They May Even Suggest a Solution.
A/N:
Now listen, Eileen.
I could post this on Tuesday. Or even Monday. Or like, at a time when I am not exhausted, or something? BUT I'm going to forget and/or nervous myself out of that if I do, so I won't.
Anyways.
I've been way overflustered by argtfargtling because you people are taking away pieces of my soul, and uhm, like I said, I don't want to be one of those stupid jerks who sits around like "lookit how many people like me urhurhurhur" or something, but you guys should go look at this picture, because it's lovely and wonderful and I'm crazy flattered - http:// buko-koko . deviantart . com / art / Rain-Shadow - 140291296 (I'll also put a link on my profile. Tomorrow. I'm pretty sure I'm losing brain function exponentially. Wait, let's see if I can spell. B-A-N-A-N-A-N- okay I always misspell that word. I just misspelled misspell. That tells you how tired I am.)
This epilogue was supposed to be so hilarious. Like I'm not even kidding. Then I sat down and thought about it, and then when I wrote it, it turned out bipolar, but hey. I kind of like it. The way you kind of like a dog with three legs or something. Or a used pencil. "It's not broken, it has character!"
Merry Christmas, by the way. Or, more accurately, happy third day of Channukah.
Anyways, since it's an epilogue, and not really connected to the rest of the story, it doesn't get any quotations. Unless I come back later and I feel like it.
I'mma go ahead and dedicate this to Muumuu12 and buko-koko for being awesome. Oh, and to Minikimii, who listened to me whine about it, and to whose piano playing I wrote like...the good half of this epilogue.
ENYOY.
Sora Goodwin was the sort of guy who told you what he was thinking when he was thinking it. Riku kinda liked that about him, most of the time, because it meant that he didn't have to worry if something was wrong. He would know if something was wrong, he just would, because if you were Riku Tepes, Sora Goodwin sat you down and said "Riks, I need a hug."
Fuck but was Sora Goodwin sort of cute when he did that, huh?
It got sort of annoying if he did it too much but once in a while it was just really cute.
It was not five weeks into summer. It was also not even five weeks until they were meant to get on a plane with two one-way tickets to the same city, and not five weeks until they were meant to take taxis in opposite directions, and not five weeks until Riku was going to get really really lost in a place where it rained most of the time, probably.
And so Sora Goodwin sat down Riku Tepes on a chair and sat on his own bed, and after a few minutes of tending to themselves, he started, "Riku?"
"Yeah?"
"You love me, right?"
Sora slid over to the edge of his bed and climbed off it.
"Yeah," Riku said. He was trying to fix a keychain on his backpack; the two tight silver coils were getting separated. It made it easier for it to fall off of things. It was also kind of fun to slide it back and forth around the loop in the zipper pull.
"Okay, me too, so," Sora said, and he straddled Riku's lap and he said "I think we should have sex."
It was right about here that Riku's mind slid to a slippery pause.
Okay.
Okay.
Sex.
Sex was a word that meant two people and…and their…fluids. Oh, God, Riku Tepes, shut up. Do not use the word fluids, that is not an okay word for you to use right now.
So okay. There's that concept down. Sex. Good job, Riku Tepes.
Sex with Sora. Sex with Sora would entail…the things that he'd already mentioned about sex, but they would be with Sora, and with him.
See, Riku Tepes didn't really think about it that much. The whole concept in general, it didn't enter into his mind as often as it could naturally be expected to.
Sex with…Sora…and him…was not…really like the normal…kind, was it? Because it involved…him. And Sora.
…naked.
Wait.
Of all the things, Riku could only splutter, "Wh – I mean…how? I mean can you even…what?"
Sora laughed out loud, and rocked back and forth like a rocking horse. "Ri-ku! Come on! Of course you can."
"But…we're both guys, I mean…Sora…"
Sora rolled his eyes and tutted in disappointment. "That's weird," he said. "I mean, haven't you – ever gotten curious? Or googled it or anything?"
Sometimes, when Riku slept over, he noticed that Sora had the most horrible dreams in the world. They started out as not-nightmares, as far as Riku could tell. They started off as sex dreams. Sora would moan and tug at his hair; he'd move slowly and whisper things that Riku never really tried bothering to understand. But – and this was the part Riku didn't understand, how you could go from one to the other with nothing in between – it was only ever a few minutes before he scrunched up in a ball all of a sudden. He held himself to himself and folded up like a chair, and sometimes he stayed like that, like a little armadillo-boy, for however long it took Riku to fall asleep. He shrunk down into a tiny box and shook and sometimes, on the really bad days, on the really sad days, he'd cry and pinch his lips together and make gulping noises.
