They Must Lead You Elsewhere.
A/N: Haha. "In which Sora is a pervert and Kairi makes pastries." Are crepes pastries? Anyways.
Okay first of all. What the heck happened last chapter? Are Axel and Roxas really that exciting, or was it just "let's screw with Nitlon's little pet statistics theory" day or something? Because I know I'm not gonna hear from all you people again this chapter and now it's gonna be disappointing and like...oh well. I will just put this down in my book as a Bizarre Anomaly.
Oh. And. And. Thanks to Minikimii who, while not actually beta-ing anything, let me bother her over MSN pretty much...every day? I bounced ideas off of her while she was thinking important thinky-thoughts. And mumbling about sodium.
...it's ten o'clock, do you know where my sanity is? I need to be put down. Or...tranquilized. I am...so sorry.
"Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened.
"So Small God laughed a hollow laugh, and skipped away cheerfully. Like a rich boy in shorts. He whistled, kicked stones. The source of his brittle elation was the relative smallness of his misfortune."
- Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things, p. 20
and Riku smelled like skin in the shower all clean but not soapy yet just there and human and Riku smelled like oakwood like Sora's grandfather's house before grandpa got sent to live in a home and before grandma died
and they must have been on a wall or a tree or a veryhighup-place because there wasn't anything around but there was sky and there was what they were sitting on but around them nothing except sky and air and Riku who was everywhere always
and Riku was kissing him Riku kissed Sora kissed Riku who did something that real Riku never would with his tongue in Sora's mouth and ohhhh it felt pretty nice, and Riku was hugging him with his arms all around everywhere
and Sora could feel Riku's hips up against his own Riku's hips sharp like two foci on an ellipse and sometimes it seemed like that was the thickest part of his body like it wasn't his head holding him together and
Sora took a big gasping breath and went in for more kissing which was deep and open-mouthed and desperate oh God it was so desperate like he'd never kissed anybody else before and he never ever wanted to kiss anybody else but Riku
which he didn't
and Riku had his hands on Sora's sides running his fingers up and down like feathers like feathers made of light or water or fire but not earth because that was too heavy like hands made of sky or
so Sora put an arm around Riku's neck and an arm around Riku's two sharp hips and pulled him forward and clamped him there with legs and the wind
tickled the hairs on the backs of their necks and it felt like spiders crawling on your skin but in a nice way in a way that spiders were nice because they had been there for so long like Sora felt he had been here for so long waiting waiting waiting for something to happen or for - because Riku was here now and it felt like Riku had been there always because as much as he changed, he didn't, and he was the thing that didn't change and that waited for Sora and he was the thing that pressed up against Sora's body with their eyes closed and their lips locked in a kiss
and Sora couldn't pull away he couldn't make himself do it so he breathed in through his nose over and over again because he was so scared, scared like if he stopped to take a breath Riku would stop kissing him forever and ever and ever
so he tucked his fingers in where Riku's jaw met his ears and pulled him forward to keep him there and Riku did something he would never actually do in real life ever, no matter what, with his hands and he kept running his sky fingers everywhere and where he touched there was the air, like breath like still, like Sora could
breathe again.
he gasped in big gulps of air and looked in Riku's eyes which were real Riku's eyes, like snake eyes or no, like dragon eyes God were they beautiful and when they weren't beautiful they were so distracting so, so distracting so, Sora kissed him again and one of them made a noise
and because Sora knew it was a dream and he knew that he could he slid his hands under Riku's shirt
because he was a teenage boy and he couldn't help it because Riku was so soft and pretty but he was also sharp and pointy with dragon eyes, Riku was a dragon, a land dragon on an island running his thumbs along Sora's belly and licking Sora's teeth in a way that real Riku never ever ever would because he just didn't have it in him, and anyways, he wouldn't be Riku if he did
but dream Riku kissed him like a hungry snakedragon and held Sora close and licked his collarbone and bit him, not enough to break the skin but enough to remind Sora that he was a teenage boy and that this was a teenageboydream but that it didn't matter because Riku's hands were tickling the line of his pants
so Sora dug the five points of his hand into dream Riku's ohsosoft silver dragon hair and it was coarse and slipped through his fingers like mud and then dream, Riku smirked against Sora's neck and kissed it in that onlyinyourteenageboydreams hairtearing swearmouthing hipbucking way
in a way that made Sora's stomach feel like it was quivering inside of him something twitched
in a way that made Sora's legs twitch suddenly all the way through like getting shocked with a lightning bolt like running a marathon and
The kicking of his own legs was what woke Sora up. He was panting hard, and his blood pumped in his ears with a sort of forced swishing sound, like he'd gone for a run. The air was so cold that inhaling almost hurt in a dull, thudding way.
He sat up a little bit, and the blankets fell down a little bit. He was hit by the frozen wave of mornings in the winter, so he lay back down and waited for the blood to rush back into his brain.
It took a few minutes for the first you're an awful person to hit him. Sora knew it was normal, but that didn't make it feel right to have sex dreams. He didn't like it.
Which was a lie, of course, he loved them when they were happening, but after he woke up he felt so dirty and horrible. Dirty...was the right word for it. At least they were of Riku and not some random person his mind made up. He felt a little bad, though, that while dream Riku looked like real Riku, he behaved very differently.
Sora heard a shift on a bed, the creak of someone flipping for the cool side of the pillow, someone who wasn't Riku. Sora feels his already thick stomach get heavier and sink lower. Roxas.
He'd had a sex dream while in a room with his little brother. His little brother who always hated change and was probably still adjusting to his brother's intimacy with another boy, let alone Sora having dreams about Riku doing - things - ! Sora hated himself in that moment. He hated himself so deeply that he could hardly bare to turn around to look at Riku, because across from Riku was Roxas. His kid brother - his - .
Sora knew that Roxas maybe had dreams like that but...no, no, he couldn't think about that. The same way he couldn't think about the hotness coiled inside of his stomach which, the first time he'd had it, he'd thought just meant he really needed to pee. The same way he absolutely refused to acknowledge the thing below his stomach because it just felt so...nasty and dirty and gross and he wanted it to go away.
He took a few really deep breaths, then peeled the corner of his covers back, letting some cold air inside. He shifted his legs around a little and could, maybe, feel it getting a little better. The hotness in his belly, meeting the algid morning air, and it helped because it was distracting. To a degree.
It is better, Sora thought. But it is better in the way that treading water in a river with two hundred piranas is better than treading water in a river with two hundred and one piranhas.
He took a very deep breath and closed his eyes; he rolled over onto his side to look at Riku. Or, the back of Riku's head. And the expanse of Riku's back, which was covered by a t shirt, but was still weird to look at since in Sora's dream - well, no. Sora stopped thinking about that. The hotness in his stomach would coil tighter if he didn't.
But as he came down, slowly, off of his dream-high from pent-up sexual frustration and teenage hormones, he got another feeling. It was delivered slowly, in liquid form, into his lungs and took their shape like hot wax. Quarter to six in the morning and it was the strangest thing, because his head was so cool and so was his torso, from being up in the cold air, but his waist and his legs were disgustingly warm and a little damp with sweat and the heat still coiled in his tummy, because he was staring at his boyfriend and still feeling a sort of aching want in his throat and his lungs.
Sora Goodwin looked at Riku Tepes, and he wanted.
It wasn't as if he didn't have Riku, or at least, as much as anybody ever had another person. He was dating Riku. Riku who used to glare at everyone, whose mp3 player was his best friend, who stumbled over his words because he somehow wasn't quite in the practice of using them or, maybe, just didn't want to.
And yeah, Riku kind of hated everything, but he seemed to like Sora. And Sora had always been sort of...prone to jealousy. Or if not jealousy than a tugging possessiveness, want me, think about me, dream about me, I dream about you. So it was perfect, really.
