And There Is No Solution.
A/N: Okay, orders of business.
(edit: UH. Forgot to switch chapter for beta'd one. Fail much? Yes, it's a hobby of mine, but the clubs are too exclusive and I've been waitlisted.)
1) It was CherryFlavoredChalk! She made the playlist! Too late to take it back now, babbie, it's going up (copy and paste, for the win?):
RAIN SHADOW: A CONSTRUCTION OF MUSIC
"The Owls Go"-Architecture in Helsinki
"I Will Play My Game Beneath the Spin Light"-Brand New
"Let the Drummer Kick"-Citizen Cope
"Lazy Eye"-Silversun Pickups
"Young Folks"-Peter Bjorn and John
"Fireflies"-Owl City
"Fuck Was I"-Jenny Owen Youngs
"Somebody To Talk To"-This Providence
"And Darling"-Tegan and Sara
"High of 75"-Relient K
"I'm Not Crying. You're Not Crying, Are You?"-Dear and the Headlights
"Push"-Marianas Trench
(interjection: the Marianas Trench, home of Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the ocean! It's like...eleven kilometers? And now you know. Sorry. That was Nitlon. I'll shut up.)
"The World At Large"-Modest Mouse
"From Yesterday"-30 Seconds to Mars
2) Much thanks to ASKInfinity for beta'ing this in...one day? Less than a day; I finished it yesterday afternoon and she got it to me this morning. In short, if you find any typos they're her fault. Mmhm. So there.
Well they're...they're mostly my fault, but...look, the thing is 16,000 words without the author's notes, what more do you want? Anyways.
This time, on RAIN SHADOW (I'm sorry I just really wanted to do this):
Sora decides Axel's NOT a child rapist, and Riku and Roxas metaphorically sniff each others' butts.
Oh, and Sora attempts to be KING OF THE LOG. -cough-
"Realize that true happiness lies within you. Waste no time and effort searching for peace and contentment and joy in the world outside. Remember that there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. Reach out. Share. Smile. Hug. Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself."
- Og Mandino
It hurt.
Being there.
Stuck. Chained.
A steady swollen pressure in his throat like motion sickness.
Riku hated the two-dream nights.
Swollen, yes, like the air in his mouth had a shape to it, pungent and hot even when he woke up, because it was almost seven thirty and breakfast was being made. He could smell fried eggs, toast, cheap cereal from the cafeteria. Felt like he was going to puke.
He remembered the first dream, but not the second. He remembered the feelings from both. Fear, sharp, slashing. And the feeling under that, which he could remember but could not call forth because the word "sex" just wasn't registering right now.
Just a bad dream. Just a two-nightmare night. Back to back like brothers they had lined themselves up.
"Hey, are you alright?" Sora's fingers under the hinge of his jaw made him blink a few more times, forced the reality of a jaundiced ceiling with a stationary fan and the half a foot not covered by blankets. Freezing cold like a flesh Popsicle.
He drew his foot in to the oily heat of the blankets and closed one eye like a lazy cat. Stared at Sora with the eyes-the-color-the-sky-oughtta be. Sora snorted and smiled at him and didn't take his fingers away. "Bad dream?"
Riku shrugged lying down. "I guess," he said. He felt faded in the morning. Greasy, a wrinkle in the sheets digging into his back.
"What was it about?" Sora asked him. "Or can you tell me?"
'Can you tell me,' he asked, like he was afraid Riku had dreamed up a horrible secret, murdered someone in his sleep. 'Can you tell me,' like Riku didn't even have the ability to tell a story to the kid.
"I dunno," Riku said. "I don't really remember what happened."
"Oh…" Sora nodded and pressed his head into the pillow sleepily. "Yeah, I get that." He rolled over onto his tummy and started fingering the buckle on the watch that Riku hadn't remembered to take off before falling asleep. He usually didn't. Didn't mind it.
He'd forgotten to brush his teeth yesterday, too, or if he'd remembered he hadn't cared enough to do it. His teeth felt like fuzz.
"How when you dream a thing you only ever remember how it made you feel," Sora said. "Instead of what happened or, or why you felt like that." He paused. "I mean, that happens to me, anyways."
Riku tried to think of a polysyllabic reply and his silence was interrupted.
"I had a dream once," Sora started walking his pointer and middle fingers like legs across the pillow, "Where I stole…daffodils, or something, from this old lady's garden. I- I think they were daffodils. They were really, really bright yellow, and like everything in the dream that could be yellow was yellow," shifted so he was sitting up on his elbows. "And the old lady, she sent her Saint Bernard after me and I was being led back when I woke up."
Riku snorted and smiled at his friend, opening both eyes. Saw Sora-covered-in-morning. Ran a hand through his greasy morning hair. Touched Sora's coarse and clean morning hair, because he looked like a – like a…something. Riku wondered at that. Sora's head, with his hair, was a very distinctive shape, and reminded him of something in that awkwardly familiar way that made people think they had past lives. He didn't know what. Sora's hair was Sora-shaped. Spiky and divided and brown. Flopped like a seal when he bounced.
"I had a dream," Riku said, and snickered because he couldn't say that and not think about Martin Luther King, "When I was a little kid, where that villain from Aladdin pushed me off the side of a boat. Only we were in the harbor, so I just swam to the dock."
Sora and his brown head laughed.
Hair the color the Earth oughtta be, which made Riku laugh. He wasn't the color of anything.
Anything besides snow.
He was the boy who used SPF 55 sunscreen and always had, and he was paper white, snow white, pale as the thing he hadn't seen until he was seventeen years old and mostly gay.
He trailed his eyes over the dip between Sora's collarbones. Mostly very gay.
"Hey," the back of his mind said suddenly with his mouth. Eyes dulled and buffed. "It's Christmas Eve, isn't it?"
Sora blinked and scooted closer. "Is it?" He leaned over Riku to grab the cell phone on the bedside table. "Wow," he said appreciatively, staring at the date. Kneeling in bed wearing boxers and a t-shirt even though it was just barely above freezing. "Whaddaya know. I mean, I guess I knew, what with all the decorations and stuff, but I kind of didn't pay attention, you know?"
"Yeah," Riku said dumbly. He had remembered in a way that was not remembering. He had thought about it, briefly entertained the concept before allowing himself distractions. I should get him a present, before the usual selfishness of his mind settled in. Better things to do.
Life to live, people to talk to. No time for school, eh, boy?
He groaned and thumped his head against the mattress, which made it bounce a little and kind of defeated the purpose.
He stared at the cracks in the ceiling, which told him stories. He wondered if little French boys had stood on their tip-toes and scratched things up there with pencils before they were erased or wiped away. He remembered going to summer camp. Bunks covered with who was where when. Who to call for drugs.
His favorite one was "I was the first to write here. Jul. 12, 1996." That and arctic.
He shivered. Like a mad scientist, what does it mean!?
"Um…" oblivious Sora lay back down and nestled close to his boyfriend. A sleepy waking up feeling hung between them on threads. "Do you want a present?"
"I didn't…I…" Riku figured honesty was the best policy. It wasn't a new thing. It was just that he didn't really have that many opportunities to lie. "I don't really have anything for you, y'know."
Sora shook his head. "Don't worry about it."
Which meant Riku was going to worry about it. Or, should worry about it. He didn't. Instead, he kissed Sora on the nose with his fuzzy slipper teeth then got up to go to the bathroom. He grabbed his plastic bag of soap and tiny shampoo and toothbrush and toothpaste and headed down the hall.
He had started to hate the bathroom. None of the doors on the cubicles closed enough to be locked. The shower curtains were white and almost see-through. There wasn't any place to put your towel where it wouldn't get wet; you had to just stick it in a safe corner and hope.
Dead bugs got caught in the lights. Not a lot, just enough to make a couple of speckles over the sink where Riku brushed his teeth. Tiny burnt black carcasses, perfectly preserved, tricked by the moon into being fried. Lying belly-up three feet over everyone's heads on the glass under a fluorescent bulb.
And Riku hated the two-dream nights.
"Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep."
- Fran Lebowitz
Axel Turner was not a very good sleeper, he mused, massaging his scalp at about four in the morning. He had never had to wake up for anything at four in the morning, but he found himself awake at four in the morning half the mornings of his life. His secret hour. He and the farmers and the bakers woke up and farmed and baked and…Axel-ed. Mmhm.
Axel-ing pretty much consisted of twisting the sheets around your legs and tucking them under your back to form a sort of cocoon. And then when that got boring, you rolled, in your cocoon, onto your side to see if Roxas was awake and if you two could play cards.
Roxas, having a normal internal clock, was still fast asleep. A very messy sleeper, that boy. Axel crooked a grin at the thought; messy was the right word for Roxas when he slept. He rarely had both legs under the covers, and his arms were spread like wings across the bed; always on his back and his hair drooped into his eyes. He drooled. It was a little bit gross, but Axel was used to it.
In the trailer. When Axel would sleep on the floor because Roxas had shown up after the show drenched like a pissy cat and demanded room and board because he told his foster parents he was sleeping at Pence's and didn't want to go home. "You're my friend, aren't you? Well zhen give me ze bed." And, after an affectionate pause, "Dork."