He'd had a bad one, just a few days ago. A really bad one.
It just made Riku wonder, was all.
"No," he told Sora. He absently traced his thumbs over his boyfriend's hips. "I never really thought about looking it up. I guess I just…" and stopped himself before he tried to come up with a real reason.
"Well," Sora pursed his lips. "I guess I kind of expected you to say that anyways, honestly. You're so disinterested in this stuff, you know that? It kinda gives a guy an attention complex."
"Huh?"
He snorted. "You're totally bored with it."
Riku Tepes kissed Sora Goodwin on the lips. He kissed Sora Goodwin some more until he kissed back kissed forward. Smiled against island boy's lips and tugged on his hair. "Not bored," he muttered. "Just not good at it."
"Yeah," Sora agreed with him, with stung in a really dull way. "I'm serious, though."
"'Bout what?" Riku grinned stupidly.
"You suck." Sora rolled off him and sat down next to Riku, picking up a dropped pen by the side of the bed and clicking it in and out. Click-a-click-a-click. "You've never even wondered? Like had dreams or anything?"
He supposed, if he were to discuss this with anyone, it would be Sora. "Well…" cough. "I don't really remember –"
"Ha! That means you have!"
"So-ra! Shut up!" Looking guiltily at the door, Riku pulled up the zipper of his hoodie. It was a sleeveless one, of course, which sort of defeated the point if you were anywhere but the island. It was warm even when it rained here so you could have a hood and no sleeves. Thinking about it was a very nice distraction.
"Listen," Sora said. "I think we've been way better than most high school couples out there, right? I mean, come on! Over a year? We're not exactly together because of our raw animalistic attraction for each other, are we?" Riku snorted. "Don't laugh. I maintain that there has been very little groping, considering we're almost in college."
"Sora!"
"The guppies in your fish tank get more action than I do! How is that fair?"
"I don't – " he folded his knees up and wrapped his arms around them. "Come on. This isn't my…my…strong suit, okay?"
"It's just another way of – it's just, I mean," Sora laughed, lifted up his arm and rested his elbow on Riku's shoulder. "I know."
Still wrapped up in his own limbs, it was Riku, this time, who put his head in Sora's lap. He faced the game console and watched their reflection in the television. Brown and white. Boring, wasn't it? He thought so, but then he got into what was boring and what wasn't boring. He was the kind of person who'd sit there and figure out why, which sucked. "You know, they taught us about this in sex ed in sophomore year, Sora." He cleared his throat. "Respected and loved romantic partner, I am glad that you are attracted to me but still respect me enough to ask permission for sexual intercourse, but I myself feel unprepared for this step in our relationship. I hope you will understand that it does not mean that I don't love you, but I will not give in to the pressure to have intercourse at this young age."
Riku's respected and loved romantic partner bopped him on the ear and cackled when Riku whined. "As if! For one thing, you're just scared."
"I'm not scared, Sora." Scared of what? There wasn't anything scary about touching, not really, actually scary. People did it all the time. People younger than him did all the time and it wasn't like the whole world was braver than he was or something.
"Then why not?"
"I don't – know! I guess I just, I just figured it wasn't really…God, seriously! Just drop it, okay?" He sat up and sighed, playing with the fringe of hair that stuck out from his ponytail holder.
"I don't get it." There was that voice again.
The sad one. The Riku, You Love Me, Right? Please Love Me Like I Love You voice. Riku wasn't all the way sure that Sora knew he had it, because sometimes it just happened, and he didn't know how to deal with it. And Sora would just pull himself out of it, anyways, eventually. He always did.
Breathing slowly, he leaned his head against the side of the bed and looked Riku full on in the face. "What the big deal is period. I always thought, that if I were going to have sex, that it was just a way of connecting to somebody. How it was sort of like…talking without words."
Before Riku could tell him otherwise, "I know what you're gonna say. I know, Riks, people do it 'cause they wanna have sex. I'm saying that we wouldn't. I'm saying that…I don't know. Maybe I just want to see what all the fuss is about, and…" He traced the tips of his fingers over Riku's own hand. "I was just thinking about connecting to people and stuff. I dunno. Maybe I'm just a horny teenage boy."
You ever have those dreams where you're the only person in the whole world left? Or not even that, but like there's nothing left you can do but you didn't do anything you wanted to your whole life and then all of a sudden you can't? I was talking to Belle about those; she says she read somewhere that that's having a nightmare about self-control. Oh! Or it has something to do with your teeth falling out? I forgot.
