying to read the man's face, but was almost a little horrified to find that he couldn't understand what it was he saw there. It was grief, for sure, but what kind of grief-- Riku didn't know. The man's eyes betrayed a near-nothing, nothing but a reflection of one hand outstretched toward Riku, palm bent up and cupped, waiting.
"What happened?" The paper was gently nestled in the palm of Riku's uncle, curled inward as calloused fingers closed around it. All the while, Riku still spoke. "If I have to live here with her," he said, "I have a right to know."
"No. You just think you do. But you really don't."
"Please. Tell me."
"I... can't." There was a hand that fell on his shoulder-- the one not holding the paper bird. It stayed for maybe half a moment, then lifted and left with the passing of the shadow and the guilty, guilty relative. "Sorry, Riku."
"There are things you don't know, Riku. Things about this world, these people, this family, even, that you just don't know. That, perhaps, it's better if you never know."
How am I supposed to be a part of this fucking family if they won't even let me in?
"You're locking us out, Riku..."
Figuratively speaking, the world is, was, and always will be full of fools on opposite sides of the door, some pushing, some pulling, forever locked and blocked from the other, greater side.
Riku realized this then, standing alone in a room that wasn't his, in a room that didn't even have the feel of belonging to it. He wanted his mother's perfume to hover delicately in that air, he wanted his father shoes lined up against that wardrobe. He would have gladly sacrificed both aunt and uncle to have them back.
He pushed, the rest of the world pulled. But Riku was strong enough and stupid enough to not let go. To get nowhere.
x x x
"Hey Dad?"
"Yeah?"
"..."
"What is it, Riku?"
"I don't know. It's nothing."
"Getting too dark for you? Tired yet?"
"No. I... It's cool. You know. Being out here like this. I guess I just never looked at the stars all that much. It's nice. I mean, I don't understand them or know them or anything. Wish I did..."
"There's still time. Plenty of time, Riku. You can learn every single one-- every single constellation and you've got all the time in the world. There's no hurry."
x x x
"Riku, are you okay?"
"Yeah..."
"You look really pale... My god, Riku, you're--!"
x x x
"Riku, your phone's going off!"
"Huh?" How did Kairi get-- stupid question. Riku was flailing around the guest bed, eyes wide open but not quite registering much of anything as he hit the floor with a resounding thud, legs and feet still effectively twisted and tied within the sheets. Through a closed door and a morning hallway atmosphere, Riku could hear the cheerful chirp of his phone going off somewhere, Kairi's voice singing right out over it--
"Want me to answer it?" Probably Sora. Italian dinner. Sora and dinner. Sweet.
"Yea--" --wait-- "wh--" --who else has my-- " wh-- whoa, wait a minute!" Fuck. Roxas. Please don't be Roxas. Please don't be fucking--
"Hello! ...Huh? Oh, Riku will be right here in just one second!" And he was there in just one second, half clothed and staggering out the door and down the hall-- tangled hair a veritable tumor growing on the side of his head, eyes glaring, arms flailing.
"KAIRI!" he hissed.
"What, what?"
"Hang up the phone!"
"But he wants to talk to you."
"I told you to hang it up. Please."
Frowning at Riku, Kairi promptly stuck one hand on one defined little hip, tilting the phone back towards her mouth. "...May I ask who's calling? ...Roxas?"
"I don't want to talk to him," Riku pleaded. Distractedly, his hands came up to work at the ridiculous mass of hair on his head, but he only really succeeded in pulling and snapping and hurting all the more. Fuck Roxas. Fuck Roxas.
"Why not?" Kairi asked.
"Would you just hang up the damn phone?" Riku snapped.
"Honestly, Riku!" Before he was quite aware of what had happened, Riku was broad-sided by his cell phone at large. Well. Not broad-sided, necessarily. Smacked upside the head. In the front. A dead-on hit with the center of his forehead that left his eyes out of focus and his head in some sort of shambled mess on the floor.
"Oww." But sure enough, Kairi's plan had some sense of brilliance to it. Riku was now holding the offensive phone and the voice was blaring right on though, a determined tenor and a pleasant ring to it--
"Riku, please talk to me for just one goddamn minute already, would--?"
