brought to you by chocolate milk
title: Another Morning
author: grey_nezumi
band: Antic Cafe
pairing: Kanon/Bou
warnings: stuff
disclaimer: I don't own them.
summary: One summer night, Bou and Kanon meet under unfortunate circumstances. Now Kanon is a believer.
Chapter Four: Normal Life
"In my darkened room
arms around my knees...
That's all I remember.
Arms around my knees
no TV, no music.
It's always at sunset.
As it grows dark...
when the air splits in two,
sound swells in my head,
and the light leaks through”
(“all about lily chou chou”)
“You copycat”, he said and tugged on one of his sister's ponytails.
“You're imitating my style.”
“Not true!”, she said and swatted his hand away. It was very different, walking home on quiet streets lined with white fences and perfectly kept lawns. Very different from the city they had lived in before. That's why people move out here into the country, thought Bou, the low crime rates, the friendly neighbours, the clean air. The safety.
The blue sky and the bright sterile green of the rice fields, that was all he had seen out of the car window, when they had moved here three weeks ago.
“It's just... I need to look cute tonight”, said Mimi, balancing on the curbstone with both her arms stretched out to the sides while she put one foot in front of the other.
“Why? Are you going on a date?”, Bou asked and watched her small face twist into a frown.
“Eww, no!”, she said. “But I have to convince daddy because of Goku.”
“Who's Goku?”, he asked, touching her elbow when she tipped slightly to the side. He pushed her with minimal effort to steady her again. She looked at him condescendingly.
“How can you not know him! You're the one who brought him home last night! The cat!”
“He didn't tell me his name”, Bou had to admit. “He was knocked out when I found him. Fell from a tree or something. Or maybe he was hit by a lightning bolt.”
“Well, his name is Goku. And he woke up this morning.”
“So? What's with him?”
“I have to ask daddy tonight if we can keep him. Didn't you listen to me?”
“But...”, Bou was staring up into the sky, counting the days on his fingers.
“But dad's not coming home until... sunday. You won't be able to blast him with your cuteness through the phone, right?”
Mimi jumped down from the curb and pointed a triumphant index finger at him.
“You're wrong. He's coming home tonight.”
“But...” Mimi cut him off.
“Mom said he's coming home earlier. She said he cut his trip short, because you... broke his camera?”
Bou's head shot around to stare at his sister.
“Mom told you that?”
“Yeah, this morning. Where were you? You were already gone when I got up”
“I just... I just had to go to school early because of some... paperwork.”
Mimi had let go of him and was walking in front of him now, with her back to the road. This was starting to feel suspiciously like an interrogation and Bou hated it. Especially because he felt like he was going to be sick, right here on this street in bright daylight.
“And where were you yesterday? You were gone almost the whole day!”
“I...”
“And the day before that, too. You can't just disappear like that, nii-san. You're making everyone worry”, she was looking at him with a serious expression that made her look much older than she really was.
“I was just walking around, Mimi. Just scoping out the neighbourhood, you know?”
His sister looked at him searchingly, lips pressed together tightly, but seemed to believe him. Bou asked himself when she had been infected with this paranoia.
“And who were those guys just now? They looked... suspicious.”
“I met them at school. I don't even know them.”
“Are you sure?”, she was turning to walk at his side now, looking at him from the corner of her eyes. “You know you can't keep a secret from me, right? I can always tell when you lie.”
No you can't. Thank god.
It was almost a miracle, thought Bou when they reached their new home, that the house and the garden hadn't received any damages in the storm last night. The freshly painted white fence, the English roses his mother had planted in the frontyard only days ago, everything was still in order. As if nothing had happened.
“Hey, nii-san?”, asked Mimi next to him as they were walking up the steps of the front porch.
“Hm?”
“Was... was it a digital camera? Did you drop it or something?”
“Yeah, kind of.”
She bit her lip.
“You're in trouble, right?”
Inside the house it was quiet. Mimi and Bou pulled off their shoes at the door, lining them up with the others already standing there. Their socked feet on the tiled floor didn't make a sound.
“Mom!”, called Mimi, dropping her schoolbag in the hall. “Mom, we're home!”.