And you couldn't have two guys sleeping in the same bed. Well, you could, because Axel and Demyx had to, but that was different. You couldn't sleep on the floor of a moving trailer; things rattled and fell down no matter how much duct tape you used.
Axel Turner was awake at four in the morning on Christmas Eve.
So he decided to go for a walk.
At four in the morning, on Christmas Eve, in a country whose language he didn't speak and in a city whose roads he didn't know. And when Axel thought about it, he realized that, yeah, that was just about par. He memorized no streets. Always-moving-Axel.
He yawned when he stepped outside the motel, at the cars whose windows were covered in a thin sheet of ice like tiny crystals.
He never really fell asleep. He tuned out. He went into power-save mode, but never lost awareness. Never-never-never, Roxas told him. It was like falling asleep in the car; not it-felt-like-I-woke-up-in-an-instant, but-I-know-it's-been-an-hour-and-I-am-now-opening-my-eyes. It was really incredibly tiring when you heard people talk about falling asleep and all Axel could do was drift on the surface of it like an unwanted buoy. He did not fall asleep, but when he stepped outside and got bitten by the cold monster, he fell awake.
He shook his head until his bed-hair evened out a little and covered his ears. His hair was cold, but not wet, so it helped a little bit.
When he reached the edge of the parking lot, he glanced guiltily back at the door with the rusty brass letters, 114. Roxas Orcot-Goodwin (whose name still made Axel giggle) was like a shelter puppy. He had a thing about being abandoned. The first time he'd slept over Axel had slipped out early to get breakfast and come back to a panic attack. A nervous breakdown described in broken English and fists banging against walls. And some very awkward and very tight hugs.
But they'd gone to bed at eleven last night, and no sane person woke up after five hours of sleep, and Axel really needed that walk. He was like an outdoor cat. He came back for food and sleep and petting. (And work.) But he had to stretch his legs, or they got itchy.
Roxas wouldn't wake up, and Axel would be back in an hour. Maybe two hours; it depended. He had a lot to sift through.
His construction-worker boots trapped snow in their ridges, and the sidewalks hadn't been plowed yet, so he walked on the curb in an odd replica of the tightrope walkers back home. "Home."
The only lights on were the 24-hour fast food restaurants and drug stores, big plastic signs on in parking lots light from behind. The streetlights were still on. They were bright white and spaced pretty closely together. Only twenty or so feet apart, because it was a busy street.
They gave Axel double-shadows. One from behind, and one from in front, they crisscrossed each other. They made Axel giggle because his spiky hairdo always translated well into shadows. Stretched out and on top of the stick of his body. His shadows looked like sparklers.
He played with his two fluorescent shadows and didn't think about anything. It took him a few minutes to figure out how to get them to touch. You had to lift both arms so that the middle ones of the shadows could reach each other. And when you leaned the left one to reach the right one, the right one leaned away. And vice versa. He stood very carefully just between two streetlights and managed to get fingertips to touch. If he backed up a little, he could get palm-to-palm, and with some very careful maneuvering he slung one shadow's arm around the other's shoulders. That meant that the other shadow had one arm sticking out into nothingness, but still, Axel thought, it was pretty neat. Having your shadows give each other one-armed hugs. Like friends for lonely people.
He liked to walk down the roads that looked dark. For one, because usually you could see a lot more than it seemed like you could see, and it was his way of desensitizing himself to darkness. For two, it was a little exciting. Because he might see something nobody else did.
Fourteen roads and an hour later, the clouds in the sky were getting lighter. Between the apartment buildings Axel could see the grey sunrise, just tinted yellow at the edges. It seemed, at best, reluctant to give them light.
For a brief moment, he could have sworn he heard the sky groaning like the rusty door of a circus trailer. Like pulling the sun up by his armpits was something it didn't need to do. He fancied he felt the stretching, the moan, the lackluster colors of the dawn faded like an old man's beard. Tired and sick of it. He'd always thought that being center of the galaxy must have been a lonely thing. You never moved, ever.
At five in the morning he decided to head back. He doubted Roxas would be awake at six, but you never knew. Kid's schedule was…odd, on the best of days.
He ran a fallen awake hand through his fallen awake hair and, feeling distinctly unadventurous, turned around to go back the way he'd come. To walk along the same curbs, this time in tired and uninspiring early morning light, watching the very few brave early morning winter joggers jogging past tourist shops.
There were some songbirds, sparrows or something, grouped together on telephone wires. And a dead crow in the road, flattened almost beyond recognition. Axel was careful not to step on it.
And it took him almost three forks in the road and a car salesman ad he was sure he would have remembered the first time before he realized he was actually lost. At five in the morning, on Christmas Eve, in a country whose language he didn't speak, and in a city whose streets he didn't know.
Because he was walking on autopilot. And now, whoop-dee-doo, he'd managed to get to a place where he couldn't see any street signs.
Axel kind of wasn't so much really a fan of not knowing where the hell you were. Or not being able to ask for directions. He looked around. To his right, the parking lot of a grocery store. To his left, a two-lane street with no cars, dark black with wet and the occasional drying grey spot. In front, sidewalk; in back, forks.
He didn't really fancy himself the kind of guy who was too stubborn to ask for directions, or anything. Of the many things that Axel and his Wonderful Imagination fancied about himself and others. But when you spoke English and you were in France, there was a distinct language barrier erected. At five in morning it towered over him with a smirk.
"Um…" He thumbed the cell phone in his coat pocket, cold plastic like everything else, and considered his options. He didn't panic. He could call Roxas, but for one the kid was probably asleep and would just worry. He could call Demyx or someone else from the circus, but there was like a two hour time difference, wasn't there? So calling Demyx, who slept like a cat (like it was an Olympic event) and asking him to just Map-Quest it or something would either yield an answering machine or a very, very sleepy, angry Demyx.
He turned around to stare the first fork in the road straight on.
Or.
Or.
He smirked. He shivered in a freezing early-morning breeze. His ears felt like goddamn tingly human icicles, so he brought his hands out of his pockets and rubbed them. His fingertips felt incredibly hot and when his ears started warming up it was with painful tingling. And stung from the cold again when Axel replaced his hands.
He could just try and guess his way back. (Because when you start off lost, it's hard to get loster. (1))
Axel then proceeded to try and guess his way back for about two hours, somewhat unsuccessfully.
And Roxas woke up alone. Alone in his bed, yes, that was a given – and a welcome one. But there was nobody else in the room, and he could tell. There was a tenseness that came with it; Roxas became hyper-aware of the noises he would make and his breathing. He would listen for Axel's breathing. The air felt…emptier? Lighter.
The beds were too big for one person. He could stretch his limbs out all the way and not reach the edges if he were lying in the middle. And they smelled bitter and unisex. He opened his eyes without ceremony, and found himself mostly on the right, one arm hanging off the side, legs spread and bent like a frog's, heart racing from some nightmare or other.
He opened his eyes without ceremony and looked at the empty bed across from him, lit by the sleepy sun in the window.
He glanced at the digital bedside clock. Seven in the morning.
Roxas sat up, brought his legs together and drew his knees up to his chest. He drew the generic, bitter, unisex stripes of the comforter up to his waist. Axel had never actually been out at seven before; it was usually earlier or much, much later. At night, that was. For some reason Axel just didn't like to walk in daylight; Roxas had asked him about it once and gotten a vague reply, something like "I'unno, sunlight feels too specific," which could have meant anything. Or nothing.
They mostly talked through email anyways.
He groaned, because he was always the most tired right after he'd gotten up, and slumped back down in the bed. Weird as he was, it was a good thing Axel was a social fucking butterfly. And a damn good friend. They'd known each other in person for – what, a month? Two months – before the circus had to move on. No, it was a month. A year of emails and two weeks of hanging out in the off-season and he was agreeing to go with Roxas to France for five days.
And he paid for the rental car.
So Roxas was not allowed to complain if his best friend wanted to go for walks irrationally early in the morning, because he had an unconditional friend who didn't laugh at his accent, but who did laugh at his abandoned-puppy reactions. Neurotic, he called Roxas, which was a word Roxas had yet to look up in a dictionary, but the way Axel said it made him think psycho. Or paranoid.
Outside, through the window and the gaps in the Venetian blinds, he could see a little evergreen tree and some generic bushes separating parts of the parking lot (which was cracked like a thousand tiny earthquakes). The little evergreen tree had some half-assed yellow Christmas lights on it, but they weren't switched on. Too bright outside for it to matter, he guessed.
The snow had melted on the sidewalk in little wet stains. Inside was clean and outside was leaf litter and mulch.
"When we were children, we used to think that when we were grown-up we would no longer be vulnerable. But to grow up is to accept vulnerability... To be alive is to be vulnerable."
- Madeleine L'Engle
"I think I've gone all the way through the circle of tolerable breakfast foods here," Kairi said, sitting down at their plastic cafeteria table. Riku, who was never that big on breakfast, was pretty much just picking at the muffin that came with Sora's food. Kairi had a tiny box of Cheerios.
"Huh?" Riku asked, tearing out a swollen purple blueberry and popping it in his mouth. He had some blueberry muffin stuck on the outside of his molars and tried to lick it off. Like his tongue was a shovel.
Kairi sighed. "I'm allergic to eggs, so I can't get most of the hot food, and I had oatmeal yesterday, and pancakes the day before that, and cereal the day before that! This place is super-limited."
