CHAPTER FIVE: CIRCLES
"If I get tired and say that I wanna
Change my mind
Pull me in a circle, so I can change it
One more time
Pull me in a circle."
"Circles" - machineheart, Vanic
"I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am."
I am, I am, I am.
Though nearly a whisper, Xion's voice echoed off the walls of her second-floor bedroom, then turned on him, piercing the membrane of cloudy thought in the upper reaches of Roxas' mind with her measured inflection.
Shirt off and belt undone, cut-off pants shoved below angular hip bones, Roxas lay on his back on the oversized duvet covering Xion's bed as she rested at his side in a similar state of undress. Her long skirt was hiked up to mid-thigh, the straps of her dress having already taken identical detours down each elbow. In the languid haze of a full stomach from dinner and a makeshift dessert of subsequently swallowed sedative capsules, it seemed to him somehow appropriate that he was half-naked and she was curled against him reciting Sylvia Plath with reverence usually reserved for biblical verse.
A homemade mobile turned above them both, its spindly-limbed wire appendages twisting in inebriated asymmetry from a light breeze that was working double duty on the dangling art piece and a nearby window shade, both. Roxas watched the mobile, eyes traveling between every twinkling bead at the end of each wire piece, his gaze finally settling on a sparkling shard of blue bottle glass. Xion had somehow threaded the wire through its center to connect it to the overhead creation, a cohesive but abstract work that revealed universes of starburst luminescence across her dark bedsheets without compromise at each and every daily sunrise.
Roxas wasn't an artist and didn't particularly appreciate the effort that had gone into it any more than he cared to admire the hours Xion had spent choosing fabric, cutting material, and sewing together her own flowery clothing. He had no discernible talents of his own, save for enduring in seeming perpetuity despite half-assed efforts to convince Life with a capital L of the sincerity behind his apathy. At his most introspective, Roxas could acknowledge how much he and Xion were the antithesis of one another — while she breathed healthy life into others' worn discards, he approached objects and people and wore them to their absolute breaking points almost as if for sport. If Sora's frail constitution was added to the mix, it wasn't that difficult for Roxas to define yet another differentiation between someone else and himself.
Generally, Roxas was no more inclined to entertain comparative thoughts like these than he was predisposed to pay lip service to the philosophy of self-examination on the whole; it seemed a combination of prescription narcotics and a full dinner plate of trout meunière were all it took to induce introspective torpor. Lucky him.
He felt a hand on his bare stomach, fingers sliding a deliberate trail downward to the edge of his boxers. There Xion's hand remained, flat-palmed against the skin of his abdomen. In his current state, Roxas couldn't tell if the gesture was meant to be a form of teasing temptation or something more affectionately benign.
"Mamma told me this morning she thought we'd make beautiful babies." Xion's voice was as light as the breeze, a vocalization of reflective thought made audible. Face resting against one shoulder, the words were muffled by the impermeable barrier of his own flesh and muscle. He felt the vibrating of his phone against the fabric of his pants, but made no move to reach for it.
Eyes still fixed on the slow, hypnotic spiraling of blue glass above him, Roxas drew in more air than he needed to form a response. "They'd be short." His voice was flat.
Two of Xion's fingers slipped underneath the elastic band that separated an insubstantial layer of fabric from the bare skin sheltered beneath. Breaths remaining steady, Roxas didn't so much as twitch. Beside him, Xion sighed, then lifted her chin to rest at the curve of Roxas' shoulder where it connected with his neck. "I don't want kids anyway."
Well. That was one thing they were in agreement about, he thought.
They lapsed into silence, Xion watching Roxas and Roxas imagining infinite worlds within the mobile's crystalline shards, along with the statistical probability that at least some of them didn't blow as much as the one he was currently stuck in. He envisioned worlds where the laws of physics differed so drastically that life as people knew it there was virtually unrecognizable here, even considered places that were identical to their own that offered better outcomes for choices made long ago.
Roxas imagined a world where he didn't even exist and thought he liked that conception out of all of them best.
"Do you ever feel like you're somehow wrong, that everything's off by just a little but it makes all the difference?"
Yes, yes, yes, he silently answered. All the time. Every moment of his damn life.
Without moving, he glanced to the right, watching the measured rise and fall of Xion's chest beneath one bare arm.
"Do you ever feel like you were an erroneous outcome of birth?"
The affirmative mantra continued, echoing in the vacuous atrium of his mind. All around him the air grew heavy as the outside breeze died down to almost imperceptible levels.
Roxas turned his head toward her and resisted the urge to answer outright. "How do you mean?"
Without a word, Xion slid her hand up Roxas' stomach, then off to one side. Pressing onto her hands, she sat upright, then vacated the bed.
Zipping his pants, Roxas twisted onto his stomach, legs dangling in the air above him. He followed her path to the window with his eyes, listening to the soft padding of her bare feet on floorboards that creaked only half as much as what he was accustomed to in his own house. Expression vacant, he only half-processed that she was closing the window shutters and reaching for the knob to the air conditioning unit beneath the sill.
"I mean," she said, flipping the knob with two delicate fingers and pausing as the unit purred to life, "that I don't really feel like a girl."
Watching as she spread out her hands in front of the stream of newly generated air, Roxas crossed his arms one over the other in front of him and rested his chin on the glossy fabric of the sleeves he had yet to remove. "I'm not following."
"Why can't I try on different lives, like dresses, to see which one fits best and is more becoming?"
