Chapter Text
Kieran's room was a controlled disaster, a stark contrast to Amarys' spartan order. Battle notebooks lay open on the desk, their pages dense with type-matchup diagrams and berry cultivation schedules rendered in his cramped, angular handwriting. A half-eaten package of Pecha-flavored crackers sat on the nightstand beside his PokéGear, the cellophane wrapper torn and crinkled. His bed was unmade, the sheets twisted into a rope-like configuration that suggested a week of restless sleep, and Ogerpon's Pokéball rested on the pillow like a security object he'd stopped pretending was just for safekeeping
Kieran sat cross-legged on the floor between the bed and the desk, his back pressed against the mattress, his Rotom Phone balanced on his knee. The device was new, a mid-range model with a cracked screen protector he'd already managed to damage by dropping it twice in the cafeteria. Carmine had been the one to drag him to a electronics shop in Castelia, her grip on his wrist firm enough to leave marks, her lecture about "basic communication infrastructure" lasting the entire walk there and most of the walk back. He'd resisted for months, insisting he didn't need one, that his PokéGear was sufficient, that phones were just another place for people to disappoint you through text. Carmine had called him a dramatic little gremlin and bought one anyway, charging it to Ari's bank account with a shamelessness that still made Kieran's stomach flip
The phone's screen cast a pale blue glow across his chin and the underside of his jaw as he typed, deleted, retyped, deleted again. His thumbs hovered over the virtual keyboard with the hesitancy of someone defusing a bomb. Three messages from Ari already sat in the chat log, sent at 7:02, 7:06, and 7:09, each one shorter and more direct than the last
ARI: how's the prep coming
ARI: kie
ARI: you've been typing for six minutes. just send it
Kieran's tongue pressed against the inside of his cheek, a habit he'd picked up from Ari without realizing it. His right foot, the one not folded beneath him, bounced against the carpeted floor in a rapid, arrhythmic pattern, the sole of his sock damp with sweat. He started typing again, his thumbs moving with cautious precision, like he was composing a diplomatic communiqué rather than a text message to his best friend
KIERAN: ok so the meeting is set for tuesday. 4:30pm. amarys booked the small conference room on the second floor of the admin building. the one with the oval table and the bad lighting
KIERAN: all five council members confirmed. yumiko said "looking forward to it" which i think was sarcastic but amarys said she always talks like that so maybe not??
KIERAN: tobias asked if he should bring snacks and amarys said no and he sounded disappointed
He paused, staring at the screen. The cursor blinked at him, patient and mocking. His fingers drifted to the edge of the phone case, picking at the rubberized corner where the material had already begun to peel. The stim was automatic, his body running its own background processes while his brain loaded the next message, the one he'd been trying to compose for six minutes and forty-three seconds
KIERAN: i wrote a script. like an actual script. with bullet points. i have a section for opening remarks and a section for anticipated objections and a section for "closing statement" which is what amarys called it when i showed them the draft and i think they were trying not to find it funny
He sent it before he could delete it, the message disappearing into the digital ether with a soft whoosh sound that his phone made despite his attempts to silence it. He pulled his knees closer to his chest, the phone resting in the valley between his thighs, and waited. The typing indicator appeared on Ari's side almost immediately, three pulsing dots that seemed to breathe
ARI: you wrote a script
ARI: with bullet points
ARI: for talking to five teenagers
ARI: please tell me we're having a laugh
Kieran's face burned. He could feel the heat spreading from his cheeks down to his neck, the flush visible even in the dim light of his room. His foot bounced harder, the rhythm accelerating. He typed back fast, the words jumbling together in his haste
KIERAN: i KNOW how it sounds ok. but i can't just walk in there and wing it. my brain doesn't work like that. if i don't have structure i'll start stimming and lose my train of thought and then dante will stare at me for eleven seconds and i'll forget my own name
KIERAN: amarys said the script was "comprehensive but inadvisable" which is their way of saying it's bad without hurting my feelings
KIERAN: they said i should "speak from a place of authenticity rather than prepared text" which sounds great in theory but in practice my authentic place is a dumpster fire
He set the phone down on the carpet beside his knee and pressed both palms against his face, the heels of his hands digging into his eye sockets until he saw phosphene stars. The scar on his chest throbbed, a dull, warm pulse that he'd learned to associate with anxiety rather than pain, his body's way of reminding him that the worst thing that had ever happened to him was still physically inscribed on his body. He breathed in through his nose, counting the seconds, four in, seven hold, eight out, the pattern Dr. Matsuda had drilled into him until it became automatic
The phone buzzed. He didn't pick it up immediately. He let it buzz twice more, three vibrations total, before he lowered his hands and reached for it, his fingers leaving faint, damp prints on the screen
ARI: right. listen. the script isn't the problem. the problem is you're using it as a shield. you don't need bullet points to tell five people you're not going to hurt their friend. you need to sit in the chair and be honest. if you stutter, you stutter. if you stim, you stim. amarys isn't bringing you there to perform rehabilitation. they're bringing you there because they want their friends to see what they see
ARI: what do you think they see?
