FFX: Opening Up, Closing Down

[edenbound]

Fandom: Final Fantasy X
Pairing: Wakka/Rikku
Warnings: Angst
Rating: PG13
Summary: Wakka did something wrong -- didn't seem to matter what exactly. For pyre_flies.


He was Rikku's first. He quickly worked that out, actually, when he first pushed into her and her eyes were wide and bright and so very Al Bhed. She was his first, of course, because before her he'd been far too embedded, bogged down in years of suspicion and supersitution pretending to be the only good and right way to do things, to ever consider touching a girl he wasn't married to. He'd been even more determined, of course, to never even go near an Al Bhed.

But there was Rikku, and Yuna's pilgrimage, and all sorts of things that opened him up and closed him down and made him go a little way off from the group with Rikku. And he was clumsy, and he hurt her, but then it was good -- too good to be borne -- and she screamed, and bit his shoulder to hold it back, and trembled under him and wound her thin arms around him and wouldn't let go.

Now, however, she won't speak to him. She won't speak to him because he's letting Yuna go on, because he's sitting there morosely and not doing anything about it, and because he hurt her and even when she tried to tease an apology out of him, he didn't even know what she wanted let alone feel that she deserved an apology.

Lulu is giving him a look that says make up with her or else because you're threatening the integrity of this group. She can say a lot with just one disdainful look and a toss of her hair. And he knows what she's saying with her dark and threatening looks because they grew up together, mostly, with Chappu in between, and he and Chappu learned to mind the danger signals, especially when they were fighting, or not talking to each other, or a combination of both.

Sighing softly, he pokes at a pebble on the ground with his toe and looks over at Rikku. "You okay?"

"Fine," she says, flatly, without even looking at him. She, too, prods at a pebble with her toe and, realising she's mirroring him, scowls and stops immediately. The look in Lulu's eyes now is somewhat encouraging, which is worrying. For whatever reason of her own, Lulu seems to think he's doing well. So he follows up on his apparent advantage.

"Good to know, ya? You've been kinda quiet the last few days, I was worried -- "

"You don't have to worry about me."

Oh. Danger zone, here. She's brittle, her shoulders stiff, and Lulu looks away and leaves him on his own with this one, getting up with a rustle of skirts and a light clack of the beads on the ends of her braids. A swish of her skirt and a last displeased look and she's off, walking over to Auron and leaving him there with a brittle, hurt Al Bhed and no idea of what to do with her.

He sticks to being stupid. Stubborn, methodical stupidity probably has something going for it, even if he can't think of anything it might have going for it right now. "There's something wrong. I know there is."

"Congratulations. Want a prize?"

He huffs softly and moves a little closer, putting his arm around her tense shoulders. She doesn't relax at all. In fact, she tenses up more than ever, coiling tight on herself, pulling in, shutting out.

"Get off me," she hisses, like a snake, only she's not cold blooded and she doesn't spit poison, although sometimes she might as well, when she's really in the mood to be mad at him.

"Nuh uh. I didn't mean to offend you or whatever it is I've done. Honest. I just..."

"You don't really care about me," she whispers, leaving him more than half confused as she shrugs away his arm and stands up, walking around the fire and stretching her legs, stretching her arms up above her head. "But I don't care about you either. So there."

It's so petulant and childish that Wakka hates her for a moment, and then he hates himself for bringing that childish streak of spoilt princess out in her. It is, after all, apparently his fault -- it always was, with Lulu and Chappu, once upon a happy time in Besaid.

"Rikku..." he says, and this time his arm goes around her waist, where she can't easily wriggle free, and he uses his good arm, the one that's specially strong from doing exercise like throwing passes in blitz and things like that. "I'm sorry. About whatever I did. Sometimes I don't think things through and -- "

"And that's an understatement," she huffs, sticking out her tongue. "You're silly."

He raises an eyebrow at that. "Silly?"

"Yes."

Lulu looks over at him, smiles for a second, and turns back to Auron. The smile might be more for Auron than for him, or it might be for Rikku, but anyway he smiles back and smiles at Rikku, who is still huffy but not quite so sulky. "I'm not silly, just..."

"Silly," Tidus agrees, coming up behind him and catching him in a headlock and Rikku slips free and grins at them both, mischief personified and apparently not sulky or huffy, and he's caught and struggling with Tidus, who is just as silly if not more silly because he dyes his hair and indulges in childish tricks like pouncing when the pouncee is occupied with talking to a girl.

"You're forgiven, silly," Rikku says, with somewhat of an air of condescension, once he's struggled free from Tidus. "But Tidus will beat you up if you annoy me anymore."

Wakka looks at Tidus, who shrugs. "You heard the girl."

"Right, right," he grumbles, and he rubs the back of his neck awkwardly, "I'm sorry and I promise not to do it again?"

Rikku graciously accepts the apology and the promise. Auron is smiling at him, too, a vaguely worrying sight at times. He's quite sure Auron has some special insight or something that makes the whole world a joke to him. Once Rikku has gone and Auron and Lulu have both fallen back on the old routine of talking to each other, Wakka turns to Tidus.

"So what is it that I did wrong? She never quite said."

Tidus stared blankly after Rikku for a minute, then shrugged. "I don't actually know. Whatever it was, it was very evil, though."

"Ah."

"Yeah."