"That's because normally the cooks have to cook for, like, hundreds of kids," Sora said. The leftmost prong of his plastic fork was bent and he hadn't gotten a knife, so cutting up his pancake was proving difficult. "So they have to just make a lot of the same thing."
"Yeah, I know, but it's still really boring," she said obstinately, tearing open the cardboard flaps. "Besides, I'm a teenager. I'm allowed to complain."
Riku shrugged and tore the top half of the muffin off of the bottom and offered her the bottom, which he had yet to bite. Little crystals of sugar on the top tickled his palm.
Kairi shook her head. "No," she smiled at him, "I'm fine with the cereal."
He knew it was irrational, but still felt a little insulted. He took the decline of his muffin bottom personally. The sincerity she switched to, the placating-doctor smile was like a relative's. If she had joked, maybe, let him in on her breakfast orientated plight, it wouldn't have bothered him, but this felt sort of stiff and formal.
Riku winced inwardly. That was about the billionth time he'd overanalyzed someone's reaction to something he said. He wondered if he was paranoid. The Riku-turtle (as Sora called him) had been teased out of his shell, built of silence and death-glares, and he felt like a child. Social interaction levels at zero percent. He didn't know what meant what.
It was like he'd missed the class on it. Or no, not the class, but the window. That time when everybody was going around learning what was appropriate to say to different levels of stranger, how you knew when you were friends, which relatives to hug and which to shake hands with, who to offer your muffin bottom to.
He almost giggled. Maybe it's like music, he thought, nobody knows what's going on, but everybody pretends to.
He wanted to think that that was it, that everyone else was just good at hiding it, but he knew quite well that he was fooling himself. He was socially challenged. He'd missed the window, but he had Sora, who had a hand on his knee under the table.
Fuck perfect trees.
A very real, slightly sweaty, dried-out-in-the-winter-air hand with weight and freckles and humanity. Not a (creamy) smooth, tanned dream hand. Riku kept reminding himself of this. No sexual fantasies for seventeen-year-old boys. No. Bad Riku!
Which sent him into a fit of mild mental giggles.
"Hmph," he said, pulling himself firmly back into reality. "I guess you're just too good for my muffin."
She shook her head and sighed. "I am, you know. I grew up in a castle; I'm used to only the best of muffins. Our pastry chef made them for us daily. I simply – "sniff" – simply can't tolerate these…these…commoner muffins!"
There was a communal burst of laughs into which Sora interjected, "But you can tolerate commoner Cheerios?"
"Oh," she said, looking affronted and staring at her box from which she was picking individual Cheerios out. "Well, you have to pick your battles."
Riku cocked an eyebrow. "Muffins are your battle?"
"Have you seen the thing you're eating? Those are not blueberries. Those are shriveled angry little beads of evil, stewing in blueberry-flavored evil, floating in half-cooked muffin batter." She jabbed at the bottom half of Riku's muffin with a red fingernail, then wiped the crumbs off on her jeans. There was a little pinky-tip-sized dent in the muffin now.
"Oh, uh, hang on – " Sora said before anyone could reply to Kairi. "My cell phone's – um…" he waved his hand back and forth like tiny vibrations. "Doing this."
"Buzzing?"
"Sure." He pulled his phone out and frowned at the screen before flipping it open. "Roxas? I thought we were gonna find you guys at noon."
He listened to his little brother for a very long time.
Riku wondered if it was appropriate to say anything right now. Not to Sora, of course, but to Kairi, maybe. Sora absently started to massage Riku's knee with his thumb, swipe…swipe…swipeswipe… like windshield wipers. He started going faster and faster.
Kairi and Riku looked at each other. Kairi mouthed, 'Do you know…?' and pointed to Sora, who was biting his lower lip and squeezing Riku's knee. Riku shook his head. 'No clue.'
"D'accord," Sora started talking again in French. He spoke pretty quickly – or at least, at a fast enough pace that Riku had trouble keeping up. He heard something about waiting, or – coming? One of those, and some verbs he was sure he'd never learned. Maybe some light swearing, but that was just a guess. And sleeping. 'Couche-toi.'
"He says he's getting kinda…" Sora trailed off and glanced at Kairi, who was frowning at them both with raised eyebrows. "Um, Kairi?"
"…yeah?"
"We're just skiing today, right? So Riku and I can stay here if we want?"
Riku and I. Not we, not us, so that Kairi might be included. Riku and I.
Riku wondered if that was why people had relationships. Exclusivity. He questioned (frequently) whether or not the whole Sora thing happened because he was the first to really befriend teenage Riku. He wondered: if Kairi had been the one to talk to him, invite him over to her house, cry on his shoulder, would he be dating a girl now? Happily straight and just as outgoing?
He remembered that weird dream he'd had, with book-surfing Sora and almost-touching. He remembered wondering at the time if he'd had a sort of sexual dream and, if so, if it was because his mind had just been so happy not to reject another human being.
Riku wondered if maybe he just had really low standards past the wall of Angry.
(What a broken, lonely little boy, confused and achy, with questions everyone knew the answer to that he was too afraid to ask.)
He was thinking this while Sora and Kairi had a conversation around him.
"Yeah, I think so. There's a group of kids that's just staying here with one of the teachers. Like…four or five kids, probably. Why?"
It was a box. That was it. Riku-turtle had not come out of his shell; there was no Riku-turtle. There was Riku and his box. His tiny little globe, like a biosphere. Running on his own bitterness, and Sora had found the door and climbed in and snuggled up to Riku and kissed him on the forehead. But Sora had come in, not let Riku out.
"Um, I think I kind of have to go look for somebody. My brother's friend. D'you think we'll be able to leave?"
That must have been it.
"Can I help?"
Right?
"I don't think so. You don't know what he looks like and he doesn't know what you look like. But Riku 'n I have talked to him."
"Oh…" she twirled a finger through her Cheerios. "Okay."
Outside, the wind tickled the bare branches, which rattled against each other and shook off residual snow. Fat, wobbly tourists, with rolls of lard like tires around their ill-concealed bellies, tottered by with children encased in synthetic winter coats.
Inside was Riku being kissed on the forehead by (his) Sora. Wishing he had his mp3 player, or a book.
"All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring."
- Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters
Axel had called Roxas at seven fifteen on the dot, because he was absolutely anal about time, and informed him that no, he wasn't dead and had not abandoned his friend, and yes, he was very, very lost somewhere in Annecy and couldn't actually find a street sign for the street he was on. But there was a little pastry shop and a McDonald's and a pharmacy.
Yes, Roxas, I'm fine.
No, Roxas, I wasn't mugged.
Yes, Roxas, I won't be this stupid again.
No, Roxas, I'm not too cold.
Yes, Roxas, I'll stay where I am.
Shut up, Roxas, go call your brother.
And Roxas called Sora, who took Riku. He explained to the teacher – with some difficulty and a halting, awkward tone, almost never making eye contact because I Don't Want Other People to Feel Uncomfortable Because of Me – the situation and by some disgusting and hideous miracle was set free with the promise of at least calling once an hour.
Riku and Sora had to stay with each other, but Roxas, having lost his chaperone, was free to head in a different direction.
All this to say: Riku and Sora were walking through the snowy French city of Annecy on Christmas Eve, past pastry shops and McDonald's and pharmacies (but never in that order), looking for Axel.
Everything was different, with snow. It was fresh, of course, had yet to get stepped on in most places, but the movies didn't lie. Not really a blanket, the way the books said it was, but it was like tiny landscapes. You could see the shapes of things underneath it, the round bulge of a rock or the square lump of a trapped wagon.
They were walking down a mildly busy street, and a pretty, touristy one at that – shops offering t-shirts and pins, informational books, food. Paulette's famous this-and-that.
The curbs were covered in snow, even if the sidewalks were plowed. It was dirty and slightly melted on the corners, and there were a few places trampled by footprints where people had slammed car doors shut and clambered over the bank to get somewhere.
It wasn't sunny, exactly, but the sky wasn't very promising of rain or shine. Just grey. Sighing. Resigned. Hunks and sheets of snow on the striped overhangs of restaurants and shops fell to the ground in front of them, leaving a powdery white stain like a frozen blood splatter.
Sora had thin, wooly gloves on and Riku didn't. So he pulled his jacket sleeves down over his palms to try and compensate.
The air was cold and clean. It was colder and cleaner than he'd ever felt, which wasn't surprising; it was the way his skin felt when he opened the freezer on a humid day. Everything seemed sharply defined and settled. With humidity, lines were blurred; he felt smudged. The irony of this wasn't lost on him. All the better to keep myself locked up with, my love!
Lines were crisp and it was harder to reach through them, so he was glad when Sora was the one to reach out and hold Riku's right hand with his wooly, glovey left. Riku put his other hand in his pocket.
"You okay?"
Riku blinked and looked at his boyfriend, avoiding eye contact with one of the patrons of a bistro behind Sora. "Yeah. Why?"
Sora shrugged, and they kept walking. "You just seemed sort of…more…quiet than usual, I guess. Different sort of quiet."
"Well, we're supposed to be looking for Axel."
"Yeah…" Sora sighed. "Maybe we should ask people?"
