fic: blister in the sun
Title: Blister in the Sun
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Pairing: RokuAxelRoku
Genre: Romance/Humor/Drama
Rating: T
Summary: I searched his face. “So where are you whisking me away to?” I asked at last.
He ducked his head for a moment, silently smiling at the question, and then looked up, grinning. “You’ll see.”
Three: Blister in the Sun
Even though I didn’t know what Roxas was going to try, I wasn’t expecting a knock at my bedroom window close to midnight. He was wearing a plaid red flannel jacket.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked, as though I was the one coming to his house in the middle of the night. He was right, though. I could hear my parents in the kitchen.
“They fight like that every night?”
I opened the window wider and leaned out. “Pretty much. But you probably already know that, if you’re here.”
He shrugged. “My parents fight, too. Dad usually passes out, though. I just thought that if I was you, and you were me, I’d feel better if you came to my window in the middle of the night and whisked me away from it.”
I searched his face. “So where are you whisking me away to?” I asked at last.
He ducked his head for a moment, silently smiling at the question, and then looked up, grinning. “You’ll see.”
Knowing that the argument between my parents wouldn’t turn physical, I reached for my shoes and threw my leg over the sill, leaving the window just a crack open. I followed Roxas, trotting quietly down the quiet street.
“I’ve never liked someone so much that I couldn’t wait through the night to see them again,” he said when we passed Sunset Ave., catching me off guard. Twilight Park was eerie this late, but a sole golden lamp post pulsed above a bench, and in its light the grass was lush green.
He raced over to the tire swing, hood bouncing at his back, and jumped on. “Come push me,” he said when I stepped onto the sand. “I’ll give you a turn, too.”
I don’t know if I would have given in if it had been light out. But Roxas had come to me in the middle of the night, partially because he wanted to see me, and partially because he wanted to get away from his house. So I stepped forward and grasped the chains, pushing him as hard as I could. I nearly fell over from it, and Roxas’s shape briefly blotted out the moon. When the arch of it died down he let go of the chains and reclined, as though the tire swing was an inner tube floating down a river.
“So why do you like me?” I asked suddenly.
He looked over at me, sitting on the steps that lead up to the slide, blinked. “I guess because...” he scrunched up his nose. “Right after I told you, I didn’t feel like I had to keep my guard up, y’know? I mean... you’re usually two people, right? Like, one way with people you’re really comfortable around, and a completely different person around people who intimidate you. I always looked at you and thought that I’d like to be the first one all the time.” He spread his arms out lazily.
“So... I make you want to be... what, exactly? Yourself?”
“I guess. I don’t feel so hesitant anymore.” He sat up. “And I like you because you stick up for people even if you don’t know them. I like how you read Shakespeare.”
I listened to the late trolleys rolling toward Twilight Town for a long minute. Roxas wasn’t a girl, but he possessed that eerie maturity they had when they liked someone for the right reasons.
“Hey,” he said, snapping me out of my reverie. “Look under the bench.” He pointed toward the lamp post and its unmarked seat. The sidewalk path they had been built on was new, I knew that much. It had been put in midsummer, and under the bench some kids had had the opportunity to scrawl a few designs in the still wet cement. There was a Paopu star, a handprint, the date, a game of tic-tac-toe, and a coupling of initials: “R.A. + A.R.”
“I thought it would be a little cliché to put a heart around it,” Roxas explained from behind me, dragging his foot around in the sand as the tire swing spun. “As it is, I think I was pushing it a little with the plus sign.”
I smirked with my back to him. “You said you’d let me have a turn on the tire swing,” I prompted.
“Right.”
An hour later found us jogging back toward Harlow St. “I can’t take you all the way back,” Roxas confessed. “I live right behind Riku, and if he hears my parents he usually calls Sora. He might wonder why I’m not answering my phone.”
I watched him run down the hill at The Burrow, wondering if I’d get any sleep, even if my parents were done feuding for the night.