Bou sighed. So much for his plans for a quiet escape to his room.
Their mother was sitting in the living room, hovering on the very edge of the couch as if she had just sat down for a second and was ready to jump up at any time. As she did now.
“There you are! What took you so long?”, she was holding a laundry basket full of clothes in her hands and some of her hair had escaped the bun at the back of her head, framing her worried face. Bou scratched his head.
“I'm sorry, mom. I kind of forgot about the time.”
She looked at him.
“You did? Maybe I should get you a watch to your birthday, because you seem to forget about the time awfully often lately.”
Bou was shifting from one foot to the other. He knew she was talking about what had happened when he came home last night and he wanted to avoid thinking about last night as much as possible. He could practically hear Mimi's ears twitch curiously.
“I didn't do it on purpose, you know that.”
His mother's shoulders tightened visibly.
“You know it took me half an hour to deactivate the alarm. It's a miracle none of the neighbours called the police on us.”, she was glancing out of the window, as if to check that their neighbours on the left side weren't spying on them from behind the curtains.
“And after that I had to reprogram the thing. I pinned the new combination on the mirror at the door. I know you're not supposed to do that, but it's just until we got it memorized.”
“I'm sorry I forgot about the combination”, said Bou quietly.
His mother looked at him for a second and sighed.
“I'm not angry at you, honey. It really scared me, that's all.” She reached out a hand awkwardly, as if she wanted to tuck a piece of blonde hair behind her son's ear. He couldn't stop himself from flinching when her cold hand touched his face.
His mother picked up her laundry basket and walked out of the room.
“I'm in the basement if you need me”, she said.
Bou's room was on the second floor, at the far end of the house. One would think that that was the reason why he had chosen this room as his, but it was actually because of the bookcase. The room had one wall that was a bookcase and even empty it was an impressive sight. Bou didn't really have any books except school books and a small bunch of novels and manga he'd picked up over the years, but he did have a collection of CDs. He had always thought of it as a pretty big collection for someone his age, but here in this bookcase it looked pathetic, not even filling a fraction of the space. Since he had first seen the room and the bookcase he daydreamed about one day filling the whole thing with music.
His collection, small as it may be, was one of Bou's most valued possessions and it was one of the few things that were already unpacked and in their right place. Because this room was slightly smaller than his room in the old house, it occurred to him for the first time how much stuff he owned.
His new closet wasn't big enough to fit all his clothes, so most of them were still packed into cardboard boxes standing strewn all over the carpet, which was exuding that nasty, chemical new-carpet-smell. On the closet door, his jehovah's witness-costume from last night was hanging to dry.
Bou went over to his CD-bookcase and changed the good mood-one that had been in the player to a bad-mood-CD. Then he dropped down on the bed and pressed a pillow to his face.
He couldn't believe how, over the course of only two days, everything could have changed so drastically to the worse. It was as if nothing worked his way since he had set foot into this town. He thought of Tachibana's eyes... should he really turn out to be blind - would he go to jail for this? Or would he be expelled from school? This simply wasn't allowed to happen. Not when he was so close to fulfilling his dream.
He took the pillow and threw it across the room.
“MEOW!”
Bou jumped up in his bed and stared at the place where the pillow had landed, on top of one of the boxes, or, more specifically, on the head of his sister's new best friend.
The cat fought with the pillow for a short while before it fell down to the floor.
“Hey, I'm sorry”, said Bou “I didn't know you were sitting there”. The cat jumped down from the box and sped out of the room, not even looking at Bou.
“Hey, don't run away...”, he said, but then he understood that the cat hadn't run from him. Now even his insensitive human ears picked up the slamming of a car door and the steps of heavy feet on fresh white gravel. From very far away it seemed, he also heard Mimi's excited steps on the stairs, swishing down there, probably in some mindblowing adorable outfit to woo her daddy. He swung both of his legs over the edge of the bed and took a deep breath. From the corner of his eyes he could see his stuffed animal dolphin stare at him.
“Okay”, he whispered “Here we go.”
Dinner was a tense affair and Bou couldn't tell the outcome. All he could do was try to act as insuspicious as possible, whatever that meant.