Roxas watched as she twirled once in place, her skirt following a quarter of a rotation behind her. It took him the time between her rhetorical inquiry and the lyrical movement that lowered her onto the floor cross-legged in front of him to realize she was probably quoting Plath again.
Xion didn't wait for a response before forging on with her current line of thought.
"We spend our whole lives around people who think they know us well enough to say who we are. Do you ever feel like they're just flat-out wrong?"
When she framed it like that… actually, yes.
"No." Roxas shook his head. The word was clipped and hung heavy between them in the fresh chill of artificially produced air.
Xion looked down and shook her head, the lightest hint of a smile at the edges of her mouth. Her dark hair swished on either side of her face, and Roxas was reminded of how it had tickled as she'd kissed her way down his stomach earlier, before proceeding even lower. It sent a subtle jolt of heat back into his groin, the feeling only partially registering in his present dazed state. Uncrossing her legs, she shifted onto her knees, leaning forward until she could place a hand on either side of Roxas' face.
She offered up a gentle, affectionate kiss, first to his lips, then trailing along the side of his face to one ear. "Liar," she breathed. The word felt uncomfortable and hot against his cheek.
Scowling, he moved away, back toward the center of the bed, knees bent in toward his chest, arms wrapping around the top of his shins. "So, what you're saying is you wanna be a boy," he deadpanned, expression impassive and unwilling to address her single word claim. He'd always been better at deflections than tackling others' assertions, about himself first and foremost. "Could've fooled me, what with your penchant for frills and dresses."
Her only initial response was a subtle thinning of lips. They regarded one another in silence, Xion's expression perturbed, Roxas' unintentionally unfocused.
"Wearing a dress doesn't make you a girl by default," she finally said with a curt nod of her head as though offering herself personal reassurance.
One eye rose pointedly in response. "Yeah? I'd say it's a good start."
Xion wasn't known to be quick to anger, so when her expression visibly darkened, Roxas managed to catch the hint that he'd possibly gone too far, straight through the haze of his current codeine-laced mental impediment.
Sighing, he slid a few fingers through his hair, the medical tape on his splinted finger catching against an unanticipated snarl. "You could always go out and buy some boy clothes, if that's how you feel," he conceded, trying to play along. "It's not like your mamma's on much of a budget at present."
Xion scoffed. "Not with that hush money, I won't. What I sew already suffices real nice, byen mærsi."
Feeling another vibrating text notification, Roxas shrugged but didn't respond to her. He reached into his pocket and pressed the phone's power button with a combination of splinted index and middle fingers, then scanned the messages while Xion looked on.
A moment later, he laughed, a low derisive sound at the back of his throat.
Xion looked over at him, expression inquiring, and reached out as Roxas tossed the phone over to her. She caught the device, then let her eyes travel over the text he'd left open, silent for an extended moment, before she inhaled and recited Hayner's message out loud.
"Any particular reason half the school is saying you're gay for Seifer?"
Weaving his fingers together, Roxas flexed them downward and cracked no less than three knuckles, ignoring the flinch on Xion's part as her eyes moved to his injury. "See?" he said lightly, redirecting her attention back toward his face. "Here you thought you had problems."
Xion looked back at the phone in her hands, her thumb scrolling further down in his messages inbox. "Sora wants a ride to that get-together tomorrow night." She glanced back up at him. "He doesn't really impress on me as the partying type."
Another shrug from Roxas, and Xion was returning to the bed. She perched on the foot of it, crossing her legs once again, careful to smooth her skirt far enough down to cover her knees. To anyone else, it would have seemed nothing more than an action of modesty in mixed company, but Roxas knew her too well. He also had no interest in bringing up something that could just as easily be turned around and thrown back his way. Everyone in a town as small as Radiant Hollow bore some sort of sordid cross; it was the bread and butter of rural locales to hide more secrets and conspiracies than the federal government. Theirs just happened to be similar enough that he found himself actively invested in not attracting attention to either one of them.
"We could all ride together, if you can get your brother to lend out the truck."
Roxas tightened his grip on both shins, pressing his knees to his chest in bruising fashion. "Yeah, except I'm not going."
The thin-lipped expression returned and Xion crossed her arms loosely over her chest as she looked at him from across the bed. This time, none of the dark undertones Roxas understood so well as a reflection of his own moods were present, from a cursory glance. She just looked dispirited, which wasn't a major positive. It also wasn't wholly problematic to him.
"I haven't seen your brother outside school in awhile now."
He offered her a mollifying smile, which didn't come remotely close to reaching his eyes. "PT. Over-studying. Still eating like a bird. Ain't missin' nothing, m'dear. End of discussion."
The unsatisfied look remained, Xion's eyes rising in exasperation at the overt abuse of English grammar.
It was probably fortuitous the telltale scraping that never failed to make Roxas' skin crawl started up with fervor at the window Xion had only recently closed just a few seconds later. Even so, Roxas couldn't help but think those feathered fuckers she treated as beloved pets were doing it for the express purpose of sending his anxiety levels straight through the house's ornate gable-framed roof.
Xion turned, her expression immediately brightening. As she slipped off the edge of the bed and padded back over toward the window, Roxas buried his eye sockets into the tops of his knees and groaned.
"Do you really have to do that now?"
Although he couldn't see her in his current position, Roxas imagined Xion slowing, maybe turning back to regard him. "It's feeding time," she said, her voice offering up a light reproach. "You know that."
"It's fuckin' weird is what it is." His voice rose in a plaintive whine, a subtle shudder creeping up his spine when he heard the window's lock click as it was unlatched. A moment later, the air conditioning unit petered off, and Roxas stole a glance across the room with one cautious eye.