Riku did like him. He'd made it pretty clear or, at least, as clear as Riku Tepes could make liking a person. Riku kissed back when Sora kissed him. He listened. He smiled, sometimes, and he hugged when it was important. So at least...at least Sora knew he was being irrational.
He just sort of wished Riku wanted him the way he wanted Riku. The wanting...came in waves. It was worst in the morning, because every time he woke up he was scared that Riku was already awake. It was like a pet fear of his, to wake up to Riku's horrified face: "You were dreaming what about me? God, that's disgusting!"
He knew Riku wouldn't do that. But he feared. On his worse days, Sora's mantra was that nothing was permanent.
The want in his lungs wouldn't go away, even though he tried to breathe it out, so he shook his head uselessly. He reached his hand out, brushed the hair on the back of Riku's head with the backs of his knuckles. It was smooth, clumping just a little from what was probably sweat and oil build-up overnight. Sora put a hand to his own head and scratched it, because it reminded him, and now he felt itchy.
Riku made a "mmf" noise, squeezed his eyes shut, then cracked one open. He rolled over, and the mattress squeaked underneath him; krrkrrkrrk. Instinctively, Sora glanced up at the other bed. Roxas hadn't moved. Buried under the blankets like a termite.
Sora looked back down at Riku, who was frowning at him a squinty-eyed morning frown. "What is it?"
"What?"
"You were looking at me funny."
Sora almost laughed at that, but, but, Roxas was in the room and he was like a dog, he hated change, and. Sora smiled at Riku, who narrowed his eyes thoughtfully then relaxed his whole face, smooth and - in a way that was just so Riku, so blank and maybe sharp with residual anger stuck in his eyes like cobwebs, that it made the want swell up like heated gas. But at least the dream was fading.
Real Riku didn't smell like soap. He didn't smell like much of anything, anymore, because Sora was so used to him; the bed smelled like boy-sweat.
"Are you...sure that you're okay?"
Sora shook his head, which could have meant anything, really, and shrugged. So his friend kept his face very blank and - and Riku reached up, with just a hand, and touched his fingers to Sora's cheek. He frowned, thoughtfully - again, and his fingers were cool. Cool and smooth, because they'd grown up on an island with the rest of him, no hard labor, and maybe you didn't need good circulation on an island where it was always warm. Sora thought about it, about how a lot of people probably had soft hands, but maybe a couple hundred years ago it was only nobles. 'Cause everyone had to work on a farm.
Riku kissed Sora with his fingers, and Sora laughed quietly like it would let the nervous out of his stomach and reached up a hand to mimic the action. But something in his heart started to hurt when he saw the criss-cross net pattern on his hand. Skin that was not his, glued onto his palm, hideous. Deformed, maybe. It looked like fine fence mesh had gotten stuck on his hand and the skin had grown over it.
"S- sorry," he said, and tucked his hand back under the comforters.
"Huh? Why?" Riku asked. It wasn't even that sort of 'I know you mean your hand but I'm trying to tell you I don't mind' question. Riku just...didn't know. Sora kinda loved that.
"Nothing," he said. But he kept his hand in a tight fist by his thigh.
Riku Tepes grabbed his wrist, brought it up, and looked at Sora's fist. He relaxed his hand, though. It wasn't like this was anything knew to Riku. Sora knew, though, knew it was disgusting, sorry it existed, wished it would go away because people could see it and it wasn't - wasn't really - skin, it wasn't. It didn't move with the muscles of his hand. Every part of him knew it was foreign. It was like having a rock in your sandal.
So feeling another hand, a smooth, cool one, around his wrist, made him angry and happy and the same time.
And the way that Riku stared at it, stared at his hand with a carefully blank expression like he was reading a math problem, Sora started to imagine lazers coming out of his eyes. Zzzp, all over his hand.
For a couple of nice seconds, Sora fancied Riku would do something sweet and romantic, like kiss his fingertips or his palm, or press his cheek against Sora's hand. Which pretty effectively told Sora that, yeah, he was still drifting in dream-land, and really, he wasn't that needy. He just...liked to know that people were there. That they would be there for a long time. He was just...a little sappy, sometimes, and he was allowed to be. Just 'cause Riku was a teenage boy and acted like it (except for the libido part, growled what was left of the coiled hotness) didn't mean that Sora had to be. He was just a little sappy, because sometimes people did things like die when you were at Cid's house and came back late.
It was more of a precautionary measure than anything else.
Riku didn't kiss his palm, or lace their fingers, or anything, really.
Sometimes it didn't so much feel like there was skin on there as it felt like there was rolly bumpy cloth sticking to your muscles.
"The dead look so terribly dead when they're dead."
- W. Somerset Maugham
Riku looked at Sora's hand, and Sora, on his side above him, and wondered if his hand still hurt. Did it still hurt, even after it was fixed, if you'd had it be un-fixed for so long? Did you get ghost pains in your hand? Did your brain even still let it be your hand, could you feel - anything, if it wasn't your skin?
All the thought about skin made Riku feel uncomfortably metaphorical.
But for some reason he sort of didn't want to put Sora's hand back. "Put it back" like you were browsing soup cans in a grocery store.
He didn't know why he'd done that thing with his hand on Sora's face. It was just another one of those little world things that happened, around Sora they happened too much.
Riku Tepes felt like Sora Goodwin knew more than he did about everything and it made him angry. Just because he didn't know anybody who'd died, that made him - irrelevant, or - ? Jeez. He didn't know if Sora thought that about him, didn't really care, but it was more Riku Tepes being mad at the world.
And that thought, that oh-so-comfortable, thought-so-much thought, made Riku laugh just under loud and press the pad of his thumb to Sora's middle finger. He closed one eye and kept the other open, if a little blurry; blinked at the crust mister sand man had put in his eyes overnight. Sora seemed very high up, since Riku's head wasn't even on the pillow, and he was sitting up halfway, and Hell if that didn't seem right up to par with Mister No-shoes.
Sora grinned at him, a real shit-eating grin, which was when there was a dull sort of creak from the other bed and Sora's face died. Or fell, maybe, was the right word for it. Deflated.
The sleepy happiness was gone; Sora's eyes were wide when he stared at the other bed and he swallowed nervously.
Riku didn't really know what to do. Or even...why. Was something wrong in the other bed?
"S- sorry," Sora apologized for something he didn't understand, pulled his hand back and dug himself further under the covers. Riku wondered, though, he was so goddamn curious because yeah, you'd think it was maybe about we're acting gay and what if someone sees us but it was only ever Riku who even gave a little bit of a shit about it so - Sora?
But Riku wasn't good with people. He didn't know how they worked, inside or out, or how to fix them. So he got up and went to the bathroom.
And Axel killed a moth.
And after Axel left Riku washed his hands and then spent ten minutes rubbing out the brown smudge left on the sink with his wet fingers until his ears started to ring with the sound of skin squeaking over tile. It was like dust. Powder. It disappeared after a few seconds but - it wasn't gone. Like paint like dust like powder, burlkburlkburlk, and God things were so dead when they died. He had to keep rubbing it out or his mind would start running.
How could Axel do that? Hell if Riku knew the guy at all, but if Axel was Roxas's friend, then he must have known Roxas's parents were dead, must have known that you didn't just take life...didn't...you just didn't.
Which made Riku realize that, yeah, okay, maybe he was right the first time. Maybe he did think differently. Wrong, even. Who the fuck got upset over a moth? A stupid bug! That guy was the normal one. Riku was fucked up. He was fucked up and he didn't even have the excuse of dead parents.
He was fucked up and he didn't care.