There was a twinge in Riku. Irrational as it was (and, honestly, what wasn't?), he didn't really want to. Not as a matter of pride, or anything. But the act of going up to a stranger, who might assume things about them with varying degrees of truth that Riku didn't want known, asking them about this street or if they'd seen a distinctive redhead, taking the chance that you'd encounter a real jerk or a gossipy old woman or an overeager man or just…it…even if it proved helpful. He didn't want to. They'd find him eventually, if they just kept looking.
"Let's look for that road first," he said. "We can ask later if we still can't find him."
Riku ran his chapped thumb over Sora's hand, this time. Sora smiled at him. "Sounds like a plan," he said, turning his eyes back to the sidewalk. Sora's coat was waterproof and dumpy. It was a skiing jacket. There was even a tag on it, a pass attached to the zipper for some ski resort (it was in French). It was from a few years ago. Something in Riku felt a twinge when he thought about Sora wearing a jacket from before his parents died. Like there should be a line there; this was before, and here is after. Simple. Your life is now different; please check all remnants of your pre-orphaned state at the emotional baggage counter.
There was a happy equilibrium reached between them, a mutual monogamy and unsaid amenity. Sora held Riku's hand and they walked.
Riku's jeans were too big. Not too big, exactly, but they were baggy and dragged on the ground. On Destiny Island that wasn't really a problem, since all they ever got was dusty. If he went outside at all that day, he mused.
Here there were not-frozen-enough puddles, which themselves created problems. He glanced back casually and noted, with a surprised indifference, that the water had seeped all the way up the calves of his jeans, though it was widest at the bottom. The front of his pants was completely dry. He started to feel the chill through the denim, though; it was unpleasant. Every step he took meant more dirty water was flicked onto the backs of his legs.
He thought about the actual flesh of his legs, distractedly agreeing to go down the road Sora was pointing to. It felt cold and damp. Like his limbs were marinated in ice water. Seeped into his skin and left it clammy and indignant. Pinpricks of icicles, and the fabric of his jeans scratched his legs uncomfortably. It was an entirely new and unwelcome sensation for Riku Tepes of Destiny Island.
So focused was he on his cold, wet cuffs that he was intensely surprised to look up and see a small Lutheran church on the right. It wasn't like churches were unheard of, or anything, it was just that Destiny Island had never been attacked by particularly zealous colonists. There were churches, sure, and temples, probably a synagogue and a mosque or a shrine, somewhere, but there weren't really a lot of them. And they certainly weren't very old.
It was pretty. White stucco with a roof and a steeple edged in dark, dark grey, and a bell in the very top of the tower gone green. It couldn't have been more than a room and an office, if you didn't count the tower. There was just enough room on either side for two abstract blue stained-glass windows. White and grey and blue, on a lawn that was striped light and dark green depending on how it was mowed, with a steeple casually tickling a grey sky – it was a beautiful church, God aside. There was a golden cross on the top, though, as much a reminder of the building's purpose as a striped overhang covered in snow for a restaurant.
There was a nice wooden sign with a plastic board and interchangeable letters: SUNDAY MORNING SERVICE 9 AM followed by a short quotation from the New Testament.
Riku, to his own surprise, didn't even toy with the idea of pulling his hand away from Sora's. It felt too nice, warm and wooly and glovey, hiding his hand in Sora's. He considered that perhaps he should feel guilty, or dirty, or rotten. Flaunting a gay relationship. But some part of him – perhaps childish and naïve, protected by his little shell, delicate but un-cracked from lack of exposure – could not see how anything they were doing was wrong. But he didn't feel lusty and sinful. He and Sora, they were friendship with kisses and accidental dreams. Curled up together while one tried to stop crying and the other tried to start.
He wasn't even trying to kid himself. He felt clean. Fitted to the situation. He couldn't imagine a priest coming out and lecturing them about what they were doing wrong, because it didn't even feel as if he should feel any other way than he did. He felt happy in a subdued, peaceful way, like swinging on a swing set for a whole hour all by yourself as a little kid. Singing songs nobody could hear.
It felt right.
He was pretty sure that by any standard, he and Sora were…healthy. In the way that they interacted, at least. The way that a nervous hand-squeeze would be replied with a reassuring one.
He stopped in front of the white-grey-blue church with Sora, and stared at it with an absent smile on his face, even if the wetness of his pant legs was scratching his ankles. Sora leaned his shoulder against Riku's and tilted his head to the opposite side. "Pretty," he said at length, and Riku nodded.
White-grey-blue and it emanated a non-judgmental peace. Riku felt welcomed. He felt clean and happy and washed.
He leaned over and kissed Sora on the lips, not hard, but enough so that there was a wet sound when they parted.
"What was that for?" Sora asked him, his eyes the same color as the stained-glass windows. They were not the color the sky oughtta be. They were just the kind of color that went where it went. He was smiling.
Riku shrugged and grinned sheepishly and they kept walking.
A few minutes later Sora shook his head and stared at his hair. "I should've taken a shower before we left," he said, "I feel all greasy and deflated."
Riku grunted.
"…Hey…Riku?"
"Yeah, Sora?" Sora glanced back in the direction of the church, which was just out of sight.
"Do you think that if people knew what happened after they died that there would be fewer suicides?"
Riku took this calmly, as he had learned to do. He thought over the words, and where they might have come from in Sora's mind. He considered it with a sort of detached doubtfulness.
"I…don't think they're doing it out of curiosity," he said skeptically.
Sora shook his head and they slowed their walk down a bit. "Yeah, I know, but I mean…I mean, people commit suicide because they just don't want to live any more, right? And if you knew…if you knew what was waiting for you, it takes away that…the like…the wild card, sort of. I mean, I guess. You can't just have it be whatever you want. Heaven or purgatory or nothingness. You'd have to know just what was waiting for you as soon as you t-took the plunge, right?"
"…Sora?"
"What?"
Riku paused and then squeezed his eyes shut before opening them again. "Never mind."
"Nuh-uh," Sora nudged him in the side with their hands. "Tell me! I wanna know, anyways."
Riku sighed. "Wouldn't it…depend on what was there? I mean, maybe there are fewer suicides because people are afraid, depending on what they believe. Suicide's a really bad thing in a lot of religions. Like in Hinduism and Buddhism and the reincarnation and stuff, it's kind of like cheating, because that's how you get to the next life. And for Christianity it just means Hell, right?"
"Yeah, suicide is a really bad thing for religions." Sora looked thoughtful and glanced back in the direction of the church again. "But if we knew it didn't matter what you did in this life, or if you all went to the same place and were treated the same, or if there was just – nothing – would people do it more or less?"
Riku shrugged. "I think…" And he had to stop here, because he wasn't entirely sure what he thought. There was a long quiet, spanning a few minutes, and they kept walking. The wind bit Riku's ears.
"…I…guess if you've gotten to the point where you really are attempting suicide, you've probably thought it through so thoroughly that there's no way anything waiting for you could be worse than what you're leaving behind. I mean, unless you're totally sure, you're probably not banking on nothingness or paradise or purgatory. So it…might not even affect it at all. Maybe about the same number of people would…stop from…doing it…as the ones that would…go through with it, but…aren't right now." He lost steam at the end, struggling desperately to remember what he was trying to say and how to put it into words properly. Trying to go back and understand what it was he had just said.
Sora squeezed his hand and moved in closer, so the lengths of their arms were touching. He shivered, and Riku wondered if it was really just from the cold. Riku's nose felt disconnected from his body, and he could feel a cold forming in it, and found himself wishing he'd worn thicker socks with his sneakers. He let Sora think, because he'd learned it was easier to do that than to ask if his friend was okay.
He wondered (at the veins of thought that rivered Sora's mind) at the oddness of their conversation, and wondered why it was always Sora bringing these things up and Riku spouting extemporaneous crap about it so that Sora could provide a counter-argument.
"Their room had these yellow walls," he said very quietly. "They weren't really bright or really pale, but I remember looking at them when I was a little kid and I'd had a nightmare, so I was sleeping in their bed."
Riku didn't even stop to wonder who he was talking about. Just squeezed his fingers.
The funny thing was that Sora didn't sound even close to being on the verge of tears. He just sounded…quiet.
"I wonder what they were thinking," he almost-whispered, "Right before they died. I wonder if they died scared. Or alone."
"Being friendless taught me how to be a friend. Funny how that works."
- Colleen Wainwright
Twelve-thirty in the afternoon.
Twelve-thirty.
Eight and a half hours after Axel had initially left.
Half past fucking noon.
Axel had managed, in about an hour, to get eight and a half hours' worth of lost. Which was kind of ridiculous. In the time that had passed he'd bought himself a crappy fruit salad from McDonald's. He would have gotten something cooked, or at least under the semblance of having been hot at one point, but that would have required him to order instead of just showing the cashier the container and producing the right amount of money.
Then, his manly pride refusing to let him revisit the McDonald's, he'd bought a plastic-wrapped bagel sandwich from the pastry shop next to it for lunch.
Axel was a cold, tired, miserable little boy when Riku and Sora turned the corner.
"Hey!" he waved and took few graceful, bounding steps over (he did, unwittingly, copy what he saw. And at the circus he saw ribbon dancers. Go figure.), entirely unashamed, despite the fact that Riku was embarrassed looking at him.