Licking his lips awkwardly, Riku pulled on one of Sora's legs until his friend was forced to straddle his lap again. Sora sat up on his knees and his hips pressed forward a little. "You really want to?"
"Mm-hm." He draped his arms around Riku's neck and closed his eyes; he licked Riku's lips for him.
Riku thought about it. Sora was right; it was such a hyped-up thing. He wondered why it was like that, why it was such a big deal. It wasn't that he'd never wanted to ever, of course not, it was just that…he didn't see why it mattered so very, very much.
He thought about that dream he'd had. It had been…a nice dream, until he'd woken up; until he'd felt dirty and nasty and too grown up for his own good and too much a teenager to be a grown-up, but. But something about him liked the idea of it. He wondered if it was like an impulse buy, sex. He hadn't applied much thought to it but he thought about it now. Somehow it seemed like a new and exciting thing, like it would make him more of an adult. You think you're jaded? I've had sex with another man. Ha! You naïve bastard.
What a horrible thought. Having sex just so that he could have one single thing that made him not-island boy. Not isolated. Not…innocent.
He thought about Sora again.
"Okay," Riku said distractedly. "But you're gonna have to show me how, 'cause I don't know." Kissing back, he opened his mouth up and pulled away when Sora laughed.
"I didn't mean now!" Sora brushed his nose against Riku's, which only served to annoy him. Riku felt talked-down to.
"You didn't?"
"We can't do it now, silly."
"Why not?" He had felt, to some degree, like a brave and exciting person. Like the sort of high schooler (or college kid) who just had sex with his boyfriend, slightly powerful and dangerous and God, normal for once.
"'Cause…" coughing, Sora scratched the back of his neck. "Well I mean, I need to…figure it all the way out, too. I only know the…" more coughing, "Basics. And I think we need – like, we need some stuff. That I don't have."
Riku sneezed more out of surprise and lack of anything else to do than actual need. "What – uh, kind of stuff? I hadn't thought it was that…complicated."
"I don't think it's as complicated as I'm making it but I wanna be sure."
He drummed his fingers on the thick carpet of the floor and thought about the little strings of rug like they were a buzzcut. Sex in movies, and in TV shows, and in books, happened really easily and fast. Of course, they never went into much detail – Riku wasn't exactly prone to looking up porn – but it was always two people who shouted at each other for a few minutes or something, then started kissing, and then there was an uncomfortable amount of skin, and then it was the next morning and they both woke up naked next to each other.
It occurred to Riku that he was maybe missing an important part of this whole process. He knew how it worked, but he wasn't inclined to entirely believe the movies on this point.
He couldn't see waking up naked next to Sora and sneaking out of the room like they were doing something wrong. He didn't know what he could expect, but it wasn't that, really.
"You mean we have to – " shuddering at the thought – "Like, research it?"
"Just online," Sora shrugged. "I don't really want to take any chances."
Momentarily silent, and stunned by what felt like a lifetime-relevant decision made in the space of one afternoon, Riku blinked and decided, "We'll need condoms."
It took them about a million years to actually really get up the courage to do anything about the decision that day. It took them about a million days sitting on top of Sora's big white roof and staring at the cloudless sky until there were funny not-black spots swimming in your eyes like water bugs.
Riku had noticed the creepiest pattern ever. Maybe.
It was just that, every night Sora had a nightmare, he was really horny the next day. Sort of. At the very least, he liked being near people more than usual.
Day A Million, on the roof, Riku asked him, "Sora?"
"Yeah?" It was crazy hot but Sora was curled up with his nose in his boyfriend's side.
"What do you nightmare about?" Nightmare like it was a verb. The way you could lie but you couldn't truth.
Sora was quiet for a long time.
"Stuff. Stupid things, I guess."
"What happens? Are you running away from monsters or something?" Most of Riku's dreams were about cursed things and him protecting a castle, which was weird, and then the castle usually fell apart. That wasn't true. It was just he'd had that dream twice and he remembered it.
"No," he said simply. "I'm stuck somewhere. Or getting crushed by something. Or drowning. Or I'm tied to the ceiling and my teeth are falling out. One time Kairi was sitting on the bed making fun of me but I don't remember why." He sighed. "And then sometimes there's that stupid fire thing."
"And then? Then what happens?"
Sora drummed the tips of his fingers against Riku's stomach. He felt the shrug.
And said, "Sometimes you wake up."
There was something absolutely and disgustingly hilarious about the fact that Riku only knew where to buy condoms because of sex ed in freshman year. They made you go to a store and write down information about size and lubrication and brand and latex versus sheep skin and fuck was it awkward because there were like, two stores that had those things within walking distance, so pretty much no matter what time you went you ran into another freshman standing there staring at the condoms with a piece of notebook paper and a pencil.