He straightened and wiped his hands on his pants, saw himself in the mirror; shorter hair still snowy-angel-white. He sighed and swallowed thickly. The irony of being in a bathroom hit him pretty quickly; Guess I'm the one who needs a second now, huh, Sora?
Someone had written something on the mirror. Or - no, Riku leaned over and smoothed his fingers over it. Someone had scratched an English word into the mirror, which struck Riku as pretty funny, but he'd seen Spanish and even sometimes German slang on the buses on Destiny Island, so maybe English was like that in France.
Arctic, it said, in broken, uneven and differently sized letters. Riku imagined someone sitting there on the sink, maybe desperate, late at night when he (it would be a he, since it was a boys' dorm) was sure nobody else would come in, pinching a paperclip between two tired fingers and deciding to scratch that word in there. Why? What did "arctic" mean?
Riku sighed. Maybe it didn't mean anything. Nothing ever meant anything.
It just didn't.
Sora hid under the blankets while Riku was gone because that Axel guy was coming back in.
"Hey, Rox," was the gravelly voice. It was a little hard to breathe, suffocating under blankets, but Sora didn't want to make it awkward. Besides, it was comfortable and he was barefoot, even though he was pretty sure that Riku had worn socks to bed? And anyways.
"Mmf," said Sora's little brother.
"I'm going for a walk, okay? Promise I'll be back in fifteen, twenty minutes tops. Hey, don't go back to sleep, Frenchie!" There was a groan. "Tu marches toujours," was the mumble.
"Uh, sure," Axel said, "I'm not gonna pretend to know what that means. It's still pretty early, but - "
"You're always walking," Roxas said, accent there but not as thick as usual. There was silence for a good few seconds, almost painful but, hey, Hell if Sora didn't know about awkward silences.
"Yeah," Axel said quietly. "I am. Get some sleep, kiddo. I think we can check in at like, noon?"
"Okay." Sora couldn't help it. With just the crook of his finger he pulled the blanket down a little to watch them, just in time to see a big hand on his little brother's head, which made him happy. 'Cause sure it was a guy that worked at a circus, only there for one month a year, but Roxas had a Riku.
No - wait. Sora nearly snorted out loud at that.
No, he corrected his thoughts, I do not want my straight little brother dating a twenty-one-year-old. That is not what I meant. He has a person.
Which kind of had him wondering if his little brother wanted him dating a seventeen-year-old boy. But Roxas probably didn't care that much, right? He probably didn't, Sora was just being silly. Roxas probably thought that Riku would disappear from their lives as soon as he graduated high school.
Which was a thing that Sora didn't actually want to think about at all.
"If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us."
- Herman Hesse
Day four meant getting dragged to a French cuisine cooking class for tourists and trying to make it seem normal that it was thirty kids who spoke the same dialect of English with softened consonants and thirty assorted Christmas tourists.
Oh yeah, Riku thought, Christmas is in two days. Oops. He wondered if you were supposed to get a present for your boyfriend, or if you were just supposed to watch a cheesy movie together or something. Oh well. Maybe he'd ask Sora. Sora probably knew these sorts of things.
It was like he'd missed a class somewhere on how to properly behave. Or been sick the day they handed out brochures on etiquette. There were things you didn't say, people you had to mention, topics you didn't go near. He didn't get it. Didn't get why it was okay to talk about a kid who you thought tried to kill himself but was absolutely forbidden to say his parents had died in an accidental fire. And maybe he was the one with the problem, but if that was okay, then he was fine being a problem.
Nobody should talk about suicide, and this cooking class was one-hundred-thirty-five suicides long.
Riku wondered when he'd started thinking in things in terms of suicides, like they were standard units of time, like if he thought about them that way it wasn't people killing people after a while.
He shivered and told himself it was a little disturbed to be thinking these sorts of things when you were in a cuisine class at ten o'clock in the morning, and just because you had a conscience didn't mean you had to keep it on all the time.
He snorted. He didn't think a class catered for tourists was really all that much culture. That was like going on a tour bus through New York and saying you'd experienced the city.
You hadn't.
You'd experienced the bullshit the tour guide had spewed about how many cars crossed the bridge in a day and what famous person lived here and however many other meaningless things.
So he watched the chef with a big tall white hat talk about the history of crepes, what they're used for, talk about French desserts in the world, tell them to get into pairs.
So, Sora went with Roxas who was, of course, there.
And it wasn't that Riku minded cooking with Kairi. It wasn't like he had any interest in cooking anyways. He could make eggs and toast and pasta, and he could probably figure out stir fry if he tried. That was enough for him.
"Hey, can you measure out - " Kairi checked the recipe, "Two tablespoons of powdered sugar now?"
"Uh-huh," Riku said. When he put the measure in the bag, of course, it wheezed at him and a poof of white powder erupted into the air. It tickled the inside of his nostrils and he had to keep from sneezing. He looked around; apparently it was a pretty unimportant and small poof because nobody seemed to care, and it was already gone. He drew the sugar out, dumped it in the bowl, and dumped another in a few seconds later.
The room was set up like a classroom with counters full of ingredients instead of desks, and Roxas was right in front of Riku, which made it kind of hard to give a shit when Kairi started mixing ingredients together.
It was a pang of - not jealousy, exactly. Being jealous of a person's brother was a stupid thing to be jealous of. Of course he hadn't been there when Sora was a baby. Didn't want to be. He had his hands full dealing with Sora the teenager.
But watching them - ...Sora said something to his little brother, and Roxas snorted and elbowed him in the ribs. Sora stuck his tongue out and smeared some flour on Roxas's shirt. Roxas flicked his ear. Sora said something to him, Roxas laughed, shook his head, stuck his tongue out and said something back in lightning quick French. Sora frowned and said something back with that sort of teasing-older-brother lilt Riku had heard in his own siblings.
It didn't make sense. Riku had older brothers. He had three older brothers. And it wasn't like they never talked. It was just that...they all had other things to do. They were on good terms and all. But Riku never talked with them the way Sora and Roxas were. Even when they came home from college, there were the cursory "Sup Riku. How's high school?"
"Dunno. It is."
"Hn. I remember high school." And the brother - any of them, really, because it was one thing they had in common, the not-talking - would say, "Well, you'll be out soon anyways." And that would be it.
It made Riku wonder a little. Were Sora and Roxas the normal ones? Maybe they were the normal ones. Despite the family-separation-orphaning thing. Maybe they acted how brothers were supposed to, instead of the you-stay-out-of-my-way-I'll-stay-out-of-yours thing Riku did. Wouldn't be the first thing that Sora the orphan-with-a-fucked-up-hand did more normally than Riku. It wasn't so much that that might be true, but that Riku didn't know, that made him feel kind of funny on the inside.
Especially when Roxas glanced back at him.
Roxas Orcot-Goodwin's stare could cut right through a person.
And Riku was still staring at the back of his head after he turned around.
Sora laughed and fwapped Roxas's shoulder. And, in French, because he figured Roxas deserved a break, "Would you relax already? You keep glancing behind you like you expect something to attack!"
"I think your friend is looking at me," Roxas shot back. The words stumbled off of his tongue like prisoners off a slave ship. So glad to be - anywhere but inside.
"Who?" Sora spoke too slowly for Roxas's taste. But he was so depraved that even being in France, he savored every non-English word that came out of anyone's mouth. "Riku?" - and of course the guy would hear his own name! Jeez, Sora - "Don't worry. He looks at everyone a little weird. He's just kinda...not good with that stuff. Like, social things, I think."
"Jesus, Sora, you make it sound like your boyfriend is autistic." And Roxas would admit to putting a little harshness into the word boyfriend every time he had to say it.
