Where Would We Land?
A/N: I...should stop reading fanfiction when I'm trying to write it. You people are giving me an inferiority complex. Friggin'...jeez.
Orders of business:
1) oh man I had to go watch some cutscenes from the end of the second game for help with characterization and ughhh now I'm really depressed why are these games so depressing
2) Yeah, I know the beginning of this chapter is boring and pointless, but I'm not getting rid of it. It's this or being jumpy and random as hell. Just hang on, (I think) it gets more interesting, at the end anyways.
3) So it's summer now. That means I have an inordinate amount of free time, and I'd rather not spend all of it watching TV and reading Axis Powers Hetalia. If you're ever bored and want to talk, honestly, drop me a line. It'll take me a little while to reply, since I'm slowly coming out of my lurker phase, but I'll reply. :/
"Courage is the art of being the only one who knows you're scared to death."
- Harold Wilson (1916 - 1995)
Riku Tepes was the loneliest person in the goddamn world.
He didn't even really have a right to be.
He didn't know whether or not he was mad at Sora, and he didn't know if he should be the one feeling sorry. For all he knew, Sora had no idea the emotional crap Riku was putting himself through that night. Sora with his little "Sorry," his little "feel bad for me" complaints that stabbed Riku in the gut and twisted around in there so much that he couldn't sleep because he didn't know if he was angry or if he was sorry or if he even cared! Or if he was even supposed to care. He felt like his head was going to explode.
He'd never had to worry about things like this; he'd never had to worry about friends and whether or not they were mad at you or if you were supposed to apologize for a thing. He didn't know what was allowed to be "blown over". He didn't know a lot about friendship, at all. He just knew that he couldn't get to sleep because he felt awful. That was a saying, wasn't it? Never go to bed angry?
Maybe it was because there was still an hour or two of nighttime left, because he was so tired it stung to close his eyes, but at that moment in time Riku Tepes wanted nothing more than to crawl onto the bed and shake Sora awake and whisper "I'm sorry please don't be mad" in a way that would have been so dreadfully unlike him that it almost hurt to think it. It wasn't a matter of pride or anything. He just couldn't see himself acting that girly.
It was hot outside, and hotter inside, especially in the sleeping bag. The cloth lining was sticking to his legs, and his hair was sticking to his face. He felt like a caterpillar, all rolled up in a cocoon, tight and warm like he was being baked. Baked caterpillar. Did they always come out as pretty moths? Surely some must get stuck and die in their little cocoons.
Riku thought about that, about how creepy it would be to be a dead caterpillar stuck inside a cocoon. He groaned and kicked until the zipper on one side of the sleeping bag came partially undone, exposing one leg to the cool air. Hn. Well, he wasn't a stuck caterpillar now. He wasn't really thinking about it like that, but it felt nice.
"Sorry."
Sorry for what, Sora? Jesus.
Riku was learning a helluva lot about the way he dealt with people, and he had figured out that one thing he hated was to be confused about what the Hell was going on. He had that same stomach-clenched muscle feeling as he did when he felt like something was about to happen. It was like constantly feeling like you were about to sneeze.
"Ah," he said, rubbing at his eyes and standing up with a few loud rustles. He kind of hoped he would end up accidentally waking Sora up. He was drunk on mind-fog again, and guilt, maybe this time, and confusion. He stumbled over to Sora's bed, barely avoiding knocking into the corner of his desk.
Sora was a tiny lump, rolled up into a little ball with one arm flung out to the side, looking limp and bony. He looked like a bunch of sticks tied together with string.
Riku knew it was irrational, but seeing Sora lie there with his little baby face sleeping like he had no worries pissed Riku off. The idea that he couldn't get something out of his mind and Sora didn't even realize - pissed him off. Sora just went on sleeping like everything was fucking peachy. It occurred to Riku that maybe he was making something out of nothing. He didn't know how to deal with any of this. But it was late at night, and he...anyways.
"Sora," he whispered quietly, hands fisted at his sides. "Sora."
Sora didn't wake up, but he grumbled something and then smiled in his sleep. He took a deep breath and yawned. "I..." he whispered hoarsely. "I looked...everywhere for...you..."
Riku's jaw stiffened and he rolled his eyes upward in desperation. Someone should write a fucking kids' book. Sora Goodwin and the Stupid Hero Complex. Honestly. Honestly. Another one of those dreams.
"Sora," he hissed, hoping that this would be enough. "Wake up."
"Everywhere...restons...dans le..."
Riku took a step back and contemplated going back to his own bed. His own nice little cocoon sleeping bag, where he could sleep and keep ignoring Sora's little whimpers like he had all the other nights.
"Sorry..."
No, he wouldn't get to sleep, anyways.
"Sora!" he whispered harshly, poking his friend in the arm. "Seriously." Sora seemed warm and comfortable, and Riku felt bad for waking him up. But he was a selfish guy, and he needed to know it was okay for him to go to sleep now. It was so hard to wake Sora up, once he started to have a nightmare. He seemed stuck.
It was the hazy grey-blue-orange light of very early morning, and Sora opened his eyes lazily and only halfway. He groaned and brought his hand up to his face to rub at it, remembered the bandage, and abandoned the idea.
"Dit, Riku..." he said. He said Riku's name with this sort of thick French accent, and the R sounded like throat fleghm. Only it was also kind of attractive, maybe just because it was foreign. Riku didn't know what to make of it. Sora turned his slivers of eyes to Riku's face. "Je viens d'avoir un rêve de toi..."
"What?" Riku asked, because he'd basically forgotten everything he'd learned after his French final.
Sora sat up, and the blankets he'd wrapped himself up in fell down to around his waist. He was wearing a black t-shirt with some bleach stains and his hair looked even messier than usual.
"Quelle heure est-il?" He glanced at the digital clock next to his bed. "Sept heures du matin!?" He made a sleepy face at Riku and stuck his tongue out, whacking Riku on the arm softly. "Pourquoi est-ce que tu m'as réveillé à sept heures?"He didn't look angry about it, though, he just looked sleepy and happy. Riku laughed awkwardly.
"Uh, Sora..." Riku was sure that if Sora had spoken a bit slower or more clearly, he might have understood him, but his words were fast and blurred together like a native speaker's would be. So Riku barely heard anything other than "morning". "What?"