Oh how far he had come. Standing in the condom isle of an industrial-sized CVS. Still staring at condoms.
Only he was with his boyfriend now!
Gee, that made it so much better.
Sora coughed sourly and stared at the bright orange price tags, big numbers and little numbers and zipcodes on the stickers on the shelf, showing you how much lower their unit price was and all that. On the metal shelves with the boxes of condoms just sitting there awkwardly waiting.
"Do we really need them?" he whispered. Like Sora was afraid of getting caught. "I mean, I'm pretty sure we can't transmit diseases to each other, considering." He giggled. "And I don't think that you'll get pregnant."
"Yeah, I know," Riku shoved his hands into his pockets. "It just feels like an obligation. Like part of the whole…shebang."
"The whole what?"
"Uh." His face felt hotter. "The whole, like, event. Thing. Occasion."
Sora made a pfft noise through his teeth and giggled. Picking up one of the more brightly-colored boxes, he flipped it around like he was looking for nutrition facts. "Hey, we should get apple-flavored condoms!"
"What? Why? What's the point of that?" Riku's voice was just about painfully sincere. He wondered how they flavored latex. Did they cover it with something?
"Are you serious?"
"What? Uh, whatever," desperately trying to save face; after all, he wasn't very keen on being shown up by Sora in this, too. "I don't really care."
"We could get kiwi!"
"Sora. Seriously. Not my main priority."
He looked guiltily down the side of the isle, at the cosmetics, waiting, just waiting for someone to come down here. A couple of jokesters or jocks or teenagers or, heaven forbid, grown adults. Someone to come down and look at them funny. Normal boys didn't buy condoms together, that was fucking weird. Now that he thought about it, did couples ever buy condoms together? It seemed more normal for one of them to go get the stuff and bring it back. His stomach lurched when he actually thought about going up to the register to buy them. Yeah, we're just here, two teenage boys, to buy some condoms and lube. It's a totally socially normal bonding experience for people our age.
He imagined the looks they'd get and the head-shaking. He imagined Sora, Sometimes you wake up, and how he always felt after his own nightmares.
Okay. Okay. So look at it this way, Riku Tepes. Three years from now you won't remember jack shit about the clerk of the CVS or buying lube, but you'll remember making your person feel better. He would remember taking away the scary part of the nightmare for Sora.
He stole himself and breathed quietly. All was well, et cetera.
"Um," he whispered, though, "What…kind of lubrication?"
"I don't…uh…the…normal kind?"
"Which one is the normal kind?"
Riku stared helplessly at the shelf, and at the gels, and the pink bottles, and the tubes with pictures of women's midriffs on them. This one heated on contact and this one provided the smoothest experience with your partner and this one set the mood like no other and this one had new shape, same great texture.
Fucking really?
That was creepy.
"God, never mind," he hissed, "Let's just get the black one."
"What, the astro-one?"
"Sure. It looks normal." He picked it up between his first two fingers, and he let it dangle there awkwardly like it would infect him. "Uh." He gripped it more firmly and looked at Sora with guilt. This was the part where one of them offered to go pay for the stuff himself to let the other free of the painful embarrassment.
Haha. Oh Riku Tepes. Are you sure you should be having sex if you're still this naïve at eighteen?
"Is that all we need?"
"Websites didn't really mention anything else," Sora coughed. "In terms of, of um, necessity."
Websites. Jesus. There were websites that gave instructions about gay sex.
"Okay," Riku took a deep breath. He found it hard to keep it inside of him. Inside he felt all hot and constricted and the coolness of the breath was a river running through lava. He thought about two teenage boys going up to the counter and putting their condoms and their lube up for the clerk to see, both together, standing a little too close, paying for it. He wondered what the clerk would think of them again. If he – or she – would think that gay sex was wrong, or that they were too young to be doing this on their own, or that this was totally normal. Or wouldn't think of it again ever because…
Because whatever.
Okay. Because whatever. Great. Fantastic in theory.
He ignored the deceivingly light guitar music crackling over the loudspeakers (it was tourist season, after all, and they had to cater to the island stereotype), hyperconsciously gripping the bottle of lube, Sora following happily behind him with his box of condoms.
So much had he built up the experience in his mind that the actual happening was brief and unmemorable. The cashier rang them up stoically and, just as stoically, gave them a bag for their things (which Sora declined).
Riku felt like a real goddamn grownup when he left the store, even if they still had to walk back.