Xion was blocking his view out the window, her back to him as she rummaged through the top drawer of her antique desk. She emerged a moment later with a ziplock bag, not all that dissimilar to the one she'd passed off to Roxas the day before in Radiant High's school corridor. Rather than her mother's prescription drugs, however, this baggy contained a different sort of offering entirely.
As Xion opened the bag with a light crinkling of plastic, she craned her neck and regarded Roxas from over one shoulder. "You only think it's weird because you're afraid of birds."
Expression darkening, Roxas sat up straighter. "I am no—"
The fluttering of unknown numbers of winged appendages sounded from the window, and Roxas' voice died, his expression becoming a picture of visible apprehension.
"Right. Sure y'aren't." With a knowing look, Xion rolled her eyes before turning back to the task at hand. Slipping one hand into the bag, she emerged with a palmful of peanuts, still in their shells but pre-cracked in anticipation of this daily ritual. She leaned forward, and Roxas heard more rustlings of wings as the large creatures moved away at her approaching proximity. Like a pixie sprinkling a dusting of shimmering glitter, Xion spread the peanuts out along the windowsill, then stepped back to survey her work.
"I'm not scared of them," Roxas tried again. "It's, just, they're dirty corpse eaters, smart enough to cause societal downfalls if they feel a particular yen. Most people know well enough to leave them alone, yet you're inviting them for daily dinner like fucked-up demonic guests of honor."
Xion's expression turned thoughtful. "They are quite intelligent," she said with an appreciative bob of her head. As if remembering herself, she met Roxas' gaze with level appraisal. "But, honestly, I think you've been watching too much Hitchcock if you really believe the rest."
Xion matched Roxas' responding scowl with a mock frown of her own before segueing back to her more typically equable expression. She turned and dropped down into an ornately upholstered chair next to an antique side table. Everything in this home was old just like at his house, in Roxas' estimation, except the furnishings here exuded a level of sophistication that a La-Z-Boy circa 1983 just couldn't hold any light to.
"Besides," she continued, "we've got a nice arrangement here, me and them. I provide the snacks, and they bring me supplies for my art projects."
Roxas snorted, brows lowering, a visual world of outright critical. "Now who's being weird?"
With a light shrug, Xion continued watching the feeding frenzy at her window, while Roxas tried not to twitch with every clack of long, black beaks as peanut shells were effectively cracked and splintered in the birds' haste to reach their interiors. He tried his best not to think about the perceived scrutiny in their beady marble eyes, and the unnaturally judicious way they seemed to regard everyone with disdain, with the exception of Xion.
"You should take your brother to the party," she said, changing the subject. "I'll go with. We'll make a night of it."
Before he could formulate a word of protest, Xion looked away from the window and fixed him with a resolute gaze.
"You can consider it repayment for all the meds I've been pinching on your behalf, and I'll concede to us being somewhat even."
Roxas blinked, mild surprise flickering across his face at the unyielding tone Xion had taken. She, in turn, smiled sweetly back, brows rising as she offered him another rhetorical question. "My dear, how's that for an end of discussion?"
o - o
They exited Xion's home after enduring the obligatory encounter with her mother who'd exuded her usual over-eager single-mindedness to impress upon them both just how delighted she was that they were an item. By now, Roxas knew the regimen for handling the woman, and he was adept at the displays of charisma he mustered just enough energy to pull off that interactions with her were relatively painless. Given how eager Xion always seemed to avoid these conversations, or at least get them over with as soon as possible, Roxas was left with the distinct impression that these three minute interactions where he did most of the talking were a relatively good illustration of their mother-daughter dynamic overall, even when he wasn't around.
Fanning herself with one hand, Xion led the way around to the side of the house. "It's hard to believe there's someplace muggier than New Orleans," she said, the comment as close to a complaint as she ever usually broached. "Standing marsh water might just be proof of divine objection to the sins of all mankind."
Roxas didn't reply, just scratched an arm band and counted down the seconds until they were somewhere cooler. At least Xion's light blue Prius had working AC, which was more than what could be said for Hayner's aging van or the vehicles any of his other friends claimed as forms of hand-me-down inheritances from older siblings or parents. It was also probably the fanciest car in all of Radiant Hollow, the Almasy family excepted, what with its model year being more recent than his middle school tenure and the sticker on the bumper extolling overt eco-friendliness. It was yet another gift from her mother that Xion had refused to acknowledge until Roxas managed to convince her of the merits of having access to an easy escape route whenever she felt she needed it.
As he made his way around to the passenger side door, Roxas glanced across the property, over toward the second building that Xion's mother was renting out. More specifically, he took in the silver Mercedes parked near the front porch in a patch of loose gravel that counted as a road this far outside Radiant Hollow's official city limits.
Well, he supposed, it seemed like someone else was even fancier. Unlike Xion and her mother, however, Roxas knew this newly arrived family was full of outsiders.
Hearing the automated click of a door unlocking, Roxas pulled on the handle and dropped into the passenger seat, twisting around so he could deposit his bag in the back area before making himself comfortable up front.
As they pulled away from her home, Roxas found himself eyeing the rental property located closer to the through-road. It was smaller than the main house but still nicer than anything on his side of town. The observation didn't endear him further to anyone who happened to be in current residence.
"Mamma got them to pay so much."
Roxas glanced over at Xion in time to see an inclination of her head in the direction of the rental home. "Almost three times what she rented it for last time. They didn't even blink at the figure or try to negotiate."