Riku considered this. He glared at Axel offhandedly and wondered. What if he was the one who'd gotten lost in…Germany, or something? Where he had no hope of communicating with the people there? He sincerely didn't know if he'd be willing to call someone and tell him he was lost with no justification. He supposed he would, eventually, if nobody called him first. But while waiting he would try his best to hide the fact. Lean casually against a telephone pole or sit on the curb and fiddle with his cell phone. Just so that people wouldn't look at him and see a useless, lost tourist.
He figured that didn't make any sense. If he saw someone standing on the sidewalk looking around, that could mean anything. You didn't immediately assume that they were lost and waiting to be found. You might assume they were – were waiting for somebody, or for a taxi, or people-watching or a million other things before you went to the undignified abnormalities.
But he would probably feel embarrassed.
Now, anyways.
Goddamn it, Sora, and with that some tiny amount of nostalgic irritation flamed. It was cheesy, was what. Maybe it was the kid's fault. Maybe optimism was partially contagious. "Strangers are people too," sort of thing. Anger had turned into paranoia, because if Riku could think horrible things about people, they could think that about him.
Or maybe they didn't. Maybe Riku was just a horrible, nasty, awful person, who (used to?) thought the worst of everybody, including himself.
But now the lines were getting smudged like they were being wiped with a crappy eraser. The plastic, dry kind that didn't even give off eraser-bits because it was impossible to break. Oh, he'd hated those.
Sora and Axel were talking and Riku was starting to think he was still pretty badly self-involved. In fact, he would probably regress back to his former state if Sora ever left. Riku flinched inwardly and Didn't Think about their college discussion.
(Listen, we'll both just apply to places that we want to go, but we shouldn't go somewhere just because the other is going there. But if there's overlap, that's great. Okay? We'll deal with it when it happens.)
"So our dorms are about…" Sora looked at Riku. "How far away? If we head back down the main street it might only be a thirty-minute walk. We could always ask Roxas to meet us there. I dunno where your motel is, exactly."
Riku probably would have numbly agreed.
"Well," Axel said hesitantly, "How about we call him and ask where he is right now? If he's close-ish, he might as well just come here and then we can head back. We're leaving early tomorrow morning, anyways."
"Oh!" Sora smiled. "Yeah, that seems fine. Okay, d'you want to call him or should I?"
Axel had the decency to look sheepish. He hunched in on himself and smiled nervously, eyes darting to Riku. "Well, probably you, since I still don't know where we are."
"Right," Sora grinned and took his phone out of his pocket. When Roxas picked up, he spoke French at first and ended with English. "Ouais, nous le – ouais. Non, sur le – non, la rue est – oui, oui, entre les deux. Donc – ah, je le sais. Mm-hm. Right now? I think it's just off Christophe Street. Où es-tu? Okay, sounds good. See you soon." He was smiling a different smile when he flipped the phone shut. "His English is getting pretty good," he remarked, still staring at it.
"Yeah," Axel said, "He said his English-language-learning thing is pretty useless, but since he can use it during the school day and I help him over the phone, he's definitely been improving." He chuckled, which was the only way to describe it. Close-mouthed and slightly smug. "He really likes to learn slang words, since nobody teaches you that in the official language course."
"Ah, yeah," Sora said, and nodded. Riku thought of a couple of things he could say, but he hadn't said anything yet, so it seemed easier to just keep silent. Let it seem completely intentional (instead of just mostly intentional). Things about how in his French class they didn't really talk about contractions or regional accents, and how they probably weren't allowed to teach them swears and things.
Awkward silence settled over the group. Crept up like a tide. Sora looked down at the sidewalk, the crystals of salt that kept more ice from forming. (Riku, however, was entirely confused by the salt.)
Riku wasn't about to start any conversations.
"So, I can see why you got lost," Sora said eventually. "For some reason, the street sign that led to this street had been knocked over. I saw part of it sticking up, but the rest of it was covered in snow."
"Oh, is that why?" Axel asked conversationally. "I was kind of feeling stupid, but I checked either end of the street a few times and I couldn't see anything. I considered looking for the nearest street with a sign on it, but for all I knew they're all like this, so I decided not to risk it." Sora nodded along with the comment.
There was another pause.
"Yeah, it's a pretty bad idea to have an unlabeled street," Riku said. "I mean, if you hadn't had your phone or if you didn't have anyone you could call to help you out you might have gotten completely stuck." He felt stupid as soon as he'd said it.
He felt some small triumph when they both nodded. "It must've been down for a while," Sora said, "There were a couple of layers of snow on it."
"Yeah?" Axel asked. "Go figure."
There were more lapses of silence and more two-minute conversations, several times over, for the next fifteen minutes. It reminded Riku of visiting relatives. Talk-talk-talk quiet. Talk-talk-talk quiet-talk-quiet, and no topics had enough steam to propel themselves. Axel crossed his arms across his chest and Riku and Sora held hands, noiselessly, under their sleeves.
Riku heard Roxas walking towards them, completely unsure whether he ought to ignore him until the kid came around the other side or if they should turn around to face him or – something else, but the crunches of snow grew too close, so Riku pretended he didn't realize who was there until Roxas stomped around to stand near Axel.
Axel grinned. "Hey there, Smiles."
Roxas scowled at him.
Roxas looked like a jewelry commercial. He wasn't wearing any--at least, not that Riku could see, but with a different expression he could easily be offering some pretty girl (Riku's mind supplied a Kairi-clone) a necklace or a pair of earrings for Christmas. What with the timeless beige pea coat, the nice face (like Sora, but sharper and less friendly, the difference between a corn snake and a milk snake), the blond hair and the blue eyes, Roxas carried a sort of unrealistic charm. Riku hated it. Hated the blond hair and the pale face and the blue eyes.
It seemed insincere, somehow. It would not fit in with the Lutheran church and the grey sky. There were little silver beads of melted snow on Roxas's hair.
Axel frowned. "What, you don't like it? It's a decent nickname! How about Chuckles?"
Roxas rolled his eyes and fwapped Axel in the chest. "You'd bettair not get lost again. Zis is the second time in six monts!"
Axel scratched his head and patted Roxas's. "I'm a free spirit, Chuckles. Like an outdoor cat."
"Like a hobo," Roxas muttered, shaking his head. He put an extra emphasis on the H. Axel laughed, which sounded like pah!, and slung an arm around his friend's shoulders. Riku watched impassively.
Axel had to lean down a bit to be able to lean on Roxas, and he grinned at Sora (and Riku). "So, I think I'm gonna let my not-lost buddy here lead me back to the motel, where there are hot showers and cable and nice fluffy pillows, yeah?"
Riku, not feeling it was his place to answer, stayed silent. And Sora, knowing Riku would not be feeling it was his place to answer, spoke. "Sounds good. You guys are leaving tomorrow, right? So this is probably the last…last time we're gonna see you."
Axel blinked. "Ah…yeah. I mean, I'm sure if you just give me directions I can make it back on my own, actually. So Rox, you can stay here and hang out with your brother, right?"
Roxas blinked and looked at Sora, glanced at Riku, looked at Sora again. "W-well," he said. "Ah…I could take you back, zhen come back 'ere or to ze dorms? Axel is terrible wiz directions."
Axel grinned and shook his head. "Sad thing is, the kid's right."
Sora nodded, and Riku felt a pang of sympathy for Roxas. He figured Axel was Roxas's Sora, in all ways but one, and knew he'd resent being in that situation. But he couldn't very well say that.
"Yeah, okay," Sora said. "Sorry about this."
"Nah, nah, 's my fault!" Axel insisted.
Roxas looked at Riku and seemed surprised to find Riku looking back. Their eyes met. There were formal introductions and Riku secretly rejoiced in the fact that Roxas did not offer him an awkward placating smile. Simply stared, and his face seemed very careful. His lips were not a line, nor a smile, nor a frown, but set against one another comfortably. His eyes were open, but not squinting; his hands were neutrally in his pockets.
It was difficult to remember the two-year age gap.
It was not difficult to remember anything else.
You are the one keeping a piece of Sora in France.
You are the one taking my brother away from me.
You are the one with the unbreakable bond.
You are the one he chooses to be with.
You have been through things I can't imagine.
You are the lucky one.
"See you later," Riku said to both of them, looking at Roxas. Roxas smiled shakily.
After Roxas and Axel had gone around the corner:
"Come on," Riku said, feeling loose and happy and wanted with Sora leaning against him. He placed a careful arm around his boyfriend's shoulders. "We should go back. World's still turning and the air is arctic."
Sora frowned at him but didn't shrug Riku's arm off his shoulders. "What?"
Riku shook his head and, giving into a whim, kissed Sora on his human forehead. "Never mind. It's not important."
"Hey, Mom?" Riku shouldered the strap of the suitcase awkwardly. The woven plastic scratched his skin. "Yeah, we landed half an hour ago. Mmhm. No, there's a bus." He glanced at Sora, who was pretending to fall asleep on Kairi's shoulder and fake-snoring. His boyfriend cracked an eyelid and saw Riku staring. He stuck his tongue out, grinned and butted Kairi's shoulder a little.
"God, Sora, it's like being snuggle-molested by a hedgehog," Kairi muttered, wiggling away.
