(no subject)
Sora had some money and, really, why was the store so far away? He was tired of walking everywhere because gas cost money he didn't have. But walked into the store, trying to think of things that could be cooked in a crock pot. Crock pots were awesome because he could dump all the things in and leave it. But that usually required having things to dump in it. And he'd had stew last week, curry the week before that . . . And nacho cheese for the last three days. Maybe chicken? Chicken soup! That sounded - hey didn't he know that guy over there?
Toying with his list absently, Riku pushed his cart through the rows of food, glancing over certain dishes and debating on just throwing out tonight's meal and getting something that he didn't have to make. As much as he loved cooking, it was more fun, or rather, more enjoyable, when it wasn't just him enjoying the food. Most of the meals he made he had leftovers with, but still...
Riku brushed his hair out of his eyes, putting a few things in his cart and keeping it going, all of what he got being healthy food, of course.
Prior objective mostly pushed to the back of his mind for the moment, Sora followed the silver-haired person. Hm. It could just be in his head but . . . Oh. Didn't that guy Riku have silver hair? He kinda looked like that picture in the file.
Hard to tell. Only one way to find out, "Oi. Riku!"
Still in the middle of a debate with himself on if sushi if he chose to go out, or something he could whip up himself sounded better, Riku tapped his fingers on the handle of his cart, stiffening at the call of his name. Glancing over his shoulder, not too quickly, not too casually, Riku found an eyebrow going up in response to the slender brunet standing there.
"...Yeah?" he said in return, waiting.
"Oh it is you." Sora walked over, giving a little wave, "M'Sora. You know, motion of the ocean?"
He did a little shake, smiling. It was more fun to bug people he'd spoken to across electronic connections than to worry about what dinner was going to be. Dinner could wait.
The store gods hated him, Riku thought distantly, leaning against his cart with a barely-held-back sigh, just looking at the younger male. "Yeah. I remember your name."
Sora didn't seem to have cart; was the boy still out of money?
"What're you gonna make?"
Sora had wandered over and was now looking at the things that were in the cart . . . Geez, didn't this guy ever live? All healthy stuff, which was good but nothing fun at all. Not even muffins. He probably ate oatmeal for breakfast, no sugar.
Riku glanced at his cart, shrugging a bit. "Pizza, probably, if I don't go out to eat." Wondering why this kid was still talking to him, and what he wanted, Riku waited. No one was this...weirdly nice. It didn't happen.
"My cart that interesting?" he said dryly, eyebrow raising once more, lips curled in a wry, vague smile. "Or is something wrong? You look offended by it."
"You have no muffins," Sora said flatly, as if that explained everything.
It didn't even occur to him that it was weird to walk up to a person in a store and strike up a conversation with them. He was bored. He was tired of doing paperwork. This was a few minutes of talk that had nothing to do with work. Work sucked.
"Pizza? What kind of pizza?"
"The homemade kind?" Riku held back another sigh, realizing that the boy probably wasn't going to be heading off any time soon so that meant entertaining him. It wasn't in Riku to be rude, so.... "And. Muffins? I don't eat muffins." Usually, his mind added but he had a feeling if he admitted that he did, he'd be opening up a whole other can of worms that he really didn't want to at this point. Pointing at his cart, he let Sora see he had almost all of what he needed for pizza.
"But muffins are good."
Obviously, most if not all of Sora's logic fell into the flawed category. Sora looked down at the cart again, trying to determine why he felt like something was missing. He looked up at Riku, only half-serious.
"What, no pineapple? You can't have pizza without pineapple."
"But they're not healthy."
Riku nearly sighed again-- was he really having this discussion with a kid he'd talked to once or twice? Really?
"I don't want pineapple on my pizza?" Not quite meaning it to sound like a question, Riku tried to figure out how to make that not sound mean. But honestly, he didn't like pineapple on his pizza so he wasn't going to put it on there.
"Muffins have fiber."
And sugar and fat and carbs. But fiber was healthy, so Sora said that instead. Always go for the "chocolate is fruit" arguments. He was enjoying bothering Riku. Riku didn't yell at him, even though he had plenty of reason to. Besides, it was always fun to pester people. You learned an awful lot about a person just from the way they answered questions.
