Reconcile [boyxboy]

Reconcile

Chapter 1 - Riko

When I first transferred schools, some kids would ask me how I got the burns on my face and hands.

"I crawled out of the pits of Hell," I'd tell them.

At first, they'd laughed it off uncomfortably and changed the subject. Now, some of them wondered if I had been telling the truth.

Even now, I pretended not to notice the kids glancing at me as I walked through the halls with my younger sister. She was babbling on about something she'd seen on TV last night, but my attention was bouncing from topic to topic as I looked around.

"Riko!" My sister nudged me none too gently. "Are you paying attention to what I'm saying?"

"No," I said, taking another swallow of my coffee.

She snatched it from my hands. "You drank a cup of coffee before we even left the house. How are you still alive?"

"How are heroin addicts still alive?" I tried to snatch it back, but she held it out of my reach. "Nia, I am not opposed to murdering my own sister over a cup of coffee."

"We might as well hook you up to an IV of coffee," Nia said, keeping it out of my reach. "Consider this an intervention."

"Consider this karma," I said and proceeded to gather a handful of her hair and give it a hard yank. She let out a startled noise as she stumbled back, and I took the opportunity to snatch my coffee away and shove her so that she was off balance.

"Riko!" She glared at me, rubbing her head. "You are such an asshole!"

"Have I ever claimed to be anything else?" I said, raising an eyebrow and sipping on my coffee.

"Whatever. I'm going to go meet up with my friends," she said.

"Are you still not so secretly pining over that kid who looks like the result of a crack addict fucking a donkey?" I asked.

Nia shook her head at me. "You know Riko, maybe you'd have friends to meet up with if you weren't such a prick to everyone. Would it kill you to be nice?"

"Crawled out of Hell," I reminded her patiently.

She looked torn between hugging me and punching me, but in the end, she went with neither of those options and simply walked away from me. I leaned against the wall, watching kids go by. Man, school was the worst.

"Riko!"

Goddammit. I did not ask for social interaction this early in the morning.

I turned to face the result of a crack addict fucking a donkey. "Yes, Mike?"

"Where's Nia?" he asked.

"Hopefully off making friends that don't look their mother beat their face in with a hammer as a nightly bedtime ritual," I said.

Mike looked offended. "You're not one to talk about faces."

I gestured to my own scarred face. "My skin literally melted and it still looks better than yours."

"Fine, I'll go find Nia myself. Fuck you, Riko," Mike said, moving past me and disappearing into the crowd of kids.

I shrugged and adjusted my arm bands before heading off towards my locker. I finished up my coffee and set the travel mug in my locker, getting the notebooks I needed before kicking it shut. Time to go deal with another day full of people who annoyed me.