"He's not! He's just antisocial, okay? I told you, he's really sweet." He tried to mix all the flour and powdered sugar and dry stuff together in the bowl without puffs. But Sora's smile looked like it hurt.
"...I really don't care, Sora," Roxas said.
He looked down at the counter. This was fucking ridiculous. Who the hell made pancakes when - who the hell took a class on how to make pancakes? He felt like banging his head on the table. He felt like going outside and staring at the sun until he couldn't see anymore. He felt like sinking.
Frankly.
That is to say.
What a goddamn lonely person Roxas Orcot-Goodwin was.
But at least he had a fucking right to be.
"Do you - Roxas?" Sora leaned the spatula on the side of the bowl to look at him. Roxas hated his brother's eyes. He hated looking at them because Sora had the pretty eyes. "Do you really hate him? Just because he's a boy?"
What Roxas really wanted to say to him in that moment was Oh, Sora, I have plenty of reasons to hate him! But he didn't.
"Never mind."
"I mean it!"
Of course you did! Roxas breathed in deeper. You just have to defend him and your whole little island like you took an extended vacation without me and I got sent to prison for not getting my hand burned enough. Just because I'm your little brother doesn't make me naive.
But Roxas didn't say that. He just sighed and poured some water into the bowl.
Everything was fucking complicated and it gave him a headache. He didn't even know who to be mad at anymore.
Arctic.
Riku was distracted. What was arctic? Was it talking about snow? About the Arctic circle? Current? He was really curious, probably because he knew there was no way for him to find out. He was pretty easily distracted.
"Hey, Riku?" Kairi nudged him with her hip. "Riku! Focus, man!"
"What?"
She rolled her eyes. "God, you're such a space case," she laughed. She pointed at the recipe, even though the book had been opened so infrequently that it was already half closed again. Riku flattened it. "What's it say now?"
"Did you add the milk?"
"Yup."
"Okay. It says...it says to take a walnut-sized spoonful of batter and like, spread it out on the grill thing."
She stared at the batter, the consistency of which was much closer to soup than it was to dough, and Riku wondered exactly how much of that constituted a walnut.
"Um," Kairi said. "Does it mean the inside of a walnut, or like, with its shell on and everything?"
"I dunno," Riku said. "Maybe it wants you to find the mean of the average volume of a shelled walnut and the average volume of an unshelled one."
"Doof," she mumbled, making a move to slingshot a tablespoon-full of batter at him but dropping it on the pan instead. Purposefully, Riku assumed.
"I know it's upsetting, since Mom and Dad died. I mean, there have been a bunch of changes -"
"I'm not upset! Okay? And if I were, it wouldn't be about - about them. Okay?"
"You're acting upset."
"...maybe I just changed. People change, Sora."
Sora sighed. "It's a big deal, Roxas. I mean, parents aren't supposed to just - like that. And then all this stuff happened and - "
"So what?" Roxas spat, "Everybody dies, Sora."
And Sora - winced, visibly, or at least flinched and closed his eyes and prayed to the highest cloud in heaven that nobody in this room besides the chef spoke fluent French. He turned to face his brother and he felt awful. Because he'd had a sex dream while his little brother was in the room. Because before and, briefly, after, he'd realized he'd had a sex dream with his brother in the room, he'd contemplated - masturbation, which - which was a totally normal healthy teenage boy thing to do but Roxas was right there in the room!
His shoes pinched his feet. Sora's socks were too big and his sneakers were too small, so they pinched his toes, but he was afraid of breaking them since he'd already had to duct-tape the fronts back together. Which didn't make any sense, but still. So he breathed in and looked at Roxas.
Roxas had been born with red hair. Really pale strawberry blond. That was one of the only things Sora remembered about Roxas-baby, which was what they called him. Roxas-baby and Sora-kid, both of who really liked the baby goats at the petting zoo, and when Roxas was born he always kicked off all of the sheets in his cradle and Sora always wrapped himself up tight in a cocoon of blankets.
They didn't know it, but they'd reversed their sleeping habits now.
Everybody dies, Sora.
It was one of those truths that was so obvious it didn't even mean anything and made Sora feel like puking.
They were related, alright.
"Roxas - " he felt a little silly staring so seriously at Roxas-baby, even if Roxas-baby had grown three inches in the last year and had the cheekbones to match. "I'm sorry. I'm not placating you. I mean - I mean duh, I'm not. Like...it sucks, I know that. But whatever is wrong, you can tell me, right? That whole blood is thicker than water thing. I love you."
"Sap." But Roxas was smiling, even if it was just a little bit.
Sora was terrible at giving Roxas pep talks. He was really awful. The few times it'd happened before, his words hadn't helped at all. Once they made it worse. But Sora was an older brother who cared enough to give shitty pep talks.
And Sora knew that Roxas was just an insecure puppy. Brother is a thick word.
"Charm and nothing but charm at last grows a little tiresome. It's a relief then to deal with a man who isn't quite so delightful but a little more sincere."
- W. Somerset Maugham
After that, it turned out it was surprisingly hard to meet up with kids from not-your-class-trip during the day. Roxas and Axel checked into their motel and Axel expressed extreme disinterest in formally stalking the Destiny Island Senior Year French Class Trip from museum to museum, which meant dragging Roxas to a book store and asking him what all of the titles meant before pissing him off enough to get him to just pick up a book at random and sit in the chair in the corner.
And Riku didn't know what arctic meant and he kept thinking about it. He figured he must have had a mind like that. He focused on things, probably.
Arctic arctic arctic. Like it was a riddle. Like it meant something, or like Riku needed it to mean something.
And Axel was the guy who killed the moth.
It made Riku feel so sick he wanted to get sucked into the pit of his stomach, and he was being forced to use his two hours of free time before dinner to go and talk to more people. People he never ever wanted to see because Destiny Island was big but at least it was closed, and he'd kind of looked forward to reading a book in their room or watching a DVD on Sora's laptop and making fun of the characters before they talked.
(What was really funny was that Riku was disgustingly good at predicting the lines before they were said in the movies. The protagonist would say "Jack, I...I don't know if..." and then trail off for a while, so Riku would add in a high-pitched voice: "I don't know if I can do this anymore, Jack!" And dammit if five seconds later she didn't say just that. It happened all the time. It made Sora crack up because he was terrible at it. And Riku thought that was odd.)
Riku felt like talking to Roxas was like meeting the parents. Only when you'd never met the Parents, anyone's Parents, in that regard, it was hard to draw the comparison at all.
Riku stuck his hands in his new-jacket-pockets and followed Sora down the sidewalk. Sora walked like he always knew where he was going. At first, on the island, Riku had thought that it was because he'd already gone to and from school, to and from the ice cream place, to and from the movie store, repeatedly before. But Sora had said he'd never been to Annecy. And he walked like he knew exactly where he was going.
Which Riku thought was disgustingly fitting and kind of painfully obvious and a little obnoxious, which seemed about right. Because who was he to mock? He was following the guy. He had no idea where they were.
It wasn't snowing anymore.
It was sunny in short bursts like soft lightning, and you could watch the shadow of a cloud creep up in front of you like sludge, moving with a slow, almost disturbingly distinct line forward forward forward until it was officially cloudy, and Riku glanced up now at the sun. It was a pale smudge behind a moving cloud.
So when the sun came back it was like watching light ooze over the buildings ahead of you and couldn't come fast enough, even though you were walking toward it, until you two were in its line of movement and Riku was in the sunlight again. He felt that vague warmth again, the kind that only happens if you sit in front of a sunny window and read a book until your back feels golden.
It was almost enough to distract him, the dizzying changes which really only happened once every five minutes.
So when they went into the bookstore, Riku let Sora do the talking.