Sora blinked his eyes and stared at Riku harder. "What? What is it?"
"What did you say?"
Sora frowned at him. "What do you mean?"
Riku rolled his eyes and sat down on the bed. It was soft, but the sheets were a little crisp from recent washing. Some awkward ocean breeze drifted in through a fan situated in a window.
"Just now, what'd you say?"
Sora stared at him blankly for a second, then snorted and put a hand over his mouth. "Holy crap, was I just speaking French?"
"Yeah..."
Sora laughed so hard he had to squeeze his eyes shut. "What? Oh man, man I haven't done that since I was like...twelve. Maybe fourteen. That's actually pretty funny. My dream was in French, so maybe that's why."
"R- right," Riku said, digging his hands into the fabric of the sheets. He started to rub the cloth between his fingers systematically, for lack of anything else to do with his hands. Scritch scritch scritch. There were some cat hairs on the bed.
Maybe he didn't have to say anything. Sora had clearly forgotten. He was freaking himself out, he wasn't...honestly.
It had just been so awful. Everything had seemed right, except for the accidentally outing himself when he didn't even think he was gay, and then stupid touchy-feely Sora had hugged him and he'd gone rigid and Sora hadn't stopped and everything went wrong the whole world was wrong Kairi was wrong and something had snapped and - . Riku knew it was silly. He just needed to reassure himself that they hadn't clicked out of place.
"Hey," Sora said, lying back down, "So what is it?" He yawned.
"Ah," Riku said, pinching his lips together. Scritch scritch scritch, there were cat hairs on the bed and a moth on the wall. "I just..." he trailed off and looked at Sora.
Sora was half asleep again. Sora had eyes that weren't the color of the sky, but that should have been, Sora wasn't wearing shoes, Sora looked like the kind of kid who went on adventures.
"Y'okay, buddy?" Sora muttered, closing his eyes.
"Yeah," Riku replied, scooching a little forward so he could be closer to Sora. It was really annoying. Riku was trying really hard here and Sora was basically asleep and didn't seem to give much of a shit at all. Kind of funny role-reversal. "I just...I dunno."
"Bad dream?" Sora asked him, smiling and reaching out with his good hand. He patted around a little until he found Riku's wrist, which he rubbed soothingly. Almost maternally. Gross. "I have those nights."
"No," Riku said. "I just...sorry, I guess." His voice seemed too loud for the conversation. He felt like he should be whispering again. Something quiet enough to slip underneath the oppressive quiet of almost-asleep Sora.
"Sorry for what?" Sora asked him, opening his eyes and regarding Riku honestly.
"I don't know, just earlier, with the...you're gonna think this is weird," he defended himself prematurely. Sora laughed briefly and raised his eyebrows expectantly, and it helped that he was looking Riku right in the face instead of closing his eyes and not getting it at all. "I mean, you probably aren't thinking about it at all," Riku sighed, "It's just, I'm sorry that I kind of freaked out on you when you tried to hug me." What did he mean "tried"? Sora had hugged him. But he'd already said it, and it wasn't worth correcting. He was focusing on that too much.
Scritch scritch scritch, there were cat hairs on the bed and a moth on the wall.
Riku chewed on the inside of his cheek briefly and brought his legs up to sit pretzel-style. "I mean, it's not a big deal or anything, I was just sort of feeling guilty that you, um...I don't know." He grunted and set his cheek in his palm, glancing at Sora, who was still staring at him with big stupid honest eyes and waiting for him to finish and not saying anything.
"That's it," Riku said, to make it clear. Sora sat up, so close their noses were almost brushing, and grinned at him. Because, of course, he had no idea that Riku had been up wondering if Sora hated him or if he hated Sora or if he even really cared. Because Sora was so fucking clueless it almost hurt.
"Okay," Sora said, smiling so sincerely it was - . His eyes darted around Riku's face like they were taking in something. "I'm glad. I was kind of worried you'd be mad." Oh, that's great, Sora. Kind of worried. The kind of worried you'd be if you'd taken a quiz and had to guess at a couple of answers worried. Forget-about-it-as-soon-as-you-sleep worried. Great to see the mutual feeling, Sora.
Riku snorted and rolled his eyes, playing with the fabric of the bed's comforter between his fingers.
"What?" Sora's eyebrows met and his mouth turned into an angry line. "What's funny?"
"You slept pretty well, for a guy who was so worried," Riku muttered, staring at a discarded t-shirt on the floor.
Riku didn't know what made him say that. He wasn't that mad about it. It was just that he didn't like how easily Sora could claim to be "worried" about a thing, or rather that he was "worried too" when Riku wasn't really worried so much as...scared, or angry, or confused. When Sora didn't actually seem to understand a thing Riku was saying. It was condescending, almost, and made Riku kind of pissed off because it was like saying "I know, I know," to a person who'd lost his parents in a fire when you had two parents and three brothers and you'd never even had to move or anything. Like Sora only ever paid attention when it was him who had the problem, maybe.
Riku knew that wasn't true. He wished he could take back what he'd just said to Sora.
And then Sora Goodwin broke Riku Tepes's heart.
"Of course I slept," he said, eyes tightening.
"How do you think I ever sleep?"
Sora sounded so quiet and pitiful. He fisted his hands under the blankets and glared at nothing in particular.
Riku didn't say anything, though; he didn't know what to say.
"If - ...i-if I had trouble getting to sleep every night I was sad or worried, I-I'd never sleep at all," Sora muttered. And oh God, he sounded like such a little kid when he said that. What was next? "Pain, pain, go away, come again another day!" Riku looked at Sora looked at Riku and it broke his heart was what happened.
Riku felt like kind of an asshole now.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"...no," Sora said. "You couldn't have known." He smiled at Riku and leaned forward, putting his head on Riku's shoulder. Bump. "It's...not really something you can get unless you..."
"Unless you get it," Riku finished with a dry smile, looking down at the top of Sora's head.
"Yeah," Sora agreed. He sighed quietly, but not sadly. "Hey Riku?"
"Mm."
"...never mind."
Riku shook his head and rolled his eyes and smiled, leaning back so that he was lying on the bed, too, perpendicular to Sora. Sora grinned at him.
