midnightdiddle

Title: Walking on Butterflies
Rating: PG
Warnings: None.
Word count: 2821 words
Summary: Post-Nibelheim fire. He has to wonder if he's picking up a druggie, or some kid just too fucked up to tell down from up. But the kid reminds him of Soubi, and that's enough. Prompt: June 22 - FFVII/Loveless, Cloud/Kio: piercings - "Mako heals everything quickly."

It’s a summer evening, hot, the sun’s heat still rising from the pavement. It’s getting dark, shadows glowing and the sun reflecting red in the windows. The kid in front of him is soaked to the skin, eyes wide and mouth slack. Kio would turn and keep going, because semester reviews are almost here and he has no time—but Kio’s nice, too nice, almost to a fault, and besides—the kid looks like Soubi. Not a lot, just his eyes and the way he looks lost, the way Soubi did when Seimei disappeared, when Ritsuka would send Soubi from his window, hurt and bloody and soaked through with rainwater.

“Hey,” Kio says, and the kid starts, drops (they look green, iridescent when they splatter on the sidewalk) of water flicking from his hair. “You okay?”

The boy blinks up at Kio, but his eyes still look dull, like he’s not all there. “I,” the boy says, “think-- This is a dream.”

It’s said more like a statement than a question, and Kio has to wonder if he’s picking up a druggie, or some kid too fucked up to tell down from up.

“Do you need help getting home?” Kio pushes onward, moving his groceries from one hand to the other. The kid shifts on the sidewalk, clothes squelching wetly, and looks even more lost. Too much like Soubi.

“I don’t know where—”

“Right.”

The sun’s almost down, shadows spreading past the boy, and Kio doesn’t have time for this. But he can’t not have time for this. He holds out a hand and asks, as kindly as he can, “want help?”

The kid’s hand is wet, and shaking, and so fucking cold Kio almost lets go. Instead, he helps pull the kid up, and holds on tighter, because something is so obviously wrong, and it feels like Kio can never fix the wrong things.

He doesn’t take the kid home. It sounds (and feels) like a phenomenally stupid thing to do, and Kio hasn’t even let the fallout from Soubi near his family. He won’t let this, either, whatever it’s shaping up to be. So he gets a taxi, bundles the kid in, and heads back to the university.

The art room’s empty, small mercy. The spaces are all cluttered, ink swans and oil flowers and Soubi’s red, red butterflies.

“Sit anywhere,” Kio says, and he sets down his groceries, flicks on the lights. The kid looks around for a few minutes, then takes a spot near Kio’s space, back to the wall and face turned towards the door. Kio digs his phone out, flips it open, and asks, “you have a name?”

It takes the boy a long time, too long, to say, “Cloud.”

“A phone number?” Kio asks, shuffling a little closer, crouching down on a level with the boy. The kid, Cloud, shakes his head, and Kio asks, “how old are you?”

“Fifteen,” Cloud says haltingly, and he’s running a shaking hand through his hair, like he’s shy or scared or just not sure, when Kio notices his ears.

Fifteen and no ears is too much, too young, sounds too much like—-

“Your ears,” Kio says without thinking, and at Cloud’s lost look, Kio reaches out, touches the top of Cloud’s head, where his ears should—-

Cloud jerks backward, head hitting the wall, and Kio yanks his hand back, a palm wet with iridescent green. Cloud’s panting for breath, looking at the open door like it’s salvation, and Kio scoots back, closer to the window.

“Sorry,” he says, and Cloud’s shoulders tense, but Cloud doesn’t look at him. “Sorry, Cloud.”

It takes a long time for Cloud’s breathing to slow, for his shoulders to fall. When he finally looks away from the door, looks toward Kio and the window, Kio gives him a thin smile.

“Maybe I should leave you here,” Kio says. “You can go home in the morning, or I’ll help you find a place to stay for a few nights.” Cloud nods after a few moments, and Kio nods back.

Kio finds some sheets in the supply closet, paint-stained but clean, and there’s a coat Soubi left one winter afternoon, when he was too preoccupied with Ritsuka to remember much of anything. Kio folds up some of the sheets, scrunches up the coat (it smells, when he holds it close, of winter snow and cigarettes, and of blood), and clears a space in the middle of the room, shoving buckets and cans of paint aside. Cloud watches him, then slowly moves closer, and when Kio’s shaking out one of the sheets, Cloud catches the snapping edges, helps him spread the sheet on the floor.

“Try not to break anything,” Kio says when Cloud’s standing next to the makeshift bed. “And use a sheet to dry yourself.” He tries to smile at the kid. “I’ll be back in the morning.”

Cloud nods, starts to strip almost single-mindedly, and Kio grabs his groceries, looks into the bag as he turns away.

“I don’t really have anything with me,” he says over the sound of clothes rustling, “but there’re some snacks. Candy, some bread. I’ll leave it here--”

He’s going out the door, reaching for the light, when the kid says (and Kio doesn’t want to think about how his voice sounds like Ritsuka’s voice when he was crying over Seimei--), “leave the light on?”