Click. Beeeeep.
"..."
"Riku Wataya. That. Was really, really rude." Kairi wasn't angry. Riku didn't want to see Kairi angry. But she was disappointed. No denying that. And really, he didn't want to see her disappointed either. Suddenly he wanted her out. He wanted her to just go away for good and not come back. He was sick of feeling evil, somehow, and her looking at him like that... He always felt evil. Always felt he was in the wrong.
"I don't really give a fuck about being rude. Why did you answer the phone?"
"Because it was ringing and I thought you told me to. Why did you treat that poor boy like shit?"
"I just didn't want to talk to him." A flash of Roxas behind the eyes and-- yes, still there, still as Roxas as ever. Painfully indifferent when Riku needed him to care and painfully alive when Riku wished he would just die, already. "He's from back home. I don't have anything to do with him anymore."
"Doesn't sound like it to me."
"Would you just drop it already?" Determined not to let Kairi and Roxas combine forces and destroy his promising day of Sora goodness, Riku made for the stairs and hoped he could shove Kairi out the door once they reached bottom. She tagged along, insistent and concerned, cloying and sweet. Why am I hating her right now? Why the fuck am I hating her? There was no reason for it, really. She was just...
They reached the ground floor. Riku drew them to a halt in front of the door. God, he wanted to kick her out. But she just kept talking. She wouldn't stop talking. Wouldn't stop worrying, wouldn't stop wringing her hands.
Her hands.
"Riku... I'm not trying to pry into your past. I'm sorry. But..." Riku's eyes dropped to Kairi's hands as she spoke. He watched them clench slightly. He took in the sight of the polka-dotted wristband hanging limply on her skinny arm above her skinny hand. He couldn't tell if the sight was any better than her disappointed eyes. "You know," she said quietly. "I'm just trying to look out for Sora more than anything else. I don't want him going out with boys who will just hang up on him one day and not speak to him again."
"Roxas and I were never going out, alright?
"He sounded really upset to me, Riku." The hand became a fist in full and Riku closed his eyes to block out the sight. He knew Kairi was getting angry with him. Getting frustrated with him. He couldn't blame her. He was frustrating himself, too, dammit.
"I think maybe he misses you a lot and just wants to talk. Right?"
"He doesn't miss me. Trust me."
"Well I don't think he was just using you for sex like you think."
Completely thrown for a loop by that one, Riku's eyes snapped open wide, registering Kairi for what felt like the first time that day. She wasn't a parasite, she wasn't a nasty sort of scar showing up to mar his already fucked up life. She was a smart girl with an intuition and a knack for assumption. A smart girl currently sporting a sad little smile and a broken sort of gaze.
"Oh, Riku," she said. "I might not understand most things about you, but you read like an open book on this one."
"Look, it wasn't like that, okay?"
She wasn't pleading, wasn't reasoning anymore. She was frustrated. Angry. Protective.
"Oh, it wasn't, was it? Well then, why don't you tell me what it was like, Riku? Huh? Why don't you tell me just what exactly you thought he was to you. Because it seems to me that, whatever you though was between you two-- or whatever you thought wasn't between you two-- I don't think you both thought the same thing. Or the same not-thing. Don't you understand? I mean... you get why I'm worried, right?"
She's just trying to protect Sora. She's just trying to make sure her little fucking baby doesn't get hurt. Just because she couldn't screw him--
"Look, Kairi. You're the one who introduced me to Sora. You're the one who's been trying to hook us up, okay? Not. Me. You."
"Riku, Sora isn't like me! Please-- please don't make the mistake of thinking we're the same person. With the same ideals... We're... we're not."
"You're right. Sora's not a fucking slut like you."
Oh.
Kairi's mouth hung open for a moment. And then it was as though, in her lapse of thought entirely, Riku picked up her intuition, held it between his own two hands, and looked straight on through to Kairi-- the world Kairi knew. One of friends and semi-casual sex, one of differing ideals and the repercussions they hauled alongside them. She'd heard the words before-- of that, Riku was sure. --fucking slut like you.
"...Riku..."
But he couldn't stop. He wanted to-- had to stop. Knew he had to stop. But he was so angry and so full of this sudden resentment towards the one girl who had let him have so much and was threatening to take it aw--
x x x
"Riku, I told you to clean your room."