Sora leaned over him. Sora put his hands on the bed on either side of Riku's head. Sora bent down so their noses touched.
"Hey Riku?" he said.
"...M-mm," Riku cleared his throat in the affirmative. He had no idea what the Hell Sora thought he was doing. It wasn't a sexy position, or anything, and Riku couldn't imagine it as being anything but uncomfortable for his friend. And Sora didn't seem to think he was teasing.
Riku knew it would probably look like teasing. A boy leaning over another boy, and he supposed if you bothered to check, their lips were pretty close. But if Sora was kissing him with anything, it was his eyes. Riku's face felt hot when he thought that.
"Do you think I'm a good friend?" Sora asked him, raising his eyebrows childishly.
Riku started. Um, okay.
"Yeah," Riku said. "Of course you are. Sometimes too good."
"Huh?"
Riku shrugged, which was awkward when you were lying down. "Dunno," he said. "You worry about what other people think a lot."
Sora frowned. "Of course I do; don't you?"
Riku raised his eyebrows and half-smiled, but didn't reply. It didn't feel right to reply.
"...I think you're a good friend," Sora said, brushing his nose against Riku's purposefully.
"Okay," Riku said blankly. Sora rolled his eyes and sat up. Well, at least this time Riku hadn't said "get offa me".
"I don't think I'm gonna get back to sleep today," Sora said, glancing at the clock. It was ten past seven in the morning. On a Saturday.
"Yeah," Riku agreed. He was pretty tired. He'd eat breakfast and go home.
"You wanna make breakfast?"
"You read my mind."
They were hit by a pleasant rush of cool air a few steps from the living room, and Sora jumped down the last four stairs like a monkey. "Whaddya want?" he called, heading for the kitchen.
"Just whatever," Riku said, following him inside. He felt a sort of overwhelming relief. It was similar to what he'd been thinking yesterday. He had a person who had him, and it was awkward because Riku had self-assessed communication issues, but it was there, which was the thing. Having a non-obligatory friend was weird in itself.
"Okay," Sora said. "Frenchie breakfast it is!" He laughed and reached up to a basket full of bread set on top of one of the shelves. He pulled down nearly half of a baguette and headed over to the cutting board, taking out a knife to saw the bread in half.
"What do you mean?" Riku asked him, pulling himself up to sit on a counter. He watched Sora move around the tiny kitchen easily.
"Small," Sora said, cutting the bread down the middle in order to make a sandwich. "Basically just a baguette with jelly and butter. And cocoa, it's good with cocoa."
Riku made a face that Sora couldn't see and raised his eyebrows. "Hot chocolate for breakfast?"
"Yeah," Sora glanced behind himself to look at Riku and flash him a smile, "Dad used to make it every Sunday for us, almost religiously. It was a tradition. Un petit déjeuner du chocolat chaud et les tartines. Can you grab the milk from the fridge? There should be almost a full gallon in there." He yawned and got a jar of jelly from a nearby rack.
"Ah, yeah," Riku said, "Sure." And it was things like that, little curveballs where ten minutes ago they were upstairs and Sora was telling Riku about how hard it was to fall asleep sometimes thinking about that and then he'd say things like "Dad used to make it for us every Sunday" like "Dad" was still alive. God. Jesus. Sometimes Riku had no idea what went through that kid's mind.
It was awful. Riku wondered, quietly to himself, if everybody had this much trouble understanding what another person was doing. He opened the fridge and took out the gallon of milk, closed the fridge, and stood in front of it with the jug kind of cluelessly.
"Okay," Sora said, "Grab a couple of plastic cups from the cupboard - not the glass ones, yeah - and just fill them up with milk and microwave them for a few minutes."
Riku did.
So, a few minutes later, they were sitting at the living room table, each with two halves of a baguette unevenly smeared with butter and jelly and elaborate hot chocolate.
"You know," Sora said, taking a bite right at the crustiest end of a piece of bread. There was a painful crunch. Riku yawned, placed his elbow on the table and his cheek on his fist, and nodded. "It's funny," Sora said. He looked at Riku.
"What?" Riku asked him, flicking a piece of hair out of his face. Yeah, he should cut it. His fingernails, too.
"Anywhere else," crunch, "You'd definitely be the odd one out." He grinned.
Riku frowned. "How do you figure?"
Sora shrugged and sat up taller. "I mean, I'm from France, sure," Sora said, "That's kind of cool. But not only are you from this tiny little paradise island," to which Riku had objections. Choking on dust and then being periodically drowned in torrents of rain which left dead fish washing up on shore for weeks was not paradise. "But you've got white hair, too. Snowy-white." He giggled. "I mean if the two of us were in a bar you'd definitely be the hot foreign one. It doesn't seem like it to you, but I mean it's definitely a stereotype."
Riku rolled his eyes. "Yeah," he said, "The 'hot foreign one', sure." He looked dubiously at his breakfast. Butter on top of jelly seemed like a very bad idea, honestly. It was like mixing orange juice with milk. He shrugged and picked it up, looking at it from underneath. Some dusty yellow crumbs of flour were stuck to the crust.
"Well, at least you look exotic." Sora snorted. "And have we not yet discussed your sexy hips?"
"Shut up!"
Sora just smiled at that and tapped his forehead. Riku didn't need to be told he was being reminded of the "machinery" comment.
Sora paused. "Speaking of which..." he muttered, looking at his cup. He dragged it nearer and blew on it, making little swirls in the foam that had collected on top. "I was kind of wondering..."
"Ah," said Riku. He stared at his own cup of cocoa. It was ridiculous to drink hot chocolate when it was warm and muggy outside and it wasn't even eight in the morning. Muggy. Hn. It was kind of humid.
He knew what was coming next. In a way, it was kind of a relief. He knew that if he hadn't been kept up all night by Sora's stupid little I'm going to hug you even though you hate it moment he'd have been kept up by this. It was pretty much a huge deal. And with another boy.
"Yeah," Sora agreed. "You know, if you don't like it, we have cereal or something."
Riku blinked a few times and looked up across the table blankly. Was Sora saying that instead of a relationship he could have "cereal or something"?
"What?" Riku asked.
"The food. If it seems weird to you, I could get you cereal or fruit. I think we have some yogurts." Sora smiled at him, but it was half-assed.
