Leftover Tea Leaves

Title: Left Over Tea Leaves

Chapter: Dreaming of Daisies

Author: Birddi

Fandom: Kingdom Hearts – and guess what, I don’t own it.


The question for the next chapter: How does Cloud know Sephiroth?

Winner gets their idea written out – and an ADVANCED copy.

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Sora loved many things.

He loved Riku, he loved ice cream, and bananas, and even the name Kibbles.

But the one thing he did not love was allergies. The sore tissue-rubbed nose or the sticky liquid in his eyes, the symptoms of fall left him quite vexed. His head was stuffy. His eyes ached, and he hadn’t known that was even possible until now. He had even sneezed so hard that his elbow hurt. His elbow!

The entire allergy thing was getting ridiculous. He was an outdoor person. His entire childhood was spent outdoors, and to be suffering the symptoms on the brink of his adulthood was not what he wanted to be doing.

Sora hated puffy eyes. But that’s what he had, little crusties and all, and Riku could kiss his round bubble ass if he said a word about it.

He glared down at his snot. It was a pity he had used all the tissues and had to now rely on his T-shirt.

Tissues were overrated anyways.

They had none of the guilty pleasures that blowing your nose in fabric had.

Well, it wasn't that big of a deal, he was the one who did the laundry anyways. He was kind of glad for that too. Having his mom clean up the spunk from one of the nights Riku spent the night, probably wouldn’t be the best way to come out of the proverbial closet.

Besides, he was completely alright with the fact that he did the laundry. He liked his mom’s cooking.

She made the best pancakes.

It was a pitiful thing that he was going to have to commit her once he went to the university. He was really going to miss her. His conscious certainly wasn’t allowing him to forget it, and really, did it matter so much if he felt like the living embodiment of guilt?

He only had a year left anyhow.

….Fall sucked.

He needed to have Riku remind him to get tissues.


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He leaned over, adjusting his messenger bag as he did, and took a sip of water. Trying, rather unsuccessfully, to ignore the copper taste and the images of rusted pipes and algae infested water that was now sitting heavy in his belly. Cringing, he closed his eyes to gag down the rest of the rancid smelling water from the fountain.

Hands slammed down around him, startling him. He sneezed out the water as he nearly jumped out of his skin. A pair of heavy calloused hands smashing roughly over his own, keeping the bar down and the water constant.

Roxas reared back; only to have two other pairs of hands grab roughly his head and torque it back into the stream of water. Opening his mouth to scream out only let the water in. Sputtering, he tried not to gag, to pull away, even tried to lift up on the bar, and tried to spin out to face his attackers. Useless. In the headlock he was in, all he could do was stand there. He despised having his head grabbed. Surrounded by what he supposed were three of the track Neanderthals, he felt a near blind rage come upon him. He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth.

He was sure they were going to be powder by the month’s end.

A mantra of the words ‘No fight’ ran through his head. Logic told him that they were all young, seventeen at most, and were kids from suburbia trying to act tough. They were stupid rich brats without anyone to love them. They had small dicks. They were going to get old, go bald, pack on the pounds, marry a sleezy bint with no teeth, and have kids who hated them. They would get hit by a car and be roasted in hell. He tried to think of something worse…They were going to work in the fast food industry as servers for the rest of their lives, for minimum wage and have a crappy boss.

It didn’t help, and Roxas still wanted to kill them.

His brief attempt at pacifism was interrupted by a spiked bracelet digging into his cheek. Obviously, one of the assholes had a leather fetish.

Kicking back he caught the other in the leg somewhere, and used the other’s startled shout as a distraction to scurry out of their hold. What faced him was not pretty.

Three of the track-jerks from yesterday: two blondes and one brunet. He recognized the blondes, them being the worst of his tormentors, Tidus and Seifer.

What happened was what usually happened on a three-on-one fight. It didn’t help that Roxas wasn’t allowed to fight under threat of expulsion.

He felt his head slam against the locker door, it didn’t hurt. Not really, but it did send the world spinning. He barely caught his breath before a fist caught him in the side. He closed his eyes, and tried to allow it to happen.

It was a lot easier than having anal sex for the first time that’s for sure. He smirked at the comparison, trying to think of a stress reliever that didn’t involve homicide or atomic bombs.

Roxas started counting.

One…Two…Three….Four…

It was at the number forty-three when a teacher came and broke it up. He didn’t say anything.

“What happened here?” The middle-aged woman asked, a global studies instructor if Roxas wasn’t mistaken. He cloud tell by the soccer-mom hair style, curled in a seventies shag, and the mar-mish drab dress that seemed to really only be seen on woman with bad taste or those from small towns in Wisconsin.

He glared, but refused to comment. Clearly the woman had no idea how schools liked this worked, hell even he had forgotten after he left the first time. Why mark yourself up for another fight by handing ammunition to pack-minded morons unless you want a target painted on your back.

Foolish bitch.

He ignored the blusterous woman and went over to pick up his book bag, it having been tossed down the hall. It was ripped, but only two of his books were on the ground. Scooping them up with angry flourish, he was somewhat proud at his ability to ignore the blood in his mouth and the other students’ who were staring en mass.

He was half attempted to ask a trembling skinny girl who was standing in front of him, pretty with blonde hair and blue frightened eyes, if she enjoyed the group mentality that was pandemic amongst her peers.

He didn’t.

He chewed on his chivalry like rancid tasting thing it was.

