Chapter Text
Well, Sunny decides. That went about as well as it could have.
Not that it went well. Obviously. But no one tried to hit him, or throw him out a window or anything. No one even shouted very much. The only one who yelled was Aubrey, and that was only for a second before she punched a hole through the drywall and stormed out. And really, who could blame her? Sunny killed the first family who ever chose her back.
And Hero—
But Sunny doesn’t want to think about Hero.
(Hero won’t forgive him. Not ever. It’s only right. If it was someone else who killed Mari, Sunny couldn’t forgive them, no matter how much they didn’t mean to. He might take it sort of personally if Hero could forgive him. It would be like Mari didn’t matter. Which is crazy. Mari mattered more than anyone.)
It doesn’t matter. It’s over now. All that’s left is for him to leave.
Except he can’t leave yet, because he promised Kel.
Kel is the only one who never looked mad. Even Basil got a little wild around the eyes when Sunny walked into his hospital room and just—outed him as an accessory to murder. Even before all the property damage, Aubrey looked like she was going to shake herself apart. And Hero—
(Stop. Not now. Not before spending an hour in a car with Mom.)
But Kel just looked stunned. Freaked out. And then freaked out in the direction of Hero specifically. Which made sense. You didn’t need two eyes to see that Hero was not dealing.
Still, the last thing Kel did before chasing after his brother was to grab Sunny’s hands and look him straight in the eye.
“Sorry, I gotta— But, look, I’m gonna come by before you leave. Okay? I need to get your new number, or your email or whatever. I’ll head to your porch as soon as I’ve made sure Hero’s—um. Yeah. If you don’t see me, I probably just went to the bathroom or something, so just—just please don’t leave until you see me.”
Sunny’s dizzy and achy and generally foggy, though he’s not sure if that last one’s from the meds or the blood loss or just the past three days in general. But he’s not about to stand Kel up. Kel’s the one who pulled him out. (Well. Him and Mari. But Sunny can't exactly wait around for Mari, because of the whole "murder" thing.)
He is tired, though. He had a long night. He lost about a gallon of blood and then he got the shit kicked out of him the whole time he was asleep. And he’s been moving around a lot more than he’s used to. And anyway, he’s always tired.
He steadies himself on the wall and sits down on the stoop.
He’s tucked behind the rhododendron, but the flowers are mostly dead, because Sunny killed the only person who ever watered them. It’s a miracle they’ve got any life left in them. (Sunny can relate.)
But it means the bush is sparse, which means he’s got clear line of sight on Kel when he barrels out of his house and whips around to see what must look, from where he’s standing, like Sunny’s empty porch.
Kel’s expression goes— Sunny doesn’t know how to describe it. He’s never seen anything like it on Kel’s face. Not just disappointment, but sinking, sickening dread.
Sunny’s heart drops. It takes the wind out of you, seeing something like that. For a second he’s afraid that he’s going to cry. Before this morning, Sunny couldn’t tell you the last time he cried. Now it seems like he never stops. Like accepting Omori broke the seal on his emotions after four years in a pressure cooker, and now they’re all shattering out of him. Oh, god, he’s really going to—
—No. He’s not going to cry. Remember the move, remember the drive, 90 minutes in the car with mom or up to three hours if there’s traffic. And because it would be insane, to cry because someone else looked upset over something that wasn’t even true. Instead, he raises one arm. “Kel.”
It’s like flipping a switch. “Oh! Hey Sunny! I didn’t see you there, haha!” Kel lopes over, grinning. “Wow, it’s still kinda weird to hear your voice. Good-weird!! I, um. I guess I kinda missed it. Sort of a lot, haha.”
Sunny frowns at him. He doesn’t understand why Kel is acting so normal. Then again, Kel has been acting normal for three days now, even with Sunny shambling along beside him like the walking dead. So maybe Kel just only knows how to act normal.
“—Not that I minded when you were quiet!” Kel says hastily, misinterpreting his silence. “It’s just nice to, um. And it’s a little. Lower than I remember. Which is kind of a fun surprise.”
Sunny raises an eyebrow. He’s not the one who grew ten feet in the past four years.
“I’m glad you waited,” Kel blurts out. For just a second, Sunny can see a flicker of the shadow that clouded his face before. “I was scared you might— And I don’t know your new address, so I wouldn’t even know where to start, trying to find you. You’d just be. Gone.”