"N-no," Riku said, "It's fine. I just..."
Riku had seen television shows and read some pretty dumb books. In them, when a person ran into another person and they became friends, it was all "and we just clicked, I could tell him everything, we understood each other!" It was awful. Because Riku wasn't sure, but he was at least mostly sure that he considered Sora a pretty good friend, and he still had no idea what he was talking about half the time. It was hard, it was so fucking hard when you actually had to try.
"So," Sora pinched his lips together and looked up at Riku. Their eyes met for the first time since they were upstairs. "You're gay," he said tentatively.
"Well, I mean - "
"You might be gay," Sora corrected with a roll of his eyes. "And," he continued. He took a big breath, like his lungs felt as hot as Riku's did. "I'm...probably. You know," he said. He sighed, smiled and shook his head. "Look at us, dealing with this like adults."
Riku had a lot of objections to that statement. For one thing, they weren't. They were both tiptoeing around the concept. "Might be" and "probably," like they could still back out of it if they wanted to. And for another, there was nothing adult about it. Acting like it was some secret to be hushed up.
"Ha, yeah," Riku coughed awkwardly. Damn. Well, it...didn't matter, anyways. You were allowed to let the little things fall through the cracks.
"But, um," Sora said. "The - point is. We are both, um...open. To the idea." He sighed again. "I'm sorry, you probably don't want to talk about this. I mean you probably just want to forget it ever happened. But I just don't like to leave things unresolved, or..." Riku watched Sora carefully. "I just like to deal with things so that they settle down as soon as they can. So I don't have to all the time...be...worrying about things. If I can fix them."
"Fix" them. Nice word choice. Kissing was a thing that had to be "fixed." Flattering, really.
But it was nice. Sora had been worrying about it. Sora liked to fix things before going on with life. It felt nice, having that connection, Riku knowing that he wasn't all alone there.
"I know what you mean," Riku truthed quietly.
"You do?" Sora asked. "Good. Because I mean," he breathed out in a woosh. "I kind of don't know how exactly I'm supposed to, um...say this. Okay, um," he closed his eyes briefly and then opened them again. "I mean, we both kind of - I dunno. Do you wanna - ?"
Riku didn't think about what he said. "...yeah."
Sora stared at him blankly for a second, and then the corners of his mouth perked up and he tilted his head to the side like a puppy asking to go on a walk. "Cool," he said.
Which was how Riku Tepes started dating Sora Goodwin.
Riku didn't know how it kept happening, but every time he told himself that he'd just eat breakfast and go home, he ended up staying at least until noon. And of all things, this morning they were watching cartoons.
Course, he'd never watched cartoons with another boy's feet in his lap before, but that seemed like a passing detail. Riku sighed, propping his elbow on the couch arm and chewing on the inside of his cheek.
"Man," Sora said, "I don't know what you're supposed to do when you have a boyfriend. Do I have to buy you flowers now?"
Riku rolled his eyes, smirked and flicked Sora's big toe. "Don't be an asshole." There was a cartoonish whistle from the TV. A couple of little kids passed by outside; their shouts reached inside and bounced off the walls, too cushioned by walls to be comprehensible. Riku wondered who it was who was willing to take their kids out on a day that was so exceptionally gross.
Sora let out a big long breath, leaning his head back to rest it on the other arm of the couch, staring up at the ceiling.
"Hey, do you - "
And promptly cut himself off when he heard soft footsteps coming from down the hall. There was a loud yawn.
Sora straightened up, jerking his feet out of Riku's lap and onto the floor and running a hand through his hair. He licked his lips nervously and stared at the television almost religiously, eyes wide. Riku followed his example to a certain degree; he resettled himself to be entirely facing the TV.
Belle's pajamas were the typical fare; a long nightgown with no sleeves, very loose and with a tiny bow at the top. Her hair was surprisingly smooth, even though it was down, and her eyes seemed more alert than ever.
"Oh!" she said, smiling as she walked into the kitchen. "You boys are already up." She frowned. "It...is Saturday, isn't it?"
Riku always felt a little awkward if he was doing something like lying down or watching TV or eating in Sora's house and Belle walked in. It seemed like trespassing, being comfortable in a house she paid for, because a kid she'd only just adopted had invited him in. She never seemed to realize, of course, and treated him very kindly no matter what. She seemed to like him. But it didn't mean he didn't feel like he was trespassing.
Especially if you counted the fact that she had no idea the whole mess of things between and around him and Sora.
"Yeah," Sora said stiffly, "It is, we just woke up early and neither of us could get back to sleep. That's all."
Riku felt his stomach clench again, like it had before when he'd been wondering who'd kiss who, but it was much less fun. Sora hadn't lied, technically, but it felt like he had.
"Oh," Belle said, popping a couple slices of Wonder bread into the toaster. "I assumed you'd both be sleeping in since you...had such a late night, last night." She said it carefully, too, like she was afraid of stepping out of her bounds. It wasn't the voice of an angry mother. Riku wondered if it was because she was so close to Sora she trusted him not to do anything bad, or because she was so far away she was afraid to ask. The stomach clenched feeling inside of Riku's belly felt a little more like sinking now.
He wondered if he was supposed to tell his own parents. How did you tell your parents that a girl at the party you'd been at had almost died from alcohol poisoning and not make it sound bad? How did you make it sound like you weren't in trouble, and that there was no way you'd been the one breaking the law? He'd already kind of decided not to, but he hadn't even seen them yet. And Belle was right there staring at Sora.
God. Jesus. A girl had almost died. Kairi had almost died. She would have died if they hadn't - if Sora hadn't done something.
The whole gay thing didn't really seem like an issue now.
And the hugging thing was barely a fly worth swatting.
"Ah," Sora said, "Yeah." He leaned back into the couch and stared at the floor and said nothing else.
"Is everything okay, sweetie?" Belle asked, raising her eyebrows and walking into the living room. Riku stiffened again, because he felt too comfortable on the couch.
"It's fine, Belle," he said. "I'm fine."
She stared at him for a little while with that concerned mother look that Riku had seen a thousand times before, then frowned, shrugged her shoulders and sat down at the table they'd been eating at just half an hour ago.