The thing was that it was moving as fast as it wasn't.
Because two weeks ago Sora sat on his lap and said "I want to have sex with you" and now there they were, in his room on a lucky weekend that Belle had to work on the mainland, sitting on the bed with an unopened bottle of lube and an unopened box of condoms. Fully clothed and staring at the things between them.
They had pulled the curtains over the windows and locked the door; they'd cleaned up Sora's room, as futile as that felt, made the bed.
"Riku," Sora picked up the box of condoms. "Uh. Before we start I want you to promise me something – "
"Yeah?"
His hair tickling his nose (his hair had gotten longer, in the last few months, but it was still brown and pointy and…just,) Sora laughed and broke the plastic seal on the cardboard box. "No getting embarrassed, okay, Riks?"
Riku frowned. "Huh?"
"I mean, this probably isn't how it usually happens with teenagers – it's probably a spur of the moment thing, really – and I appreciate that you're doing this because I want to – not that I don't think you're ready – but we're planning it, we're sitting here planning to have sex, which is bound to be awkward, right? It would normally happen when people are already all hot and bothered. So no getting embarrassed, either of us. I've seen you naked, and you've seen me naked at least twice, so don't just hold back from doing something because you think it'll be embarrassing. 'Cause no matter what we're not gonna be weird about this after."
He'd gotten quieter and quieter as he had gone on, flipping a single wrapped condom between his fingers.
"Pessimist."
"Promise?"
"That you're a pessimist?"
Sora pursed his lips and chucked the condom at Riku's face; it hit his nose and fell into his lap. "You know what I mean."
Now Riku was the one to pick it up. The wrapping was thick and serrated on the edges, and he could see where Sora had torn it off unevenly from the strand of them; he could see the perforated beginning line on the side and the "tear here" arrow. It all seemed so bizarrely normal, like opening a bag of chips. Opening a packet of grown-up.
"I promise," he relented quietly. "Embrace the awkwardness and all that."
"I'm not forcing you or anything? You – you want to too, right?"
"Yeah. And you definitely know how to do it? In theory?"
Sora ran a hand through his hair and laughed. "Yeah. But let me just – double check something really fast?" He stood up, and the bed creaked tellingly when he did; he trotted over to his laptop.
Riku was a happy guy. If…if this was ever gonna happen, he would want it to be this way. Planned and double-checked, at night, with the blinds drawn and the door closed and the lamp turned on medium-brightness. A tiny little world for his tiny little understanding of it, inching outwards.
"Hey, did you check email on my computer?"
"Uh, yeah? Why?
"Nothing, nothing. It's just sending me one of those little bottom-right-corner pop-ups telling me you have new mail or something…"
"Oh?" There was a rational part of Riku's mind that had been previously nonexistent, now blown out of proportion to his life; if girls at silly parties could get drunk and almost die and end up being your best friend, emails could be really important somehow. It was just that if he didn't check it – he'd wonder. Even if Does Not Happen. "Can I just read it really quick? Out of curiosity –?"
Sora was quiet for a moment, not really noticeably, and "Yeah, sure." Like he knew already.
It was from the parent-teacher organization, the same one that had sent out the email telling the students to be nice or else, because Sora was a French orphan and damn, if you're a French orphan you're kind of already fucked.
The email…was not about French orphans. It was in the same color as the rest of the emails, in a cute little silver and blue box with the school symbol in one corner.
Dear Students and Parents of Destiny Island District High Schools, it began, and Riku realized it had been meant for the other school too,
As some of you may have already heard, recently, our community has been dealt a great loss. On Tuesday, July 14th, Allison Lang Wu, a 2010 graduate of WestDestinyIslandHigh School, passed away in the Destiny GeneralHospital. She had been hospitalized a week prior due to injuries suffered in a car accident, and her passing was very peaceful. We would like the members of our school community to be aware of this tragedy – Ms. Wu was a valued student at WestDestinyIslandHigh School, and she will be missed.
Her family will be holding a memorial service on the third of August in the Seashole Auditorium in WestDestinyIslandHigh School from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Any and all are welcome to attend.
Sincerely,
Destiny Island High School District PTO
Riku felt funny in his stomach and all heart-squeezy, like there was something hot and tight sitting inside of his lungs.
"Hey? All done?"
But – …
"Fuck," he grumbled, slumping back in Sora's chair in front of Sora's computer, Sora the French orphan, Sora who lost everyone he had and had to start over in the middle of somewhere.
But – but Does Not Happen.