Sunny nods. Yes. That’s true. It’s more or less what he assumed was going to happen, before Kel asked him to wait.
“Right,” Kel says quietly. He pulls a leaf off the dying rhododendron and peels it into tiny little threads. “Right! Glad that didn’t happen! Um… So, do you know the number for your new place?”
Sunny shakes his head.
“Okay! That’s okay! How ‘bout your email?”
Another head shake.
“...No, you don’t know it, or no you don’t have one?”
If there’s a way to answer an either/or without talking, Sunny doesn’t know it. “Don’t have one.”
“Pff! Sunny!! What the heck, dude, what year is it!”
Sunny isn’t actually sure. It’s been ages since the date had any impact on his life. “Two thousand… six?”
Kel winces. “Right. Sorry. I can see why… It’s, uh, 2007. Everyone emails now. But don’t even worry about it! Just means we’ll hafta make you an account!”
Okay. That seems fine. Sunny puts his hands in his lap and waits for Kel to do it.
“So, do you have a laptop or something?”
Oh. Sunny shakes his head. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize to me, dude! Better for me anyway!”
…Huh. “Why?”
Kel freezes up a little. For a second, he looks almost embarrassed. “Oh, I just mean… The longer it takes, the longer you stick around, right?”
That is true, yes. Sunny still doesn’t see how that’s better for Kel. But Kel’s been hanging out with him, ostensibly on purpose, for three days now, so. He should probably just accept that there are some things he’ll never understand. “Right.”
“Right!! Okay, I just gotta figure out how to swipe Hero’s laptop without anyone seeing… I’ll be right back! Um… just… don’t go anywhere!”
Sunny nods.
“Do you know when your mom is supposed to pick you up? Is there, like, a time you gotta hit the road?”
Sunny shrugs.
“Okay, I’ll just move fast! You’re not gonna leave while I’m gone, right?”
Sunny shakes his head.
“No, you’re not gonna leave? Or—”
Another nod.
“Cool! Cool cool cool.” Kel half-turns to go, and then hesitates. “You, um. You promise?”
…Weird. Kel is being weird. But that’s to be expected. Now that everyone knows that Sunny’s a liar and also a murderer, it makes sense that they’d trust him less. “Promise.”
Kel beams at him, a break in the clouds. “Be right back!!!”
###
True to his word, Kel returns with his brother’s laptop.
Sunny shifts his weight uneasily. He’s not sure it’s right, touching Hero’s things with the hands that killed Mari. But he’s already made Kel’s life difficult enough. He shouldn’t make things any harder than they have to be.
Kel pulls up the web page and taps the necessary keys, chattering away about nothing in particular. Sunny listens and nods until, all at once, he finds that he can’t just listen and nod.
“...Kel?”
Kel startles. “Woah! Haha, wow, still not used to that. What’s up, buddy?”
“Do you hate me?”
“What!! No way!! Of course not!!”
“Oh.” Sunny chews that over. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. “Do you think you’ll hate me… later?”
“Sunny,” Kel says unhappily. “No. It’s… You know. It’s a lot, obviously. And, yeah, the others are probably gonna need some time to… I dunno. Be mad, I guess. And then hopefully finish being mad.”
“What about you.” It’s barely a whisper. Sunny’s voice sounds thin and cracked, like his vocal cords are all dried up.
Kel’s hands twitch forward, like he’s going to grab Sunny and—something. Hug him, or hit him or something. But he doesn’t. His arms hang at his sides, fingers flexing and unflexing.
“Sunny. Come on. I’m—I mean, yeah, it is… really a lot to take in. Honestly, I think it still hasn’t fully sunk in. But I’m upset for you, not at you. It’s… This whole time, I thought you were just grieving, and now it turns out you were—all alone and hating yourself, and blaming yourself, and thinking everything was your fault.”
“It was my fault,” Sunny says quietly. He’s finished hiding. He’s the one who killed her.
“But it’s not like you— You just had a fight! You didn’t even—” Kel sees the way Sunny stiffens and stops short. “S-Sorry. I didn’t mean to— I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about it. I only mean… No, I don’t hate you. And I don’t blame you. And I don’t care if anyone else does. And I don’t care what you think I should think! I’m still not going to.”
Oh. It’s—Hm. Sunny doesn’t… He sort of understands, but. At the end of the day, if he didn’t exist, Mari would still be alive.