Riku became hyperaware of his surroundings, then, because it felt like everything he saw she saw and everything he knew she saw. It was definitely the most humid it had been for a while. He couldn't see the sky from where he sat, but he was willing to bet it was cloudy out there. The room seemed a little dimmer than usual. He wondered if Belle could sense that neither he nor Sora felt comfortable as they had been, or how unnatural their poses were. He wondered if this was how criminals felt; always scared that something they did would give them away.
The dining table was perpendicular to the back of the couch, so the backs of both Riku's and Sora's heads were very visible to her, and Riku had never been more aware of it. He'd more or less banished the thought of authority figures from his mind since last night.
He imagined sitting down with his own mother and telling her, quite straightforward, that yesterday he'd been to a party in the woods, helped to drag a girl sick with alcohol poisoning to a drug store to call her an ambulance, had his first kiss let alone kissed a boy, declared he was gay, and as a finishing touch told her that he now had a boyfriend (sort of). Ah, he could see it now! "Oh - oh dear, Burt, why don't you go call one of those teen help lines? Riku's having a bit of a...crisis." It wasn't that his parents would call a priest to come preach the gay out of him, or anything, but they certainly wouldn't be happy with all the...growing up he'd done.
He hated to think that, but yeah. He probably would not be telling his parents. He wasn't sure he wanted them to know. It didn't matter if they did.
He looked over to Sora, who was frowning and staring at the floor very hard and trying to blink tears out of his eyes. Oh - oh uh-oh. Oh, come on, Sora.
Sora mouthed something darkly and wiped at his eye, which was what gave it away. Sora wasn't crying, but he seemed to think he should be.
"Sora? Oh, Sora, are you alright!? Are you crying?" Oh, even when she was sad she sounded like a one-woman musical. Belle rushed over to kneel in front of him. It was hard to remember they weren't related. Riku wondered how awkward a subject that was to bring up; the adoption.
"N- no, I just..." Sora closed his eyes and sighed painfully, looking up at Riku. "I don't know." Belle frowned at him, furrowing her eyebrows, and grabbed his chin gently.
"Regarde-moi, Sora." It really did feel like being a criminal, hiding everything away. It was horrible. Riku didn't know how Sora was even still sane. He knew if his mother had been doing that...
"Belle," Sora said, "Can I talk to you about something?"
Her eyebrows rose just a little and her mouth opened. "Oh, um, yes. Yes, of course you can, sweetie. You know you can tell me anything, okay?"
"...yeah," he said, glancing at Riku. "I just - okay."
So, Sora led his foster mother into another room, biting his lip and making prolonged eye contact with Riku before closing the door to a spare bedroom off to the side.
Riku couldn't hear what they were saying. He had no idea what Sora was telling her.
Which was a lie. He had a pretty good idea of a lot of things he could be telling his foster mother about himself, about Riku, even about Kairi. He couldn't imagine any of it being easy. But it made sense, to Riku, what Sora was doing; or rather that it was Sora doing it. Sora had said it, hadn't he? He hated to have unfinished things, elephants in the room. And he liked to tell the whole story when he started part of it. That was why Riku knew what he knew about Sora Goodwin. Why he knew how Sora's parents had died, how his brother lived, how he spoke English fluently, why he'd moved here. Riku wondered if Sora ever felt lonely.
It was hard to focus on anything. It was like waiting to hear from colleges after applying. Of course Sora could tell her anything; Sora was her cute little foster son! Riku was just some floozy who'd come in and made the innocent little boy a flaming queer and dragged him to parties to get drunk and was now sitting on the couch watching cartoons on a Saturday like a lazy ass, like a bum with no future who was determined to rob Sora of his future too.
They came out of the room just a few minutes later, together, Belle rubbing Sora's back soothingly. Sora looked like Riku had seen him at least a few times; tired but mostly satisfied, and always just aftera little venting. His mouth was twisted to the side, but otherwise his expression was at an equlibrium.
Riku heard Belle mutter something to Sora, maybe in French, maybe in English - pat him on the cheek. She glanced at Riku, smiled, then headed down the hall again.
"Everything cool?" Riku asked nervously when Sora sat down on the opposite end of the couch, and nearly hit himself for sounding so stupid. Sora stared at him with those eyes, those oughtta-sky eyes even though there wasn't any time for thinking about those sorts of things when life was trying to bitch-slap you in the face.
"Yeah," Sora said dully. "I told her about Kairi, in case she found out about it later through the...parental grapevine and got mad at me for not telling her myself."
"...oh," Riku said. "Okay..."
Sora bit his lip again. "That's it," he added, no trace of mockery in his voice. And Riku didn't have to ask to know what he meant.
When Riku walked home, it felt like he was being rained on the whole time, even though it was only muggy outside.
The house was pretty full, considering. Mom and Dad and one of his brothers (he couldn't tell who, and barely cared, anyways). Riku felt like a trespasser, which wasn't unusual at all lately, when he walked inside and saw his parents eating breakfast. He didn't say anything, but he did head for his room right away.
He dumped his backpack on his bed, ran a hand through his hair and pulled out the top drawer of his dresser. He rifled through it, looking for a shirt that seemed remotely acceptable for a hospital visit.
His mouth felt dry when he heard his mother say something to his father and get up from the kitchen table.
He stood still, posed like a statue, "Boy Searching For Clean Shirt," until he felt his mom standing in the doorway. He continued to paw around past boxers and socks and basketball shorts. He could have sworn he'd had a plain black shirt in here somewhere.
"Glad you're back, Riku," she said.
"Yeah," he said, "Hi Mom." His mother was Japanese but didn't speak a word of it. Acted the part, though.
He pulled out a wrinkled, but unworn, green shirt that he'd thought he'd lost some time last year.
"So did you and Sora have fun?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"Oh, good," she said, walking into his room and tucking some hair behind her ear.
He discarded that shirt; it would probably be too tight anyways. He lifted up a ball of socks and dug near the back corners of the drawer.
"So do you have any other plans for today?" she said.
"Yeah, I'm just here to...get some stuff and then we're gonna...hang out..." Riku muttered, shoving that drawer shut and opening the next one down. His heart felt like a rotating fan that someone was holding in place.