Kieran read the message three times. His thumb hovered over the reply field, trembling slightly, the nail bitten down to the quick from a week of nervous chewing. He thought about Amarys' face without their glasses, the way their turquoise eyes had looked larger and less armored, the way their little finger had trembled against his palm. He thought about Tomoe's onigiri and Honoka's panic attack and the curry comment that had made Crispin cry
He typed slowly, his thumbs pressing the keys with more force than necessary
KIERAN: i think they see someone who's trying. not someone who's fixed. someone who shows up even when showing up is the hardest thing in the world
KIERAN: is that enough?
The reply came in four seconds. Kieran counted. He always counted
ARI: it's enough for them. is it enough for you?
Kieran stared at the question. His foot stopped bouncing because somewhere down the corridor, a door opened and closed, the sound traveling through the walls. He picked at the corner of his phone case, the rubber peeling back to reveal the hard plastic underneath, white and smooth and untouched. He thought about typing "yes" and he thought about typing "i don't know" and he thought about typing nothing at all and just letting the question sit there, unanswered, the way so many of the important questions in his life had sat, gathering dust in the corners of his mind until they became furniture he stopped noticing
Instead, he typed:
KIERAN: i'm working on it. amarys said they'd bring tea. they have a schedule for it apparently. tuesdays and thursdays, 3:45pm, their dorm. i'm a recurring appointment
He paused, then added:
KIERAN: is it weird that i like that? being a schedule? most people would hate that. it sounds so clinical. but it means they planned for me. they made space in their system and put me in it. nobody's ever done that before. my parents made space for carmine. my grandparents made space for the masks. even dr matsuda makes space for "the 4pm slot" not for me specifically. but amarys made a slot that's just
His thumb hovered. He backspaced through the last word, retyped it, backspaced again. The typing indicator on Ari's side appeared, disappeared, appeared again. Kieran's chest tightened, the scar pulsing, and he forced the words out before his brain could intercept them
KIERAN: just mine. the slot is just mine. for tea and berries and sitting in whatever unfinished we are that day
He sent it and immediately wished he hadn't. The vulnerability of the admission made his skin crawl, the exposure too raw, too naked, too much like standing in the center of a room full of people who could see every crack in his foundation. He grabbed the Pecha cracker package from the nightstand and shoved one into his mouth, chewing aggressively, the sweet, chalky taste flooding his tongue and giving his jaw something to do besides clench
The phone buzzed
ARI: it's not weird. it's you. you like systems. you like knowing where you fit. there's nothing wrong with wanting to be someone's scheduled appointment as long as you're also their unscheduled one. the tea at 3:45 is the system. the fact that you'd walk across campus at midnight if they texted you is the person. you need both. amarys gets that
Then, after a pause long enough for Kieran to finish the cracker and start another:
ARI: now put the script away. keep the bullet points if you need them for your own anxiety, but don't read from it. talk to them like they're people, not a panel. dante stares at everyone. it's not a verdict, it's just how his face works. yumiko's protectiveness means she cares about amarys, which means she's capable of caring about you once she sees you're not a threat. tobias brings snacks to funerals, i'd bet 50 quid on it. and priya
ARI: priya held a girl's hand through a panic attack for forty minutes because of what you did. she's going to be the hardest. don't try to win her over. don't try to explain. just acknowledge it. tell her you know about honoka. tell her you didn't know her name until amarys told you. let the silence do the work after that. people respect someone who can sit in the mess they made without running
KIERAN: how do you always know the right thing to say
KIERAN: like actually. is there a class for this? did carmine teach you? did you read it in a book? because i've read fourteen books on social communication and not one of them said "let the silence do the work"
He sent both messages in quick succession, his thumbs moving faster than his brain could second-guess them. The Pecha cracker sat half-dissolved on his tongue, its sweetness turning cloying the longer he held it there. He swallowed, the chalky lump scraping down his throat, and wiped the residue from his fingers on his shorts, leaving a faint white streak on the dark fabric that he didn't notice
The phone stayed dark for thirty seconds. Then a minute. Kieran watched the screen with a fixed intensity. He could hear someone two doors down playing music through thin walls, a bassline thumping in muffled pulses that interfered with the rhythm of his foot-tapping. He shifted his weight, his tailbone aching against the carpet, and pulled his phone closer to his face as though proximity would summon a reply faster
Nothing. Ari was probably making tea, or kissing Carmine, or doing one of the hundred normal things that normal people did on Friday evenings while Kieran sat on his dormitory floor composing briefings for a conversation that most teenagers would just… have. Without bullet points. Without a script. Without spending a week rehearsing opening remarks in front of a bathroom mirror, adjusting his inflection until his own face in the glass looked less like a boy trying to apologize and more like a boy who meant it