The next time Kel looks up, his eyes widen. “Oh. Shit. Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”
Sunny frowns at him, confused, and then notices the way Kel’s face is blurring. He raises a hand to his cheek. It comes away wet.
…Right. Of course he’s crying. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be!!! I’m—” Kel does another of those weird, aborted movements, hands twitching forward and jerking back. “Can I— Is it okay if I hug you?”
Sunny lifts a shoulder. Suit yourself.
But then Kel’s arms close around him, warm and slightly damp with sweat, and suddenly Sunny is really crying. Ugly, wrenching sobs. His diaphragm jerks him around like a pitbull playing tug-of-war with a chihuahua. He’s getting Kel’s shoulder all wet.
He wasn’t supposed to cry. Mom isn’t here yet, but she could pull up any minute. What would she say if she saw him like this?
(Nothing. She wouldn’t say anything. She would smile and pretend she didn’t see.)
“Sorry,” he mumbles into Kel’s shoulder. He doesn’t want to be a burden, but Kel feels warm and solid and he’s squeezing Sunny so tight it almost hurts. His right arm wraps around Sunny’s ribcage but his left hand cradles the back of his head, the same way Mari used to. The intimacy of it takes Sunny’s breath away. Unthinkable tenderness. “Sorry, I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry,” Kel chokes out, squeezing even tighter. “I should have tried harder, I just—I didn’t know, or I would’ve— I should’ve broke the fucking door down.”
Sunny huffs an unhappy laugh. How could Kel have known? Sunny wouldn’t even open the door.
They stay that way for a while, just. Holding. It feels... warm. Real. Like Sunny is finally, fully awake.
When Mari was alive, she used to hug him every day. All of his friends did. They touched each other constantly, reflexively. Without thinking about it. Like touch was an autonomic process, like blinking or breathing. Sunny remembers that clearly, even after all this time. It was the thing he missed most, after Mari.
Before Kel brought him outside, Sunny couldn’t even remember the last time he’d been touched. He can’t believe there are still people who will touch him.
Then he remembers the move, and the drive, and the 90-to-180 minutes alone with his mom. He has to calm down. He can’t survive an hour alone with Mom when he’s feeling like this.
“Okay,” he tells himself firmly. “That’s enough.”
Kel practically somersaults away. “S-Sorry!! Haha, sorry, I’m sure this is really—”
“No,” Sunny cuts in, frowning. “I just. Don’t want to be crying anymore.” He really doesn’t want to have to make excuses to his mom. Or, worse, to have to see her notice and say nothing.
“Haha, wow, yeah, I hear that. Sorry. I didn’t mean to, uh, stir up any—”
“No,” Sunny interrupts again. “You aren’t—” He hesitates. He was never very good at translating his feelings into words. “I don’t want you to be sorry. You’re like. The only good thing.”
Kel’s face flits through another flurry of micro-expressions that Sunny couldn’t begin to name, much less understand. Disbelief, delight, regret... All jarringly fast, like the flicker of a strobe light. Sunny has to steady himself on Kel’s elbow to keep from getting dizzy.
“Sorry?” he tries. He still doesn’t understand, but he is more or less full-time sorry, so it feels like a safe bet.
“N-No!! I—” Kel grimaces, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. “I’m… really glad you opened the door. I, um. You’re… like. Important to me, and stuff.”
Sunny nods. Yes. The feeling is decidedly mutual.
There’s a hiss of brakes, and Sunny’s mom’s sedan pulls up to the curb. Wow. When’s the last time Sunny saw his mom’s car? He can’t remember. Not that he’s been paying much attention.
“Sorry—”
“Stop!!” Kel pleads. “Just stop apologizing, okay? I’m so happy you opened the door. I’m so happy, Sunny, you really don’t—” Another pained grimace. “I’m just. I wish you weren’t leaving… I’ll be honest, Sun, I’m really pretty worried. But I’m mostly just glad to have you back. It was… I’ve been really…” He gestures vaguely. “I don’t know. Bored, I guess. It’s been really boring without you.”
Sunny’s eyebrows twitch. It’s hard to believe. Kel was always the fun one. But there’s no time to get into it, because he can see his mom in the driver’s seat, fixing her makeup in the rearview mirror and pretending very loudly that she can’t see him.
“I was bored too,” he says. He was a lot of things, but ‘bored’ was certainly one of them.