Sora came up behind him, his breathing just vaguely labored, and leaned over Riku's shoulder to read the email himself. And after a few seconds, he just put his hand on Riku's shoulder and rubbed it back and forth, like Riku'd seen Belle do for her foster son a few times. "I'm sorry," Sora said. Bumping his chin against the crown of Riku's head, he continued, "Did you know her?"
And Riku sighed a long sigh and let Sora tug his hand – and the rest of him - over the bed to sit down.
"I think so," he confessed, leaning up against the headboard and watching the closed window. From this angle, parallax just allowed him to see a corner of the ocean sparkling. Parallelograms of light, headlights of the car going by outside, moved across the wall. "I'm pretty sure I talked to her a couple of times last year and sophomore year. She was in some of my classes, probably. Just – no, not really. I didn't."
"I'm sorry," Sora said again, even though he was smiling. It wasn't a very strong smile, Riku supposed. Sora sat on the bed next to him and touched his hand.
His voice cracking, Riku muttered, "Yeah," and felt stupid. And this time it was him who said "I'm sorry."
"For what?"
His eyes felt hot, like something in the pit of his stomach was trying to chase the water out of them. He preemptively wiped his face with the corner of his palm. There was a bubble in his throat made of Styrofoam.
"It's dumb," he explained to his best friend, who inched closer and pulled his knees up to his chest. "I didn't even know her and I basically never talked to her. But I'm – " he gulped the bubble down (it popped up again), "You know? It's not even gonna affect me. Not even the tiniest little bit. But I still - …"
"No," Sora leaned against him and looked him in the eyes. "It's never ever stupid to cry about somebody who died if you knew them when they were alive. Jamais, Riks."
"I didn't know her!" He could barely even recall a face for the name, so unimportant was this girl to his tiny world. He just felt like being converse.
For lack of anything else to do, he fingered the opened box of condoms; he distracted himself with the crack along the opening of the cardboard.
And there was Sora's hand again, on his knee, making things worse, somehow.
"You met her," Sora said. "I mean, this was a person who you knew was alive, and now she's not. That's scary, Riku. That's – trust me. It's really fucking scary."
Riku didn't say the obvious thing. He didn't say 'it's different, your parents died.' He didn't say that a girl whose name you only barely remembered was not the same as your parents. He wondered if Sora already knew what he meant.
"You've never lost anyone before, right?" Sora asked him. "Not anybody human?"
"No," Riku said. Not even a grandparent. That happened to kids in movies, don't be silly, it didn't happen here. It was like car-chases and bank robberies and AIDS, it didn't happen here, it couldn't.
"Anybody would be upset," his boyfriend ran his hand over Riku's cheek and through his hair. "Anybody would be scared, if you've got nothing to compare it too. Finally having to – figure out that people can go places where they won't ever come back."
"It's not fair – Sora, this barely counts as someone I know dying! If it was a friend or something, yeah, but – I mean, come on - !"
"You keep saying that," Sora laughed and leaned forward; he nudged his head under Riku's chin. "Like you can stop being sad by trying." He turned his head forward and kissed Riku's Adam's apple. "Or like it's actually supposed to be fair or something."
Hard as Riku tried, he couldn't remember anything about Allison Wang Lu besides that she was Chinese and that she was dead. That was funny – that the most defining feature of Allison Wang Lu was her death. In life she had meant nothing; her life itself, to him meant nothing; it was her death that would leave a mark. It didn't seem like what Sora was saying.
Fucking coincidences, huh?
"Are you going to say something stupid about life and death now?" he asked Sora, who was kissing his neck. He brought his hands up and over Sora's back, wondered at the fine muscle he felt there, warm and firm and covered by the cloth of a cotton shirt.
Sora ran his nose up the side of Riku's neck, across his cheek, until their eyes met. "Life is stupid and death is stupid," he said, and kissed Riku's lips. "Oh well."
Riku was almost braindead; he stared, just sat there and he stared at Sora with his eyes-the-color-the-sky-will-be, and his Does Happen. A person you knew alive is dead now; he knows what this is like. God, it was just, it was different in real life, wasn't it?
Two eyes, the same color, Crayola Light Blue, with speckles of darker colors and pupils the same color as his. A round face with flushed cheeks and a high forehead hidden underneath a mess of brown hair. A nose slightly rounded off at the end. A happy Sora almost-smile.
"Riku?"
"I'm sorry," Riku apologized for something he didn't understand. I'm sorry for not getting it at first; I'm sorry for almost getting it now; I'm sorry about the sex thing; I'm sorry I just cried over a girl I don't really know; I'm sorry I cried more over the idea than the actual loss; I'm sorry I just did that and now I want to kiss you so much it almost hurts my chest.
