And the Last One Nearly Killed Me.
A/N: (FYI, the title isn't referring to the number of chapters left.)
First things first. I was on a train the other day, and a gay couple got on at one of the stops - confirmed gay, though, not just a couple of flamboyant guys; there was kissing. I'm not saying that's unusual or weird for me to see, but what I am saying is that one of them looked exactly like Zack with shorter hair OH SNAP
I went there.
Seriously, I was almost bug-eyed.
Second things second.
Do you know why these chapters take so long? Because I write them on the FF server alone, in the documents manager. Do you know what that means? It means that if I accidentally click "X" instead of "minimize" in the corner, unsaved work is lost. It means that if my internet decides to flip out and just commit ritual sepuku, my work is lost. It meanst that if fanfiction randomly decides to log me out instead of letting me save 1500 words of writing when I hit the little green "save" button and then logging me out I lose a day's worth of writing. I then become too angry to think straight and have to take a break before coming back to rewrite it all.
I know it's irrational. I know I should use one of the three word processors on this computer. Blame my hair.
(EDIT (minor spoiler, I guess): yayme2012 rightly pointed out that Kairi was not nearly drunk enough to have almost died. I've hopefully fixed that, and if not, advice is appreciated, laleela. But if you've already read the chapter - does it send you updates if I replace one? I dunno, anyways - you don't have to again because it seriously has no affect on the plot at all.
Uh...okay, by "fixed that" I um, don't mean it's a good thing that - WHATEVER. I'ma go nurse my headache, you bunny-nosed tail-munchers.)
So yeah try and guess what my favorite book is.
" 'Whomever I touch, I send back to the earth from whence he came,' the snake spoke again. 'But you are innocent and true, and you come from a star...' "
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince, p. 72
Riku Tepes couldn't fall asleep, and it was killing him. He'd tried everything possible. He always seemed to fall asleep after Sora, which didn't make any sense. Sora should have been the one kept up all night worrying about...things and stuff and people. But it was Riku Tepes who couldn't fall asleep.
On the bed above him, Sora snorted and kicked in his dream, muttering incoherently. "V-" he grumbled. "Valm- vamlumtime..." he smacked his lips together with a "mnam, mnam," sound.
Riku's eyes stung, and the bags underneath them felt heavy. Staring up at the ceiling, he felt like his loose thin skin was sagging down into the socket of his eyeball. It wasn't that he wasn't tired. But there was a window. If he didn't fall asleep within oh, say, half an hour of turning off the lights, his brain didn't go off. He kept thinking about things. It was awful. He couldn't turn off his thinking, which was kind of funny, he thought, since so many people he knew never even turned it on. Maybe that was why they always got good rest.
He knew he was being kind of a prick when he thought things like that, but he didn't really care. Nobody was monitoring his thoughts. Screw the...just screw the whole world.
Okay, he was definitely getting sleepy.
"N-no-um," Sora was mumbling, "I- I saved ev'rybody, I - I saved ev'ryone 'cept fur - fur - mnam," he groaned and flopped over on the bed, making little rustling noises in the blankets. "No-o! Y- you can't!"
That about killed Riku.
Even in his dreams Sora Goodwin only thought about saving other people. Rescuing the whole goddamn world.
That just about goddamn killed Riku Tepes.
He wanted to crawl into the bed and slap him, or maybe just stay there, sitting on Sora until he woke up, like a really big cat. That would be weird, but he was tired. He didn't think much of it.
Of course he woke up the next morning with morning wood, which was a fucking hassle considering it was a sleepover and he didn't even remember dreaming or having lewd thoughts or anything. It went away fast but it was fucking embarrassing. He didn't know why.
Sunday evening brought one of the most ridiculous mass PTO emails in the history of West Destiny Island High School, which was pretty hard to do.
Dear Parents and Students of WDIHS:
We understand that many students and their parents have been hearing rumors about a student at the school who recently underwent surgery. The Parent Teacher Organization would like to formally clear up any confusion that students and parents may have about this inciden. The student had a delicate operation performed on his hand and wrist last weekend, and he along with his parents/guardian have expressed a wish to be discreet about the matter. We ask that the student body be respectful of their wishes, as it is a private matter.
Thank You,
West Destiny Island High School Paretn-Teacher Organization
Apparently the somebody West Destiny Island High School Parent-Teacher Organization was getting capitalization-happy with the emails. And was not able to spell very well.
It wasn't very professional, telling people not to talk about it because the "parents and/or guardian" asked it to be treated with discretion. It was probably one of the most ridiculously uncalled for things he'd seen lately. It was just, it was fucking ridiculous.
Riku fell asleep kind of laughing to himself.