It was that same feeling, the way he'd felt earlier waiting for Belle to find out about the Kairi thing or...one of the other things. But now it was all focused on the one thing. Can she tell? The things I do, and say, do they give me away? The way I am, it, it's only a matter of time before someone sees it. The...gayness. It reminded him of being a little kid, sneaking candy from the post-Halloween stash. If a parent saw him he hid it up his sleeve and thrilled from the adrenaline rush of getting away with it. It wasn't even really about eating candy. He just wanted to sneak it under their noses.
"Again?" his mom asked. So there went his heart, thumpitythumpaDUMP-BUMP. If you hung out too much at one person's house, did your parents immediately think...that?
"Uh-huh," Riku said. "We might head to the beach. Sora likes looking for, you know, little animals and stuff." Or - or if you knew too much about what they liked and what they didn't. Would that seem...gay? The way he talked about Sora, was it the way people talked about best friends or about boyfriends? ThumpadabumpadaBUMP.
"Well, if you two end up having dinner together, bring him here, okay? It'll seem rude if you're always eating at their house. And bring your cellphone with you, in case you need anything." He nearly fainted with relief at the gentle reminders, just as they always were. The fact that he and Sora were going to visit Kairi, not the beach, didn't matter.
"Yeah, Mom," he said. "Okay."
"The safest course is to do nothing against one's conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death."
- Voltaire
Riku was growing disturbed by the number of times he'd had to visit the hospital in the last month or so. It was only twice, sure, but before that he hadn't had to come in since...well, since he was born, frankly.
It was busy on a Saturday morning, which Riku supposed was a bad thing for a hospital. Being busy meant the halls were crowded with unnecessary people. And they were never happy people - old, fat couples visiting their daughters giving birth, or families crowding around grandparents. It was a little depressing.
"Riku," Sora said. "C'mon, this way."
"Coming," Riku called, following Sora down another hall and through a set of doors. "How far away is she?"
"Next floor," Sora said distractedly, trying to look through the reinforced glass windows in each door as he walked. The hospital was not entirely white. The tiles were patterned unevenly in green and purple and brown, though they were chipped in a few places; the walls held pictures of happy babies and men holding the hands of smiling bald women. It smelled sharp and clean like a new car. Unnatural, even offensive.
The clattered up some stairs, covered in textured rubber for traction, to the next floor.
And, when they finally found Kairi, she was playing absently with a piece of her hair.
There was no heaviness, no weight when they walked into the room. There wasn't the crushing awfulness Riku had felt when he'd seen Sora, because Kairi had two parents and a little brother, and she wasn't asleep. She didn't have a cast, either.
Her eyes were tired, bloodshot, and she had lines under them. Her hair was messy and she was pale, jaundiced, even. But it was nothing in comparison. Riku remembered that Tuesday, coming into Sora's room in the near-empty hospital; watching him sleep in that sad little curled up position with his arm flung out to one side like he couldn't stand seeing it and choking down some sort of horrible dream, all alone.
Sora Goodwin had seen his parents die and his brother separated from him and he still seemed like the most normal guy Riku had ever met. And here Kairi was, with two parents and a little brother, and she looked like the world had fallen on her shoulders.
For a second, Riku felt a flash of the anger he knew Sora must have been talking about when he told Riku about being mad at television shows. Because they thought they were so dramatic, and here people were, having to live that crap. He wondered why Sora wasn't mad all the time.
Sora grabbed Riku's hand and laced their fingers, dragging him into the room and right next to the bed. He was a few centimeters shorter than Riku, which Riku'd never noticed before.
"Hey Kairi!" he said, beaming at her. She looked up, her mouth open and her eyebrows slack for just a second before "Hey Sora!"
Riku thought about their laced hands, held just below the rim of the bed out of Kairi's sight. His heart started to feel like a fan again. She was a girl, she was intuitive, and she probably gossiped - !
No she doesn't, said some other part of his brain. She's just the opposite.
Riku found he didn't care. But he didn't take his hand out of Sora's; he didn't know why. Holding hands was a girly thing to do.
"You feeling okay?"
Kairi grinned, but then paused and closed her mouth. There had been something sort of blackish on her teeth. She raised her hand up to her mouth and touched her fingers to her lips and smiled with her mouth closed. "I think they made me swallow some sort of weird stuff to dilute the alcohol or something," she muttered from behind her hand. "But apparently it's gonna stain like this all day. Tastes like mud, too," she laughed.
"Ugh," Sora wrinkled his nose and squeezed Riku's hand. "Do you have to keep drinking it?"
Kairi shook her head. "No, they already pumped my stomach. I'm just still here because...I don't know, they like, want to keep an eye on me or something?" she laughed again, awkardly, then looked to the side.
"Oh, yeah," Sora said knowingly. "I had to stay like a week after surgery here. It's so annoying!"
Kairi looked at him and giggled and said "I know! What do they think is gonna happen? I'm not going to like, spontaneously get drunk."
And then she backed off, facially, looked down and sat up a little better in the bed. She pressed her hand harder against her mouth.
"Ah," she said, closing her eyes tightly. She opened them again. They were black, now, since her contacts had been taken out. Riku liked her better that way. "Th-thanks," she said meekly, "For...I mean, yeah. Oh God, I'm gonna puke."
"It's no problem," Sora said, smiling at her. "We kind of - well, I kind of owed you the favor." He watched her wretch once and then open her eyes to look at him. She shrugged and gave him a weak smile.
"Nothing to throw up anymore," she explained.
"You're gonna be fine, right?" Riku surprised himself by asking, even though he spoke softly and looked down. For all the world it sounded like he could have asked her what time it was. It was the opposite of the way he usually was, which was to say: telling himself he'd get out of bed by the count of ten and then not doing it. Or telling himself to say something to someone on the count of ten, and then not doing it. He just said it.
"Oh, yeah, yeah," Kairi nodded and frowned. "I'm fine. At least, physically. I don't know what my parents are going to do to me..." she leaned back into her baby-blue, non-patterned, neutral hospital pillows and sighed. "They just left, actually. My mom's coming back in an hour to check on me." She sniffed. "They actually brought my little brother to see me. He's twelve and they brought him to see his drunk-on-her-ass older sister. Maybe they like, wanted to make an example out of me."
She crossed her arms and blinked and looked to the side again.
Riku didn't say anything else.