"Pfft," Sora said. He came around the plastic table to sit next to Riku. "Fine. I'll just lean on Riku. At least he loves me." Sora sighed grandly and rested his arm around Riku's waist.
Riku made a motion like slitting his throat with his finger, staring at Sora, and went back to the phone.
"I dunno, Mom, but it should show up soon. It'll probably drop us off at the high school. Yeah. No, no, it's okay. I'll walk home. It's not that far! It's like a forty-minute walk at the most, and my bag's not really heavy at all. Yes, I'm sure. Really. Yeah, I will." Riku groaned when he hung up and angrily stuffed his phone back into a side pocket on his suitcase. As if it was the phone's fault, somehow.
He just didn't feel like getting picked up. Like it would have been a blow to his independence, to spend all of ten days parent-free, feeling quite accomplished in terms of Meeting the Brother and finding Axel (and having a sex dream, but that didn't count). And to end it by being taken home by your mother in her minivan, being asked 'how it went,' seemed pretty damn awful.
The airport here – and Riku wasn't sure how he'd missed it the first time he was here – smelled thickly of ocean. Sandy. It invoked images of cheesy beach towels and little kids squealing about cold water. Then again, the airport in France had smelled like bread, and sickly sweet, like dead flowers.
"Hey," Sora said. "Do you guys wanna hang out today?"
Riku almost groaned. Was ten days not enough for the guy? He had literally not had a moment to himself, outside the bathroom, since the trip began. Not even when he slept. Sora was fucking clingy when he was asleep. Riku didn't really mind that much, aside from the fact that the nightmares seemed so much more real when Riku saw them up close. Sora shook and kicked; sometimes he cried.
Riku was too tired for this. He needed to go home and just…kick Sora out of the biosphere for a few hours. He needed to close the door of his bedroom, open a window and stare out. He needed to take a shower and play videogames and not have to interact with anybody. (Leopards can't change their spots.)
"I don't think I can," he said. "I have to go home and unpack and stuff. My mom will probably want me in the house since I was away for so long, plus two of my brothers came home from college for Christmas and I probably have to see them." All legitimate, real excuses. None of them sincere.
"Oh…" Sora said, blankly. Kairi nodded.
"Yeah," she said, "I have to unpack. But I should be free by later tonight, like after dinnertime. So I'll call you at like seven or eight?"
Sora nodded. "Yeah, sure, sounds cool! Riku?"
Riku licked his dry lips. "I…" he thought on his feet, "I don't know yet. I still have to touch base with my family."
"Okay. So I'll call you later?"
He nodded.
It was always Sora who called. Riku never called, not anyone. He didn't know quite why; maybe he was too shy, or scared that they'd pick up and he wouldn't have anything to say. Maybe he was scared they wouldn't pick up.
His room was exactly the same, which wasn't surprising. It was composed of varying intensities of blue. The floor was a light-blue rug (stained with childhood), and the bedspread had been changed recently to dark blue sheets. The walls were grey, but it was grey with a bluish tint, and had no posters. Not even a picture taped above his bed.
There was a stuffed fish hanging on the wall; it was his birthday present when he turned seven. Loz took him fishing and Dad had his biggest catch stuffed. Riku thought it was creepy in a sad sort of way, so he left it up there. Its eyes were glass marbles, and it was covered in a sort of plastic glue that had stunk for weeks. Its fins were forever erect, its mouth open in surprise. There was still a small hole in the top of its head where it'd been pierced with the hook. It was only about a foot long. Loz had said it probably hadn't even reached sexual maturity; it was too little for the species.
It wasn't that Riku really felt guilty about it, but he didn't want the thing put in a box somewhere far away, gathering dust on his conscience.
He took a really deep breath. Mom was still at work for at least another hour. His brothers were probably off dicking around at the baseball field or something.
He sat down on his bed, which made the non-sound-blue-sound of a tired bed, and turned on his computer out of habit. The log-on sound sparked familiarity in his consciousness.
Riku by himself, separate from everything. He shut the door, heard the click of the latch, and sighed. For now, Riku was alone in his tiny world. Trapped like a happy mouse in his den.
He had no obligations, but the "I'll call you later" weighed heavily on him. He didn't want any plans for the immediate future; he wanted the world to fuck off.
It occurred to him that he had nothing to do. He was so indescribably, ridiculously, unjustifiably happy about this, he curled his toes and grinned.
He felt peaceful. His life was a one-instrument song. A single finger on the whole piano. For one hour, he returned to junior year; Riku did not need to check in with anyone, maintain relationships, worry about what others thought of him, or what he ought to say to anyone. He did not have to think about white churches with grey roofs and Sora-colored stained glass windows.
He was separate, closed off with sharp lines despite the humidity. He felt sharply defined. It was not a bad thing, nor was it a permanent one. He closed his eyes, lay down on the bed, and opened them again. He stared at the white ceiling.
After a time, he got a pencil from the desk in the corner. He stood on the bed, which wasn't nearly bouncy enough to cause him trouble, and wrote on the ceiling above it:
Très équivoque.
He bit his lip and smiled.
It took half an hour of Mom and Kadaj being in the same house for the fighting to start. It was never serious things, and nothing lasted more than a day, but it was still awful. It was always so stupid! They argued about laundry or his still-undeclared major, why he never had a girlfriend more than three months, why she felt the need to control everything, how he played his music too loud. He'd gotten better. But Riku suspected that being in the same house together made Kadaj feel like he was still in high school.
The problem was that they were both just such stubborn people. He thought that in all likelihood, they didn't care half the time what they were arguing about. Just that the other person didn't get the upper hand.
He locked his door and sat on his bed with the big headphones. Fancy ones that covered the entirety of you ears, instead of sticking in them. They'd been very expensive, so Riku only used them for his computer at home. They blocked out a lot of the noise. Just not all of it.
He could hear the shouts. He couldn't hear what was being said, but he heard the difference between the tenor of his brother and the awkward soprano his mom adopted when she was angry.
He drew his knees up and turned the music on the computer up. He didn't even care what it was, so long as it was loud. He knew he didn't live in a broken home, or anything; he wasn't complaining, but it was distressing. When you were nine years old and your fourteen-year-old brother had tri-weekly fights with your mother that you didn't really understand, it was sad and scary.
Mom and Kadaj had taught Riku to stay quiet when you had an objection. Unless he wanted to be the one shouting, he didn't say anything when his mother yelled at him for leaving out dishes that he hadn't. He just listened and made eye contact, because that way he didn't have to argue.
He wasn't afraid of arguing. He just didn't want to be part of that horrible shouting match. They'd been so awful when he was a kid. So awful. Hearing his parents angry and his brother angrier had made him flinch, because families weren't supposed to do that. He knew better now, of course. He knew it was just in the nature of teenagers to fight back, even if he folded. He knew it was literally nothing. Especially when it was compared to things that some people dealt with.
In between the shouting, he slid the headphones off his ears and crept downstairs. He opened the door to the study; it scraped against the thick carpet.
"Dad?"
His father turned in his chair to look back at Riku. He slid his glasses down his nose. He raised his eyebrows.
"I'm gonna…" another shout. Riku dropped to a whisper. "I'm just gonna go to Sora's, okay? I'll bring my phone."
"Will you be back for dinner?"
Riku glanced at his watch, which read ten to seven. "Doubt it," he said.
Dad nodded. "Will you sleep over there?"
Riku almost flinched. He'd never asked…either of his parents, really, how they'd feel about having a gay son. He wondered: if they knew who Sora really was for Riku, would they still let him sleep over at Sora's house? Did the same rules for a teenager apply if you were gay?
He shrugged. "I don't know yet."
He suspected – perhaps unfoundedly – that they wouldn't mind so terribly much. They had three other straight sons; what did it matter if the youngest wasn't? They weren't religious. They were liberal.
Didn't mean he wanted to tell them.
"All right," his dad said, and that was all there was to the matter.
"It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all."
- Samuel Butler
Riku wondered, as he walked into the house, when it was exactly that he'd just stopped bothering to knock. He just used the key hidden in a fake rock and walked in most of the time; Belle didn't see him because she was working or busy, and when she did, she seemed delighted.
Riku knew she knew about him and Sora. Sora had told her. He wondered why she still gave them so much freedom. So much trust unearned.
He dismissed the thought, ignored the cat and knocked on the door to Sora's room.
"Yeah? Belle, I'm not hungry."
"It's me."
A thoughtful pause. "Riku? Come in."
Riku did. Sora was sitting, cross-legged, on his bed, surrounded by books, of all things. Seemed an odd thing to heap around yourself. Like stuffed animals for grown-ups, or something, Sora had them in messy piles, but not stacks. He grinned. "Finally getting around to unpacking the books," he said sheepishly. "That part of the house was actually mostly intact for some reason. My room, I mean."
Riku blinked. There were a good number of thin, hard-backed, large books – picture books. Kid ones. Sora was sorting them.
I wonder if they died scared. Or alone.
He supposed it was good sign, that Sora could be touching all of these things and not getting upset. Seemed an odd thing to do, though, unpacking your books with only tonight and one more day left of Christmas vacation. Maybe, he figured, Sora had finally mustered up the courage and acted before he talked himself out of it.
"Oh," Riku said, "Cool."
Sora smiled at him and then didn't.