"Hey," Sora half-jogged up to Roxas, swung an arm around his shoulders, "Whatcha reading?" He said it in English, which confused Riku a lot.
Roxas was standing, with a sweatshirt and jeans, looking a few years older than he was, in front of one of the bookshelves. He had a thin paperback in his hand and he was reading the author biography on the last page.
Roxas looked at Sora, held up the book so his brother could see the cover, then went back to reading.
Which fucking scared Riku.
Because he did that.
Not to Sora, but to everyone else. He didn't like to be interrupted when he was reading. So he held up the book, let them read the title, didn't say a word, usually didn't even lift his eyes from the page. More to prove a point to the nosy asker than because he was oh-so-engrossed in his book, but still.
Fucking shit. That wasn't the reason Sora liked him, was it? He shook his head. Of course not. Nobody wanted to date their little brother.
Roxas said something in French, very quickly to Sora who grinned at him and stuck his tongue out again. And Roxas rolled his eyes.
Riku wasn't really oblivious. Roxas Orcot-Goodwin, Orcot because they'd adopted him and Goodwin because he was born with it and wouldn't let go, glared at Riku, made sure he couldn't understand what Roxas was saying, ignored him, and took every opportunity to make sure Riku knew that Roxas was the brother. And had superiority. Had definition in Sora's life.
But the thing about acting like you don't care either way about anybody is that, usually, the only reason a person might do it is because he doesn't care either way about anybody and likes it that way.
Riku had thick skin.
But he couldn't shake the feeling that Roxas had something of his; something that Riku had too, right now, a trait or a thought. He recognized the quietness. It was not Riku's quietness of ten months ago. It was Riku's quietness of three years ago, when he discovered that high school cliches were true and, subsequently, lost interest in the whole of the world because it had lost interest in him.
And Roxas probably felt differently. Not so much apathy as...abandonment, maybe. How were you supposed to feel, when your parents were dead and you'd been at your friend's house? And now you were being sent somewhere to speak a language you couldn't. How did that feel? Riku couldn't imagine it for a second. Like reading a fantasy book.
Dragons were all well and good, but Riku had never seen a dragon, so he didn't care if the hero felt afraid. Because he didn't know what it felt like to have a giant lizard breathing down your neck. He didn't care to find out.
So for all he knew, Roxas was just an asshole. And Riku wondered why it was, exactly, that he was trying to find excuses for him to be an asshole.
Riku didn't know anything at all. He didn't know why people did what they did. He couldn't understand them and it killed him. Like he'd missed the class on how to be a good human being.
Maybe everyone felt that way.
He shook his head. He really just wanted to go watch DVDs on a laptop, or read a cheesy book, or something. He looked around.
The bookshop was full of things. Books, mostly, and book accessories like bookmarks, or covers, or special collector's editions of books nobody had even read the first time. All in French. L'Homme invisible, said one title.
It was hard to miss Axel's hair. It was hard to believe that anyone really looked like that. The red poked up over the bookshelves like a billboard on a highway.
"Hey Riks?" Riku switched his gaze to the side to stare at Sora, who had a hand on his arm. The hand was warm. It was bumpy from a skin graft. But it was warm.
"What?"
"I gotta talk to Roxas about something really quickly, so can you like...go distract Axel?" He grinned.
"Distract Axel so Axel doesn't interrupt, or so I don't?"
And Sora made a sort of joking helpless face, wide eyes, shrugged, and Riku switched his gaze to Roxas really quickly and thought about how funny it was that they looked exactly the same and didn't at all. He could not see himself kissing Roxas. Ever. For one, kid was fifteen. Sixteen? Still. Even thinking about it made him sick.
He remembered thinking about kissing Sora. In the hospital, after the surgery. Not romantically or anything. Just sort of...lean down, lips-lips, to see what it felt like, and he knew what it felt like now. It felt warm and made it hard to breathe.
Riku mouth-shrugged and fiddled with a piece of lint in his jacket pocket. Did Sora really think he'd end up talking to Axel? Like, a conversation?
This was maybe the tenth time he'd been in a bookstore in his life. He always went to the library, and when he did have to buy a book, like for school or something - it was easier to buy it online or to just get Mom to drop by the bookshop and get it for him on her way back from an errand or something. When he was a little kid he'd go into the bookstore with his brothers while their family waited for a table to open up at a restaurant, but that was pretty much it.
Being told to talk to your boyfriend's resentful little brother's twenty-one-year-old best friend was eerily similar to being introduced to relatives you didn't know you had and then being expected to make polite conversation. Yes, you had a thread of people who connected you. You did not really have anything else in common.
If it were a stranger Riku had been told to talk to, sure, that would have been better. If you said something weird to a stranger you could just walk away. No strings.
If Riku said something weird and socially awkward to Axel (again, his mind courteously added) then Axel told Roxas and really, Riku didn't want that kid angrier than he was.
Axel apparently did not speak French. At all. Even a little bit. He was holding one of the books that had been set atop the shelf, a this-just-in of literature, upside down and peering with squinted eyes at the inside jacket. Upside-down.
Riku considered a sarcastic comment, "I don't think that's how they read books in France, man," but realized that maybe even false hostility was not the best option right now.
He felt very proud of himself for coming up with a reason not to say anything besides 'I don't want to talk'.
"Oh! Hey, Riku, right?" Axel grinned at him, snapped the book shut and set it back on the stand.
"Yeah," Riku stayed a good few feet away.
"So you're Japanese or what?"
"My mom." Which was more than he would have given anyone last year, at least.
"Cool," Axel nodded. Haha, said Riku's mind, what eerie deja vu. He didn't really care. "Your mom lets you dye your hair like that?"
"What?" Riku asked, genuinely confused. It made him feel a little embarrassed to not have a clue what this guy was talking about. He couldn't tell at all, actually, because he was over thinking things. He didn't really know. Maybe he'd convinced himself that a twenty-one-year-old guy automatically knew more than him about everything.
"Your hair," Axel waved one hand around his own head and fisted it in his own hair. "Your parents are fine with you dying it?"
He blinked. "I don't - uh, don't dye it."
"Oh," Axel frowned. "So you're like...one of those people whose hair turned gray at like fourteen? That must suck."
Apparently whatever face Riku made had Axel widening his eyes and held his hands up defensively. "I mean not that it's bad or anything! I'm, uh, sorry if I offended you or something, like..."
"No, it's fine."
The world was not a ten-meter-tall tree.
It wasn't that it was sometimes not a ten-meter-tall tree, Riku realized with a laugh, it just wasn't. Everything you said was a screw-up. Evolution was basically the process of screwing up and using it to your advantage.
That was fucking stupid. He was thinking completely stupid shit. But he was thinking it, not saying it, and safe inside his little skull-shell, it didn't matter, did it? He shook his head and laughed again. "It's really fine. I was born like this. People on the island just are, sometimes."
Axel grinned a shit eating grin, and Riku felt like he hadn't seen very many of those lately for some reason. "No kidding? The whole keeping-da-island-blood-strong thing?" He nodded, "I respect that." He sounded sort of sarcastic. "Yeah, I remember Roxas telling me about how his brother had moved to an island...what was it called again?"
It was things like that. Riku was confused. Axel mentioned "his brother had moved to an island," so was it okay to talk about the adopted thing? Since assuming that Axel knew about that, were you allowed to? And if you were allowed to, should you? It was common ground, right?
Riku didn't understand small talk. He was getting better at it; when Belle started that awkward little talking-to-Sora's-friends thing while Sora was doing something. "So, how's school?" And if you just said "good" then there was a long silence before she thought about something else to ask you, which was more invasive. So you said "Oh, it's pretty good. We have to write an essay about the symbolism in the play we're reading for English, though," and when you talked about school with a parent that was good.
