A/N: Just so you know, the alarm described in fic exists; it's called an "alarm clocky". I do not own, and I don't care to. It seemed like an Ike thing to have though. Also, the song implied in the fic is a real one as well; "Do You Realize?" by the Flaming Lips on the Charmed soundtrack (whoever remembers Charmed gets a cookie). The novel Kyle wrote that is mentioned in the fic is actually not a real novel. The idea is based on an Indie movie I saw as a kid (my cousin made me watch it with her because no one else would, and I can't recall the name of it at all). However, the style of writing and the cool glasses are based on my bestie (whom often identifies with Kyle). And the cute pillow Shadow gave Ike, is also, not a real pillow… but I wouldn't be surprised if there is one like it in existence.
This story went wayward on me!
Warning: Awesome-O says that this is GAY. Full of GAY. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I… I gots nothing. Really. Nothing. Sorry.
Summary: Challenge fic. 25 Random Words. The rules? Just use the word in a scene about the pairing. Chapter 19: Rotation.
Remember:
"Blah" – Speech
Blah –Thoughts/Emphasis
Blah – Self Explanatory
19. Rotation
"I'm thinking of becoming a physics major…" Ike declared at the dinner table. There was a clatter of plates and forks and knives. His father looks up, eyes surprised but pleased, and his mother flippantly smiled, but his older brother's head tilted up, slowly, like he was calculating his next few words.
"Why?" he asked, a pointer finger rising up to push the bridge of curly black wire glasses to his face. Ike had two thoughts simultaneously at the action; one was his normal reaction when he noticed Kyle's new glasses (Damn, they're so gothic! Shadow would love them!), and the second was a tinge of disappointment (Really? "Why?" That's what the writer of the family came up with?).
"Why?" he repeated in an effort to not retort with Well, why not?
"I dunno," Kyle responded, stabbing at lettuce with his fork almost as if bored, "You never mentioned particularly liking physics."
"You never mentioned liking the written word," Ike shot back. It sounded nastier than he meant it too. Kyle didn't seem perturbed by it, but his father sent him a harsh look.
"Ike, you're brother's just worried!" he commented. The adopted boy frowned, ducking his head to stare at his plate.
"No he's not…" he mumbled. His mother scoffed, rising from her seat and clearing the chinaware from her family.
"Now, now, Ike. There's no need to be upset, your brother is happy for you!" she dismissed.
Kyle was quick to grab his half-finished plate back, "I never said that."
"Indeed," Ike commented, looking up to see the redhead continue eating at his usual snail-pace, "In fact, I could argue he implied otherwise."
"No," Kyle said, shaking his head reverently, "You could not argue you that."
"Boys," his dad said tiredly, "No one is implying anything."
"Yeah, Ike, no one is implying anything," his older brother smiled widely as he agreed with their father.
Frowning, Ike crossed his arms, childishly. "No? Then what are you saying, Kyle?"
"For the record," Kyle stated, diplomatically gazing over the edge of his glasses (Seriously, Shadow would be envious), "I'm saying that you've never told me your interest in physics."
"You never asked!" Ike exclaimed, triumphant and loud. He backed away from the table and marched to his room, leaving confused parents and one groaning brother in his wake.
It was several hours later, after the parents left to go catch a drive-in movie for some impromptu date, that there came a knock on Ike's door. The black haired teen debated letting Kyle in or making him wait outside for a response.
Unfortunately for him, Kyle barged in anyways, calling out in the shadowy recesses of Ike's room, "Hey."
Again, Ike was slightly upset that his scholarship endowed, award winning, and recently famously published brother could only come up with quaint, over-used phrases like "Hey" as a greeting. But what was he expecting, really? Kyle had been hailed as brilliant for his eloquent use of simplistic, but heartfelt realism. Ike had the clippings taped in a secret scrapbook as proof.
"Whaaaaaaaat?" he whined in response, burying himself into a purple, plush pillow. It was shaped like a bat. Technically a gag present from Shadow a year ago for his birthday. He often hugged it when he felt lonely, so, gag on Shadow more than Ike.
"I'm sorry," the redhead said, and Ike peeked up, noting the glasses nowhere on Kyle's face. Then again, it was still dim in the room. He flicked on his lamp, squinting at the assault of super-powered fluorescent light immediately filling the room. It was neat and tidy, (a desk and a bookself alphabetically organized and stalked with geeky interest) but the walls were absolutely covered in meaningless posters from Goth bands to science postulates and a couple of movie and book advertisements.
"Why are you sorry?" he questioned, squinting as he swung his legs off the bed. Kyle sat down next to him, and those gothic glasses were pushed up into the fiery mess of curls framing the delicate face of his older brother.