"Can I help?" Riku asked. "I mean, if you're busy I can just…"
"No, no! I – no, it's fine, don't leave. I could definitely use the help," Sora laughed. "I'm putting little kid picture books over there – " he gestured to the floor on one side of the bed, "And then chapter books, like novels, over there," another side of the bed, "And non-fiction here." He pointed to the pillows at the head of the bed, laden with a few volumes of an encyclopedia, dictionaries in a couple of different languages, educational books about Vikings and dinosaurs and how-to manuals. "And then I'll sort from there."
"Okay," Riku said, coming over to the end of the bed with the unsorted books. The sun streaming through the window, tinted orange, lighting on all the dust floating through the air like gold particulates, seemed out of place. Like the sun shouldn't shine when you were sorting books owned by Sora With Parents.
Riku sat down on the footboard, balanced awkwardly, and every time he found a non-fiction book he had to lean over Sora to toss it into the pile.
Sora seemed content to be quiet, for the most part. Occasionally he would pick up a book and then laugh and tell Riku something about it. Mostly picture books.
"Oh, hey, check this one out," Sora laughed and showed Riku a book of short stories. "It's a bunch of things about trickster gods," he said. "You know, Anansi and Coyote and Loki and a bunch of other ones I can't remember. Man, my mom loved these. She really like this one about some god who had a hat that was two different colors down the middle," Sora drew a line from the front of his head to the back to show Riku the way the line went and told him the story.
"She really liked it," Sora said, "Because half the time the gods would end up being tricked themselves. She said it was how she meant to teach us not to lie," a laugh, lighthearted and fluttery and weighed down with lead, "Because we would…um…oh, we would just get tangled up in them or something." His laugh was like the very last scrapings of the laugh barrel, pushed out forcefully.
There, hidden in the backs of his eyes, were the tears Riku had been looking for. Sora choked them back and swallowed.
"What were they like?" (To Sora, Riku's voice was and always would be soothing. It was low, and not terribly smooth or rough, but direct without being ambitious. It snuck into your ear and coiled there.) "Your parents."
There were enough books sorted now that Sora could put his hands on the bed between them, staring at his fingers.
"You don't have to – "
"No, no, it's fine," Sora said, smiling down at the bed. "I'm just thinking."
"Oh," Riku said, "Yeah, okay. I guess it's a tough question."
"Yeah," his friend laughed. "Um…well. Dad taught fourth graders at an elementary school, and my mom, she was a translator. Only, for a while she worked on a tree farm – you know, raising baby trees? But when I was seven she started translating and stuff. Her family was from America." Riku was nodding and kept his eyes on Sora. So when Sora raised his gaze, the first thing he saw was a patient stare. His stare. "And," Sora cleared his throat and spoke a little better. "So, my dad was this really energetic guy. He was really into the whole family thing. Like, dinners together and game night and Sunday-at-the-park and shit. Only, sometimes if I had a ton of homework, he'd let me eat dinner in my room while working – uh," Sora blinked, and his eyes had gotten red. He swallowed a couple of times and smiled a watery smile. "S-sorry."
Riku scooted down from the footboard, to the empty space now cleared of unsorted books, and put his hand on Sora's. The one with the skin graft, not that he meant to.
"Sorry," Sora said again, shakily, and he put his forehead against the side of Riku's neck. He was shaking, just a little tiny bit.
"It's fine," Riku said. "You don't have to…"
Sora shook his head against Riku's neck. His coarse hair was scratchy. It felt like a bigger version of Loz's unshaved face in the morning. Riku had called him porcupine-man when he was little and Loz was…how old had he been? Old enough to shave.
"No," his friend said, "No, I kinda…want to, you know?"
"Yeah."
There was a long silence. In the silence Riku put his hand on Sora's back and rubbed up and down, feeling the cloth rolling under his fingers and a warm, solid Sora underneath it. Sora shivered.
"My mom was sorta…I mean, I dunno. It was weird, because she worked from home, so a lot of the time she would be home, but I couldn't talk to her or ask her things because she was too busy, and it was really annoying. Oh! And she really liked animals. She, she – we had a dog and she was always sort of s-spoiling him and, um, she loved taking him on really long walks and stuff."
"Mmhm…" Riku wasn't sure what to say. Hell, he wasn't even sure why he'd asked! He'd just…wanted to know.
Sora made a sniffling sound, and shifted his position so he could comfortably rest his head on Riku's shoulder. "It's still weird," he mumbled. "They still…they still don't seem all the way dead. And…" He made a sound like swallowing grief. Glunkulp. He started shaking just a little bit, and probably crying, but silently. "I felt like it should have been raining but it never did."
Sora and Riku lay down next to each other. On their sides, face-to-face. Sora had his eyes closed and his lips pressed together and shaking a little.
"Damn," he whispered eventually, "I've been crying way too much lately. I'm kind of a wimp."
"Don't say that," Riku muttered. "Idiot."
"I don't think I've ever seen you cry."
That was because Sora's eyes were closed right now.
"The hell do I have to cry about?" Riku asked him, putting a hand in the space between them.
Sora scooted in closer and wrapped one arm around Riku in a sort of loose hug. He was warm and solid and Sora, and he said with his achy-breaky-shaky voice: "Hey, Riku Tepes."
"Yeah, Sora?"
"I'm…I'm really glad you aren't dead."
They fell asleep like that. For almost an hour. Red-faced and headachy when they finally woke up.
Domesticity was strange in its fleeting nature. One minute you were trying to run away from some stupid argument your family was having around you and the next you were comforting your boyfriend about his dead parents for two-hundred-seventy suicides. It turned out that the harder you tried not to think about death, the more you thought about it.
The next morning (not that they'd slept the whole night; Belle woke them up around eight to eat dinner) Riku remembered the school-wide letter sent to sympathetic parents in fourth grade: the father of one of the children at the school had passed away, so everyone should take special care to keep from upsetting the child in question.
Riku almost laughed, now, thinking about it. The death of one person meant a school-wide letter and a great big deal when sometimes a person's whole life burned down. They'd acted like nobody's parents ever died, ever. Like this was some horrible, strange anomaly. How dare reality encroach on the perfection of life on Destiny Island.
Riku hated it. He felt no shame in hating it. He supposed he blamed this place, the entirety of the dry side of the island, for keeping him locked so tight in his world. For keeping him in the mindset of does not happen. He had always assumed that unhappy endings happened to other people, really. Not that he really expected an unhappy ending; at least, not in the traditional sense. But perhaps unsatisfactory, like the ending of a good movie. They left you feeling as if there was no more to be had: as if these peoples' lives may as well have ended for all they did after their adventure.
He wondered what would happen when he graduated. The applications had been sent out; the colleges were not replying yet. School itself seemed futile. Why bother keeping your grades up when colleges wouldn't look at them?
He wondered if he and Sora would keep in touch, or if they'd promise to and then not. He didn't entertain thoughts of going to the same college. It would have been silly and pointless. But long-distance friendship wasn't so silly, was it?
"You look thoughtful," Sora said conversationally, and Riku almost jumped.
"Hm?"
His boyfriend shook his head and sat up on his elbows. "Penny for your thoughts?"
Riku sighed. "Nothing to think."
"Mm," Sora dropped it, giving Riku an odd look before taking his right arm in his hands and playing his fingers across it. It almost tickled, but not enough to make Riku laugh.
"Hey, Riku?"
"Yeah?"
"What do you think your major is gonna be?"
"…I don't know yet."
"But I mean, like, art or science or business? Are you leaning any way in particular?"
Riku snorted. Maybe he ought to be a psychologist. He could be his own case study. "Not really, yet. I don't think I want to be an artist."
"I wanna design videogames!" Sora rolled over onto his back and wound his arms around Riku's neck, grinning like a satisfied housecat. Riku laughed at him and flopped his head onto the pillow.
"What?" Sora frowned. "Don't you laugh at me! I'm genetically engineered to make videogames." Riku raised an eyebrow, and Sora started counting off with his fingers. "I'm part Japanese," he said, "And they're all…big on technology and stuff. And I'm French, and they're artists, and I'm part American and they…they…play videogames!"
"And me?" Riku asked him. "What do I do, if I'm part islander and part Japanese?"
Sora frowned. "Hm," he said, "I think you have a carte blanche there."
Riku exhaled through his nose (the hot air tickled the inside of his nostrils), and stared out the window above Sora's head. He ran his fingers up and down Sora's side absently, taking some secret pleasure in that he could. It felt nice to have a person to touch. He figured that was the appeal of having company. You just couldn't keep yourself amused, most of the time. There was a world of difference between one and two.
Sora shivered underneath him. Riku blinked, looked down at him; he stilled his hand. "Sora?"
"Mm, nothing," Sora said, eyes closed. "That feels good…"
Riku thought you only shivered when you were cold.
Sora head-butted him under the chin. "Don't stop!" he muttered. "Jeez."
He chuckled and kept running his fingers up and down Sora's side. "You're like a whiny puppy." His boyfriend snorted.
Sora opened his eyes and looked up at Riku; he smirked. Riku ran his fingers up his ribs, and he closed his eyes and shivered again. He opened them. It was a funny pattern.
"Hm," Sora said lazily, looking at Riku.
"What?"