Without a glance he moved around the shaking girl and towards the library, slamming the door behind him.

Stupid freaking bastards.

Roxas slammed his books, heavy with words he wouldn’t read, down across the wooden library table. He clenched his back molars in aggravation, hating how the groves in his teeth fit so well together. If he wanted to bite down so hard they’d break, they should. He knew his face was flushed with anger, he could feel it. His arms were numb with frustrated antipathy.

How he yearned to have the ability to blow stuff up. Make all his problems, and daily aggravation smolder in front of him. He knew hearing the dying screams of his tormentors would please him; a childhood on shallow Hollywood movies brought many images to mind. What he wouldn’t give to be able to play god for the day. He felt a hearty cackle brewing.

He’d smite them.

Pausing as an irrational flitter of humor brought his lips into a pained twitch. Smite. What a fucking awesome word. Axel would say it all the time. Making promises of smiting their neighbor’s cat, or swearing today was the day he would smite their old alarm clock.

Ready to bust a cap in the ass of the bedside clock, Roxas purposefully let his thoughts drift. It was easier to play oblivious than to deal with the immaturity of his classmates.

Axel and him had just gotten a one bedroom flat, it was small. Dingy too, and yellowed by old cigarette smoke and there had been a scurry of critters when they had first turned the light on, but it was theirs. All they had to account for was the furniture and the cheap fee for rent and utilities.

They had also been broke.

Axel had enough in his name to tackle the down payment and the first few months of rent and food but that had been pretty much it. Demy had needed it more, and Roxas could never have begrudged Axel helping a friend.

So to make up for it they had gone shopping for stuff to furnish their new pad, as Axel called it, at the local thrift store. Roxas had never gone to that type of establishment before, but Axel knew the layout better than he did his work. Roxas was a bit shamed by his googol-eyed introduction to the store of awesomeness. At the time he had stared at the grime on the floor, and the junk on the shelves in mild appallement. The people there weren’t what he was used to. One woman, large and untidy swept by screaming to her renegade son a few isles over, and another, a cashier had snorted before spitting into a cup by her register. He had come to admire the forty-something, legally named Delicious Wright in the following months.

She had gold teeth and could curse in nine languages. She made a wonderful grandmother too.

Delicious had helped them pick out their clock.

Their broken when bought block, that Axel had insisted they buy it with their week’s grocery money. It had been a smiling daisy with sunglasses. A plastic daisy clock, with one of its white pedals missing, a face-splitting grin done in yellow plastic, and comically large pink sunglasses. It had horrified Roxas at fist sight, but had gone home with them. It had been possessed.

It would go off at random times usually, and this was what had convinced Roxas of their demon clock’s true nature, was that the clock would blare its alarm a minute before the coffee was ready, or the lasagna was done. But only with those two foods, and only when those were cooked; and attributing Axel’s rather sporadic cooking times, such as three in the morning lasagna binges – it was all very suspicious.

It had also taken a penchant for turning its radio receiver on when quests rang the door bell.

Axel would laugh and call it Kuujo.

Roxas would keep Axel between him in the clock at night. It had never hurt to be sure.

Axel, damn it.

He wanted his Axel. He knew his face was in a pout, it was habit now, as it usually got him his way. Thank god for good looks and a full bottom lip.

He was trying to ignore the fact that he was acting like a dramatic girly girl.

Silently, he vowed to commit suicide by disembowelment if he used the world like more than necessary, or said the word whatever. Or if he struck up a conversation about his feelings, or wore a dress. He’d drink Drano before that. It would be much more painful and he was positive that, he deserved a cruel death for willingly putting on a dress.

It’d burn out his belly in a cleansing ritual before it ruined the dress.

He could have shuddered at the thought, but his thoughts had already moved on.

Five more months.


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A few hours later found the groceries put away and Cloud dead to the world in bed, one arm flung out from his curled in position. A vintage thin sheet entangled itself sinuously around his sometimes-flailing limbs. His breathing was even. His dreams were not, unknown and unrealized fantasies occurred in his dreams. His alarm clock was set to go off at noon.

His cock already was.

He was dreaming of Sephiroth.

He rested in the dimness of the morning sun. The blinds were drawn almost closed, but the window was open and they rustled in the breeze. Nag champa incense burned in its porcelain elephant container on the dresser. A croony female voice and a broken violin
played from the radio keeping the blonde’s peace. Low, sullen music helped lull Cloud to sleep.

Almost spartan in its design, the bedroom was like the rest of the apartment: refurbished furniture, inexpensive plastic bins, and tacky dollar store throw pillows. The room was clean, not tidy, as the blonde had never had the opportunity to impress. Laundry lay ignored, needing to be put away. Habit sustained him now that his little brother was staying with him.

It had surprised him when he had gotten a phone call from his Protestant raised mother, it was the first phone call in four months, and he hadn’t thought to say no to her order at the time. He was glad he hadn’t thought to refuse her, or Roxas, his place. Even though he and his younger sibling were almost a decade apart in ages, and seemingly nothing but how they ate Oreo cookies in common. Dunk and bite, none of the silly twisting rituals that Zack participated in.

But for being the start of the third week, Cloud thought the two of them had done pretty well so far. It was nice sharing his bed with something besides pillows.

Cloud woke up at two in the afternoon with a curse on his lips.

He was almost an hour late to work.

Thankfully Cid was drunk.