"Why not?"
"So do a lot of things, but they're not healthy." Riku glanced at the isle before starting off again, picking and choosing things to stick in his cart, figuring Sora would follow. "I don't like pineapple on my pizza. I like them normal."
"But when you put the pineapple on with ham then it becomes a Hawaiian pizza which is accepted as a normal kind of pizza."
Sora was following Riku much like a child follows his mother with a million and a half kind of annoying questions that usually didn't have real answers. Or answers that the kid wanted, in any case.
Riku answered half of those questions, deflected a quarter and just plain ignored the rest, finding that no, he really didn't want to answer them. "Don't you have your own shopping to do?" Riku finally asked, pausing in the middle of grabbing some things for steak and potatoes, another craving he'd had lately and could fix himself.
Sora thought about that for a second. Oh. Right. Buying things so he could eat and not starve to death.
"I'm only getting chicken and marinade stuff. I can afford to bother you."
"Can you actually make chicken?" Riku asked dryly. Most of the people that he had seen so far hadn't had the...best cooking skills. There was that one who just ate microwaved food, in particular. Who did that?
"M'hm," Sora said absent-mindedly, "you just stick it in the crock pot with the stuff and leave it for a couple hours."
Mostly, he was calculating how much chicken he could get for $ and trying to remember if he had chicken noodle soup in a can somewhere. Hm. Probably not. Oh well.
"Do you have a crock pot?" Sora didn't look the type- or...well, or sound it really, to have everything he needed for all his meals. His heart might be in the right place, but...
Pushing some other things into his cart, Riku decided between white and brown rice, choosing the second and then getting pineapple as well.
". . . How would I cook the chicken if I didn't?"
Really. He wasn't stupid, scatterbrained maybe, but he didn't forget important things like equipment. Stuff like that got you killed. He made a small face at the brown rice. Tasted funny, after being brought up on white rice for so many years. Not that he ever had that anymore and - wait, didn't Riku say he didn't want pineapple?
"Thought you said you didn't want pineapple."
"I dunno. You look the type to stick it in somewhere and pray that it works."
Teasing, really, something rare in and of itself, Riku sent him a sideways look, working on picking out another kind of fruit as well before realizing that he should've headed over to the fresh fruit. Off there next, Riku shrugged. "I said not for the pizza. Who said that that pineapple was for the pizza?"
"I'm not stupid. I got a cookbook."
Regardless of the fact that the cookbook was confusing sometimes and, well, more often than not he substituted things for other things. It was still edible. He watched enough cooking shows to know what worked. Looking over at Riku, he raised an eyebrow.
"So what's the pineapple for then? A luau?"
"I never said you were stupid."
And he didn't; Riku didn't go around and needlessly piss people off, or insult them, since often times those went hand in hand. "The pineapple, if you must know, is for breakfast. It's far easier than making something complicated."
"I never said you said I was stupid. It was just kinda there, floating."
No one said anyone had to make sense all the time and Riku was really not making sense right now. Pineapple? For breakfast? I mean, Sora totally ate it for dinner sometimes but for breakfast? That was new.
"You don't eat oatmeal, all plain and gross, for breakfast?"
"You were reading too much into it," Riku said dryly.
He directed them to the fruit isle, picking out a few grapefruit, then some pomegranates, deciding against the cherries because whoa, expensive. He blinked at the comment about oatmeal being plain and gross. "Uh. No. I eat it with brown sugar, or syrup and walnuts."
"I guess . . ."
The statement trailed off into a long and complicated path of thought that ended in duck being a weird flavour. Disassociation was Sora's best friend at times. He was snapped back by the answer to his oatmeal question. Huh. Gur wasn't as boring as Sora had originally thought. But . . . Syrup?
"Syrup goes on pancakes. Or in iced tea. I've never met anyone who put it in their oatmeal."
Riku looked away after getting his fruits, shrugging a bit. "I like it in my oatmeal. You've never tried that?" he shot Sora an innocent look, mostly blank, and went about his shopping once more. Just little things here and there to make bigger meals, he was growing close to being finished. "I don't drink tea unless it's green tea usually."