Monday morning was just like any other, which was kind of a dumb thing to say. Mornings weren't "just like any other." Mornings just were, and they had patterns. Riku hoped to Hell his mornings didn't repeat themselves like he was stuck in purgatory. He'd had a dream where he'd been stuck in purgatory. He just sat in a white room with shelves, and the shelves only had white food on them like powdered sugar and onions and clear bottles of oil. It was horrible.
But sometimes he did feel stuck on a loop. Because mornings did kind of look alike. His mouth always tasted like those disgusting toaster-oven blueberry waffles he ate every morning, which tasted like piss, but it was either that or oatmeal. Of course he brushed his teeth, but half the time he didn't bother to use toothpaste, so his teeth were clean but his mouth still tasted like piss smelled. Ugh-ugh-ugh.
Looking out the window of the bus, he saw its big rectangular shadow on the ground, whizzing by on the road with them. It was like a tiny thin blanket, fitting to the shape of the sidewalk curb and the fences it touched. He could see the little outlines of the windows in the bus' shadow, and even a blurry dark sort of lump that was his head.
He hated Mondays.
--
He yawned, legs crossed and sitting on top of the wall in front of the school. Riku scrolled through his music absentmindedly. All of his songs sucked today.
"Hey," Sora said, levering himself onto the wall with his hands and leaning over Riku's shoulder to see what he was doing. "What's up?" he asked, a little too close to Riku's face.
"Hn," Riku said, shrugging and turning his mp3 player off. He wound his headphones around it and stuck it in a sweatshirt pocket. "Are you...uh, doing better?" he asked because it seemed like the thing he had to say. His mouth felt weird, forming those words, like they were shaped wrong. He knew deep down inside that he didn't really care.
"Huh?" Sora asked, tilting his head to the side. He'd seemed fine on Saturday, when he apparently woke up a good hour before he woke Riku up. By placing the cat square on his stomach, ironically enough. He'd laughed and torn the covers off of Riku's body, even though it was Saturday, and just put a ten-pound cat on his body. "Riku Riku Riku wake up Riku it's Saturday! Let's go get slushies for breakfast!"
That Sora kid, Riku thought, was pretty damn okay.
"Well, I mean," Riku said awkwardly. "Are you like...okay to be in school now?" He bit his lip and looked up at Sora. Then he realized that was fucking girly and stopped.
"What? You mean the rumors?" Sora shrugged. "I know, I was thinking about that on Saturday after you left." He grunted a little. "I know this might sound stupid or...I don't know, bipolaire, whatever that is in English, but...I don't really mind, you know?"
Riku frowned. That did not sound right at all. As far as he knew Sora, which was farther than he had two weeks ago but was still not very far at all, he hated it when other people said mean things about him. He hated it when it was his fault other people were uncomfortable around him. He hated causing trouble.
Sora wasn't on meds or anything, right? Maybe after the surgery they'd given him happy pills, just in case, or something, and now he was acting weird. Was that how happy pills worked? Hell if Riku knew.
"You don't...mind...?"
Sora shook his head. "I mean, I'm kind of...I don't like how people are getting kind of, you know, needlessly upset, but it's...petty, I guess? To worry about myself. I mean, I know I didn't try to kill myself, so what does it...matter? To me, anyways. I just wish people wouldn't feel so...weird, about it."
Riku nodded very slowly, fingering one of the straps of his backpack. He licked his lips. It was too hot outside. It was supposedly raining on the other side of the island. Stupid rain shadow. It was always only ever raining on one half of the island.
"Yeah, I guess," he said to Sora, even though he didn't really think so. He always seemed to be doing that lately, saying things he didn't really mean and not saying the things he wanted to. Maybe it was because he finally had somebody to say and not-say them to, which was kind of a depressing thought. For example, he thought Sora's logic was crap. Sora spent such a long time thinking and re-thinking about the things he knew that it hadn't occurred to him to think about himself. It was like he was unhappy and he didn't even know it. It was always "don't make other people feel uncomfortable" and "don't let everyone else get affected," and sure, it seemed like the noble thing but ultimately it was just fucking up his stupid life.
"I mean," he said, even though it had been a good thirty seconds of silence and assumed that the conversation was dead, "People probably forgot already."
Sora looked at him very seriously for a second. Riku would have thought he was being sarcastic if it wasn't for the fact that he knew Sora basically couldn't do sarcasm. He leaned in far, almost touching Riku's nose with his, his brow furrowed. He started to smile. "You think so?" he said, entirely too close.
Riku found himself thinking, again, about what would happen if he kissed Sora. Not that he wanted to, really, but he wondered what would happen was all. It was the same way he thought about getting stabbed with exacto knives. Only now it wasn't what if he slipped, or dropped it, or forgot where it was - it was different. It was what if he leaned in that last inch, or pulled Sora, or passed it off as a joke and he kept thinking about how he'd never kissed anybody before. He wondered what it felt like. It wasn't about what if it slipped, it was about what if Sora didn't mind.