"Hey now," Sora frowned a sideways frown and put his free hand over hers, even though it had a rough cast on it. His fingers, at least, touched the back of her hand. "I'm sure that's not it. They're probably just worried about you! And just...glad you're okay."
Kairi coughed dryly and put the corners of her palms against her eyes. "I know that, I know, they're glad I'm safe right now." She sighed. For a few moments, nobody said anything. "For now I can ride the pity train, at least until I get out of the hospital. That's not..." She looked right into Riku's eyes then.
He definitely liked her better, when she wasn't wearing contact lenses, and when she was being sincere.
"For now," she said, "I'm just shoulda-woulda-coulda-ing myself until I go crazy."
"Yeah," Riku said agreeably, because it seemed like he ought to say something. "It's...I'm sure you'll be fine." He felt so awkward, standing, hiding the one hand.
"I'm sorry, can I tell you guys something?" she asked, switching her gaze between the both of them.
The hospitals rooms seemed...whiter, than he remembered.
"What is it?" Sora said softly.
"I - I really don't want to go back to school. I mean, I know we've only got like a week and a half left, but still, I mean..." She wiggled around in the sheets. You could just see the outline of her toes, if you looked, in the blankets.
"I'm gonna be 'that drunk girl', you know? Like, that's who I'll be. The girl who got drunk and almost died." She sniffled or sighed or summat. She kept wiggling around. "I sound like a cautionary tale for health class, huh?"
Sora looked at Riku, who met his eyes with an unwavering stare that pierced the back of your skull and dared you, goddamn dared you to look away or to say anything to him, or to pull yourself away, dared you to do it. Sora looked at Kairi again.
"I'm the kid who tried to slit his own wrists," he said quietly, pressing his lips together. "I'm the kid who tried to commit suicide. That's who I am at school."
Kairi opened her mouth, but Sora cut her off. "I know it's different since I didn't actually try to do it, but I'm still that kid at school. When people think about suicide, they go to me." He patted her arm. "Believe me. Being the girl who got drunk one time is gonna be way easier, doofus!" She gave him a sort of halfhearted giggle. Riku could tell she wanted to be left alone. She was in a mood where she didn't want to feel better.
Riku was pretty sure Sora saw this, and kept going. "Plus," he said. "If anyone says anything out of line, I'll make Riku...glare his death glare at them." Kairi raised her eyebrows and looked at Riku.
"Grr," said Riku blandly. "I'm a bulldog."
That got Kairi to laugh out loud, which she seemed to regret; she held that delicate little white hand to her mouth again.
When she'd recovered, she looked at them both again. Right at their faces, just a few feet above their linked hands. Hidden hands. Could she tell? Girls were intuitive, weren't they? Oh God. He could forget about it for a short while, but it always came back.
"You know," she said conversationally, "In seventh grade, I had the biggest crush on you, Riku."
Riku basically choked on his own spit then. "Ah, um - " Well? What was he supposed to say? "Thank you"?
"Oh, no no no - " she waved her hands in front of her torso to stop his train of thought. "I don't now, don't worry! I mean, no offense, or anything. But in seventh grade," she hissed through her teeth, "Ye-ah...I dunno."
The bed squeaked a little, and she giggled. Riku basically had nothing to say. He wondered if she'd meant that to be flattering, or if she was like Sora and just said things without expecting anything to come of them.
Kairi's eyes were tired, hot; her hair was frizzy from the unusually persistent humidity. Perhaps, if Riku had been bothering to pay attention, he would have noticed the way she consciously ran her hands over her body, as if to assure herself it was still there; the way that she never let her gaze wander from the two boys in her room like she was afraid they, too, would leave. He did notice these things, but didn't stop to wonder why she was doing any of them; Kairi was still a ditz, and a spaz, and she had brought her present upon herself, to him. Sora noticed these things, too. He didn't hide his cast.
"Actually, it's pretty funny," she said eventually, laughing a little preemptively. "I was talking with my friend yesterday, and she totally has this theory that you're asexual. I mean, we weren't, like, talking about you or anything, but yeah." She giggled. "Can you believe that?"
"Hm," Sora rolled his eyes and squeezed Riku's fingers. "If there's one thing I know about Riku, it's that he's most definitely barely sexual."
Yeah, sexual like a bulldog, Riku thought sarcastically to himself. He considered saying it out loud for a few laughs and decided against it. It would be a...weird thing for him to say. He was overthinking things.
He looked up again, then, to the lights, letting his hand fall out of Sora's casually. He thought about being blinded by them. Of all places, a hospital seemed like a good place to have a medical crisis. He thought about just staring at the lights until the sunspots in his eyes wouldn't go away, and never looking at anything, ever again. He wondered if it would really make any sort of a difference. He wondered if moths had good eyesight, or if they needed it, flying around in the dark all the time and flocking towards open flames.
"Oh?" Kairi looked falsely intrigued, and happy to change the subject. "Really? Does Sora know all about your secret trysts with girls, Riku?"
"Actually - " Sora started to speak and was stopped when Riku snapped his head back down to look at him.
Riku had never really thought about communication, before. He'd always assumed that if he had a secret, he'd be the one to tell it. That Sora would know to shut up because Riku knew that was the best idea. But Sora wasn't Riku. Sora Goodwin was not the loneliest person in the world. He looked at Sora very carefully; looked at his blue-blue eyes and his brown hair made of coarse spikes, and his primary-colors clothing with too-big shoes and bare hands and a giant white cast. He knew he couldn't stop another person from doing something. Nobody read minds.
"Oh my gosh!" Kairi said, beaming, "Wow, I mean, really? Honestly. Honestly, I never would have - wait."
Riku felt something in the back of his mind shatter like a piece of glass and get rushed through his bloodstream in pumps, shards, poking at his chest and legs.
"So you guys are dating? I mean, each other? Like, I don't want to be forward or anything, but is that right?"
Which meant he'd done something or said something, Hell, even thought something and given himself away which meant that anyone could see it, like he was wearing it on his sleeve everyone knew, everyone could see it like he had on a poster board or something that screamed "I AM GAY" to the whole fucking world - ! It wasn't fair! He didn't even know if he was! He didn't want to think about that, he had better things to do, like pick out colleges and work at summer jobs and learn to drive. He'd be leaving this stupid island soon, anyways.