Sora squirmed until he was sitting up on one elbow; he reached one hand out to run his hand through Riku's hair, which still felt too short since he'd cut it. He sat up, leaning his back against the headboard, stared down at Riku with his round face. Riku stared back up at him.
(Riku's eyes were a funny color.)
"Just thinking," Sora said. He half-smiled, the crook of one side of his mouth pulled up as if on a string, and he leaned over Riku so far that he had a forearm resting on either side of Riku's head. "I mean…hm."
Sora kissed Riku (kissed Sora.)
Oh God, thought Riku.
He tensed. For one thing, dream kisses were way different from real-life ones. Or at least, for him they were. Post-dream, anyways. Everything was much more…real. He was so much more self-aware. It was not all lips and hands. It felt wonderful; it tingled like having your foot fall asleep but with nerve endings instead of pinpricks, and it was distracting and heart-thumping and does not happen, but did he feel the same way? Did Sora get the same things out of a kiss that Riku got? Was Riku doing it wrong? Were his lips too dry, should he be moving more or less, was he disappointing, was Sora trying to tell him something?
So Riku Tepes tensed underneath Sora Goodwin.
Sora slowed down but didn't pull away. He backed off and not out. He used little nudges, and quick kisses, and he hovered over Riku, who felt like an animal being coaxed out of a hole.
Riku let him. Sora seemed to know what he was doing; let him take over. I'll just…sit here and…uh, give him the reins. Mmhm. Good plan, me.
Two minutes later Riku's cell phone rang, and he promptly decided that he hated technology. After he'd dampened down the self-consciousness (if it was so bad he wouldn't've kept going) it had been very pleasant, even if it was a far cry from that dream.
He hated technology and Tuesdays.
Sora just laughed and pulled away, still lying on top of Riku. "Figures," he said, and Riku didn't know if he meant the kissing or the phone.
"Listen. Do not have an opinion while you listen because frankly, your opinion doesn't hold much water outside of Your Universe. Just listen. Listen until their brain has been twisted like a dripping towel and what they have to say is all over the floor."
- Hugh Elliot
It turned out that Kairi had called, which was better than the alternative (parents). She wanted to come over; she didn't want to spend her last day of winter vacation screwing around on the Internet, and she wondered if they were busy.
They weren't. Unless you counted the kissing, which they didn't see as particularly important business.
The first thing Kairi did when she came into the TV room and saw Riku and Sora sitting by either arm of the couch watching some crappy New Year's Eve special (it was five days till then, anyways) was sigh dramatically and sit between them, flinging her arms out to the side.
"Ah, it is good to see you, my young and innocent friends…" she said, rolling her head on the back of the couch.
"Uh-oh," Riku said apprehensively.
"Uh-oh is right," she said, perching an elbow on his shoulder. Kairi had smooth skin. She didn't even have any freckles or anything. Riku wondered if there were some girls who shaved their arms. "You two," she shoved a foot in Sora's lap, "Have no idea of the perils of my active teenage life! All you guys do is watch movies and make out."
"Nuh-uh," Sora pulled at her big toe. "We also go to the beach and Riku stops me from terrorizing crabs."
"You terrorize crabs?"
"When he finds them," Riku said, "He holds them up by one leg because he's afraid of getting pinched."
"You're supposed to hold them on either side of their shell!" Kairi chided Sora, who just threatened to tickle her feet if she didn't shut up about it. (2) "Anyways," she continued, "Must be nice."
Riku snorted. "You want a gay boyfriend of your very own?"
"Nah," she patted his knee, "You two are more than enough. I just…" she sighed for real now, and looked distantly at the wall. "…" Even her silence was audible.
"What is it?" Sora asked her, looking earnestly at his friend. Ah, right, Riku thought, You have to ask what's wrong or they won't talk.
"You guys are really lucky," she said. "Since you've got each other. I mean, aside from the gay thing, you could be the poster couple for healthy relationships."
Riku snorted. That – that, he very much doubted, but perhaps for Kairi, it was just in comparison.
"And that's like…like, in high school, you almost never find that. And I just…God, I dunno, it's just…" She groaned and wiped a hand across her face. "Maybe I've just got really awful taste in guys."
"Whoa," Riku said. "Hey. Seventh-grade-me is deeply insulted."
Kairi laughed a laugh that had been pressed and put through a strainer. But, perhaps like Sora, she too was not pulled off track when she had something to say. Riku wondered why he and Sora qualified as people to say it to. "There's this guy I really like," she said. "And I think he likes me back. You know, as more than a friend."
"So?" Sora nudged her foot. "What's the problem?"
She groaned again, long and exaggerated, and let her head slide down into Riku's lap. At this point, Riku thanked the heavens that he was decidedly not heterosexual. Kairi was about as aware of personal space as Sora.
"I know it's stupid," she said. "I'd probably be miserable if we stayed together for more than a month or two. It's just a stupid high school crush and I wish it'd go away!"
"You don't know that would happen," Sora said. "Right?"
She breathed in through her nose and closed her eyes; she breathed out through her mouth and opened them. "I do too. He's like…like me before I had to go to the hospital. Parties and drinking and, I-I don't know, he might even be a crackhead for all I know about him."
There was a long quiet. Riku had no intention of saying anything; given his track record, he'd just make things worse. And Hell, if Sora found this thing worth a mental chewing-over, no way he could help.
Kairi's head was like a warm basketball. It reminded Riku of having the cat in his lap. Only, then, he hadn't had much to worry about. It was a lot more awkward to have a girl's head in your lap.
"So what're you gonna do about it?" Sora asked at length.
"…nothing," Kairi said. "Wait until it goes away. I mean, at this point, with like six months left in the entirety of our high school lives, there's not much point starting a new relationship."
Riku felt a little pang when she said that. "Why?" he asked carefully. He stomach had sunk; he felt weird. It was funny how a conversation could go from teenage sympathy to horrible niggling worries about the future so quickly.
"Because it probably won't even be strong enough to like…I mean, at this point, what's the point?" She sighed. "I don't think I could handle a long-distance relationship anyways." Kairi licked her lips and looked at the ceiling. She squirmed a little bit, so that both of her feet were in Sora's lap. Her legs were bent at the knees, but she was wearing shorts. "I just…just wish I could stop liking him so much, you know?"
"Yeah…" Sora smiled and looked at Riku, then back down at Kairi. "I've felt like that."
Riku hadn't. He'd never had to try to stop liking anybody. Really, it was the opposite. He wondered how it felt, liking someone and not being able to do anything about it. It must suck.
"Not like you guys," she said forlornly. "I can't even see you breaking up when you go to college."
"I don't…" Riku started. "I mean, we're…we're not…"
"Yeah," Sora said, "We'll probably not ending up going to the same college." Riku had been about to say that, but Sora saying it made it sting a little bit.
"I know…" Kairi said. She sounded whiny. "But honestly. I definitely can't see either of you cheating, or something, and I'd bet my tuition you'd find a way to stay together. Even if it's emails or, or video chats or something." She sighed for about the millionth time. "God, I hate being a teenager. Screw this. I'm not dating for the rest of the year. I'm just gonna be a fag-hag."
Riku rolled his eyes and clipped her gently on the back of the head. "Hey. Bad language."
Kairi started giggling, her eyes squeezed shut and her nose wrinkled. Kairi was pretty cute, in a bunny sort of way.
"What's 'fag' mean?" Sora asked. Kairi opened one eye, looked at him, and started to giggle harder. She rolled around on top of them both, or rather, swayed from side to side. "I'm serious! Kai-ri!"
"It's…it's…" Kairi kept laughing.
"Ri-ku! What's it mean? I know what hag means."
"It's slang. Like fairy."
"Oh! So Kairi's a fag-hag because we're gay and she's a girl?"
"Yup."
Sora wrinkled his nose and tickled Kairi's feet, grinning when she started gasping for air ("Stop! Agh-ahahahaha! No fair!"). "That's stupid," he said.
(1) Adapted quotation from Orson Scott Card's Ender's Shadow. And I'm not looking up the page, I haven't read it in over a year and I don't even know where it is anymore.
(2) Actually that's not how you do it, either. There's a method to long-term crab-wrangling. Especially Asian shore crabs. Lousy things…very pretty, very mean.
A/N: Okay screw you and your long-ass chapters and your rock music and your tight pants. Fffff. This is ridiculous. I am wasting hours of your time. Next chapter should be shorter, yes? That is what I thought.
...thoughts? ANSWER ME.
I want to see if me predicting anything will affect the outcome of the reviews. My hypothesis:
Due to the lack of smut and Axel/Roxas in the chapter, especially near the end, the number of reviews per chapter will decrease to at or below the previous average.
Alternate hypothesis: the content of the chapter has relatively little bearing on the feedback, which is in direct correlation simply to the number/amount of readers.
Anyways. You don't have to review unless you feel like it; I always feel awkward leaving an obligatory review on a chapter. I'm like "is this an okay thing to say? Is this too long? God, I hope I'm not annoying the author here. Crap, now I can't think of anything to say. Is it okay to joke about that? Crap." (I think it's cute, but I also think Christmas tree worms are cute, and I think fish are cute, so I really don't trust myself in these matters.)
Anyways. JOYOUS SEPTEMBER MON AMIE. Time to go read Don Quixote.