Some part of his brain, locked away tight in his sick little imagination, was a box that screamed I am all the important things! and told him to lean forward.
The thing about Riku Tepes was that if he was going to do anything new, he needed a lot of outside encouragement first.
"Get offa me," he said roughly, shoving Sora to the side and hopping off the wall. He headed for the mouth-door of the school. He had to get to...somewhere. He knew it sounded stupid to say it, that it was one of those things that a person couldn't really deny because denying it meant you were lying and admitting it meant you were telling the truth and you couldn't win. But he wasn't flustered. He was weirded out. He was curious, about the whole gay thing. He wondered if Sora thought about kissing him, like really honestly kissing him because he was Riku and not because he was curious what it felt like to push two pairs of lips together.
He knew it was silly to think that, just because they were both boys and Sora was maybe-gay.
Maybe he was just egocentric and he wanted to believe someone would see that in him. What a horribly teenage thing to think, but there it was. Riku admitted he thought wrong things, sometimes. But at least he knew when he...shit.
" 'To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox, like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world...' "
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince, p. 80
Riku and Sora sat together at lunch, as per usual, and there were no weird glances and no whispering.
It was weird.
It didn't feel right, to Riku.
There was no big resolution, and Sora didn't stand up on a chair in the cafeteria and shout that he didn't try to commit suicide, he burned his hand, and he didn't then deteriorate into a big speech about life and how brave he was and how he wished they would only accept him for who he was or some shit.
It had begun very, very quickly, in the space of two hours like the start of a friendship bracelet. All of the strings taped to a clipboard and placed on the ground with an even starting point. But teenagers had short attention spans, and had abandoned it, leaving strings unraveled and tapering off to vague and undefined points. It did not stop as quickly as it started. People were such spazzes.
It had seemed like such a big deal on Friday.
Sora put his arm on the table between them, wiggling a little. He looked at his hand with its fingers stretched out, like it wanted to be a starfish.
"I know this sounds stupid," he said after a while. Long enough that Riku had started tallying homework assignments in his head. "But I think that every morning I wake up, it's kind of awesome."
"What?" Riku said sarcastically, "Like you're glad you didn't die or something?"
Of course Riku knew that wasn't what Sora meant. He didn't know what Sora meant, but he didn't mean that, and Riku was afraid that this was going to be another "living is my revenge" bullshit rant.
"No," Sora said. See? said Riku's brain. "I mean...okay, yeah, it sounds dumb. But it's just kind of awesome that...I don't know. Things didn't fall apart at night. That all the, the atoms rushing around and hitting each other and stuff, they've all stayed in basically the same places instead of just randomly falling apart. I mean, nothing changes, not really, even though the universe is s'pposed to be this really random place. So...I - I don't know."
Riku shook his head a little and smiled to himself with his arms crossed and his elbows on the table, shaking a sheet of white hair out of his face. "Yeah," he said after a while. "No, I get that. People complain about how...everything...changes, and..." he felt incredibly stupid saying it. He sounded like Sora, and he always told himself that Sora sounded fucking stupid, guessing at all of the things nobody ever teaches you. Pulling shit out of your ass as you said it, instead of thinking about it. He kind of hated himself for it.
It was funny. Up until now, Riku hated everybody but himself.
"And even though they say that, it's kind of strange how little it does...change," he muttered, because he felt like he had to finish the sentence.
Sora was quiet for a little while, and Riku briefly entertained bitter thoughts like Oh, now when I'm saying supposedly deep crap you're gonna get pissed? Little hypocritical, huh, Sora? Which was of course wrong. Like-freaking-always.
Sora started to smile. "Huh," he said finally, turning to face Riku full-on. "I hadn't thought about it like that. I...huh." He sounded more careful than usual. He sounded nice.
He perched his chin on his hand and nudged Riku with his shoulder. "Thanks," he said quietly, sort-of-graciously.
Riku snorted. "Yeah," he said, trying to focus on tallying homework assignments.
I am all the important things!
"You know what, Riku Tepes," Sora said, crossing his legs on the lunch table bench and grinning, "You...are a pretty okay guy."
I am all the important things!
Riku sort-of laughed, very awkwardly, and tucked some hair behind his ear more out of habit than anything else. Didn't seem right, that there couldn't be any sort of satisfying conclusion to this crap about suicide. Sora was acting just like before, and so was he - . Kind of.
I am all of the important things!
"Yeah," Riku said, throwing his trash in a nearby bin and slinging his backpack onto his shoulder. "I have to go to the - bathroom so I'll - see you. Later."
"Oh," Sora said from down there, looking a little surprised. "Uh, yeah, okay. Uh, um, wait!"
"Hm?" Riku hadn't moved.
