Smoking - Chapter 8
Title:: Smoking
Genre:: Drama
Fandom:: RPS Vam, Villinde, Dugera, Lindunn, others.
Rating:: R
Summary:: A story, reaching back to the beginning like a twisted, curling whisp of smoke from a slow burning fire.
Disclaimer::Most characters are property only of themselves; I own the storyline and the writing. This is a work of ficiton; treat it as such.
Links
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
The day I realized that Ville was my best friend was a very odd day indeed.
Have you ever had one of those days? Where everything’s just… weird? Not weird in the sense that there are extra-terrestrials climbing over your roof or that crop circles have appeared in your back yard or that you wake up with an extra limb, or to find that the laws of gravity have been reversed, or anything like that. It would just be subtle abnormalities. The sun might be shining a little bit too bright; the mail on the breakfast table might be fluttering in wind that you can’t feel. Maybe your carpet was just a tiny bit crooked, and it made you look twice at it, made the room feel completely different. Your shutters might slam just when you were thinking that they probably wouldn’t. You’d get a phone call; pick it up to hear nothing but a dial tone on the other end of the receiver. They’d be small things that you would notice, subtle but completely disarming.
It was one of those days for me.
I remember waking up and hearing a bird singing right below my window-ledge - odd, because it was still dark out. I noticed for the first time that the separator between the hours and the minutes on my alarm clocked flashed every second. There was the sleeve of a jacket caught in my closet door. The sheen on my guitar was an odd color in the surreal mix of the first rays of the sun rising slowly over the harbor and the stars still in the sky. When I got out of bed, the springs groaned in a way that made me freeze before I realized what had made the noise. My cereal poured into the bowl without one single piece going on the tablecloth. The door opened without me having to jiggle the handle and press my whole body weight against it. The bus door opened just as I reached it. The bell rang right as I stepped into homeroom, and for the first time in months, my teacher didn’t mark me late. The computer I sat at during our history research class was displaying a weird message, a blinking head in the middle of the screen. Weird things like that, trivial things that were suddenly standing out…those were the first things I noticed about that day.
The second thing I noticed about that day was that Ville was a strange shade of green. When he sat down at our desk in second period, he flopped into his chair and flung his head dramatically in his arms on the top of the table. I could hear him pouting from the other side of the room when I got up to close the door as the teacher asked me to.
“Ville? What’s up?”
I got no answer, so I shrugged it off and ignored it.
I ignored it well. I ignored it for 3 and a half periods. I ignored it so well, that I learnt some amazing things. Hanna had thirteen long, blonde hairs stuck to the back of her sweater. There were exactly three chair legs in the classroom without felt stuck to the bottom so that they wouldn’t screech on the floor. In the ceiling of every classroom, I estimated that there were about 150,600 little square holes in the panels. The lights flickered 10 times every 5 seconds. Jorma picked his nose and licked his fingers clean. Our math teacher’s moustache was longer on one side than on the other, and the lunch bell rang exactly 27.9 seconds late.
By the time I made the intriguing discovery about Jorma’s nasal hygiene, I was fed up.
I got the guts up to confront him about it at lunch, when we were sitting opposite each other at the end of the table.
“Okay, Valo, what the hell is wrong with you?”
“Whaddya mean, Barbie?”
“I mean, you’ve been moping all day. What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me.” He glared at me and poked around at the food on his plate. I lifted an eyebrow.
“Yeah, sure.”
“What’s it to you, anyways?”
“I gotta sit next to you all day, and you’re no fun when you’re all grumpy and stuff.”
“Oh, Barbie, I never thought you cared.” The sarcasm stung, but I brushed it off. I was slowly learning not to take a single syllable uttered from his mouth seriously.
“Right, that’s it, come on.”
“Come on what?”
“We’re going outside.”
“No we’re not. Fuck off, Barbie, seriously, I’m not in the mood.”
But apparently, I was having none of it. I surprised even myself when I shoved my chair backwards and grabbed him by the hand, pulling him out of the table.
“Kimi, will you take the trays back?” Kimi looked at me like I was nuts but nodded silently. “Thanks.”
And then I dragged a shell-shocked Ville outside and shoved him onto one of the concrete benches that had been unofficially claimed by our group.
“Jesus, Barbie, what’s gotten into you?”
Truth was, I didn’t know. I sat down next to Ville and sighed.
“Dunno. Sorry. You gonna tell me what’s up now?”
“I told you, there’s nothing wrong with me.”
“Ville, I don’t believe you for a second.” He looked at me for a long while after that, sizing me up, apparently. And here’s where another weird part of that day came in. I suddenly realized just how green his eyes were, I realized just how perfectly his hair curled around his face, just how deep chestnut brown and silky it was. I realized how sleek he looked, hunched over, his elbows on his knees, his head almost between his legs it was bent so low… And then I shook myself, had to remind myself that I had a … boyfriend. Of sorts. That this was Ville, the tyrant of my young life. And just like that, that weird moment was gone. The weird, dull light that had been shining around him like a flickering sepia aura was gone, and Ville the old arch-enemy turned comrade was back, and I was still trying to figure out what was making him so grumpy.