Riku had gotten off his high horse and now he was stuck in a maze of social boundaries and he couldn't see over the walls.
"Uhm," Riku had almost forgotten the question. "Destiny Island," he said absently, keeping his eyes on the spines of the books.
Axel snorted and grinned wider. "Seriously? 'Destiny Island'?"
"Yeah..." Riku said apprehensively.
Axel laughed, cackled like an old lady telling gossip. "Doesn't that seem a little - " met with Riku's confused, oblivious, where-do-babies-come-from stare, "Destiny Island. Where all your dreams come true! Doesn't that seem kind of...like...Disney to you?" He laughed again.
"Destiny isn't about dreams, though," Riku said, and frowned. He didn't know why he said that. It was probably a dumb thing to say, if you ever said just what you were thinking. "I mean, destiny is supposed to just be stuff that happens to you, without...like, without you interfering. Stuff that just happens. So it's not dreams."
And then Axel desperately looked like he wanted Riku to relax, because he was joking around, and Riku was clearly taking him too seriously.
Axel was, just then, honestly wondering if maybe Riku had a minor social disorder and, if he did, Axel was going to feel really bad. Who gave a shit whether he said dreams or destiny? He was just poking fun at the name of an island.
Or at least that's what Riku guessed.
And he was proud of himself, for at least making the effort to guess, because even if it was wrong it sounded plausible, right?
"Ah, yeah," Axel corrected himself. "I guess that's a definite difference..." He smiled a weak, awkward smile.
Riku cleared his throat the way his grandfather did; aherm-erm-ahem, though he'd always hated it when his grandpa did that. Even as a little kid, he'd known that nobody had that much stuck in their throats. But it felt good to make a noncommital noise.
"It's a pretty cheesy place though," he said this like it was a peace offering. "I mean it isn't really big enough for people to bother with attacking, so it's never been in any wars. But apparently the European asshat who discovered it was...um, a total religious zealot, um, and he believed that God's 'destiny' for him was like...to discover the island, or something."
And because Axel was looking at him strangely, "I mean, I think. I mean my dad told me that a while ago. But I mean, he could have just been lying to me."
Axel shrugged and pulled out a big cookbook with a picture of a fancy decorated smoothie on the cover. "So if your mom's Japanese, does that make your dad a native?"
Riku blinked. "Native?"
"Yeah, 'cause you said the white hair was like..."
"Oh." Riku blinked and shook his head.
He didn't - well. He just didn't remember it being this awkward with Sora. Or Kairi, really. They'd treated him like...like I was a conversation amateur, he thought and smiled. Like he didn't know what he was doing. Which was true.
Because apparently he said awkward things during small talk. Riku didn't really think about what he said before he said it, he realized. Like those people he hated.
He felt like he didn't want to talk to anyone he hadn't already talked to. Didn't want to bridge any new magical gaps, as it were. He had enough bridges, he had two, and that was plenty. He could just about say anything to Sora, he realized, which was a weird way of thinking about things. That if you maybe had a thing you wanted to say, you had somebody to tell, instead of someone you could just joke with and - that was it.
Riku felt like one of those people he hated. Really proud of himself for figuring something out a bunch of people had figured out before him.
So he figured maybe he was a two-friend kind of person. Couldn't handle too many of them. It was too hard to make friends, and he was fine with it, even if it meant having fucking awkward conversations with your boyfriend's little brother's twenty-one-year-old best friend.
"Yeah," he said. He felt nice inside. "My dad's family goes way back. Like, he thinks that maybe even before the explorer guy landed there he had ancestors there, 'cause me and all of my brothers have white hair."
He almost laughed when he said that. Because his whole goddamn family had been stuck on the dry half of the island for about a million years, seemed like.
"Wow," said Axel, "That's kind of cool. I guess the whole white-hair-exotic-island-accent thing must get you a lot of chicks, huh?" He chuckled at his own joke and put the book back.
Something in Riku clicked and he didn't say anything else. He didn't want to. He didn't have to, he could pick up a book and become engrossed, because maybe it wasn't all him because he had a feeling he wouldn't get along with Axel, anyways. And Roxas did.
After a long pause, "Oh, right. Obviously not. Never mind." He looked at Riku who looked back at him. Didn't glare, but just looked, like an unnerving toddler hoisted on a parent's shoulder staring at you across the subway.
"I'm not, uh, homophobic or anything, don't worry," he assured Riku. "I totally get it, w-well like, I have a coworker who's gay, so-o..." A four-year age gap seemed small. Riku wasn't as tall as this Axel guy but he could level him in a staring contest pretty easy.
"It's fine," Riku said. "And you just picked up a Danielle Steel novel." (1)
Sora waited a little while, watched the greying sky outside.
He really liked bookstores; he remembered going on a vacation with his family once, and some jerk had double-parked them. And it wasn't so bad, because it was summer, and Roxas and he had smelled like the sunscreen-bugspray-sweat amalgamation of every kid at summer camp. He remembered it. Oil and sharp offensive deet.
And oh, it turned out that the car preventing them from leaving belonged to a guy who was currently out on a tour-guided nature hike, so they had had about three and a half hours with no plans in a tiny useless town.
So their parents went to a coffee shop, 'experience the culture of the town,' all of that. Ten-year-old-Roxas and twelve-year-old-Sora ran away to the bookshop next door.
Three hours spent with your knees draped over the back of a chair and your head almost on the floor, reading a book and periodically glancing at your brother to see if he'd gotten further in his than you had in yours. Feeling the blood rushing to your head but not changing your position because Roxas was in the same one and he didn't look like he was moving, and you couldn't be the one to break first.
Sora remembered that. Not in a sad way, really. It wasn't like it was going to happen again anyways. But this book store felt the exact same; small shelves for little books, just a room and a register for people who didn't have anything better to do.
And Roxas had drawn out a thick paperback and was reading the quotations of praise on the inside.
"Are you seriously still only reading fantasy books, Rox?" he asked, smiling at the dragon on the cover.
"No," Roxas said. "I'll read anyzing zat's good enough now." He said the 'now' like it was a pointed, angry word, even though it had no points. N-a-o-w, the tip of the tongue to the top of the palette and round the mouth and end with a puckering, but no sharp noises. He made the entire word sound like the point of a sword.
"O-oh," Sora said. "That's cool." He clicked his tongue and smiled at nothing in particular. He scanned the books on the shelf. Dust covered the tops of most of them. "I remember when you were a little kid, and you refused to read any books that one, didn't have magic and dragons, two, had a girl for a protagonist because girls were 'icky,' and three, didn't involve an adventure or quest of some kind."
"Yes," Roxas grunted. "I remember. But I read uzzer kinds too, now."
As if to prove his point, he put the fantasy book back and pulled out a young adult novel.
Sora groaned inwardly. Because Roxas was in one of his Moods. "So, Axel's...twenty-one, right?"
"Yes," Roxas's eyes flicked to Sora, an electric flash which Sora didn't feel at all. It was the way Riku looked at him when he was listening to his iPod. I'm busy being unhappy and antisocial, it said.
"Does he...have a lot of friends his age?" He knew he was pushing his luck, speaking to Roxas in English.
"Ze circus moves around a loot," Roxas said, shoving the book back into place. Sora glanced up at Riku and Axel, across the room, but Axel was doing the same thing. Pulling out books and putting them back in.
"Yeah," Sora said. "But...?"
"'e 'as friends in ze circus," Roxas was still talking and he shot a glare at his older brother. "Zere is...euh. Zere is Demyx. And...'e and Larxene are friends, I zink...well, maybe...I don't zink 'e likes Marluxia, zough."