"Uh, there's this almost-the-end-of-the-year-before-finals party thing that Kairi told me about, so I'm dragging you to it since we usually hang out Fridays, okay?" he said casually.
"Whatever, yeah," Riku said, heading for the doors. He had to get fucking control of himself. Sora thought about everybody but himself and it was killing him. It was killing both of them.
" 'But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more.' "
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince, p. 83
Riku had these little fantasies of real life, only better, sometimes. He hadn't had very many close friends for quite a long time, so he didn't know how to deal with the one he was getting. He didn't know how to deal with people.
In Riku's fantasy, he got to tell Sora all of the things he really honestly thought about him. All of the ugly nasty things he wasn't willing to say out loud. Some of the things that he wanted to say, but couldn't because he didn't know what would happen.
Things like it's unfair to keep on telling me all of the things you think about life, and not asking about what I ever think. Things like it's unfair to keep trying to change my opinion, when you never change yours. Things like just because you've been through more shit than I have does not make you more relevant.
Things like I hate being around you because I'm a horrible person and you're a beautiful person and it makes me feel like shit.
Sure, it sounded very good in his head, it sounded very elegant and neat. It sounded like one of those big, dramatic speeches that people in soap operas and teen dramas made, but with fewer exclamation points. Only in soap operas and teen dramas, after the person was finished speeching they got to hold up their hands to make the person they were speeching at shut up and they said "No, no, I don't want to hear it" and then slammed a door.
Riku wasn't stupid. He knew it didn't work like that.
If he wanted to figure out how to have a decent friendship, he couldn't say all these things to Sora, because Sora might misunderstand or be hurt or just have the generally wrong reaction. He'd do something surprising, and Riku didn't want to risk it.
So he thought about it the whole week. He spent a whole, actual week thinking about somebody else, actually thinking. For once Riku Tepes had a reason to be totally silent.
"The next planet was inhabited by a tippler. This was a very short visit, but it plunged the little prince into deep dejection.
'What are you doing there?' he said to the tippler, whom he found settled down in silence before a collection of empty bottles and also a collection of full bottles.
'I am drinking,' replied to tippler, with a lugubrious air.
'Why are you drinking?' demanded the little prince.
'So that I may forget,' replied the tippler.
'Forget what?' inquired the little prince, who already was sorry for him.
'Forget that I am ashamed,' the tippler confessed, hanging his head.
'Ashamed of what?' insisted the little prince, who wanted to help him.
'Ashamed of drinking!' The tippler brought his speech to an end, and shut himself up in an impregnable silence.
And the little prince went away, puzzled.
'The grown-ups are certainly very, very odd,' he said to himself, as he continued on his journey."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince, p. 50 - 52
Time, of course, did not care. He'd come to no real conclusions about Sora, except that maybe Riku was being unreasonable about the whole "you never ask about me" bit because nobody could read minds, by the time "Zack's PRE-SUMMER BASH LOL" (according to the email) rolled around.
(It was that morbid curiosity that made him click on the forwarded email, which was difficult to understand because all of the words were chatspeak and he had trouble telling which things were smiley faces, but he managed to glean a time, at least.)
It was in a forest, which was a pretty stupid idea. Riku didn't know about anyone else, but he had sure never had a fun time in a forest with a bunch of teenagers around. Fuck, they were teenagers!
People milled around one little clearing in the one little forest-reserve (which was, of course, on the wet side of the island, but it wasn't a far walk), talking and giggling. A couple of kids were trying to rub a couple of sticks together to make a fire, pretty much fruitlessly. Kids walked around in between the trees, and it was clear that despite them being in a forest near dusk, nobody had put on bug spray. Mosquitoes buzzed in the air like dust, and people seemed surprised when they got bit. But nobody wanted to smell like bug spray at a super-cool party.
Riku had on bug spray and sun block. He smelled like summer camp, but he didn't give a crap.
He sat down by the base of one of the trees, leaning up against rough bark and letting his shoes slide out, feet half-buried by dry leaves. Everything smelled like dirt, like fresh vegetables.
Speaking of which, Sora had abandoned him, despite dragging him there. Riku could see him, too, standing with a blue plastic cup of soda in his hand talking to a girl with short brown hair and laughing like he was high.
Riku Tepes wasn't jealous, exactly, but he was kind of pissed. All this crap about friendship and sticking together and now you want to go talk to girls. Fuck, I always followed you home when you were upset about stupid shit! But no, when you're fine, it's all good, huh?
He rolled his eyes and to play with the hem of the white and yellow vest he'd ended up putting on over his black shirt. He needed pockets and his jeans had really small ones that didn't fit his mp3 player. It looked really stupid, but hell if he cared.
"Hey!" Sora said, coming over to sit next to him.
Riku rolled his eyes and didn't say anything.
"Wha-at?" Sora asked, nudging him as he plopped down on a nearby log.