In the purple-orange luminescence of deepening twilight, Roxas could see each room that was lit up in the home's interior. From the downstairs dining room area, his eyes drifted up, to the only bedroom with light filtering out its two picture windows.
"Probably got a lot to burn," he said. "Asians are all doctors and engineers an' the like, pretty sure."
"And lawyers." Xion offered a responding nod. "A doctor and a lawyer. Must be nice to be so rich. They didn't even sell their home out west, from what I heard."
The car turned onto the dirt path that would eventually connect with a paved road when they approached city limits, and both homes disappeared out of view. Roxas turned his head away from the window but kept his eyes trained forward on the front windshield. "You and your mom are practically poverty-stricken by comparison."
"Oh hush. That's different and you know it."
Roxas knew. He just wasn't willing to concede to something even as obvious as that at present. There was potential for the silence that followed to become uncomfortable, and Roxas considered reaching for the radio, but Xion spoke again before he could put the idea into tangible motion.
"Their son's in three of my classes," she said, voice thoughtful. "Seems real smart."
Roxas snorted. "With books and learning, maybe. Socially, not so much."
Glancing at him before returning her eyes to the road, Xion seemed to consider his statement. "Because of what he said to Hayner?"
"And how he handled Seifer in gym today," Roxas said, speaking directly on the heels of her question. "Or didn't, come to think. Oh right, that was all me."
Xion responded with a soft, humming sound, the look in her eyes turning contemplative. "That's why half the school now thinks I should worry about you taking the heir of Almasy Industries to Prom, I'm guessing?"
Despite himself, Roxas felt a smile twitch at the corners of his lips. "That'd be why, pretty much exactly."
Eyes still on the road, Xion unconsciously matched his smile. "Boy, do I know you too well. I'm just not sure if it's something to be proud of."
Her subsequent laughter was crystalline, a sound like glass tesserae gathered together and jangled lightly. It was such a rare occurrence that Roxas allowed himself a moment to truly savor the vibrato sensation that lingered in the car even after she had lapsed back into silence.
The jubilant reaction was over too soon, but her smile remained a beat longer, a remnant of temporary happiness. If only these instances lasted, Roxas thought. If only they could find a way to bottle it up, to pour it down their throats in a way that might truly touch the darkest parts of their souls. As it stood, the only things that entered either of them with such rapid fluidity were never at risk of being considered remotely healthy.
By the time they arrived on Roxas' block, the sun had fully set. Half of the homes that lined the street leading up to his own were dark, a sure sign that their occupants were pulling night shifts at the same plant where Cloud and his mother worked. Roxas looked at the familiar surroundings without really seeing them with any level of clarity, his mind settling into its preferred state of flat-out blank, a nice, level stasis where nothing could touch him.
Xion pulled up against the cracked curb at the edge of his property but didn't switch the car into park. She noted his expression with a sage one of her own. "I hope you didn't forget my little gifts?"
Without looking at her, Roxas nodded, hearing her general tone more than the individual words of her question. Reaching for his bag, he opened the car door, exited, and slammed it shut in a matter of seconds. He barely registered the sound of an automatic window lowering, followed by a lightly chiding voice. "Try to use them more sparingly this time. Even mamma can't sweet-talk the pharmacist enough to get an unlimited supply, and you know I'm no good at lying about these types of things."
Roxas didn't look back or otherwise react. As he made his way toward his home's front porch, he considered the momentary crunch of loose bitumen as Xion put her Prius into reverse. Shoving a hand into his pocket, Roxas fingered his house keys while reaching for the door with a free hand, only to discover it had been left unlocked. He opened it, then pushed past the flimsy screen barrier before making his way into the living room.
Sora and his mom were seated on different chairs, their faces illuminated by a small table lamp and the red, white, and blue schema of a TV news program. Roxas glanced at the screen just long enough to note the Fox News ticker tape headline helpfully warning the American public about the latest attack on religious freedom before his mother looked up.
"Welcome home, sweetie," she said, offering him a fatigued smile before returning her attention to the television. Nearby, Sora looked up from his cell phone as well and unknowingly mirrored their mother's expression while still somehow managing to put his own convivial spin on it.
Roxas approached the couch on the side closest to where Sora was seated but kept quiet, eyes rising first to his mother, then following her line of vision straight to the television.
"Do you need dinner?"
Glancing back at his mom, Roxas briefly considered a sarcastic 'Why? Are you gonna make it?' before holding his tongue. Unlike Cloud, his mom didn't tend to be as seasoned at taking his acerbic brand of sarcasm in stride, and he wasn't in the mood to make her upset or start a fight. "Nah, I already ate."
"Ah." The smile returned, but it was distant and didn't reach its apex before her lips returned to default neutral. She hadn't even seemed to notice his splinted fingers. Roxas knew that she was probably tired, that her escalating disinterest in taking part in her children's lives was owed to a more than full-time workload and an absent, deadbeat father more than a lack of genuine affection.
But Roxas was tired too, particularly when it came to cutting others slack. So fucking tired of what life was currently offering up on a platter that amounted to a tarnished silver yard sale knock-off of a more genuine artifact, at best.
Sora was looking at him, expression expectant. Vaguely, Roxas remembered that he hadn't bothered to respond to his afternoon text. Before his brother could pose the question Roxas assumed was seconds from being voiced, their mother spoke again.
"Did you have a nice time with Xion?"