"Is Demyx a boy or a girl?" Sora asked nervously.
"A boy," Roxas said. "Zhey share a trailer." He smiled at this. "But eet's a small one."
"Cool," Sora told him. He wondered how subtle it would be to ask if Axel had a girlfriend. Or if Roxas knew he was straight. Or if Roxas knew whether or not he was a really patient pedophile with a penchant for blonds.
Sora knew it was weird for an adult to befriend a child to such a degree. Wondered if it was really worth worrying about.
"Riku seems cool," Roxas said, in a way that suggested he didn't really think that. He flicked his eyes away from his brother who believed in God.
"Aw, don't let him fool you," Sora laughed and slung an arm around Roxas's shoulders. "He's a total doof."
Roxas winced.
'Doof,' like what Sora had called his dog. It wasn't okay. Roxas knew fucking nothing but it wasn't okay. Riku-guy was nobody, and that was final. He was Sora being unfair. He was Sora becoming island-Sora and not France-Sora even though Roxas was still France-Roxas.
"'e's your boyfriend, right?" Roxas almost said it without an accent. But he was bad at his H's and he was bad at his th's.
"Um..." What surprised Roxas most was the pause. The "um." Sora smiled. "Yeah, he is. But he's almost as antisocial as you are, so don't let him hear you say that." His brother winked at him, but Roxas blinked a few times and frowned at him.
"Antisocial?" was his one-word question.
"Yeah," Sora didn't even skip a beat, "It means...like you don't want to be around people. Or, you don't like people."
"I like people," Roxas said. He didn't like how much he sounded like a first-year English student. 'I like dogs. My name is Roxas. I am fifteen years old. My favorite color is red.'
"I know," Sora grinned, "But not a lot of them."
Roxas, not wanting to give Sora the satisfaction, just shrugged.
Something was broken.
Something.
Ouch.
He stared at Sora really, really hard. He looked so little, Sora thought, he looked so small, like a fifteen-year-old kid for once. He had a sort of baby face when he was sad. Roxas stared at Sora who stared back.
And Sora felt like crap. Roxas had never been his best friend; they weren't those brothers that looked out for each other and told each other secrets and had "sleepovers" in each other's rooms. But Roxas was his brother, and Sora had been so happy on the island.
And Roxas was so not.
And Sora couldn't do anything, and he realized with a start that he liked talking to Riku more than he liked talking to his brother. Which, in any other case, was fine. But Sora couldn't get rid of that niggling fear: if it starts like this it will grow like a tumor, soon you forget you have any other family, soon you are telling people your home is Destiny Island and Mom and Dad are gone and maybe Roxas too.
Sora was a touchy-feely person.
He really really wanted to hug Roxas.
He wanted to apologize for the abandoning and the loving another boy and Hell, the making his kid brother so lonely he befriended a circus worker only there one month in the year, but Roxas was staring at him.
Sora rubbed the back of his neck.
"Love you," he said awkwardly.
Roxas nodded. "Me too," he said.
Nobody left the bookstore all too terribly happy, but not terribly sad, either.
Things were cracked; not enough to need a do-over. Just enough to need a little bit of tape, maybe. Horribly painfully beautifully inescapably cracked like a skin graft, two kisses from your boyfriend's lips and it was all better.
"Forming characters! Whose? Our own or others? Both. And in that momentous fact lies the peril and responsibility of our existence."
- Elihu Burritt
They dawdled on the way back, the four of them. Riku wanted nothing more than to go back to his room, where there weren't any strangers and there weren't any little brothers (besides himself), watch a DVD or read a book or just sleep. Whatever the Hell they wanted.
Axel left before Roxas. Needed a run, he said. Felt like he hadn't done a damn thing today besides sit and stand, he said. Had to keep up the muscles or the boss would demote him to popcorn-selling, he said.
Sora didn't let Roxas leave with him; kept a hand around his arm tightly, dragged him to the park, "I said we'd meet Zack and Kairi here! I dunno what we're gonna do there though, free time is over at six and it's like five-twenty now."
What they did there was Roxas was introduced to the two other kids, Riku nodded and smiled awkwardly and didn't say anything, and Roxas said as little as possible and with as little accent as possible.
Eventually Roxas went to sit on a bench leaning against the wall of an old public library. Which was kind of ironic in a way that wasn't really ironic at all.
And eventually Riku, who was feeling a little more self-assured after talking to Sora and Kairi and even holding a mostly-normal conversation with Zack, came to sit next to him because the bench was the only quiet place he could sit.
Roxas bristled.
"What's it like, in England?" Riku asked suddenly, and he didn't ask it in that horrible placating see-look-you-can-be-relevant-too way. He asked like he actually wanted to know the answer, and like he thought Roxas could tell him.
But Roxas knew better. He knew how easy it was to fake sincerity; he did it all the time, hell!
But he answered. "It's a lot like it is 'ere, I guess," he said, very carefully so that he didn't have an accent. (A part of him didn't want Riku to have the satisfaction.) It was about true. The streets looked the same, though the people weren't as friendly, and he supposed a guy from an island wouldn't be able to tell the difference. "I like it better 'ere than there, though." He didn't bother with the H's. He bothered with the th's, though.
Riku nodded. Roxas noticed he had taken his watch off and it was in his hands; he was playing with it, curling it up and letting it go with his wrists resting on his bent knees.
"What's it like on Destiny Island?" Roxas asked obligatorily, because at least Riku knew when to shut up, even though Sora had blabbed Roxas's freaking ears off about the place.
Riku glanced to the side and looked away when Roxas met his eyes, stared back at the park where Sora was talking to some of his other friends. Roxas kind of wished Axel hadn't claimed it felt creepy hanging out with so many teenagers in public and gone back to the bookstore.
Riku looked at the watch dangling from his hands between his knees, then to the opposite side, along the expanse of the wall.
"Lonely," he said.
Roxas nodded.
"Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be."
- Anton Chekhov
"Hey," Sora said, "Turn on the laptop?"
"Mm," Riku dumped his backpack next to the door as soon as they stepped into the room. For the millionth billionth time in forever, they were too close and Riku could smell summer vegetables and clean dirt. Not like clean cold whitesnow. Brownclean.
The room they were staying in, Riku thought while he zipped open Sora's suitcase, looked a little bit like Sora's room at home. White and grey, only here there were crappy landscape drawings of flowers and rivers and things framed and hung on the wall. And the beds were skinny, because it was a dorm, not a hotel.
He tossed the computer on the bed they'd ended up sharing for the last few days (last night, at least, they'd had an excuse) and kneeled on the carpet to plug it into the wall. The outlet was underneath the nightstand.
"Hey, Peter Pan or Series of Unfortunate Events?"
"What?"
"What movie do you wanna watch?"
Riku scooted out from under the nightstand and unfolded himself, brushing off his knees. "Are you serious?"
Sora must have been expecting his reaction, should've remembered Riku's memory like an elephant and that Mr. Reno had offered them this choice in book form last year. He must have thought it was just so cute to do that.
Riku rolled his eyes and crawled belly-down onto the bed. He grunted.
Sora crowed, "Cock-a-doodle-doo!" and leapt onto the bed, feet-first, bouncing. "Peter Pan it is."
Riku started and grabbed the laptop so it didn't just slide right off the covers. Gee, Sora, thanks for that.
--
Halfway into the movie and Sora wouldn't shut up.
"I wonder what happens if you think something bad when you're flying. Like - what if they have a war? And you're flying around and all of a sudden 'Oh no! What if Chippy was killed by pirates!' Do you sink?"
"Shh! Shut up!"
"What?"
"There's - "
The door creaked; shadows interrupted the light seeping in through the bottom. The door opened so slowly Riku felt like he was in a horror movie; creeaaak, "Boys?"