". . . No?"
It came out more question than answer. Not because he was confused, but because he wasn't sure how to respond to that. Wouldn't the syrup make the oatmeal stick to the spoon and make it all sticky? That didn't sound too good. And Riku didn't drink iced tea. Probably didn't drink much soda either.
"But iced tea is refreshing. Green tea is nasty when it's cold."
Round clock arguments, that's what they were. Answers that ignored the original question.
"...I'm about done," Riku said suddenly, because, really, he was. "You should probably get your shopping done too."
He wasn't trying to be rude or chase the boy away-- no, because oddly enough, he was...enjoying the idle, aimless chatter, not really minding the brunet. He didn't know many people around here, and that was good because it didn't do any good to get too attached to people. Sora though. He was...bearable.
"Green tea is fine either way, but yeah, hot is better."
Right. Shopping. The thing he had come to do. He should do it, because otherwise there wouldn't be food for the next week or so. Whenever they decided to pay him.
"Can I have your phone number?"
It came out of his mouth before he really thought about how weird that sounded coming from a random person. Oh well, too late now. Heck. He didn't even know if this Riku person had a phone. Probably, though, phones were pretty important.
....He was right. Riku had figured Sora had been distracted talking to him and forgotten that hey, he needed to eat too.
"....Can you what?" Riku asked, blinking in shock. No one besides someone he intended to work for, had ever asked for his phone number before. Either one of his numbers really. There was a personal, and a work number, but. but still. "Why?"
"Um. Your phone number. Can I have it because I'm getting tired of not having friends because everyone is so into work and no one pays attention to me."
It wasn't so much a question as a rather long and convoluted reason that was kind of worded like a question. And for the most part, Sora was ignored by people at work. He was intimidated by them, by how scary some of them were.
But really. It wasn't because he was a creepy stalker or he wanted to track down his address. Plain and simple, it was just Sora wanting to get to know Riku better.
"...Yeah, but. But." Riku gaped for a moment. Because. People. Didn't ask him for his phone number unless it was work related and Sora was working for the very people who he suspected wanted him dead so. ....So this was kind of weird. And awkward.
"What makes you think we'd be friends?" he asked finally, pushing his long bangs out of his eyes and behind his ear.
Well. Sora tilted his head to the side slowly, giving Riku a kinda confused look, "Because you answered my questions without yelling at me for longer than five minutes and that's kinda rare?"
A wry curve to his lips, Riku sighed. "Yeah, but. Really. You're serious?"
....Awkward. Very awkward. Sora looked so earnest and...well. Riku knew murderers, knew prostitutes, knew all the scum of the world, or at least he thought he did- and well...Sora really didn't look like that. "Ah. I guess." No one said he had to answer, anyway.
More confused, vaguely childish looks, "Why wouldn't I be serious?"
Being the pure-hearted person he was, Sora really just liked people on an individual basis. He couldn't bring himself to hate either side of the war because nothing could stop him from believing that there were people like him who really just wanted to make everything decent for the people that didn't want to fight. Was there anything wrong with that?
He brightened up, though, when Riku said it was okay, "Really? Cool!"
Pulling the cellphone he'd gotten from the Commission out, Sora set up everything and then handed the phone over to Riku, smiling brightly.
And the childish, cat-like head tilts really just settled it. If he ended up getting toasted by Sora later on, props for him for being such a good actor. "Mm," Riku offered in response to that question, not quite feeling like answering it as he reached out and took the cell, giving the untraceable number, the one he used for personal things. It was the phone number he used the least, of course, but still. Sora would be one of a grand total of three numbers in there.
Programming his number into the phone, Riku handed it back when it was done, handing his to Sora in return, feeling vaguely...childish.
Perhaps, on some lower level deep within his heart, Sora could have been acting. But for all intents and purposes, Sora really was happy to finally have a number in his phone that didn't belong to someone at work he always needed to call for backup or whatever. He took the phone back, sticking it back into his pocket.
"Thank you!" He thought about it for a second before adding, "For entertaining me and stuff."