"Nothing," he muttered.
"Are you sure?" Sora moved a little closer, and the smell of farmers' markets and vegetables grew stronger, like pumpkins or fall. They'd cut down a little part of his cast, so it was mostly just his hand now.
"I don't...like parties," Riku said awkwardly, looking in the opposite direction. Mosquitoes were like little anti-fireflies, silhouettes in the sun, buzzing around. Just looking at them made him feel kind of itchy. He scratched his leg.
Sora laughed, touching the back of his head to the bark of the tree. "Oh, I see. It's just so awful, hanging around other people."
"Shut up," Riku grumbled, smiling a little and nudging Sora's knee with his own.
"Well? This not enough reason to kill yourself?" Sora giggled. It seemed funny, that he'd joke about that, him of all people.
"Oh," Riku said, "Plenty of reason, really, but you know me. I'd hate to be a statistic."
His friend laughed and ran a hand through his hair, stretching his legs out as far as he could go. "You know," he said, "My mom told me once that Japanese people take off their shoes when they commit suicide." He sounded a little more somber, now, at least. He'd stopped smiling.
Well fuck, that was random.
"Really?" Riku asked. "I thought they only did that when they, like, entered a building or something."
Sora shook his head. "Well, yeah, that too, but when they kill themselves they'll go up to the rooftop of a building or to a lake or something, take off their shoes and...take the plunge. You know?"
Riku shrugged. "Yeah," he said, "I get it."
They were quiet for a little while. People were shouting and laughing, and bugs in the forest were making bug noises. Riku wondered what time it was.
"I wonder why," Sora said, "Because it's not like you're going to be very concerned with manners when you're about to kill yourself. It's kind of weird, I guess." He made eye contact with Riku. His eyes looked a little less blue, now, even though Riku might have thought they would stand out. Blue-blue eyes didn't stand out in a forest, they were subdued by it. His eyes looked almost grey-green.
"Maybe they just wanted to die without wearing shoes," Riku offered. He didn't really know what that meant. It seemed obvious to him.
Sora stared at him more, maybe a little harder, maybe a little closer. And, after a minute or two, "...yeah." He smiled and looked at his own feet. "Think so?" He wiggled his toes; Riku could see the stretchy fabric of his sneakers bulge. "It makes sense."
Riku frowned. "Really?"
"Yeah. You said it, man."
"I was making shit up."
Sora looked at him again and laughed. "But, don't you think it would be nice?" He kicked off one shoe, to reveal a very pale pink foot, and dug it under some of the leaves. "To be able to feel things with your feet." He blinked slowly and smiled.
"I think," he said, "That when I die, I would like to die without any shoes on." Riku looked at him strangely.
"I mean," he added, "If I have the choice. When I'm all old and wrinkly. I think I want to die without any shoes on, so that I can feel things with my feet."
Riku looked at the anti-fireflies again; the sun was almost gone. It was that time of day when sunlight came in at an angle, all slanted. The tiny little bits of crap and dust floating through the air made it visible, almost physical, like a flashlight beam in a dusty attic. But it was a very different kind of light. Riku wondered why sunlight felt so different when it was the same idea. He was tired.
"Okay," he said blandly. He knew Sora probably wanted a comment along the lines of "wow that's fucking deep" but he didn't feel like it. Sora said things like this so much it wasn't really that fun anymore.
He knew he was bullshitting himself.
Riku wanted to die without shoes on, too.
"Hey Riku," Sora said, poking his thigh. He had put on sunscreen too. His skin was a little oily, but not sweaty. "You don't really give yourself credit for it, but I think you're a better thinker than you seem like."
"What?"
"I dunno," he shrugged. "But this is the second time this week we've had a conversation like this."
Riku frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"You know, Monday? Waking up and still being...sticking yourself together?"
"Oh," Riku said. "Yeah." He stopped talking for a little while and they watched people stumble almost drunkenly through the trees and the little slanting beams of sunsetlight. Above them, trees whispered to each other little meaningless non-words.
"I like this conversation better," he whispered, fancying his voice similar to the trees. He wanted to whisper things high above people who weren't listening. He just wanted to.
So of course, Sora did something shit-weird. He sort of fell over to the side so that his head was on Riku's lap and his legs were curled up by his chest. He giggled. "Yeah," he replied, matching Riku's whisper, "Me too."
Riku remembered one of the first horribly uncomfortable things Sora had done, crawling into his lap and pulling his hair away from his forehead.
"Holy shit! You actually have a forehead! I thought you would have, I dunno, whirring machinery up here like cyborgs in the movies!"
He'd said something like that.
Riku had been completely disgusted. Now he barely cared that another boy's head was on his lap.
Did that make him gay? It didn't, did it? Sora rolled onto his back so he could look straight up at Riku and stick his tongue out.