"I've been so busy lately…" Kyle said, shoulders dropping sadly, "We haven't gotten to talk, just the two us."
"Sure we have…" Ike mumbled, glancing off to the side. There was glaring letters from his roaming alarm clock clearly displaying the time as 12:13 AM.
"Well, yeah, but its been all about book deals and coffee and all that annoying bureaucratic bullshit," he admitted. He too looked at the alarm clock chugging about the floor thanks to motorized rubber wheels. "I don't know why you have that damn thing. It rolled into my room the other day… I almost threw it out the window."
"Well, then you'd have to buy me a new one with your royalty check," Ike teased, smiling mischievously (well, more adorable than mischievous, but he hoped).
"Please," Kyle said, rolling his eyes, "I'd rather buy you a wake-up call every morning."
"Aw, but I love my alarm clock!" Ike bounced on his bed, and picked up the odd contraption. "Shadow and I named it, too. He calls it Poe Edgar."
Kyle's brows scrunched up confused. "How does that make sense?"
Ike opened his mouth, but found he didn't really have an answer. So he closed his maw, and just shrugged. The redhead beside him gave a soft smile as Ike hugged the moving alarm clock to his chest. He put an arm around his young brother and laid his head on the black one that automatically rested on his shoulder.
"Why are interested in physics, Ike?" Kyle inquired softly. Ike sighed.
"I heard this song…" he answered cryptically.
"What song?" he asked.
"Um…" the Canadian hesitated, "I don't think you'd really know it."
"Well, explain it to me," Kyle tried. A blush was forming across pale cheeks.
"It's really stupid," Ike suddenly popped up from his spot on the bed, breaking the brotherly moment. He placed his alarm clock on the floor, where it proceeded to roll right under bed, kicking up dust bunnies, almost like it was a hound dog.
Kyle tilted his head, and again, that earlier, calculating look came back to his eyes. "I see… Ike, did I ever tell you why I wanted to write?"
"It makes money?" came the fast snip before he could stop it. Kyle didn't respond to that, just waited patiently, with sparkly Kelly-green eyes directed at Ike. It made him slightly sad. His eyes were a splotchy mix of brown and moss green. Nothing pretty like Kyle's. Then again, Ike figured Kyle could have been a male model if he so wished. That's why it was so shocking to Ike when the would-be-model announced a secret novel he'd been working on since his early high school days. He'd finally found a publisher willing to take it at the ripe age of nineteen. Even though Ike knew full well he was adopted, Kyle had always been his brother, and they had always talked about all kinds of things.
To have a huge disconnect like that… it had somehow managed to wound Ike.
"You told everybody you were compelled—a natural inclination," he said, leaving the unspoken words, a passion you never told me about floating in the cool air between them.
Sadly, Kyle plucked the glasses off his head and twirled them nervously in his fingers. They were smeared with blue ink and covered in badges from numerous paper cuts (Ike would frequently hear the profanities echo from his brother's room late at night when the revision bug hit). For some reason, computers never worked well with Kyle's process, probably because he spent most of his time using them for Internet research and then left up pages in different windows, and just wrote out his ideas and passages onto loose-leaf paper.
Ike admired that sort of old-fashioned hard work.
"Well…" Kyle sighed, "It's not true."
"What do you mean?" the younger brother asked, sitting back on the edge of the bed.
"I mean, although I do like writing, I wasn't compelled so much as I was… frustrated," he explained. Ike grabbed his bat-pillow and hugged it close, listening to his brother in bemusement. "You see, I started to get fed up with a lot of things in my life. I wrote to escape the misery."
"You didn't tell me you were miserable!" Ike butt in worried. Kyle smiled and patted the fluffy ink colored head.
"I didn't tell anyone… I was too scared to really try and understand it…" he said. "You see; the story I wrote was a long metaphor of a lot of deep seeded desires and insecurities."
"But why? You're amazing!" Ike proclaimed, hugging his brother. Kyle hugged back.
"Don't worry, it was mostly fantasies that I wrote…" he stage whispered. Ike felt himself laugh, quietly, squeezing his brother's midsection. "Do you remember my first novel?"
"Uh, yeah. How could I forget?! It was excellent!" Ike recalled. Kyle's book was a clever stringing together of seven couples brought, wrought, and either cemented or broken by their chance interactions. It was really a masterpiece.
"Well, I interwove those stories based on people I actually know…" he confessed. Ike's eyebrows shot up.
"Oh my god?! Really?! Who?!" Ike demanded, pulling back. "So! What happened to the one blonde who was addicted to—"
"Most of the situations are imaginary," Kyle chuckled, hedging the questions. "And her story, uh, I don't really know. That blonde and I weren't very good friends, so I only wrote things I thought were possible. That's why the ending is loosely tied."