"You're funny." Sora touched their mouths again, moved forward a little and lapped at Riku's mouth. There was a sharp inhalation through someone's nose and they kissed harder, but only a little. He pulled away. "Sometimes you make me feel like some wise old man the way you listen to me talk about dead people."
"I don't – " Riku didn't know how to reply to that; he just laughed nervously.
Sora just twisted his mouth funny and played his fingers over Riku's collarbone. "And then sometimes you look at me like you can't believe I seriously said what I said 'cause it's just that stupid, you know?"
Riku was…scared. Was the way to put it. The conversation was what kept him going; it was calm and it followed carved routes of their previous words; it ran down familiar pathways. He knew how to reply and where in a way that was only there on a relative scale. But the other part, the leaning, the hard kissing in between words and this closeness – it was not, quite, that he had experienced none of it before, but there was something different about it now. He felt like he was sitting on an edge made of glass and it was slowly splitting him in two.
"Yeah," he said. "It's just the – stuff you say sometimes. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it." The tight-fuzzy in his chest was fading, or moving lower, but the words Does Happen brought it back.
You don't even feel sad that she's dead. You feel relieved because -
You have a claim to pain, Riku Tepes. Good for you. Oh, it's okay, you know what it's like. Fuck you.
Laughing again, Sora wound his arms around his boyfriend's neck. "I don't know what anyone's supposed to do with it," he whispered. He set his lips against Riku's and started saying something else, something about moving, and about learning, but Riku didn't pay attention.
He closed his eyes and felt Sora. Warm lips, dry, a little rough from nervous biting, touched his and tingled. Sora's breath was hot and it drifted into his mouth and mixed with his own, that smell like rainy vegetables in fall, dirty and clean, toothpaste-flavored air and teeth which they'd learned not to click together so much. Little vibrations from Sora's words drifted in a direct current to a growing tight-hot-squeezy feeling growing in Riku's stomach.
Kids their age died. So did kids of every other age. One size fits all. Okay.
One of them had turned on the whole-room light, instead of just the lamp. It lit up everything everywhere. Riku didn't know what he'd expected, not roses and stupid music and candles or something, but the dimmed lights would have been kind of nice – less embarrassing? He felt so exposed.
Fuck. So people really died? Not just the parents of French orphans?
The girl with the long black hair down to her waist who had a permanently sniffling nose and her house key on a string around her neck, who once cried in sophomore French III because she'd done badly on a test? She was never going to grow up or go to a college or anything? Stuck inside a box?
And that was all he knew about her and would ever know.
"You don't get over it," Sora was saying (brokenrecordbrokenrecord you've said this before), rubbing his thumbs along Riku's cheekbones, and God, his hands were so hot. "You get used to it. Riku?"
He'd been saying something probably important, or, or maybe he was just being Sora, and he was trying to make himself better by telling people all about himself. It was just – the dumbest coincidence ever; Riku hated coincidences.
He kissed Sora on the lips. Hard. Damn, well, if it was the day for growing up. He pushed his mouth forward and pulled Sora in, and without stopping Sora climbed on top of him, heavy and solid and warm like a person ought to be.
They parted for a shuddering breath and kept kissing, and then kept kissing when Sora snuck his hands just up Riku's shirt and no further, warming cold fingers on a hot stomach. He trailed lines of goose bumps over Riku's abdomen. It tickled in a way that didn't make him want to laugh.
It was like a sugar rush or a caffeine rush; somewhere in there, they crossed a line; somewhere in there, there wasn't any coming back. It started so slow and sad and comforting, and See, Riku, I'm still here, and then developed an energy that jittered and jangled up their insides. Like he couldn't stop or he'd explode. It was like his hand had almost fallen asleep and now he had to shake the fatigue out of it. He had to he had to he had to.
Had to raise his arms up above his head and let Sora slip off his shirt; after all, Sora initiated the action, he must have wanted it. Had to let him settle between his legs with his arms on either side of Riku's head, kissing him and pressing down urgently, even though the lights were all on. The jittering energy – nervousness? Denial? Fear? Or was it something so stupid it didn't have a name yet – had him unabashed, slipping his hands under Sora's shirt, too, feeling the soft boy-muscle padded by a thin layer of fat. What if I'm bad at this? What if he hates me?
So he did the natural thing and let Sora take over, as he was bound to do eventually, because even when he got it he – didn't, really – not the way it really felt to have a person in your life not be there any more – it was like he'd lost half a person.