They were on the same bed boys didn't share beds this looks really suspicious and everyone's gonna talk, offered his exhausted paranoia.
"Yes, Mr. Russell?" Sora was actually a pretty good liar. Riku was very slowly figuring this out. With the hand thing, and the being mostly-okay on the anniversary of his parents' death, and the interacting with people, he was a good liar because he wanted to believe so badly that they were truths. So Riku shut up and let Sora lie for them both.
"It's almost ten thirty, you should turn the lights out soon."
"Yeah, okay. The movie's almost done, anyways," Sora grinned. It was true, it was over halfway done. "We're even watching it with French subtitles!"
Mr. Russell smiled weakly at them, reminded them to be quiet, and left. Just like that.
"Boy," Sora said, "That guy always kinda gives me the creeps."
There were no lights on besides the one from the computer; the blinds were drawn against the disappointingly yellow light, the hallway lamps switched off, the world liquid dark and Sora was only the lit parts of his face.
Riku blinked, tiredly; the glow of the screen almost felt like it was burning his eyes.
He ran the palm of his hand over one eye, which made it a little blurry, and he waited for it to clear while he watched Wendy and Peter and the fairies. The sound coming from the laptop was tinny, static, but that was to be expected. It wasn't really the greatest laptop, after all.
A goddamn moth landed on the screen. A tiny one. Different species. Fucking shit.
It needed to stop. Riku was going insane.
Sora laughed, wrinkled his nose, and whispered: "Wow! She's really beautiful!"
And of course Sora would call the moth a she, Riku mused. And he was right.
She was beautiful. It was only her silhouette they could see; two petals, fuzzy at the very edges, with a head peaking between their tips. Two long antennae, like hairs, stuck straight out to the to the side and her tiny thin legs rested on the screen, warped by the pixels. She fluttered a little, landed higher up on the screen, and Riku leaned in so close he fancied he could smell her. The smell was dusty brown, animalistic but civilized like an old stack of adventure books.
Sora didn't swat at the moth. Didn't crush it against the screen, shoo it away, blow a stream of air across the tiny crack between its wings. He let it be.
Riku fell half-asleep before the movie was over, before the moth flew away, head resting in the bent crook of his elbow. He stirred little when Sora shut the laptop, dragged it off the bed, set it down on the floor and crawled back in.
It was nice and warm.
Riku felt like he had on long car trips to the opposite end of the island. After an hour of watching telephone poles get closer and closer and farther and farther, trailing his eyes along the wires up and down in their swoops like hypnosis.
Felt sleepy and satisfied in a dull way.
--
He didn't really fall asleep, as it were. He sort of did, but always felt a little conscious, just a tiny little bit. The very lightest kind of sleep.
So two knees pressing into his sides, a weight on his lower belly, hot air like steam in his face; he opened his eyes easily.
"Hey," Sora breathed, half his face lit by blue light. Must have opened the blinds.
"Nn," Riku grunted against his boyfriend's mouth. Sora was hunched over him, biting his lip.
Sora leaned in, kissed Riku very, very fully. "Feel like I haven't seen you all day," he muttered, wrapping his arms around Riku's neck and sitting up, pulling Riku with him.
"Yeah, I guess so," Riku said before they started kissing again.
Like watching the telephone wires between telephone poles while your mom drives past the graveyard and you try to pretend that you're not holding your breath.
Riku sucked air in narrowly through his nostrils, kept his eyes closed and his mouth set openly on Sora's. Let his hands wander up into the thick, coarse, wiry brown hair, so harshly divisioned. Felt good on his hands. Felt good.
A tongue tickling the roof of his mouth, and a gentle traveling pressure over his shirt as he realized he was holding Sora to his lap. Sora didn't seem to mind.
Sora's happylight devilfingers danced over his bare collarbone curiously, set Riku's lower abdomen hungry. Felt good. Bareskinonbareskin.
Riku decided to try it, because Sora had gone first, anyways. Let one hand slide out of his hair, down the feltgoodwarm of the t shirt on Sora's back. Paused and ran his fingers over the bump of the base of his spine. Sora made a happy noise, like a sort of warm grunt in Riku's mouth and did something nice with his tongue. Feltgood.
Feeling braver, Riku snuck his thumb under Sora's shirt, grazed it over the bare skin of his hip. Felt good, stuck a little with sweat that cooled in the winter air.
Sora smiled, kissed more; dug his hands so far into Riku's hair his fingers grazed Riku's scalp. Goodsign? Feltgood.
Riku reluctantly let his other hand trail out of Sora's wiry hair, over his shoulder, down to the otherhip. Both thumbs up under Sora's pajama shirt, brushing against skin and boysweat, all the while breathing through his nose.
Sora groaned and broke the kiss, rolled his eyes. "Gosh," he grumbled, grabbing the hem of his own shirt in both hands. "I can tell this is going to take you forever."
Waitwaitwait, Riku's brain said, toofastnonono.
Riku's brain stopped saying things, then, when Sora pulled his own shirt over his head. And balling it up in one hand, Sora was caught by Riku's eyes like a fly in a web, frozen, about to drop his shirt on the floor, straddling his boyfriend's hips, chest exposed, frozen.
Riku was still panting a little from the kiss.
His mind was reeling like a wheel mounted on a wall. Spinspinspinning and not going anywhere. There was a lot of prettypretty skin. Sora dropped the shirt, eventually, readjusted so he was sitting evenly on Riku, let his fingers dance over Riku's collarbone again. His touch was disgustingly amazingly beautifully breath-quickeningly light, like a butterfly landing on your arm. Like a moth landing on a computer screen. Tickled, like Riku's skin was rising to meet Sora's fingers.
Sora quirked at him a quiet little smile, let Riku take his time as he ran his eyes very slowly up and down most of Sora's body. Embarrassing as it was, all he could think:
HolyshitSorahasnipples.
He tried not to think it but it thought itself. He made a snerk noise, at which Sora rolled his eyes, fisted his featherlight devilfingers in Riku's shirt and pulled him forward for another kiss.
Riku was starting to feel that sort of cruel, guilty happiness that happened when you blew into the straw of your soda and made wet, sticky bubbles while your mom hissed at you to please behave in the restaurant. IcanandIwillbecauseIwantto.
Long and slow and lazy, took his time, distracted Riku while Riku's hands of their own volition came up and rested on Sora's waist, ran down his belly, halted like frightened horses when Sora's hands snuck up under Riku's shirt.
He broke away. "I – I don't, sorry, I – "
Sora laughed, shifted in his seat, set his palm against Riku's forehead. "I know," he said, and kissed Riku on the cheek. Very chaste. "I know you can't, silly. It's Tuesday."
When Riku woke up, slowly, aware of the boy next to him making nightmare sounds – he decided that sex dreams were the very worst kind of nightmare.
(1) If you haven't heard of Danielle Steel, consider yourself lucky. But she writes (wrote?) bodice-rippers. I haven't read any but...oh come on. Pop-culture reference. Give me some credit here.
A/N: Hosnap.
Riku has a sexuality?
Who knew? I didn't.
I'm trying to drink leftover Gatorade. It smells like cleaning fluid and looks like glow-in-the-dark camel piss.
Orders of business:
1) Someone made a Rain Shadow playlist. I don't know if she's comfortable with me giving out her screen name, or with me posting the list of songs n' such, so um, wonderful-person-who-made-playlist, would you be comfortable with that? Either of those things? y/y?
2) Dang. I totally had a number two. I forgot. Uh...there's a poll on my profile? Go check it out? OH! Um. Long chapter. Longer than before. And there was redheadedness. And um. Adult-type touching.
so tell me what you thought of that please don't be mean?