;xsyntheticsmile
xroxiri
xchallenge – fic : hotel lobby
xdedication : ninja-butterfliie
(for making me fall in love with the pairing)
i owe you one. (:
HOTEL LOBBY.
- - i remember stormy weather
the way they sky looks when it's cold …
A mistake.
This was a mistake.
It was a mistake when it began, it was a mistake when it ended, and it's still a mistake now, as I trace and retrace your name in the mist, forming and fading, forming and fading, my breath warm against this chilly hotel window and painting a canvas of vapor on which I write our song.
The lyrics come back to me easily, much too easily, as though just yesterday we were on my front porch, the sun gold and amber amidst the blackened silhouettes of autumn. I was there and you were there and all of a sudden, I wasn't. Just because I was moving, moving, moving halfway across the country.
Away from you.
I smiled, then you laughed, and somehow I knew you didn't mean it when you told me you hated me and never wanted to see me again. Or at least I think I did. I don't remember too well anymore. All I know is that I never saw you again after that day. You didn't write, you didn't call, you didn't pick up the phone, and I'm sure that if I'd been there, you'd have taken all my wrinkled embers and envelopes and tossed them into the fire, pages upon pages of black ink smoldering into ash.
I wondered if maybe you really did hate me then, and maybe even just a little, I kind of hoped you did. Because that would have made it so much easier to let you go.
Ever so much.
- - - -
YEAR ONE:
I was here and you were there, and surprise, surprise, just one step out of the plane and I finally got to see what snow looked like. I remembered a time when you wondered if snow near the beach tasted anything like sea-salt ice cream. Kairi, Kairi, Kairi, you said, grinning madly as you attempted to eat the whole thing in just one lick. When we grow up, we're gonna get married, okay? We're gonna have kids and teach them how to make snowmen and snow angels and that snow tastes a billion times better than sand! I could only laugh because we were only five then and at that time, I was still madly in love with Sora. I told you that, and you only continued grinning, but next time I saw him, he had one huge bruise on his arm and his toes were blue, you jerk.
Well guess what?
Sea salt ice cream tastes nothing like snow.
No, it tastes a billion times better.
- - - -
YEAR TWO:
363 days, 10 hours, 6 minutes and 45 seconds and still no news from you. How were you anyway? Were you doing alright? Did the skating career ever take off? Did you ever work up the nerve to ask out that Naminé girl? What about Olette? Selphie? Actually, I don't know that you were ever interested in her, but you were such a pimp back then, you could have been. Probably even more than Riku. Man, oh, man, all he had to do was flip his hair and all the girls and their mothers would come running. I was an exception, but you never really bothered to ask about that. All the same, I think it was better that way. Because through all the years I've known you, you could have been interested in just about anyone.
Anyone but one.
- - - -
YEAR FOUR:
I've been talking and talking and talking, and you've been reading and reading and reading, but never have you ever taken a single second to reply. Conversations don't work like that, dear, but I guess in your own twisted little world, they do. It was always I'll do this, you'll do that, never, ever we'll do this together. Playing a game of musical chairs, every time we had a chance, we didn't go for it, and it just kept going and going and playing and dancing, until the music stopped and our chance was ripped away. Though I suppose now is a little too late to complain, but that's always been the problem with me, hasn't it?
Maybe I should have listened to Axel.
If you've got a dream, don't wait. Act.
I guess now it's a little too late to say I'm sorry.
- - - -
YEAR SIX:
At first I didn't know it was you. Not that you can blame me. Six years of not seeing someone, not speaking to them, not knowing how they're doing or what they're feeling and soon forgetting what they're like, how they sound, or even how they look … that's what six years apart tends to do to you. You could have been anyone, and believe me, for as long as I could stand it, I convinced myself you were. Blonde hair, blue eyes, goofy grin, backed by an expression of perpetual malcontent; just another boy sitting down with a book in the middle of an old hotel lobby. Just another chance to be let down.
So, after a minute or so, I stopped looking, stopped trying, stopped caring.
Up until just now.
You were the first to speak.