“Look at him, nii-san. He's so cute, right?”, Mimi dragged him to the kitchen, where the cat was already munching on some tuna from a can. It looked healthy, but a little grumpy. When his sister started to pet its back it hissed loudly and its fur was standing up on his back.
“You better leave him alone when he's eating, Mimi. He will think you want to steal his dinner.”
“Eew.”
“Come on now you two, your dinner's getting cold!”, called their mother and they all sat down around the kitchen table. As soon as she was sitting, Mimi asked.
“Can we keep it? Can we keep the kitty cat?”
“Oh but we can't just keep it, sweetie, what if it already belongs to someone?”, said their mother.
“But it doesn't have a collar!”, she looked to her father hopefully and made her best puppy eyed face “Please, dad, can we keep it?”
He chuckled and took another bite, chewing it slowly.
“You really want it that bad, hm?” Then Bou felt his father's eyes on him.
“What about you, do you want to keep the cat?”
“Yes, I...”, he forced himself to look up and at the man sitting on the other side of the table
“I would like that very much.”
His father looked at him and nodded.
“Sure. You can keep it.”
“Oh thanks, dad!”, Mimi was beaming from ear to ear. Bou didn't say anything and neither did his mother.
“I named him Goku”, said the little girl around a bite of rice.
“Goku? Why that?”, his father's question pulled Bou from his silent reverie.
“Because he looks like a fighter, don't you think? He looks like he could kick some serious a-”
“Mimi-chan! Language!”, said their mother and pointed a chopstick at her daughter.
“And you!”, she suddenly turned to Bou “Don't think you can trick me like that, young man! You still haven't told me where you were all day yesterday!”
“I told you, I was just walking around”
“Walking around where?”
“I... don't know. Just checking out the place, I guess.”
“For eight hours?”
“I...”
“Leave him alone”, said his father, to Bou's big surprise.
“We will talk about this later.”
And suddenly he felt like he was choking on something stuck in his throat. Bou nodded hastily in direction of his father and turned back to his food. His mother asked about how their first day at school went and Mimi took the chance to complain about the weirdos she had for teachers and about the children in her class who had “absolutely no fashion sense, like, at all”. Bou found it sometimes scary, listening to her, because she was still so young. When he was eight... he had been still a child. Nowadays, it seemed, everyone grew up so fast.
“Oh did I tell you the news already?”, he heard his mother's voice chipper happily, and turned his head slightly.
“No, mom, what is it?”
“Teruki called. He's coming home in two weeks.”
At that Bou's head shot up, his eyes wide. Teruki was the oldest of the three siblings and the only biological child of their parents. He had been gone for almost one and a half years now, studying in the US and Bou had missed his brother dearly. More than he would have expected.
“Really? He's coming home?”, asked Bou, trying not to sound too happy, but unable to hide his excitement.
The rain started again while he waited in his room for his father to come and talk to him.
It got stronger and stronger and he tried to concentrate on that sound, on that raw force of nature, washing away the dead cells of his skin, cleaning him all the way down to his bones. At first he tried to do his homework and then he tried to read, but he couldn't concentrate, because he was waiting. Waiting didn't leave room for anything else.
He sat down on his swiveling chair that belonged to the desk, then he moved to sit on the bed, and then to the chair again, trying to gather his courage.
“Hey”, said a voice and involuntarily he swung aroung on his chair to face his father. He was sitting on his hands now to stop them from shaking. How pathetic was that?
“...hey”, he answered eventually.
His father sat down on the bed and looked over the unfinished room, eyes caught for a second by the shiny silver cross that belonged to his costume. The man's eyebrows rose but he didn't say anything.
“Come over here for a sec?”, Bou didn't move on his own accord, but merely out of habit and sat down on the bed next to his father. Almost immediately there was a hand on his leg, right above his knee.
“You know, if I didn't know any better, I'd think you were avoiding me.”
“I'm not avoiding you.”
“But I barely get to see you anymore.”
Bou pressed his lips together.