Rolling his eyes a bit, Riku just nodded. "Yeah, sure." Figuring they were done, he waved a hand lazily, and started off to the checkout line, hoping he hadn't lost track of what he needed and forgotten something.
Sora waved before turning on his heel and walking off to get those things he needed. He still needed to eat dinner, afterall.
Toying with his list absently, Riku pushed his cart through the rows of food, glancing over certain dishes and debating on just throwing out tonight's meal and getting something that he didn't have to make. As much as he loved cooking, it was more fun, or rather, more enjoyable, when it wasn't just him enjoying the food. Most of the meals he made he had leftovers with, but still...
Riku brushed his hair out of his eyes, putting a few things in his cart and keeping it going, all of what he got being healthy food, of course.
Prior objective mostly pushed to the back of his mind for the moment, Sora followed the silver-haired person. Hm. It could just be in his head but . . . Oh. Didn't that guy Riku have silver hair? He kinda looked like that picture in the file.
Hard to tell. Only one way to find out, "Oi. Riku!"
Still in the middle of a debate with himself on if sushi if he chose to go out, or something he could whip up himself sounded better, Riku tapped his fingers on the handle of his cart, stiffening at the call of his name. Glancing over his shoulder, not too quickly, not too casually, Riku found an eyebrow going up in response to the slender brunet standing there.
"...Yeah?" he said in return, waiting.
"Oh it is you." Sora walked over, giving a little wave, "M'Sora. You know, motion of the ocean?"
He did a little shake, smiling. It was more fun to bug people he'd spoken to across electronic connections than to worry about what dinner was going to be. Dinner could wait.
The store gods hated him, Riku thought distantly, leaning against his cart with a barely-held-back sigh, just looking at the younger male. "Yeah. I remember your name."
Sora didn't seem to have cart; was the boy still out of money?
"What're you gonna make?"
Sora had wandered over and was now looking at the things that were in the cart . . . Geez, didn't this guy ever live? All healthy stuff, which was good but nothing fun at all. Not even muffins. He probably ate oatmeal for breakfast, no sugar.
Riku glanced at his cart, shrugging a bit. "Pizza, probably, if I don't go out to eat." Wondering why this kid was still talking to him, and what he wanted, Riku waited. No one was this...weirdly nice. It didn't happen.
"My cart that interesting?" he said dryly, eyebrow raising once more, lips curled in a wry, vague smile. "Or is something wrong? You look offended by it."
"You have no muffins," Sora said flatly, as if that explained everything.
It didn't even occur to him that it was weird to walk up to a person in a store and strike up a conversation with them. He was bored. He was tired of doing paperwork. This was a few minutes of talk that had nothing to do with work. Work sucked.
"Pizza? What kind of pizza?"
"The homemade kind?" Riku held back another sigh, realizing that the boy probably wasn't going to be heading off any time soon so that meant entertaining him. It wasn't in Riku to be rude, so.... "And. Muffins? I don't eat muffins." Usually, his mind added but he had a feeling if he admitted that he did, he'd be opening up a whole other can of worms that he really didn't want to at this point. Pointing at his cart, he let Sora see he had almost all of what he needed for pizza.
"But muffins are good."
Obviously, most if not all of Sora's logic fell into the flawed category. Sora looked down at the cart again, trying to determine why he felt like something was missing. He looked up at Riku, only half-serious.
"What, no pineapple? You can't have pizza without pineapple."
"But they're not healthy."
Riku nearly sighed again-- was he really having this discussion with a kid he'd talked to once or twice? Really?
"I don't want pineapple on my pizza?" Not quite meaning it to sound like a question, Riku tried to figure out how to make that not sound mean. But honestly, he didn't like pineapple on his pizza so he wasn't going to put it on there.
"Muffins have fiber."
And sugar and fat and carbs. But fiber was healthy, so Sora said that instead. Always go for the "chocolate is fruit" arguments. He was enjoying bothering Riku. Riku didn't yell at him, even though he had plenty of reason to. Besides, it was always fun to pester people. You learned an awful lot about a person just from the way they answered questions.
"Why not?"
"So do a lot of things, but they're not healthy." Riku glanced at the isle before starting off again, picking and choosing things to stick in his cart, figuring Sora would follow. "I don't like pineapple on my pizza. I like them normal."