“Ville, just tell me, would you?”
He sighed. I frowned a bit.
“My mom’s … … she’s having another kid.”
I blinked at him. He wasn’t serious. That wasn’t the only reason he was so upset.
“Um. That’s what’s making you upset?”
“Sort of? I mean, come on Mikko, I’m 14. I don’t really want a baby brother or sister.”
“I don’t see what’s so bad about it though. I mean… you know. It’s not devastating or anything.”
Ville shrugged. I watched him for a moment. His eyes were shifty. His shoulders were twitching. His leg was bouncing up and down constantly. And just like that, I knew. I knew that wasn’t the whole truth. And I knew that I wasn’t going to get the whole truth. Something was bugging him, and he wouldn’t tell even me what it was. That’s when it suddenly dawned on me. I was so surprised Ville wasn’t telling me what was wrong because lately, he’d been telling me everything. From what he ate for breakfast to the fight his parents had had the night before. And I’d been telling him more and more too. The first thing I’d done after I gave Kimi head for the first time was to call Ville to tell him about it. I told him about how my mom was dating some random who I didn’t like much. I told him about all the new ideas for songs I had, I told him when I broke a string, when I needed new shoes… I didn’t even talk to Kimi as much as I talked to Ville now, as summer vacation neared, and I realized that the only reason I even cared what was going on was because suddenly, Ville had become not my child-hood enemy turned comrade, but my best friend. I could almost read his mind, I knew him so well all of a sudden. And that was the weirdest thing that happened to me on that weird day to beat all weird days.
----------
Ville sat on the concrete bench next to his best friend and lied through his teeth.
The night before, when his mother told him about the new baby, he’d been overjoyed.
But when Mikko asked him that day what was wrong, the only thing he could think of to worm his way out of telling the truth was to tell Mikko that he was upset about the baby.
And the really bad thing about it?
As he was sitting there on the concrete bench, his leg jiggling, his jaw clenched, his eyes averted from his friend’s glowing golden hair - as he sat there, counting the stones in the pavement beneath his feet, lying with his whole body … he knew that Mikko wasn’t fooled for even one second.
And he knew that eventually… he’d have to come clean.
And he had to avoid that - he had to avoid it at all costs.
Genre:: Drama
Fandom:: RPS Vam, Villinde, Dugera, Lindunn, others.
Rating:: R
Summary:: A story, reaching back to the beginning like a twisted, curling whisp of smoke from a slow burning fire.
Disclaimer::Most characters are property only of themselves; I own the storyline and the writing. This is a work of ficiton; treat it as such.
Links
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
The day I realized that Ville was my best friend was a very odd day indeed.
Have you ever had one of those days? Where everything’s just… weird? Not weird in the sense that there are extra-terrestrials climbing over your roof or that crop circles have appeared in your back yard or that you wake up with an extra limb, or to find that the laws of gravity have been reversed, or anything like that. It would just be subtle abnormalities. The sun might be shining a little bit too bright; the mail on the breakfast table might be fluttering in wind that you can’t feel. Maybe your carpet was just a tiny bit crooked, and it made you look twice at it, made the room feel completely different. Your shutters might slam just when you were thinking that they probably wouldn’t. You’d get a phone call; pick it up to hear nothing but a dial tone on the other end of the receiver. They’d be small things that you would notice, subtle but completely disarming.
It was one of those days for me.
I remember waking up and hearing a bird singing right below my window-ledge - odd, because it was still dark out. I noticed for the first time that the separator between the hours and the minutes on my alarm clocked flashed every second. There was the sleeve of a jacket caught in my closet door. The sheen on my guitar was an odd color in the surreal mix of the first rays of the sun rising slowly over the harbor and the stars still in the sky. When I got out of bed, the springs groaned in a way that made me freeze before I realized what had made the noise. My cereal poured into the bowl without one single piece going on the tablecloth. The door opened without me having to jiggle the handle and press my whole body weight against it. The bus door opened just as I reached it. The bell rang right as I stepped into homeroom, and for the first time in months, my teacher didn’t mark me late. The computer I sat at during our history research class was displaying a weird message, a blinking head in the middle of the screen. Weird things like that, trivial things that were suddenly standing out…those were the first things I noticed about that day.
The second thing I noticed about that day was that Ville was a strange shade of green. When he sat down at our desk in second period, he flopped into his chair and flung his head dramatically in his arms on the top of the table. I could hear him pouting from the other side of the room when I got up to close the door as the teacher asked me to.
“Ville? What’s up?”
I got no answer, so I shrugged it off and ignored it.