He locked the phone and set it face-down on the carpet. Then he picked it up again. Then he set it down. The cycle repeated three times before he pressed his palms flat against his thighs and forced himself to stop, the way Dr. Matsuda had taught him to interrupt compulsive loops, by replacing the behavior with a competing stimulus. He grabbed the nearest battle notebook and flipped it open, landing on a page dense with Hydrapple move-set calculations. The numbers were familiar, soothing. Clean. Tidy. No ambiguity
His eyes drifted to the margin, where a small doodle sat in the corner of the page, half-hidden beneath an arrow indicating type-effectiveness flow. It was a crude sketch of a teacup, rendered in the same angular handwriting as the calculations, with a small asterisk beside it and the notation "3:45 T/TH" written underneath. He'd drawn it during Tuesday's session with Dr. Matsuda, while she'd been asking him about his support systems, and he'd meant to erase it but hadn't. Now he covered it with his thumb, pressing the pad of his finger against the paper until the ink warmed beneath his skin
The phone buzzed. He lunged for it, his knee knocking the cracker package off the nightstand, scattering orange crumbs across the carpet. The screen showed one new message
ARI: i don't always know the right thing. i just know what would've helped me when i was your age and nobody said it. you're doing better than i did, kie. i didn't have a script. i didn't have tea on tuesdays. i had a bottle of pills and a bloke who told me emotions were a design flaw. you've got amarys, a sister, a schedule and five people who care enough about you to sit in a room and be angry. that's not a disaster. that's a support network with a bad attitude
Kieran read it twice. Then a third time, slower, his lips moving faintly around the words as though he needed to physically shape them to absorb their meaning. His throat tightened, not with the desperate, choking sensation from the club room, but with something quieter, a pressure that sat behind his eyes and made the lamplight blur at the edges. He blinked hard, twice, and a single tear slid down his left cheek, tracking a warm line to the corner of his mouth where it pooled against his skin
He wiped it away with the heel of his hand, the gesture rough and impatient, and typed:
KIERAN: i'm keeping the bullet points. not to read from. just to hold. like a thing in my pocket. so i know they're there if my brain stops working
KIERAN: amarys said the same thing actually. they said bring the script but don't open it. "the presence of preparation without its deployment" is what they called it
KIERAN: they talk like that all the time and i should find it annoying but instead it makes my chest feel warm and i hate that i just typed that to you but i'm not deleting it because you said be honest and messy so this is me being honest and messy in a text message at 7pm on a friday like a loser
He dropped the phone onto his lap and pressed his forehead against his drawn-up knees, the fabric of his shorts rough against his skin. Ogerpon's Pokéball caught the lamplight from the pillow, its surface gleaming. He thought about the meeting on Tuesday, about Dante's eleven-second stare and Yumiko's protective scrutiny and Tobias bringing snacks to what amounted to an emotional tribunal. He thought about Priya, about Honoka, about the forty minutes of hand-holding in a corridor that he'd caused without knowing, without seeing, without caring
The phone buzzed again
ARI: you're not a loser. you're a kid who's learning how to be brave in a language his brain wasn't built for. that's harder than anything i've ever done on a battlefield. now go to sleep. you've got a script to not read on tuesday and a tea appointment to be anxious about until then
Kieran smiled. It was small, crooked, and slightly lopsided, pulling more on the left side of his face than the right, but it was real. He typed one final message, his thumb hovering over the send button for three full seconds before committing
KIERAN: thanks ari. for everything. i mean it
KIERAN: also carmine says you left your charger in her room again and she's not returning it this time
He locked the phone, placed it on the nightstand beside the scattered crackers, and lay back on the unmade bed, his body sinking into the twisted sheets. The ceiling above him was blank, featureless, a plane of off-white plaster with a single crack running from the light fixture to the corner. He stared at the crack and traced its path with his eyes, following its jagged trajectory until it disappeared into shadow. Ogerpon's Pokéball rolled slightly against the pillow as he shifted, the weight of it familiar and grounding against the side of his head
Tuesday. Four-thirty. The small conference room. Five people who thought Amarys had lost their mind. One person who had made space in their system and put him in it. A script he wouldn't read. Tea at 3:45 beforehand, because Amarys had a schedule and the schedule included him
His foot tapped against the mattress three times, a final, diminishing rhythm, and then went still. The bassline from two doors down faded as whoever was playing it turned the volume down, or stopped, or fell asleep. Kieran closed his eyes, his hand resting on his chest where the scar pulsed its warm, familiar ache