"But when you put the pineapple on with ham then it becomes a Hawaiian pizza which is accepted as a normal kind of pizza."
Sora was following Riku much like a child follows his mother with a million and a half kind of annoying questions that usually didn't have real answers. Or answers that the kid wanted, in any case.
Riku answered half of those questions, deflected a quarter and just plain ignored the rest, finding that no, he really didn't want to answer them. "Don't you have your own shopping to do?" Riku finally asked, pausing in the middle of grabbing some things for steak and potatoes, another craving he'd had lately and could fix himself.
Sora thought about that for a second. Oh. Right. Buying things so he could eat and not starve to death.
"I'm only getting chicken and marinade stuff. I can afford to bother you."
"Can you actually make chicken?" Riku asked dryly. Most of the people that he had seen so far hadn't had the...best cooking skills. There was that one who just ate microwaved food, in particular. Who did that?
"M'hm," Sora said absent-mindedly, "you just stick it in the crock pot with the stuff and leave it for a couple hours."
Mostly, he was calculating how much chicken he could get for $ and trying to remember if he had chicken noodle soup in a can somewhere. Hm. Probably not. Oh well.
"Do you have a crock pot?" Sora didn't look the type- or...well, or sound it really, to have everything he needed for all his meals. His heart might be in the right place, but...
Pushing some other things into his cart, Riku decided between white and brown rice, choosing the second and then getting pineapple as well.
". . . How would I cook the chicken if I didn't?"
Really. He wasn't stupid, scatterbrained maybe, but he didn't forget important things like equipment. Stuff like that got you killed. He made a small face at the brown rice. Tasted funny, after being brought up on white rice for so many years. Not that he ever had that anymore and - wait, didn't Riku say he didn't want pineapple?
"Thought you said you didn't want pineapple."
"I dunno. You look the type to stick it in somewhere and pray that it works."
Teasing, really, something rare in and of itself, Riku sent him a sideways look, working on picking out another kind of fruit as well before realizing that he should've headed over to the fresh fruit. Off there next, Riku shrugged. "I said not for the pizza. Who said that that pineapple was for the pizza?"
"I'm not stupid. I got a cookbook."
Regardless of the fact that the cookbook was confusing sometimes and, well, more often than not he substituted things for other things. It was still edible. He watched enough cooking shows to know what worked. Looking over at Riku, he raised an eyebrow.
"So what's the pineapple for then? A luau?"
"I never said you were stupid."
And he didn't; Riku didn't go around and needlessly piss people off, or insult them, since often times those went hand in hand. "The pineapple, if you must know, is for breakfast. It's far easier than making something complicated."
"I never said you said I was stupid. It was just kinda there, floating."
No one said anyone had to make sense all the time and Riku was really not making sense right now. Pineapple? For breakfast? I mean, Sora totally ate it for dinner sometimes but for breakfast? That was new.
"You don't eat oatmeal, all plain and gross, for breakfast?"
"You were reading too much into it," Riku said dryly.
He directed them to the fruit isle, picking out a few grapefruit, then some pomegranates, deciding against the cherries because whoa, expensive. He blinked at the comment about oatmeal being plain and gross. "Uh. No. I eat it with brown sugar, or syrup and walnuts."
"I guess . . ."
The statement trailed off into a long and complicated path of thought that ended in duck being a weird flavour. Disassociation was Sora's best friend at times. He was snapped back by the answer to his oatmeal question. Huh. Gur wasn't as boring as Sora had originally thought. But . . . Syrup?
"Syrup goes on pancakes. Or in iced tea. I've never met anyone who put it in their oatmeal."
Riku looked away after getting his fruits, shrugging a bit. "I like it in my oatmeal. You've never tried that?" he shot Sora an innocent look, mostly blank, and went about his shopping once more. Just little things here and there to make bigger meals, he was growing close to being finished. "I don't drink tea unless it's green tea usually."
". . . No?"
It came out more question than answer. Not because he was confused, but because he wasn't sure how to respond to that. Wouldn't the syrup make the oatmeal stick to the spoon and make it all sticky? That didn't sound too good. And Riku didn't drink iced tea. Probably didn't drink much soda either.