One set of eyes was still fixed on Roxas, but it wasn't his mother's, her attention remaining diverted by the overdressed talkshow host on the screen in front of her.
Brows rising as Roxas caught Sora staring, he shot his brother a suggestive look. "Oh, yeah. She was great. Real hospitable, as usual." Curling the fingers of his good hand to touch the tip of his thumb, Roxas lifted his arm to the side of his face and shook his wrist for a few measured flicks while tonguing the cheek on the opposite side of his mouth.
Sora's reaction was immediate, and Roxas noted the steadily rising pink at the tops of his ears, alongside a flush working its way into his cheeks, with a hint of amusement. He performed an unasked for encore of the gesture, watching as Sora's eyes darted over to their mom, and then straight on back to him. His face an open book of outright embarrassment, Sora squeezed his eyes shut as if to block out the image, then opened them and aimed a pointed glare his brother's way as he mouthed an exaggerated, "Stop it."
Roxas merely looked at his brother and grinned before deciding the novelty of Sora's unnecessary modesty was quickly wearing thin.
"Anyway," he continued, finally dropping his arm and turning toward the stairway. "Going upstairs. I've got homework."
If his mother said anything in response, Roxas didn't hear it. He made it to his room in record time and was just as quick to drop his backpack by the entryway, unopened, before peeling off his shirt and free-falling onto a mattress so lumpy it could've contributed to scoliosis in a supermodel with even the most carefully nurtured posture.
It couldn't have been more than ten minutes between the arrival to his room and the familiar sound of Sora's crutches on the steps down the hall. Twenty, possibly, Roxas conceded since the pills always screwed with his sense of temporality. He tracked his brother's slow approach, well aware of the point when the heavy, dull sound of industrial-grade materials meeting creaky wood floorboards should have stopped if Sora had been aiming to enter his own room. Holding his breath, Roxas counted the steps he knew it'd take before…
A light knock sounded, a crutch rapping against the solid wood of his doorframe. Idly, Roxas wondered what it must be like to not even be able to use your own God-given hands to do something as simple as alert another person of your fresh presence.
"Can I come in?"
Roxas let out the breath he'd been holding and spoke at the same time. "Door's not even fully closed."
The hinge creaked as the door opened a little further. Roxas didn't look up as Sora made his way into the room.
"I was just trying to be polite, you know." Leaning forward on one crutch with expert adeptness, Sora turned on a lamp set up on the donated bedside table to let some light into the dreary room.
Eyes fixed on a crack in the ceiling directly above him, Roxas thrummed his splinted fingers against the hard bone of his bare sternum. "I know."
Coming to a stop by his brother's head, Sora looked down, expression inquisitive. "Did you get my text?"
Roxas glanced over. "I never took you for the partying type, personally," he said, echoing Xion's words from earlier. Within half a second, his gaze began to drift away from Sora again.
Lips pursing as he tried to maintain his brother's attention, Sora shook his head. It was a subtle movement that still had his mess of hair bobbing askew above wide blue eyes. "You know I'm not. I just thought it'd be nice to do something with the other seniors before we all get so bogged down with finals we can hardly afford to think about anything else."
Roxas' expression didn't falter as he redirected his eyes from the ceiling. "Get Kairi to take you."
"I can't." The words came out in a frustrated rush that Roxas wasn't accustomed to hearing. Sora was the patient one, logical and even-tempered, while Roxas himself was more inclined toward irrational anger and rapid-fire mutations of one superficial disposition after another.
He quirked an eyebrow. "Because of her daddy issues? Pretty sure I heard she's got other relations in town to chauffeur around her and that disabled sense of fashion, both."
Without uttering a word, Roxas could tell Sora was trying to hold back a defensive retort. As his brother's brows scrunched in consternation toward the bridge of his nose, Roxas stole enough of a look downward to note the whites of Sora's knuckles as they gripped his crutch handles. By simple virtue of his silence, it was obvious how much Sora wanted to keep in his brother's good graces. To Roxas, it was just as clear how much more willing Sora was to come to Kairi's defense than his own, which was what he tended to take particular offense in most.
When Sora next spoke, his words were slower, more carefully chosen. "There's not enough space in their pickup and the back's all rusted out. I was hoping you could ask Cloud about borrowing the flatbed truck."
Sucking in a mouthful of clammy-warm air, Roxas exhaled like he was releasing a tendril of cigarette smoke. He imagined it drifting upward, languid and slow, to meet the ceiling's cracked plaster, an imagined reunion of surreptitious lovers. "Not enough space for …two people and a driver?" He shot Sora a pointed look.
Sora shifted his weight, for a moment swaying from one crutch to the other before checking his balance, then looked down. Before Roxas could consider telling him to avoid unnecessarily exhausting himself, move to the edge of the bed, and sit his ass down, Sora spoke again.
"We invited someone else."
"Y'don't say." Roxas' voice turned mock-surprised as he crossed one leg over the other and bent his arms back to form a makeshift pillow under his head. "And who would that be?"
Again, Sora hesitated.
"You know about the new transfer student, right? His name's Riku. Hayner must've told you at least a little about him."
"Why am I not surprised?" Half under his breath, Roxas scoffed. The harsh sound filled the short distance between both brothers, vying for attention with the vaporous air that clung to everything it touched. Talk about jealous lovers.
"Hey." Sora's voice took a detour toward sharp and effectively forced Roxas' wanderlust attention back onto him. Roxas sat up in bed and considered the tone with more interest than he'd displayed in sum total of the last few hours. They locked eyes, Roxas feeling a sense of unwanted reality starting to set in as the pills he'd taken after dinner began to wear off. Sora looked back with an expression hinting at the merest possibility of verbal defiance.