I ignored it well. I ignored it for 3 and a half periods. I ignored it so well, that I learnt some amazing things. Hanna had thirteen long, blonde hairs stuck to the back of her sweater. There were exactly three chair legs in the classroom without felt stuck to the bottom so that they wouldn’t screech on the floor. In the ceiling of every classroom, I estimated that there were about 150,600 little square holes in the panels. The lights flickered 10 times every 5 seconds. Jorma picked his nose and licked his fingers clean. Our math teacher’s moustache was longer on one side than on the other, and the lunch bell rang exactly 27.9 seconds late.
By the time I made the intriguing discovery about Jorma’s nasal hygiene, I was fed up.
I got the guts up to confront him about it at lunch, when we were sitting opposite each other at the end of the table.
“Okay, Valo, what the hell is wrong with you?”
“Whaddya mean, Barbie?”
“I mean, you’ve been moping all day. What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing’s wrong with me.” He glared at me and poked around at the food on his plate. I lifted an eyebrow.
“Yeah, sure.”
“What’s it to you, anyways?”
“I gotta sit next to you all day, and you’re no fun when you’re all grumpy and stuff.”
“Oh, Barbie, I never thought you cared.” The sarcasm stung, but I brushed it off. I was slowly learning not to take a single syllable uttered from his mouth seriously.
“Right, that’s it, come on.”
“Come on what?”
“We’re going outside.”
“No we’re not. Fuck off, Barbie, seriously, I’m not in the mood.”
But apparently, I was having none of it. I surprised even myself when I shoved my chair backwards and grabbed him by the hand, pulling him out of the table.
“Kimi, will you take the trays back?” Kimi looked at me like I was nuts but nodded silently. “Thanks.”
And then I dragged a shell-shocked Ville outside and shoved him onto one of the concrete benches that had been unofficially claimed by our group.
“Jesus, Barbie, what’s gotten into you?”
Truth was, I didn’t know. I sat down next to Ville and sighed.
“Dunno. Sorry. You gonna tell me what’s up now?”
“I told you, there’s nothing wrong with me.”
“Ville, I don’t believe you for a second.” He looked at me for a long while after that, sizing me up, apparently. And here’s where another weird part of that day came in. I suddenly realized just how green his eyes were, I realized just how perfectly his hair curled around his face, just how deep chestnut brown and silky it was. I realized how sleek he looked, hunched over, his elbows on his knees, his head almost between his legs it was bent so low… And then I shook myself, had to remind myself that I had a … boyfriend. Of sorts. That this was Ville, the tyrant of my young life. And just like that, that weird moment was gone. The weird, dull light that had been shining around him like a flickering sepia aura was gone, and Ville the old arch-enemy turned comrade was back, and I was still trying to figure out what was making him so grumpy.
“Ville, just tell me, would you?”
He sighed. I frowned a bit.
“My mom’s … … she’s having another kid.”
I blinked at him. He wasn’t serious. That wasn’t the only reason he was so upset.
“Um. That’s what’s making you upset?”
“Sort of? I mean, come on Mikko, I’m 14. I don’t really want a baby brother or sister.”
“I don’t see what’s so bad about it though. I mean… you know. It’s not devastating or anything.”
Ville shrugged. I watched him for a moment. His eyes were shifty. His shoulders were twitching. His leg was bouncing up and down constantly. And just like that, I knew. I knew that wasn’t the whole truth. And I knew that I wasn’t going to get the whole truth. Something was bugging him, and he wouldn’t tell even me what it was. That’s when it suddenly dawned on me. I was so surprised Ville wasn’t telling me what was wrong because lately, he’d been telling me everything. From what he ate for breakfast to the fight his parents had had the night before. And I’d been telling him more and more too. The first thing I’d done after I gave Kimi head for the first time was to call Ville to tell him about it. I told him about how my mom was dating some random who I didn’t like much. I told him about all the new ideas for songs I had, I told him when I broke a string, when I needed new shoes… I didn’t even talk to Kimi as much as I talked to Ville now, as summer vacation neared, and I realized that the only reason I even cared what was going on was because suddenly, Ville had become not my child-hood enemy turned comrade, but my best friend. I could almost read his mind, I knew him so well all of a sudden. And that was the weirdest thing that happened to me on that weird day to beat all weird days.
----------
Ville sat on the concrete bench next to his best friend and lied through his teeth.
The night before, when his mother told him about the new baby, he’d been overjoyed.
But when Mikko asked him that day what was wrong, the only thing he could think of to worm his way out of telling the truth was to tell Mikko that he was upset about the baby.
And the really bad thing about it?
As he was sitting there on the concrete bench, his leg jiggling, his jaw clenched, his eyes averted from his friend’s glowing golden hair - as he sat there, counting the stones in the pavement beneath his feet, lying with his whole body … he knew that Mikko wasn’t fooled for even one second.
And he knew that eventually… he’d have to come clean.
And he had to avoid that - he had to avoid it at all costs.