And then Sora laughed and sat up between Riku's legs, pulled off his shirt and leaned down to kiss Riku again, and kiss him more and faster and softer and hotter and more urgently, moving his mouth, and maybe shaking a little. And the sadness was gone, somewhat, and it just seemed – ha! It seemed funny, and weird. He ignored the death and focused on the sex that was so obviously happening, and felt like they should have had a soundtrack instead of the fast breaths and rustling cloth and bed and the wet noises of kissing. He didn't lose awareness or go mad with passion or anything. But fuck.
It just seemed so awkward and boyish and clumsy, how they went about it, how Sora had some serious difficulty tearing the condom wrapper and then laughed and palmed his forehead, handing it to Riku to open. They started to talk each other through it when they were down to their boxers.
"Remember, right? No getting embarrassed! And I mean, Riks, if it helps at all you're – " a long kiss – "Totally hot, okay? You've got nothing to be embarrassed of, and I'm shameless, so – "
"Sora, stop talking and just do it!" Riku laughed and clamped his knees around Sora's hips. Don't let me process it.
He started giggling halfway through out of nervousness. He glanced anxiously at the door and giggled. It was that funny feeling in his stomach (so many of those, so many, he should make a chart to keep track) that made him do it, trapped down there inside him. So he giggled it upwards in a bubbling stream of laughter.
"Ri-ku!"
Tu m'aimes, Ri-
"Ow! Are you sure we're doing this right?"
Sora looked up at him and grinned, then donked his head on Riku's chest. "The description made it sound easy!"
"Oh, great. And does playing the cello look easy when Yo-Yo Ma does it?"
"Just bear with it. I think it's supposed to hurt at first…" Sora kissed him in the lips (they both bubbled giggling into each other's mouths) and kept going.
XXX
A few minutes later,
"OW OW OW OW! Dammit! Okay, no, we are doing this wrong! Fuck! Stop it! This kills! OW!"
"I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry- "
"Now!"
It was, relatively speaking, an absolute and miserable failure in terms of losing your virginity. They would get it right about two weeks later, when they dared to try again and Sora had done a bit more background research. They would get it very right about two months later.
But that was okay.
Sora crawled up onto the roof after Riku, and they both sat down (tenderly) on the edge of it, big and white and practically glowing in the night. It wasn't a particularly romantic view, and frankly, Riku was a little bit scared shitless that he'd fall off or something.
And really all you could see was some of the houses here, and the dry, cracked sidewalks along the dry brown roads, and that almost all of the lights in all of the houses were out. But some of the motion-sensor lights on driveways flickered on for a few minutes when late-night drivers went by, and the few sad community planning trees along the roads blew together.
The nighttime felt safer somehow. Because it was dark, and small. If you stood on Sora's roof on your tiptoes and saw the ocean in one direction, you could probably turn around and see it in the other direction, too. That small. Holding your thumb and forefinger a few centimeters apart small.
On one of these roads, a girl had been in a car accident and died. It seemed dislocated when he thought of it like that. He just didn't think anything about the island.
"Boo," Sora nudged him in the shoulder. "Watcha thinking?"
Riku blinked. "We're not very good at sex," he said blandly. "We kind of failed."
Sora shrugged. "We'll figure it out," he replied. "I'm pretty sure even straight couples have miserable first times, anyways. The key is perseverance, Riks!"
"Hah!"
Nah, thought Riku, I think we'll be okay when we go to college. We're gonna be fine. Did that make him like Sora?
Oh, honestly, Riku Tepes, you just had sex for the first time. Stop thinking for a second and enjoy the fact that the stars are all the way out.
"I feel like a Radiohead song should be playing or something," Riku said, kicking his bare feet against the side of the building.
"Who?"
"Radiohead."
"Who's that?"
Riku laughed and kissed Sora on the top of the head. "Il n'a pas d'importance," he said, with an atrocious accent.
Snorting, Sora butted his head against Riku's chin. "'Eet's not ehmportahnt!'" he said with a terrible French accent, sneering. He laughed.
"Or maybe one of those stupid acoustic guitar tracks," Riku leaned his shoulder into Sora's and spoke softly. "Something like that."
"Maybe," Sora agreed. "I kind of like it quiet, though. It's…it's nice." He sighed and pulled away, slumping over with his elbows resting on his knees and his arms dangling between his legs. Riku scooted a few inches away and leaned back to stare straight up, at the sparkling blanket covering his tiny, quiet world. It would get so much bigger soon. But right now it…yeah.
"Yeah," Riku said.
And the world was ten meters, forty-three centimeters, and three millimeters tall.
A/N: I just - okay. OKAY.
So, yes there will be a real epilogue.
Ignore this.