"What do you want me to say?" Roxas braced his upper body on two locked elbows behind his back, ignoring the reverberating ache up one side of his arm. "I can't drive you 'cause I'm not going. And you really shouldn't either," he added as a pointed afterthought.
Shoulders rising with increasing tension, Roxas could see a tangible form of his brother's internal struggle between remaining agreeable and trying to advocate for something he apparently wanted very much. "And why is that?" Sora finally asked. His voice was quiet and low. It was a good way to hide irritation, Roxas very well knew from his own past practice.
"Wet clay, uneven ground, you can't use the chair or your crutches. That's before you even get there and have to avoid asses too shit-faced to look where their legs are takin' them." Roxas ticked off the list with monotone efficiency. He swung his legs over the side of the bed to face Sora full-on, eyes flashing an unspoken challenge. "Do I need to spell it out even more the fuck further?"
Sora's face became expressively transformative, Roxas noting the quick succession of emotions with scarcely concealed eagerness.
That's right. Get angry. Stand up for yourself. Tell me off.
The silence spread out before them, each brother staring the other down with an intensity that would have put most spiritual gurus to outright shame. Still balancing on his crutches with rigid-straight arms, Sora took in a strained breath, then relaxed his shoulders upon exhale.
It was in that instant that Roxas knew he'd lost. Without fail, he always did, but some part of him had still held out hope that this time might've been different.
"Never mind." Sora turned to go. "I'll figure something else out." The final words were muffled as he headed back toward the door but Roxas detected no trace of bitterness, not even an ounce of discernible anger. Just resignation. This wasn't the first time he'd been let down. It wasn't the first time it'd been Roxas who'd disappointed him.
Without another word, Sora exited the room, Roxas listening to the familiar sounds of crutches traveling down the upstairs hall toward a bedroom they once used to share. Throat tight, chest burning hot, he stood and strode over to the door, slamming it hard enough to be easily heard from three doors over.
Making a grab for his backpack, Roxas dragged it across the floor, indifferent to the noise it made as his textbooks trailed over his room's uneven floorboards. Depositing it next to his bed, Roxas sat back down and fanned himself, wishing for even the lightest of breezes to make its presence known through his open, yearning window. The air was stifling, and he considered removing his sleeves, toying with the thought of letting the skin on his sweating arms finally breathe like a cat allowing a field mouse to get away from its clawed clutches before delivering the inevitable, killing blow.
He couldn't make himself do it. He just didn't want to see.
Once again, his lower lip became the victim of an enamel assault as he worked out his frustration the most physically efficient way he knew how. Leaning forward, Roxas unzipped his backpack and shoved a hand in, bypassing his textbooks and folders that held countless assignments he'd persistently been ignoring. Finding the pouch that Xion had so genteelly deemed a gift, he opened it within his bag, hand emerging with one baby blue capsule. Roxas raised it to his mouth, deliberating over its smooth cylindrical shape, then pressed it between his lips and swallowed it dry without thinking twice.
Flopping onto his back, he reached for the lamp and clicked it off. He found himself awash in darkness, the only light a subtle glow from outside, likely a reflection from the living room window one floor below. He lay still for a time, immobile, unthinking, yet felt restless. In this state, he knew he wouldn't be doing anything remotely resembling sleep for hours into the foreseeable future.
There were core workouts he could run through, he supposed, remembering his resolve from yesterday morning. Right now, he didn't particularly want to move though. Fingers ghosting over his chest, Roxas found himself retracing the route Xion's hand had taken just a few hours prior. When they reached the barrier of his cut-offs, Roxas unzipped them without much conscious thought.
One hand sliding under the band of his boxers, his fingers met pulsing heat. As they curled over his own semi-hard length, Roxas shut his eyes and tried to summon up an image of Xion and the earlier feelings she'd so effortlessly induced. He even tried imagining her as a boy before coming to the ultimate conclusion that the thought was just too weird to realistically linger on.
The haze of the opiate's effective suggestion clouded his thoughts; it parried every attempt to visualize anything concrete, and, by the time Roxas had jerked himself to completion, his sweltering body was fast on its way to becoming as numbly remote as every scattered thought left meaningless and echoing inside him.
o - o
It started quietly as a subtle rustling that teased at his mental peripherals.
At first, he assumed it was trees from the backyard, branches pressed momentarily flush against the siding of his house before the wind relented, retreating like tides at the behest of moonlight, then re-exerting its influence in wave after measured wave of effective, tepid breeze.
But the air was muggy and dormant, with no hint of wind on this silent, suffocating night. As if forced prone onto his side by the weight of a brick-ton of invisible vapor, Roxas found himself paralyzed, eyes still closed, curled up and inert, tangled in the sheets at the edge of his bed. The immobility in itself was a brand of torment, more so than any physical sensation of pain he'd experienced in recent memory.
The rustling persisted, supplemented by a scraping of claws, a subtle clacking of razor-sharp beaks.
Breaths coming only with concerted effort, heart rate increasing like he was nearly through with a protracted athletic field relay, Roxas felt his throat constrict as though someone had caged it in a pitiless, multi-fingered grip. Closer and closer, the noises approached, from the window onto the uneven wood flooring, creeping up to the headboard of his bed.