Ah.
And therein lied Riku Tepes's peace. It didn't matter if the people on this island knew he was sort of gay. Because he only had to last another year until he could go somewhere else. Dump them all. Dump the whole island like a gigantic landfill.
And what? Be a hateful shit somewhere else, but in college this time?
The thing Riku Tepes hated most about Sora Goodwin was that he seemed to love everybody, and he was making Riku hate his own self.
"Ah," Sora said. "Well, yup. Basically. Right, Riku?"
"Uh-huh..." Riku said, staring absently at nothing at all, really, and licking his lips. "Right."
Kairi made the sort of face people made when they looked at kittens or very small people. Her eyebrows raised, her mouth open and smiling. "Aw!" she said, which was fucking condescending, "I never would have guessed!" Really?
Riku didn't say anything, so Sora did. "Don't - tell anybody, okay? Please?"
"Of course I won't. That's your business," she said diplomatically, which was surprising.
Sora smiled at her. "Good," he said, "'Cause Riku's acting all self-conscious again."
Riku rolled his eyes. "Grr," he said again, just as blandly.
They laughed.
Probably the most horrifying moment of the whole visit was when Sora's board-certified psychiatrist came into Kairi's hospital room to speak with her. Riku had never been in a room in which the majority of the people were going to mandated therapy, as far as he knew. It was a little worrying.
And the shrink had smiled at Sora and asked him about how school was. And then she'd carefully, quietly, sneakily tiptoed up to and around the topic of Riku, who stood there like a chicken waiting to be cornered, with a little "So, is this the infamous Riku?" which had made Riku feel kind of weird. That he was a topic in therapy sessions. That was a little weird.
He'd felt like he was being examined even closer.
His train of thought had basically been Oh God she's a psychologist or no wait a psychiatrist that's even worse can't they smell gay on people it's probably really obvious to them I don't know I don't know I don't know but she's a shrink they can tell things about people that people can't tell about themselves and she can probably see it or tell by the things that I do and say and think and the way that I act and talk to Sora or Kairi even or maybe just me standing here means I have something to hide
Until she'd requested to speak privately with Kairi and the two boys had been promptly, if politely, nudged out of the room to stand in the hallway.
"Are you mad?" Sora asked Riku quietly. How could he do that? Ask it so simply? Riku didn't know.
"No," Riku said, "Just surprised, I guess."
"Oh, good," Sora said. He never seemed as crazy cheerful when it was just him and Riku. Maybe he thought he didn't need to be. Maybe he just wasn't. "Kairi told me her best friend says she's bisexual, anyways, so I figured she'd be fine with it. Oh," he said, turning to Riku, "You've got...you've got a, uh," he snapped his fingers and frowned. "Oh, I know this word...un cil..." He shook his head and tapped his cheek. "Right here."
"A smudge?" Riku asked, rubbing just under his own eye with an index finger. "Dirt, you mean?"
"No," Sora said. He pointed to his eye. "I can't remember. Uh, the little hairs on the edges of your..." he drifted off again. "Man, I'm so bad with these. I remember, I do, the bits around the eye...they all have eye in them, don't they? La paupière et le sourcil sont..." he frowned. "Never mind, just tell me."
"You mean eyelid and eyebrow?"
Sora clapped his hands, a bit too loudly, and then snorted and looked around to see if anyone had heard him. "Yes!" he said. "That's it. So the hairs on your eyelid...?"
"Eyelash?"
"Eyelash! I knew it was something really obvious like that! I can never remember those. You've got an eyelash on your cheek."
Riku rolled his eyes and kept rubbing his thumb over his face to get rid of it.
"No, no, other one," Sora was saying, "Here, let me." He wiped a slightly sweaty thumb under Riku's left eye; Riku caught a whiff of vegetables, and summer, like freshly mowed grass.
"Thanks," he said quietly.
"Um," Sora said. "We don't have to tell anybody else. You don't even have to tell your parents, if you don't want. But can I - I mean, it's just because I don't like to lie. So, my psychiatrist, and Belle - "
"Sure," Riku told him. "Yeah. Whatever." Just one more year. If it was so bad, he could go to school in...Finland, or someplace. Finland seemed pretty cool. And very far away.
"It's not that big a deal," Sora muttered, almost to himself, "It's really not. Destiny Island isn't super-religious or something, anyways, and it's not like we're walking around making out and like, sharing ice cream or anything. And I have never heard either of us use the word 'fabulous'." He giggled. "Hey Riku?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you remember, on the first day I came to this school, I asked you what a 'fairy' was and you told me it was a gay person?"
"Nn." Riku leaned against the wall, and his hair fell out from behind his ear and got in his eye. It looked almost artificial, in the fluorescent lights.
Sora laughed again. "I think...I don't really care. If I'm a fairy, I have magic powers, right?"
Riku had never thought about it like that. He hadn't really thought about it at all. He didn't say anything, though, because Sora wasn't finished.
"What I think people don't get about magic, in the real world," he said, "Is that magic's never the thing that does the finding. You have to look for it, and you have to know what it is once you find it."
"Sure," Riku said, "Guess so." Oh jeez. He was dating a five-year-old.
Sora leaned in and touched his lips to Riku's, very innocent, very little movement, and no teeth-clicking or anything. Riku let him, and closed his eyes, though nothing could disspell the paranoia. He knew, even when he leaned back into it, he was aware; the steady rush at the back of his mind of what if someone sees what if the doctor's about to come out or if a nurse comes down the hallway or a patient or a parent oh God what if somebody I know comes down the hallway
It was the last kiss they would share their junior year of high school. Two, that was all in total.
And even when Sora backed up, just a little, to look at Riku's whole face and smile a dopey smile, the thoughts didn't really stop. Well, they did somewhat. They were cut off but - unfinished, on the brink as if permanently paused. Hanging by a thread at the edge of a cliff such that Riku's mind could not sit, not even take a breath, all because of Sora,
A/N: .
Oh man, I so would hate me right now. Ending a chapter with a comma. Blame Lewis Thomas. "Notes on Punctuation," PAH! That bastard robbed me of sleep...
Seriously, though. Thoughts? Too unrealistic? Slow-moving? Dull? Too much dialogue?