“Haha, yeah, I mean… Yeah.” Kel scrubs his wrist over his eyes and shoves a piece of paper at him, a chickenscratch-scrawl of Sunny’s new email and password. His handwriting is just as bad as Sunny remembers. “You’re not gonna lose this, right? Can you, like… memorize it, just in case?”
Sunny nods.
Kel exhales slowly. “Cool.”
Sunny wants to apologize again, but that got him in trouble last time, so instead he just says, “Bye.”
“R-Right.” Kel glances toward the curb, gives Sunny’s mom a big friendly wave that she pretends she can’t see. “Um. Yeah. I guess, um…”
The rest of the sentence gets lodged in his throat.
Sunny gives him a worried frown, and then a stiff pat on the shoulder. “Well. See you.”
“D-Don’t go.” It’s so soft that Sunny isn’t sure he heard it at all.
“What?”
Kel throws his hands up. “S-Sorry!! I didn’t say that. I just meant…” He deflates a little. “I’m just. Really gonna miss you. So, um. D-Don’t just disappear again. Please. We just got you back, you know? I just… don’t want to lose you. Again.”
Sunny’s chest aches. But it’s different than the usual ache, the hollow sinking cold that wakes him up in the morning and puts him to sleep at night. It's more like the way you feel sore after spending a whole day playing in the snow. Or like your first hot shower after getting sunburned at the beach. Tissue stretching and tearing and growing back stronger.
“I won’t,” he says quietly.
Kel is still tensed up, limbs lit with fight-or-flight, but Sunny’s aware that this might be his last chance, so he indulges a little. He shuffles forward and throws both arms around him.
Sunny is out of practice talking. Even when he wasn’t, he was never very good. But Kel always wanted him around anyway. So he tries to say with the hug what he can’t say in words. I’m here. You’re important. I’m staying as long as you want me.
Kel chokes on a laugh that’s almost a sob. “S-Sorry.”
“No.”
“Haha… Right, yeah. Okay, I’m not sorry. I’m just. I’ll… IM you?”
Sunny frowns. “Is that like email?”
“Oh my god, what year is it?? Yeah, Sunny, it is kinda like email!!”
Sunny’s smile makes his eyes crease. —His eye. Singular. But the muscles around his empty socket scrunch anyway, pressing on the raw meat behind his wound dressing. “...Ow.”
“Aw, geez, dude, be careful!!”
“Okay.”
“And try to remember to eat, and… just… if anything comes up, if you need help or you just want company or anything, just IM me.”
“Which is like email.”
“Pfff. Yeah.”
“Okay,” Sunny says quietly.
Kel squeezes him a little tighter and then steps back. “I’m gonna IM you every day. Okay? So if it gets annoying, you gotta tell me, or else I won’t stop.”
Sunny nods. He can do that. He won’t, obviously. But he could.
“Okay,” Kel sighs. “Then, um. I guess. …Drive safe?”
Sunny smiles at him. A few days ago, he didn’t think he’d ever smile again. Now it happens without him even noticing. “You can tell me stuff too. If you want.”
Kel’s face undergoes another of those disorienting cyclones of emotion. “Hah! Yeah!!! I totally will!!”
Good. Sunny nods at him again, firmly, and shoves the slip of paper with Kel’s email address deeper into his pocket. “Okay. Well. Bye.”
“Bye,” Kel croaks.
###
Sunny’s feelings are still too close to the surface for him to sit in the front seat. He slides into the back instead.
“Hi, sweetie!” his mom shrills, without looking back. Has she even noticed the eye patch? Does she think it’s an accessory or something?
Normally it might make him feel small, thinking about how much Mom wishes it was him and not Mari who died. Sunny was always the weird one. The one she couldn’t understand.
But Sunny is tired. He’s felt more in the past 24 hours than he let himself feel in the last four years. At this point, there isn’t anything left to feel. And he doesn’t care what Mom thinks. She’s not the one who brought him back.
He peers out the window. Overhead the sky is clouded, bright bright white with little patches of blue seeping in through the cracks. And when he slips his hand into his pocket, he can trace the edges of the scrap of paper Kel gave him. It’s still there. Solid. Real.
Sunny has never been a morning person. But he's been asleep for years. He’s still tired—he’s always tired, and also there’s the trauma and the grievous bodily harm and etcetera etcetera. But for the first time in a long time, he doesn’t want to go back to sleep. He feels… awake.
He presses his face against the glass and watches the phone lines blur by.