Eyes flying open, Roxas flinched, arms jerking upward as though to fend off the anticipated tormenters. His hands felt leaden, clumsy, like they had lost circulation at some point during the night. With considerable effort, he drew them up to his face, then covered his eyes with two sweat-dampened palms and let the tremors travel his body with caressing familiarity.
The sound returned, this time in the form of a whispered, swishing sigh.
The girl, the girl. The girl was coming for him.
Shoulders tensing, Roxas released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. All the while a new mantra echoed faintly in his thoughts, vibrating off the interiors of his clenched teeth and further obstructing his already aching throat until he felt the urge to retch. Still trembling, he slid both clammy hands away from his eyes and down the sides of his face. They came to a rest as inadvertent voyagers, riding the rise and fall of his heaving chest.
At first he saw nothing. The room was bathed in the shadows of night itself. Even if he could move, he had no interest in drawing his window shade, too apprehensive about the scratching that had drawn him out of the depths of unconscious and into the purgatorial state he found himself in now.
Nothing is real…
The unspoken words drew his gaze over to the window, then past it into the far corner of his room. Her presence shone like a beacon as she sat huddled against the convergence of two foundational walls. Shoulders rounded, hair falling in waves over obscured features, her chin was inclined so severely it was near to grazing the very top of her diminutive chest.
"Nothing…" Roxas echoed the word as though it were foreign vocabulary.
She tilted her head, features still shielded by flowing, silken hair.
Ça iná… that's what you told me, yes?
The words sounded entreating, her lilt a soft melody, like tinkling shards of glass woven through wire mobile arms strung up between and above the both of them.
"Yes." Roxas swallowed, his throat swollen, dry. He had said that.
Pulling her knees into her chest, the girl rocked forward, then back again, her movements silently keening, a soundless, mournful wail given physical form.
Mo byen ba, mokin frèr.
I'm sick. I am, I am, I… am.
The words reached him, their meaning following a beat later, both bathing the scene before him in even more foreboding. The underlying sentiment remained unspoken between them, but Roxas didn't need those supplemental words to know this was all his fault.
Still rooted to his mattress, Roxas narrowed his eyes, tried desperately to distinguish even just some of the features of her face. In the inky darkness, he could only just make out that the girl's hair was an ethereal shade of blondish-white.
And yet, he couldn't help but think, it might be…
Running his tongue over the chapped skin of his lips, Roxas drew in a shuddering breath.
"…Xion?"
Her movements stilled, the silent agony encompassed in her rocking temporarily suspended as she seemed to strain to hear his voice. Slowly, she turned her upper body toward him, hair still obscuring what Roxas somehow already knew were delicate, porcelain features.
The hem of her skirt fluttered, as though caught upwind in a sudden breeze. It rose in swirls, catching the tips of her shoulder-length hair, directing it away from her face little by little until blue eyes locked with those of unseeing obsidian.
A quick crescendo of inhuman howls accompanied the sound of myriad feathered appendages, and Roxas was caught in an involuntary, full-body recoil, eyes squeezing shut as if his life depended on it.
He jerked awake at the edge of his bed, breathing labored and shallow. Scanning the room in a blind panic, his eyes moved first to the window, then to the corner where the girl had been.
He couldn't see more than a few inches in front of him, but Roxas knew there was nothing there. No one. He was alone.
And he was hot, far too warm, even though the bedsheets had already been kicked aside at some point while he'd been asleep and were now tangled in abrasive, low thread-count knots around his feet. Forcing himself to breathe more deeply, trying to maintain a steady intake of air into his oxygen-starved lungs, Roxas reached over to his elbow, working a finger under the edge of one arm sleeve, and began the careful process of peeling first one off, then the other. The fabric was slick with sweat but it still stuck to his arms, an adhesive rendering the skin beneath moist and puckered to the touch. Already he knew it'd be in his best interests to take a quick trip to the bathroom, soap up, and wash both limbs into a state of more acceptable dryness.
Twisting his body, Roxas rose to a seated position and pondered how harshly he should judge himself for waking up in such a state of irrational fear. He looked toward the window, his vision a distorted haze, and noted the solid-state darkness even over the area that the shade wasn't covering. Holding in a breath, Roxas listened for a prolonged moment, then assured himself the room was void of any other living entity, even though he still felt the ominous sensation of subtle observation on him.
There was no way he could have seen anyone as vividly as he just had, he tried to reassure himself. It was simply too dark.
Still, it had felt so real, the girl's anguish so bristling and palpable.
Nothing is real…ariyin ditou.
The voice came to him from within his own head, then traveled outward as if compelled by his subsequent exhale.
Roxas froze, body rigid, eyes searching. The logical part of his mind told him he'd imagined it, a remnant of a vivid dream and nothing more. Just the same, his body felt alive with nerves, prickling with every perceived sensation, and the apparition had spooked him enough not to want to remain alone in his room even a moment longer.
Sliding off the bed, Roxas sidestepped his backpack and the cutoff shorts he'd pulled off before falling into fitful sleep a few hours prior. He navigated the short distance from bed to door with unsteadiness that had nothing to do with any finding of unfamiliarity in the small space.
He paused in the hallway, listening for indicators that anyone else was awake, but all remained silent and still, save for the sense that incorporeal bird eyes still followed his every movement. With no sounds floating up from the downstairs living area, Cloud was either still at work or possibly sleeping on the couch. The only noise that registered at all was the echoing of those three, portentous words. They followed him out of his room and into the hall, not so much growing in strength as refusing to dissolve into the nothingness generally induced by his own increasing wakefulness.