And yeah, Riku thought about kissing him again, just because it would be funny. Because his lips were feeling itchy and Sora was at an awkward angle, and he was sleepy and only two people had put on sunscreen and bug spray even though they were all in a forest filled with mosquitoes, and Sora was still only wearing one shoe and he didn't seem to care.
Sora was a boy and Riku was a boy. They were on the same side of the line, and Riku knew that girls were on the other side of the line and the whole point of puberty was to get curious about the line, and to step up to it and to get curious about the other side. You were normal then, wanting something you weren't, you were normal.
Riku Tepes was seventeen years old and he'd never had a crush on a girl.
Sora Goodwin was seventeen years old and he was only wearing one shoe.
Fuck, but he was beautiful inside.
He made a stupid face at Riku and Riku made a stupid face at him, and trees whispered and people shouted. There was drunken laughter close by. Then it was even closer, like someone had broken through another one of their little worlds, and Riku had to register it. He looked up.
Kairi had a bottle of something in her hand. It was mostly empty, and what was left inside was clear like water. Even though he knew it wasn't. Kairi had fallen over, staring at something just above her head with glazed and half-closed eyes. She made a choking noise and closed them.
There was a glass bottle in her hand, and it was mostly empty, which sounded ridiculous because that sounded like something a drunk person would have, so.
Riku frowned, and out of the corner of his eye saw Sora look a little puzzled and sit up, leaning his back on Riku's shoulder (he didn't know why it was important to note that but it was, it was warm, but anyways). Sora licked his dry lips and furrowed his eyebrows.
"Is she...?" he began. "I mean..."
"Um," Riku said, "Yeah, I mean, yeah, sure. I'm sure...I mean, she can't be drunk or anything, I mean..."
"Yeah..." Sora said. They were both thinking it.
People we know don't really get drunk. Teenagers don't do that. Well, the do, but not here. Inner-city kids or something, but not people we know, nobody's that stupid.
Which brought Riku back to
People don't really die in fires.
"Sora," he said finally, "I think you should put your other shoe on."
Sora did.
They stood up.
"Kairi?"
She rolled over onto her side and retched once.
"Um, Kairi, are you okay?"
Riku hung back a little, just a little behind Sora. Kairi creased her eyebrows, eyes still shut, and pulled one of her legs up to her chest with the rustle of dry leaves.
"Oh," Sora said. Riku still didn't say anything. High over them trees whispered nonsense. Around them people shouted it. His shoes were too hot.
"Mmm," she moaned uncomfortably.
"Yeah..." Sora said. He turned around. Sora looked at Riku looked at Sora. "Riks, do you have your cellphone?" he asked, pressing his lips together. "Riks"? Seriously? What the Hell was that?
"Uh..." Riku thought about it. He had some just-in-case money in one of the pockets of his stupid vest, and his mp3 player in the other pocket of his stupid vest, so... "No," he said.
"Oh, okay," Sora said. A couple of other kids were walking by near them, probably heading for the throng just past a line of trees.
Sora asked them if he could borrow a cellphone.
They asked what it was for.
He said it was because Kairi was drunk.
They asked So?
He said he wanted to call an ambulance.
They said they didn't have cellphones.
So did the next person.
And the one after that, and the one after that.
"Sora," Riku said after a while. Kairi hadn't moved, unless you counted rolling over to the other side and then getting so still you had to check and make sure she was still breathing. "Nobody's going to lend you a cellphone to call the police."
"But I'm not trying to call the police, I'm trying to call an amb-"
"It's the same thing. EMTs show up, start asking questions, and people don't want to have to go to the hospital for drinking and have their parents know." Riku sighed and ran a hand through his hair. It was really hot in the forest, and really humid, too, like breathing in water.
"But - "
"Sora."
Sora, who was kneeling down with his hand on her cheek, went quiet for a little while. He pursed his lips and looked down at his shoes, toeing around a stick on the forest floor. It was almost dark.
"I know," he said. He didn't look happy about it.
Kairi tried to sit up, suddenly, her eyes open and maybe shaking a little. She leaned on one hand and tried to throw up, but couldn't. She looked at Sora very briefly and closed her eyes, holding a hand up to her mouth and lying down again on her back.
"Holy shit," Sora whispered, which was a weird thing for a person whose first language wasn't English to say, because they didn't teach you in school, and how did Sora know English anyways? Riku felt weird. "Riku, this is not..."
He clicked his teeth together. "There's...I think there's a convenience store like half an hour away if we walk..."
Sora ducked underneath Kairi's arm and leaned it over his shoulders. It was scary, it was so fucking scary, Riku couldn't think in full sentences.
"Okay," he said, ducking under Kairi's other arm. She tried to walk, too, but couldn't, and they began to drag her towards the town.
It was very quiet, and mostly awkward.