Kairi, you said, the word choked out like a bad cough in the middle of winter. It surprised me. After all, I hadn't exactly been expecting anything special to happen today. In fact, I hadn't been expecting much of anything, really. Certainly not someone from a past life coming to find me as I stepped in out of the cold to pick up some coffee, that's for sure. It was kind of funny to be honest, in a sort of ironic, bitter way. Your voice had matured some since we last spoke, which, in retrospect, was actually a good thing, but it only reminded me of how much time had really passed. And that didn't make me feel good at all. How are you doing?
Fine, just fine, I wanted to say, even if I didn't mean it. I guess it's just one of those things you can never really be honest about. Like forgotten birthdays, or late night parties, or feeling sorry for yelling at someone because you really, really didn't want them to go.
Or admitting that you didn't really want to go, either.
I'm alright, I told you, the words bitter on my tongue and then the silence fell, awkward and misgiving as seconds turned to minutes. How about you?
But you didn't say a word after that.
No, you just placed your book down, rose to your feet, and stepped toward me, muttering apologies that would never really matter and telling me things I would never really hear. After all, how could I, when my heart was pounding in my head and spinning and turning and I felt like I was going to collapse? All of a sudden, everything was loud, much too loud, and the only thing I remembered was walking forward and stumbling into everything that we'd always wanted but could never really say.
Besides, you always said words were overrated
And in a flurry of fabric and color, we were out. Out of the lobby, out of our clothes, out of our minds, with your lips on mine as some melancholy notes played distantly in the background. It all happened so, so fast and neither of us showed any intention of slowing down. In that instant all of it fell together, everything missed, everything unsaid, everything forgotten, melding to one like your body with mine, and whispering a sin not yet tainted enough to be acknowledged.
Did you miss me?
Of course I did.
Did you care?
Every fucking day.
So why did I find it so hard to believe you?
Maybe I was just afraid to.
- - - -
It was a mistake to leave. It was a mistake to forget, and it's a mistake to still be here now, with you, in you, wrapped up in your blankets and sitting snugly on your bedroom floor. From the corner of my eye I can still see you snoring, the grey haze from the slightly open window streaming in and onto your cheek. I hate to admit, but a part of me wants to kiss you, unwary of waking you and starting up again, because, yes, you were just that good; another side wants to put your amusing sleeping habits on film for us to watch sometime on Saturday nights while you pig out on popcorn and I tease you about being such a dork; and still another voice is telling me to run, to hide, to cover up my shame with heavy winter coats and warm, fuzzy mittens, running, running, running away like always.
Because things are just so much easier that way and easy is always good.
With a kiss and a sigh and a tear and a creak of rusted hinges of doors that never open and memories that never fade, all I'd have to do is step outside, down into the hotel lobby, and out of your arms, forever. New town, new place, new people, erasing all that ever made you and I, you and me. But somehow I can't and I don't know why.
Why I'm still here.
Why you're even here.
Why I ever let something like this happen.
Especially with someone like you.
None of it makes any sense.
And what scares me most is that I'm not even sure if it's supposed to.
- - - -
A mistake.
This was a mistake.
It was a mistake when it began, it was a mistake when it ended, and it's still a mistake now, as I trace and retrace your name in the mist, forming and fading, forming and fading, my breath warm against this chilly hotel window and painting a canvas of vapor on which I write our song.
But, somehow, with your hand pressed in mine and my lips on your cheek and our hearts on the ever glow, I think that maybe, just maybe, it might just be the best mistake I've ever made.
- - the truth is
i've never fallen so hard …
- - - -
xfini.
- - - -
x AUTHOR'S notes
x augh. my writing's been such crap lately. -.-;;
sorry. i'm trying. i really am. T.T
x sanks to gray-rain skies for beta-ing. tu es très fantastique. :D
x for hana's hotel lobby challenge. and goodness, you have no idea how many times i wrote, revised, discarded, and rewrote this. kairi's gone through nearly a billion character changes and i've switched from sokai to roxiri to even friggin' kairiku about a billion times more. waahaa, writer's block is a bitch.
x this fic was weird, even without my craptastic writing skills. and by weird i mean it was written backwards, from end to beginning. o.o;;
x changed format again. i got tired of centering everything. xD
x inspired by a number of things, namely the stormy weather we've been having recently, michelle branch's songs 'tuesday morning' and 'hotel paper', the spill canvas's 'all hail the heartbreaker', and jamisonparker's 'best mistake'.
x reviews are lovely.
♥ xsynth.