Sora often kept a dim light on while he slept, although it wasn't always visible with the door closed and Roxas didn't notice it now. He reached for the door handle into a room that the two once shared, arm still shaking enough to see the aftershock of light tremors all the way down to the tips of his fingers. He turned the wobbling doorknob with care, the apparition's presence still baiting his sensate peripherals. The last thing he needed was to yank a loose handle clear off the door and create one more line to add to Cloud's growing list of home improvement projects, the still sensible part of his mind cautioned.
The door creaked as it swung inward, a fitting sound to announce a presence even Roxas was willing to admit was more caustic of late than in any stretch of the definition compassionate. As he slipped into the room and shut the door behind him, Roxas heard the sound of weight shifting on his brother's mattress as Sora pushed himself up to sitting, one gaunt arm reaching up to rub a hand over bleary eyes still full of the remnants of his recent insentience.
In the dim light of a lamp set up on the floor at the far end of his bed, Sora's eyes were blue absolute, not so different from the yawning expression that had been circumscribed a different shade in Roxas' latest dreamscape. He felt his throat tighten again at the mental image, sensing nearly invisible hairs prickle as the apparition let out a longing sigh against the back of his neck.
"What's wrong?" Still unfocused, Sora was looking at him from across the room, and Roxas found himself taking a few steps forward, then stopping, eyes scanning the dimly lit space, unsure where his gaze should settle.
"Can I stay here for the rest of the night?"
Someone else might have questioned him with more acute scrutiny. After the way he'd treated his brother only a few hours prior, at the very least Sora would have been well within his right to refuse a request that was by all accounts unquestionably vague.
Instead, he pushed himself up to sitting without a word, then tucked his knees into his chest to give Roxas room to climb into the twin-sized bed.
Roxas wasted no time taking advantage of the silent invitation. The moment he crossed the space Sora had opened up for him, his brother straightened his legs and carefully lowered himself back onto his side. He shifted his head forward to give Roxas the back corner of the pillow and bent his knees out over the edge of the bed to offer extra fraternal legroom.
Roxas mimicked the posture, his eyes resting just above the crown of Sora's head as he bent his own legs into the place Sora's would have been had his knees been lain out straight. Lying on one arm, Roxas snaked the other under his brother's small bicep, letting it come to an unassuming rest just beneath Sora's chest. His arm was still sweaty, the skin clammy and exposed to discerning eyes, but Sora didn't comment on it. He shifted, pressing the backs of his shoulders up against Roxas' bare chest, the fabric from one of Cloud's old tank tops rubbing minutely, then reached to slide his hand into Roxas' cupped palm in front of him.
Closing his eyes, Roxas tried to match Sora's measured breathing, mimicking the rise and fall of his brother's chest in an effort to find a happy medium between calm and unconsciousness. It was naturally cooler in Sora's room, a result of its north-facing window that didn't receive nearly as much sunlight throughout the day as Ven's old room, and Roxas found himself sliding his bare feet and calves beneath the bedsheets where Sora's already rested for added warmth near the foot of the bed.
Ça iná, frèr…?
The voice danced through the stagnant air above him, reminding Roxas of her abiding presence. Eyes opening again, they fixed themselves on the misty visitant now standing at the window. Back facing the two brothers, the hem of her flapper-style skirt fluttered in the same illusory breeze that seemed to be threading its way through tangled strands of white-blonde hair. With each successive movement, Roxas could hear the sounds of wings, of responsive flapping and fluttering and rustling, as though her constitutional make-up was one-part human, the other wholly aeriform. Despite his best efforts to suppress unnecessary movement, Roxas felt a shudder travel the length of his body, an undulating, involuntary flourish of substantive flesh against brotherly flesh through a thin layer of cottony fabric.
In front of him, there was a noticeable pause in Sora's measured pattern of breathing.
"Are you seeing her again?" His voice was no more than a whisper, but the room's empty silence amplified it and Roxas was only half successful in stifling a reactive jerk of his arm.
"Nah," he said, stilling his body as much as he was able and pressing one cheek against the tangles of hair at the back of Sora's head. "Go back to sleep."
In an action reminiscent of Xion's one day earlier, Sora readjusted his grip on Roxas' hand until he was able to wrap his fingers around the make-shift splint. Gently, with only the barest additional pressure, Sora gave his brother's fingers a light squeeze, and the heat of presumed pain traveled a languorous path up the outside of Roxas' forearm. As if in response, the apparition flickered, becoming increasingly translucent at the window in front of them.
"It's okay. I'm here," Sora murmured, eyes remaining closed. "You know she's not real."
Roxas knew.
At least, he truly wanted to believe that his brother wasn't as much of an outright liar as he was turning out to be himself.
As Sora's breathing slowed and deepened, Roxas felt his own tense muscles begin to release, each becoming gradually slack in succession. For a time, he simply listened to the familiar sounds of his brother's slumber. Even after three years of having their own rooms, the sensation of regulating his breathing to match Sora's, of truly becoming as close to a singular entity as two individuals on paths so increasingly divergent really could, remained a comfort to him. It was an immersion into the language only siblings who'd shared their first moments of life on forward could ever hope to understand in its true full glory.
This was where he knew he belonged, but the older they got, the more everything felt like it was increasingly falling apart.
"I'm sorry for earlier," Roxas whispered into his brother's hair. "I'm sorry about everything."
Sora didn't stir, and Roxas made no move to wake him. As the girl faded into nothingness, Roxas closed his eyes and made a silent promise to his brother that he'd check with Cloud about borrowing the truck first thing come morning tomorrow.