"But iced tea is refreshing. Green tea is nasty when it's cold."
Round clock arguments, that's what they were. Answers that ignored the original question.
"...I'm about done," Riku said suddenly, because, really, he was. "You should probably get your shopping done too."
He wasn't trying to be rude or chase the boy away-- no, because oddly enough, he was...enjoying the idle, aimless chatter, not really minding the brunet. He didn't know many people around here, and that was good because it didn't do any good to get too attached to people. Sora though. He was...bearable.
"Green tea is fine either way, but yeah, hot is better."
Right. Shopping. The thing he had come to do. He should do it, because otherwise there wouldn't be food for the next week or so. Whenever they decided to pay him.
"Can I have your phone number?"
It came out of his mouth before he really thought about how weird that sounded coming from a random person. Oh well, too late now. Heck. He didn't even know if this Riku person had a phone. Probably, though, phones were pretty important.
....He was right. Riku had figured Sora had been distracted talking to him and forgotten that hey, he needed to eat too.
"....Can you what?" Riku asked, blinking in shock. No one besides someone he intended to work for, had ever asked for his phone number before. Either one of his numbers really. There was a personal, and a work number, but. but still. "Why?"
"Um. Your phone number. Can I have it because I'm getting tired of not having friends because everyone is so into work and no one pays attention to me."
It wasn't so much a question as a rather long and convoluted reason that was kind of worded like a question. And for the most part, Sora was ignored by people at work. He was intimidated by them, by how scary some of them were.
But really. It wasn't because he was a creepy stalker or he wanted to track down his address. Plain and simple, it was just Sora wanting to get to know Riku better.
"...Yeah, but. But." Riku gaped for a moment. Because. People. Didn't ask him for his phone number unless it was work related and Sora was working for the very people who he suspected wanted him dead so. ....So this was kind of weird. And awkward.
"What makes you think we'd be friends?" he asked finally, pushing his long bangs out of his eyes and behind his ear.
Well. Sora tilted his head to the side slowly, giving Riku a kinda confused look, "Because you answered my questions without yelling at me for longer than five minutes and that's kinda rare?"
A wry curve to his lips, Riku sighed. "Yeah, but. Really. You're serious?"
....Awkward. Very awkward. Sora looked so earnest and...well. Riku knew murderers, knew prostitutes, knew all the scum of the world, or at least he thought he did- and well...Sora really didn't look like that. "Ah. I guess." No one said he had to answer, anyway.
More confused, vaguely childish looks, "Why wouldn't I be serious?"
Being the pure-hearted person he was, Sora really just liked people on an individual basis. He couldn't bring himself to hate either side of the war because nothing could stop him from believing that there were people like him who really just wanted to make everything decent for the people that didn't want to fight. Was there anything wrong with that?
He brightened up, though, when Riku said it was okay, "Really? Cool!"
Pulling the cellphone he'd gotten from the Commission out, Sora set up everything and then handed the phone over to Riku, smiling brightly.
And the childish, cat-like head tilts really just settled it. If he ended up getting toasted by Sora later on, props for him for being such a good actor. "Mm," Riku offered in response to that question, not quite feeling like answering it as he reached out and took the cell, giving the untraceable number, the one he used for personal things. It was the phone number he used the least, of course, but still. Sora would be one of a grand total of three numbers in there.
Programming his number into the phone, Riku handed it back when it was done, handing his to Sora in return, feeling vaguely...childish.
Perhaps, on some lower level deep within his heart, Sora could have been acting. But for all intents and purposes, Sora really was happy to finally have a number in his phone that didn't belong to someone at work he always needed to call for backup or whatever. He took the phone back, sticking it back into his pocket.
"Thank you!" He thought about it for a second before adding, "For entertaining me and stuff."
Rolling his eyes a bit, Riku just nodded. "Yeah, sure." Figuring they were done, he waved a hand lazily, and started off to the checkout line, hoping he hadn't lost track of what he needed and forgotten something.
Sora waved before turning on his heel and walking off to get those things he needed. He still needed to eat dinner, afterall.