"Ma... mmyyy...!"
"No, now I told you a million times! I won't give them back until you do it, understand?"
"Ma-myyy!"
"You come find me when you're finished and I'll give your toys b--!"
x x x
--ay, she was taking it away and it was cold and ruthless and spiteful. And Riku wanted to hate her. He wanted to hit her and holler and kick and scream--
He wanted to make her pay for how much she'd hurt him.
"Yeah. You know, you are a slut. Your parents were right to jump to conclusions-- that day they walked in on you in front of me like that. They've probably walked in on it countless times. You screwing around with some fucked-up guy. You using them-- manipulating the hell out of them... You're pathetic. You couldn't get with Sora so you just settle for screwing anyone you can, right? Well what about me? You want to fuck me, don't you, Kairi? Don't you?"
"Riku! St-stop it, okay? Stop!"
He'd won. She was crying. She wouldn't stop crying.
"O-Okay, so maybe you're right. Maybe I am a slut. Maybe I'm j-just a st-stupid slut who doesn't know anything and can't help a-anybody. I'm sorry."
He'd won, but he wouldn't stop. He wanted to kill something inside her so she was dead and gone and would pay for how much she'd hurt him.
"You do want to fuck me. Don't you."
Would pay for how much her dying had hurt him.
x x x
"Mommy...!"
"Not until you're finished, understand?"
"Maaah-myyy!"
x x x
Fuck them. Fuck both of them.
x x x
"G-Goodnight, Riku Wataya."
He heard the door open, heard it close. Felt the brief warmth of summer air kissing his wrist. He realized he'd won then, but then he didn't understand what winning was. It wasn't something that made sense. But...
It was... odd, what happened then. One minute Riku was there, standing and watching the door close and hating his-- hating Kairi so much. The next he was falling-- his arm slamming against the hall table and cracking-- Fuck, I'll bet I broke it-- his body colliding with the floor, a heavy thud and spots and dark all swimming across his vision. He couldn't quite think of what to say. He couldn't quite figure out if he should say much of anything at all.
"Sora..."
Riku felt a searing pain tear up his chest, separate from the ache already pulsing at his arm, at his head. Something was being driven into the center of him and piercing the core and destroying that thing-- that something that was alive. He was dimly aware that it had happened before and it was happening again. And he felt like--
Damn, if I'm going to die now, I probably shouldn't have said all those godawful things to Kairi.
From his curled position lying sideways on the floor, Riku had a good glimpse of his sneakers. They looked a little worse for wear, but then again, that was what happened to sneakers. You walked all over town with them and they kept your feet nice and protected and you eventually threw them away. Worn-through holes or growth or simple change in fashion-- that was the death of all shoes.
But why the fuck am I thinking about that? When--
"Mom..."
--a little... pathetic. That I can't-- away from it. That -- on the floor, twitching like a dying bug.
"Ah... any... body?"
...Maybe I am just a dying bug. God, what a thought. What a fucking thou--gh--t--
x x x
"Hey Dad?"
"Ye--?"
"..."
"Wha-- it, Riku?"
"I -- know. It-- nothing."
"--tting too dark for you? Tired y--?"
x x x
I am tired... I'm really... fucking... tired... But I don't want to die. I don't want to die... I'm not like that.
x x x
It was Kairi who found Riku two minutes later. She opened the front door, face still red and swollen with tears and hurt, and felt the wood connect with something soft but solid on the other side. Riku's arm slipped from his chest, where it had been cradled so carefully, and hit the floor with a nearly inaudible thunk.
But it was a noise that rung and echoed and screamed throughout Kairi's ears and took up residence within the in-between, in the hollows of her memory. The thunk would stay, long after she had run for the phone and cried not in hurt, but terror-- and terror alone.
(x) (x) (x)
As always, feedback is appreciated. I'll try and update Suburbia at least once more this month, but I can't make any promises. Thanks for reading!
Oh, and just as a note, Sora's 'angel mine' phrase is taken from Jack Kerouac's poem of the same name, just as the Navajo poem is, well, a Navajo poem. More on that later.