“Haven't you seen enough of me already?”, he pointed to the ceiling in the corner of the room, where the remainders of the surveillance camera were set up. It had been a so-called “vandal-proof” camera, with a synthetic covering over the actual camera, but it hadn't been much of a hindrance when Bou had smashed it. He hadn't even bothered to clean up the shards or put away the hammer, which he had borrowed when his mother had been hanging the family photos up on the wall over the stairs. He supposed he had been too pissed-off and he also hadn't seen the possibility that his dad might come home earlier. He hadn't thought at all, to be honest.
“Oh, yes, that...”, his father looked over to the camera, but didn't stand up to take a closer look at the damage.
“That was a very expensive surveillance system you smashed there, do you know that?”
Bou held himself back when he really wanted to laugh.
“You know that this is only for your best, right?”, his father continued.
“It's illegal, that's what it is. Spying on people.”, he said and cursed his voice for shaking.
“I wouldn't have had to do it if you would only observe the rules. I'm worrying about you.”
Bou hadn't looked up from his knees, so when his father hugged him, it came as a surprise.
Out of habit, he didn't struggle.
“I missed you.”, his father said and Bou tried not to listen, tried to drown it out, but he was too close.
“You know I love you, right?”, he heard that voice against his ear. He could feel a hand pressing against his back, running up and down, as if his father wanted to count the little bumps of his spine under his skin.
“You're mine and I love you. Don't you ever forget that.”
When he unfastened the embrace, Bou's body was frozen, numb from being hugged so tightly.
Then he felt himself being kissed, full on kissed, with a hand in his neck, tilting his head back. There was another hand, still on his back, pulling him impossibly closer.
After a second he pulled back and shoved the man away, drawing his knees up to his body to create a barrier between them.
“Get out”, he said, staring down at the small patch of blue sheet between his knees.
A hand, he didn't know which, touched his cheek. He didn't look up, just grabbed the hand and pushed it away.
“Get out of my room. You can't do this anymore. I'm not a child anymore, you know?”
His father stood up, but didn't move.
“I know that, Bou-chan. You're fifteen three-quarters.”
Bou could hear a sigh. “You kids grow up so fast, it's amazing.”
He lifted his head slowly to stare at him. He was so so angry that he forgot to be scared.
“Get. Out. Now.”, he knew yelling was not an option, not with Mimi's room being right next to his, but he didn't know how long he could hold back.
His father grabbed his shoulders and stared back at him and for a moment Bou thought he would hit him, from how distorted his face was. But then he spoke again, his voice strained.
“Don't look at me like that, please? You know that you're the only one I have, right? You're the only one I love.”
It hurt so much, he couldn't even comprehend it. His father's words were making him physically ill.
“You're sick”, he said.
“You're a very sick person. But I don't care. If you don't get out of here right now, I swear I'll fucking kill you.”
Bou was staring down at his knees as he said it, saw them shake. To his own surprise, the hands slid from his shoulders, he could hear another sigh and then clothes rustling as his father stood up. Sneaky steps on thick carpeting, making their way to the door.
Before his father left the room, he heard him say something that almost sounded like
“...so cute.”
Bou waited until he heard those steps disappear down the hall, heard his parents' bedroom door close and then he started to breath again. He stood up slowly, went to the bathroom and brushed his teeth for a long time. The white squares of the bathroom tiles were blurring in front of his eyes and all Bou wanted to do was curl up under the sink and cry, but he wouldn't. He was already past that stage. He was almost a grown up now.
When he snuck back into his room, closed the door quietly and turned around, he jumped.
Goku was lying there on his bed, stretched out on his back.
He was as long as a skateboard.
When Bou came closer and sat down on the side of the bed, the animal started to purr, a low masculine grumble-purr. The boy carefully climbed over the cat and slid under the covers next to him, to at least try to get some sleep.
Goku rolled over on his side and opened one sleepy yellow eye to look at Bou. Then he pressed one of his paws against his cheek.
“Fat lucky kitty cat”, said Bou and buried his face in that thick grey fur.
Only two weeks, he repeated in his thoughts, in two weeks Teruki's coming home. Only two more weeks and he's coming back. Two weeks...
Like a mantra.
(AN: sorry?)
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