“Right,” Kio says, and he feels cold inside and out, and the summer night feels empty all the long walk home.

x

Kio doesn’t sleep much that night. He’s walking back to the university long before dawn, bag in hand, paint on his fingertips. He unlocks the art department, and heads down the dark hallway to where an edge of light is cutting across the hallway. When Kio opens the door, the kid is already awake, sitting in a tangled heap of sheets.

“Did you sleep alright?” Kio asks with as much of a smile as he can manage. He holds up the bag and, without waiting for Cloud’s response, says, “I brought some food, if you’re hungry.”

He hands stuffed bread and a bottle of water to Cloud, and Cloud’s hands are still like ice when they touch Kio’s.

“If you’d like tea or coffee,” Kio starts to say, but Cloud’s shaking his head, uncapping the water. Kio watches him eat, fast and messy, like he thinks the food is going to disappear. The collar of Cloud’s shirt (a simple thing, plain white, and now that Kio’s really looking at it, it looks almost like a hospital gown--) is loose, and Cloud’s collarbones jut out of it, thin and sharp. Kio wonders if food really does disappear from the kid, and when Cloud finishes the first bread, still looking half-starved, Kio gives him his.

“What happened?” Kio asks when Cloud’s half done with Kio’s bread. Cloud looks startled, then says, cautiously, “I don’t know.”

Half an hour later, the sheets have been shoved back into the supply closet, and Cloud’s sitting under the window, near Soubi’s work-space. Kio’s dragging out his paints, sighing and stretching his back. And then he’s painting, and Cloud’s half-asleep under the window, and the sun is beginning to rise.

The sun is warming the room when other students begin to come in, harried and paint-stained. Some of them look at Cloud, but most of them have no time, and turn their backs to the room, and turn their attention to long brush strokes that turn to birds and flowers and fish. When Soubi comes in to paint his red butterflies, he looks at Cloud for a long time, then shoves his things over a few feet, into the shadows.

They paint long through the day, and Cloud sleeps restlessly, eyes opening at every snatch of conversation and sigh. When a brush clatters to the floor Cloud starts up, reaching to his side like he’s looking for something. But he doesn’t have any pockets, wearing loose, drawstring pants like those from a hospital. Kio tries to smile at the kid, and after a long moment— and all the room is silent, everyone tense and turned to their walls— Cloud leans back against the wall, looking scared and tired and pale.

“Who is he?” Soubi asks, a brush tucked behind an ear, red paint clotting like blood in his hair. Kio shrugs, looking back at one of his paintings, and Soubi asks, “where did you find him?” Kio shrugs again, reaching across for a pale lavender, and Soubi says, “be careful.”

Kio likes to think there’s concern there, but he’s just Kio, never Ritsuka. He’s Soubi’s friend, never Soubi’s life.

Near evening, the room starts to slowly empty, students packing up parchment and paint, sliding paintbrushes into battered pouches. They leave with the same beaten look they’d entered with, and Kio watches them go, and watches Cloud watch them go. Soon, Soubi’s the only one left, and he’s wiping red paint from his hands with an old, frayed rag.

“Who are you?” Soubi asks as he tosses the rag into a pile near the wall. Cloud stands up, looking small near Soubi, and says, “Cloud. Cloud Strife.”

“Right,” Soubi says, and asks, “what are you doing here?”

Cloud’s quiet for a long time, and Soubi’s just as quiet. Kio watches them both, spinning a brush between his fingers slowly. Finally, Cloud answers, his hands gripping the window sill behind him.

“There was a fire, I think,” he says. “My mother—”

Soubi asks, when Cloud’s bending his head against the growing dark, “you were in the hospital, then?”

“It wasn’t a hospital,” Cloud says sharply.

Soubi crouches near Kio, pulling his hair back, and says, “nothing good ever comes from fires.”

“He’s not Seimei,” Kio says, and he can’t understand why he feels so furious, but he does. “Faith,” he says, when Soubi’s gathering his things, leaving to answer a call from his Ritsuka, “isn’t stupid.”

He hopes he can believe it.

x

It’s a cheap hotel, beaten-down and dingy, but the door locks, and Kio’s pretty sure that’s all that really matters. He thinks the kid probably agrees, because Cloud’s already tested the lock and deadbolt, and is looking a little relieved. Kio had stopped by his house on the way for extra clothes, things he outgrew years before, but never got rid of. The clothes probably won’t fit, the kid’s too thin, but it’s better than nothing.

“It’s just for a night,” Kio says, “but you can take a shower, change your clothes. Tomorrow I can take you somewhere.” He’s not sure where, doesn’t even know if his car can go far enough to get Cloud back to wherever Cloud’s supposed to be. But this is all getting too deep, and Kio’s getting too deep.

“Right,” Cloud says, and when he starts toward the bathroom, Kio starts toward the door, dropping the key on the bedside table. He’s barely opened the door, though, a near-silent click of the lock catching, when Cloud’s saying, in a rush, “you’re leaving?”