"Then, why are you telling me this?" the Canadian asked. Kyle looked down, nodding to himself.
"I'm in the story…" he confessed.
"Oh…" Ike said. His eyes widened, recognition dawning on his face. "Oh." Without thinking he pointed at his older brother. "You were Kay!"
"Kind of obvious, huh?" Kyle deadpanned with an emotionless smirk. "When I wrote those chapters in high school, I labeled myself with a simple 'K'. When editing it for publishers, I just made it the actual name of the character."
"Oh my God, Kyle," Ike said with tears in his eyes. "That's the character everyone cried for! Even Shadow! Sha-dow!" He was emphasizing the sadness of that character, tossing the purple pillow up into Kyle's face.
The character in Kyle's novel was one who fell in love with his male best friend, despite no prior attraction to men before. The character, either led astray by the best friend, or falling into hopeful delusions, was eventually placed into an asylum by his younger sister when he could no longer tell reality from fantasies. Kay was the central character who revealed with spider web-work of the story. Ike had already read several college thesis's on whether the character was the true "main character" of the story or the "omniscient narrator". Ike now realized both ideas were true in a sense.
"I fell in love with Stan," Kyle said, "Or I had always been in love with him."
"Oh…!" Ike sniffled, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.
"It's okay," the redhead said, smiling.
Ike shook his head, "Why are you telling me now?"
"I was going to tell you eventually," Kyle shrugged in reply.
"No, I mean… What does all this have to do with a physics major?"
"Oh, see…" Kyle started, "It's background history I never published in my story… but Ida became a physics major."
"Kay's sister in the novel?" Ike questioned, cocking his head to the side. He paused then and blushed profusely. "You turned me into a girl in your novel?!"
"Well, you are kinda girly…" Kyle said, scratching his cheek, unaffected.
"Says the guy who looks like a Disney Princess!"
Kyle just shrugged, "Anyway, I was careful when placing all my fantasies and musings in an order that was balanced. One set of people never outweighed another… I left out some things about Ida's future, simply because of the time span I covered."
"Yeah, it's a year of turmoil. I know that," Ike hurried along.
"Well, the reason she chose it was because…" Kyle hissed in thought, putting up his hands in defense, "She, too, began to loose her mind. She was convinced aliens were abducting her."
Ike blinked stupidly. "… what?"
"I know… I left it out of the story because it really is ridiculous," he added.
"Well, I can assure you, no aliens were involved in this decision… hopefully," he taunted. Kyle rolled his eyes.
"Then why do you want to focus on physics? I thought you were gonna be a lawyer like dad?"
"No… I…" it was Ike's turn to sigh. "I heard Shadow humming this song about the rotation of the Earth."
"What song is this?" Kyle asked, smiling good-natured.
"It was on a soundtrack to a show, something about magic and demons, you know…" Ike sighed. "I'd never heard it before. It wasn't very dark… but, it was on an episode he was watching, and he said it reminded him of me. He wouldn't let me listen to it fully. I just got snippets of things he didn't realize he'd sang loud enough for me to hear."
"Did something get you?"
"Yeah, it was one line…" Ike said, singing softly, "Realize the sun doesn't go down, it's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round…"
"Hmm, pretty. I think I know the song," Kyle said aloud. Ike looked up to him, but there was a secret grin on his irritatingly femme face. He realized that Kyle wasn't going to give him the song he sought. "So, you're trying to discover what Shadow sees in you, through dedicating your life to physics?"
"Well, when you put it like that…!" the teen sarcastically said. Kyle's head reared back and he laughed loudly, joyously. "Really, Kyle? Don't be an ass."
"Read my book, again, Ida," Kyle tormented him with a shit-eating-grin, and hopped off the bed. It was well past one in the morning now. "You'll figure out what's so funny…!"
"Oh! Shut up with your crazy-unrequited love!" Ike shouted, bringing the plush bat pillow to his face to muffle his groans. The redhead was already gone, however, into his room and didn't hear the insult. Or if he did, he ignored it, knowing his younger brother was just as frustrated as he was.
Maybe.
Ike brought the bat-shaped pillow away from his face and stared at his cobwebby ceiling, brows crinkling as he struggled to remember the character of Ida in Kyle's break-out novel. He felt his face flush when he vividly brought back the images of Ida's quite possibly implied boyfriend—the suicidal goth boy who was, conveniently, Kay's roommate, Shade. That could only be one person Kyle and Ike both knew…
Slapping his hands over his face, he hollered out, embarrassed beyond belief.
"Oh my god! Shade and Ida had a sex scene!"
"That's what I was implying at dinner, by the way!"
Ike hated Kyle's transparent guts as much as he hated visitors…—END?—