After a while the crisis mode of "Kairi is seriously in trouble if we don't get her to a hospital quick" diminished. Of course, it was still there, but she was such a small person being carried by two other people, it wasn't very hard to walk.
It was basically dark outside. Crickets were there, but not much else besides whispering trees and dry leaves.
So even when the sun was completely gone, Riku didn't really say anything. And then even when Kairi passed out permanently and they really were dragging her, like they were dragging a corpse to be buried, he didn't really say anything. Even though it took an hour to get to the CVS, instead of thirty minutes, he was just sort of zoning out in his own little Riku world.
"Excuse me!" Sora shouted at the building, before they were even inside. With Kairi's tiny, dangling and unconscious body between them, they stepped on the mat in front of the automatic doors. The stench of sunscreen and bugspray was magnified by sweat, hanging between them, and Kairi looked awful. Her hair was messy and she was so pale, and sweating a little.
Luckily there was a store clerk restocking a shelf right by them.
"I - I'm sorry, can we - "
What level of politeness was needed when you were in a serious crisis? Were you allowed to just dispel common courtesy and shout at strangers, or did you have to say please and thank you still?
"P- please call an ambulance for her!"
The store clerk jumped a little, her eyes widening, "Uh- uh, okay, you just hold on right there, okay?"
They dragged Kairi over to a wall, leaning up against it and breathing hard. Riku's legs were shaking, all of a sudden, from muscle fatigue or whatever. He felt like swearing, it seemed appropriate. Or like in those doctor shows, you know? I need a breathalyzer, stat, pronto!
Wait. Breathalyzers were what cops used for drunk people.
Whatever, it was his imagination anyways, what did it matter if surgery intern him asked for a breathalyzer to resuscitate a person? It wasn't like he was saying it out loud. Ha!
He sighed; Kairi's head lolled to the side and landed on his shoulder.
He looked at her face, with her closed eyes, and the horrible warm dark blackness in his stomach and throat got thicker or deeper or multiplied. Ohgodohgodohgod.
"Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction."
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery
So, Kairi was legally dead by the time an ambulance showed up.
They took those electric paddle things, whatever they were called, and like, zapped her back to life while they watched. And then she got wheeled into the ambulance, and one of the EMTs stayed behind and asked them if they'd also been drinking, even any little amount, and they won't get in trouble if they were, so don't worry, and are they really really sure they haven't been drinking anything?
And they both said the same thing, which was yes, I'm definitely sure unless someone spiked the air, and I didn't even know there was booze there. And Sora looked really nervous and asked if she was going to be all right. The EMT said that yes, probably, because they'd got her heart pumping again, and what were your names? And he wrote things down in a little notebook.
Half an hour later found them both outside the CVS at ten o'clock, leaning up against the wall and staring at an empty parking lot.
It felt, to Riku, almost poetic. He wasn't sure how. All alone in a parking lot with Sora, in another little world, while moths flickered around one sodium streetlight like a fading pyramid of orange.
Moths - hey.
It was a little bit cold, so he shivered as the wind tickled the fine hairs on his arm. The side of the building was rough and bumpy, and the parking lot was fading away, starting with the little white lines drawn on the ground for all of the cars. He blinked his eyes hard and scratched his forehead.
He stretched his legs out all the way; Sora copied him. Riku rolled his head to the side to look at Sora, who smiled at him and toed his foot.
Riku smiled back, very awkwardly because he was out of practice, and then turned his head back to look at the empty, dark parking lot.
He was starting to feel guilty, about the whole Kairi thing, because -
Okay, fuck, he'd been feeling horribly, nigglingly guilty for ages, like a big black worm in his stomach -
- well, if they hadn't done anything she would have actually literally died, and that was really really scary. He'd seen it happen to a moth and he got upset. A person - and a good person, too, the kind of person that went around doing stuff like erasing graffiti on walls - was so much more important than a moth that you didn't know.
But she was okay.
Was this the kind of thing you told your parents? It didn't really involve them, and Riku wasn't in danger or something. They didn't need to know; him and Sora had it under control, and it was basically over. It was just, what if they heard it through the grapevine or whatever? And got mad at Riku for not saying anything.
They'd be worried about him, if they knew he was at a party with drinking. They'd start thinking he was shooting up drugs in his room or something. They'd start paying too much attention to him. It'd be all "How was school, Riku, I mean really is everything okay?" and "You know you can tell me anything, right?"
He would explain to them most of it. He would explain that Kairi felt very sick, so he and Sora brought her to a hospital, and she's fine now. He didn't have to explain about the alchohol, since he hadn't had any. It would make them too worried.
Besides, he thought, and then didn't finish.
He looked at his sneakers with his dirty shoelaces, halfway untied. He didn't know what made him do it, but he shoved them off his feet, letting his socks touch the pavement - as gross as it was.