“I’ve got to get home,” Kio says, but the kid looks tiny the room, and he looks like he’d break after one good shove. Kio wonders if he was bullied, if he was the dreamy-eyed kid in the back of the room who always carried his bloody mouth and broken heart with a feeling of inevitability. And Kio doesn’t want to pity him, but he does, and he says, “I can stay a little while.”

Cloud nods, but he’s still standing tense, like Kio’s going to walk out the door. Kio shuts the door again, sits on the edge of the bed, and Cloud gives a smile that looks too shaky to Kio.

“Hurry,” Kio reminds him, and Cloud stumbles in his haste to get into the bathroom. The shower only runs a few minutes, and soon after it turns off, the door opens and Cloud comes out with a cloud of steam and hot, muggy-feeling air. He’s holding a towel around his hips awkwardly, and Kio grabs the clothes left on the bed, holds them out.

Cloud bends to pull on the pair of pants, and when he straightens up, shaking out a shirt, Kio looks at him. And he says, his hands beginning to feel cold, sweaty, “your stomach.”

There’s a scar running near the center of Cloud’s stomach, nearly the length of Kio’s hand, the width of three fingers. It’s still faintly red, not entirely healed, and it looks too much like Soubi when Seimei was still (and maybe he always will be) his god.

“It’s not bad,” Cloud says, looking down at the scar, then pulling on the shirt with clumsy, self-conscious motions. Kio can’t believe him, opens his mouth to say so, and Cloud continues, face looking more anxious.

“It doesn’t hurt,” Cloud says, “it’s mostly healed.”

“When?” Kio asks, wiping his hands on his pant legs.

“After the fire,” Cloud says. “I think.”

“But—”

“Mako,” Cloud says, and his voice sound strange, nearly angry, “heals everything quickly.”

They’re quiet a long time, Kio staring at the carpet and Cloud fidgeting with the hem of his borrowed shirt.

“I don’t understand,” Kio finally says, and it seems like this is his life, to never understand anything, not in Soubi’s world, not in Cloud’s, not even in his own. Cloud shifts on his feet and Kio looks up in time to see Cloud shrug.

“You remind me,” Cloud says after a moment, and he’s stepping a little bit closer, nearly within arm’s length of Kio, and then his hand is reaching out, almost touching Kio’s hair, “of my friend.”

“What?” Kio asks, and Cloud’s fingers are barely touching Kio’s ear, then darting away.

“His ears were pierced, too.” Cloud has that nearly broken look again, and he’s saying, “are. Are pierced.”

The tense shift makes Kio feel sick, and he asks carefully, like treading on thin ice, “did he? In the fire?”

“No,” Cloud says, then, “there are worse things, than fires.”

And Kio knows there are worse things, has seen them, flicker-bright, in Ritsuka’s eyes, and Soubi’s eyes, and Seimei’s sharp, brittle smile, a thousand ways to make the world hurt. He says, as Cloud steps further away, “I can’t fix things.”

“I know that.” Cloud sounds too fatalistic, too sure that nothing will ever turn out for him, the world always turned wrong-side up.

“Then what,” Kio asks, because he just wants to be able to make something right, for once in his life, “can I do?” And that’s wrong, the words are wrong. He needs to ask what Cloud wants, what Soubi wants, so he can give it to them, wrapped in whatever bits of his happiness are left.

Cloud’s quiet a long time, fingering his wet hair, and finally he says, “leave the lights on?”

Kio stands up, reaching out for the towel still around Cloud’s shoulders, and Cloud fumbles as he grabs it, pulling it off to hand it to Kio. His hands, when they touch Kio’s, are cold, and Kio says, voice faint, “sit on the bed.” And when Cloud sits on the bed, Kio knows that he isn’t going to go home tonight, isn’t going to sleep in bed next to his wife, because he’s always fallen too hard for the hopeless boys. Too much hope in him, his grandmother had always said, and he’d die for trying to give it away.

He kneels on the edge of the bed, so he won’t have to bed down, and lays the towel over Cloud’s head. He drives Cloud’s hair the way his mother used to dry his, the way his wife dries their daughter’s. Cloud’s still beneath Kio’s hands, but when Kio’s fingers brush the line of Cloud’s throat, Cloud’s pulse is fluttering madly, too fast and too fragile. Kio licks his lips, tries to hum, and feels his throat close on him. He swallows dryly, then, slow as he touches Soubi when Soubi is rain-washed and bloody, lets the towel drape over Cloud’s head, and wraps his arms around Cloud’s shoulders.

Cloud shudders beneath Kio’s touch, but he doesn’t pull away. Kio holds on tightly, damp towel pressed against his cheek, tickle of hair on the corner of his mouth.

“I don’t want to wake up,” Cloud says, and it sounds like he’s begging. “I don’t want to wake up, I don’t want to wake up, I don’t want to--”

“You won’t,” Kio promises, but he knows it’s empty, knows it’s a lie. His words have never sounded like Soubi’s, sure the world would burn if he spoke a word. Kio’s always been too naïve, too flighty, dreaming things that don’t need words, don’t turn butterflies red, and now he can’t touch the ground everyone walks upon, and he can’t play hero, no matter how hard he tries. “You won’t wake up.”