It was bumpy, kind of rough, and wind tickled his ankles. It felt like walking on gravel, which was what it basically was. Like when you had to run outside really quickly to pick up the newspaper or let the dog out, and didn't bother putting on shoes and ended up stepping on sticks, that was what it felt like.
"Hey," Sora said, smiling, "Good idea," and took off his own shoes.
They both turned their heads to face each other, Riku leaning on one hand and Sora flopped against the wall.
Sora was a boy and Riku was a boy, which meant they were on the same side of the line, and should not look sideways. It wasn't really what you were supposed to do, or at least what your body said. Of course, considering that, the school made it pretty freaking easy to be gay in theory. Yeah, there were the hate crimes, but they were just kids fooling around. There was an after school club called the fucking Gay-Straight Alliance Organization, for goodness' sake. They preached in sex ed about how it was a natural thing, and that people don't know what causes it but that it isn't a choice, and blah blah blah.
Yeah, that was fine for people other than him.
And Riku was starting to notice this trend, where he thought about kissing Sora when Sora's face got closer, and how it kept happening every time and it wasn't really a joke anymore for him.
He could feel warmth, kind of like a radiator, from Sora's forehead, and then he stared closer and bumped their foreheads together. His vision was blurry and it looked like Sora only had one eye, which was pretty much hilarious for some reason. He giggled and so did his friend.
I am all of the important things.
So what, he was thinking about kissing another boy on the same side of the line, and he - well it wasn't like - he knew Sora was touchy-feely and all, but he wouldn't normally get this close, if he was just - right?
He wasn't quite sure how it happened, or who moved first, and all.
But the lips, the ones he'd been thinking about touching with his, were touching his. The world didn't explode, even though two boys were kissing each other. It was feather-light, and Sora's lips were kind of dry. Riku had never kissed anybody before.
He closed his eyes. He'd thought he'd...he didn't know. Fight it more.
(He would, later, the second and third times, he would think in rapid succession like bullets that's a boy that's a boy you're kissing a boy boys are not supposed to kiss other boys Sora is a BOY stop kissing a BOY but not the first time.)
But it was warm, and the wind was cold. Sora wanted to kiss him. Sora wanted to kiss him back; nobody ever wanted Riku, not for anything ever. Sora was warm and solid, so...Riku didn't really...care.
He moved closer, a little.
Click.
The broke apart abruptly; each holding a hand to his mouth. Oo-oops.
Sora snorted, "Pff," and giggled kind of loudly. "Um," he said.
"Yeah," Riku said, feeling his face get hot like he'd just gone on a mile run. "Uh, did our teeth - "
"Pfff!"
Riku felt like laughing, really hard, too, and so he did, covering his hand with his mouth. "Shut up! It's not like I know how to - "
"I know!" Sora giggled with him. Riku tucked his feet under his butt because they were getting cold. A mosquitoe or something buzzed past his ear. "But seriously, that was - "
"I know," Riku laughed a little more, his stomach sort-of vibrating with borderline-girly laughter.
Sora was Sora and Riku was Riku, and fuck the stupid line. Gender, Riku decided, should not be such a deciding factor with who you liked.
Sora pressed his lips together, and he still smelled like vegetables, and bugspray and sunscreen which made him smell like summer, but it was fading because he'd sweated it off (like Riku had) and been cooled by the wind (like Riku).
He was leaning forward on his hands, which he must have done while kissing Riku, and now he looked out into the empty parking lot surrounded by trees.
"D'you think - " he said after a pause. "Kairi, do you think she'll really be...?"
Riku stared at him for a second, trying to figure out what he was saying. His mind, even, was breathless. "No - yeah," he finally replied. "I'm sure she'll be fine, the EMT said this happens sometimes and that he's seen worse, so...I'm not worried."
Sora sighed, and smiled quietly. "Yeah," he said. "Okay, good."
He looked up at Riku. "Wanna, um..." he paused. "Try that again?"
Riku blinked at him and swallowed. "What, you mean - "
"I mean, only if you think, I was totally - "
"Yeah, sure, I mean, yeah - "
Touch.
He had no idea how their lips kept meeting, especially this time since they were both talking at once. He still counted it as his first kiss, though, because he felt a little high off of anxiety and wonder and maybe happiness, that two people could want each other just the same, and be just the same way, insecure and nervous and excited.
Their teeth clicked again, but they figured out how to pull away from that, to use only lips which were soft and pliable. They did that for a while.
Riku had his first kiss not wearing any shoes.
And he could feel things with his feet.
A/N: Well geez that took eight chapters.
Tell me if that achieved what I meant it to, please. (i.e. was the kiss okay?)
Mmkay.
Also, circus story (Axel and Roxas) is coming soon (and will be called "Always Moving Sideways") so updates might be a little slower.
Thoughts?