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 Posted: Tue Mar 26, 2024 9:04 pm
Riker looked up at the grilled cheese sandwiches and then down at his soup that Evan had made with him in mind. He had been careful about the ingredients he used, all because of an obscure allergy. He appreciated the effort, of course. He didn’t know how he could repay Evan for his thoughtfulness.
But for the food…
“Um,” he mumbled awkwardly, his ears burning. “I don’t think I’ll be able to take them home. I mean, I’d like to! I just don’t think I’ll be able to eat them all before they get thrown out,” he frowned, trying to think of something else they could do with them.
“There’s uh… some alleys where some homeless stay at night. I, uh… sometimes just stop by to check and make sure everyone is okay. I don’t know them, but I know they’d be easy targets so…” he shrugged, feeling awkward about the suggestion. Maybe it was too much for him to say. Evan was being kind and offering him food, and he was turning it down? He felt like he was being ungrateful.
“Parents kinda suck… I’m glad you get to take credit for your own success.”
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Posted: Tue Mar 26, 2024 9:14 pm
Evan tilted his head in thought. He couldn’t tell if Riker was agreeing about parents because it was the general state of being a teenager, or if there was more to it. A puzzle, without all the pieces. Even if it was slow going, he’d figure it out eventually.
“You check in on them? There’s a shelter I try to drop a lot of my extras off at but sometimes they can’t take it. I get really uncomfortable being out by myself at night. Which is great, you know, when you’re supposed to be fighting evil and all. If you want to put off going home for longer, you tell me where you think they’ll be and we can stop by. I think it’s a good idea.”
A very compassionate idea.
“You can help me wrap up the rest to drop off. Or you can just watch, since you’re hurt. But just in case you do come help me on one of my busy days, you’ll show up with a skill.”
He was teasing, but there was still enough honesty behind it that he would teach Riker if he wanted to learn.
But he’d had a rough night, Evan was glad he’d stayed sitting down for so long. It looked like he was getting a bit of color back in his cheeks. “How are things with your friends, did you get a chance to talk to them?”
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Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2024 6:22 pm
“I’m not that hurt,” Riker frowned, but it looked more like a pout. “I can help,” he insisted, and he tried to prove his point by taking another big bite of his soup. How that was supposed to prove anything, he wasn’t sure, but maybe it would!
He figured Evan did something like that. He was kind and compassionate, so he would have been surprised if Evan didn’t donate his extra food. But he nodded to let him know he could show him where. It wasn’t that big of a deal, it was just somewhere he sometimes passed by. Making sure there weren’t any youma around wasn’t exactly him going out of his way.
As for his friends…
He could feel his ears burning again. He shrugged. “It just… hasn’t come up yet…” he mumbled and stirred the soup to get some more of the cheese. “They don’t know I’m. Well. They know Reims, but not Riker,” he explained, even if it wasn’t the best explanation at all.
“I like being friends with them. I don’t want to just give them a reason to not want anything to do with me.”
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Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2024 6:25 pm
“That makes a lot of sense,” Evan said after a moment. “I mean, now that I know about Reims.” The holes in the story had closed up. He’d had assumptions, but it was so much easier with the rest of the information instead of just an overactive imagination.
“It’s okay, something like that seems like a weird thing to just drop in casual conversation, anyway. I get it, I think. It feels safer when you’ve got a mask. Like you can be someone else. Who you want to be, not the person your life made you into.”
He was quiet for a second and then shrugged once more. “I guess that doesn’t sound quite right. But you get it,” he insisted. “It’s not a bad secret. I still think you should bring them by my truck sometime. Want me to talk you up? I can tell them how you saved me from a youma. ‘And Riker was so brave, he had this baseball bat and he just pulled this youma off of me. I would have been a goner if he hadn’t rescued me.’ You know, like that.”
He was drying the knives when he glanced over his shoulder. He was trying not to look at Riker too much, that just seemed to make him nervous. “You seem like a good kid. They’ll like you. You made some mistakes, that’s not so bad. Even friends fight sometimes. You just have to care enough to work it out afterwards. When you’re ready, I’m sure it’ll work out. Just make sure you apologize, that means a lot. Really,” he stressed. “It’s not something adults say just because they think it makes their kids look more polite. It’s…It makes you feel like you were important enough to be acknowledged, you know? It gives you some self-worth back. It chases away some of those garbage thoughts that creep in when you’re alone.”
Evan pressed his lips together and shrugged once more. His shoulders felt a little tight, but he was just trying to brush off being too tacky. He didn’t have to look cool in front of Riker, he wasn’t cool. Riker should know that about him if he was going to stick around.
“Anyway, no pressure. Are all of your friends Knights, too? How do you handle all that pressure, do you have time to do school…?”
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Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2024 6:36 pm
Riker frowned down at his soup, which was already almost empty. The bowl was nice-- he just noticed that it wasn’t the usual styrofoam he’d expect from a food truck. Had Evan brought it just for him? Oh… or he might have had it for himself or someone else. Riker knew better than to think everything (or anything) was about him.
He wanted to deny being a good kid. He knew he’d done some pretty mean things, although never to the point where it was really bad. And usually for that, he would be on the receiving end of whatever treatment had been planned. But he didn’t want to think about that now, or go into details. He didn’t want Evan to worry, and he had the feeling that Evan had gone through his fair amount of being bullied. He’d alluded to as much, already.
“Yeah they’re knights,” he mumbled with a shrug, still stirring at the remnants of his soup. “I go to school, yeah. I don’t know.” A lot of noncommittal answers, he knew. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk to Evan it was just…
“I meant it, okay? That you’re really important to me.”
He didn’t know why he said it, but he had to kind of blurt it out before he changed his mind. His ears were burning and he quickly kept himself from saying anything else by shoving more of the bread and soup into his mouth.
Perhaps it was something Evan said. About how apologizing helped make people think they were important enough to be acknowledged. To give them some self-worth and chasing away garbage thoughts. He didn’t think he’d done anything too bad that he needed to apologize to Evan, more than he already had, but he felt like he needed to say something. It was probably too much and he could already feel the heat moving from his ears to fill his cheeks too.
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Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2024 6:48 pm
This time, when Evan paused, he turned to face Riker. For a few seconds, he said nothing. The silence wasn’t long-lived, and it wasn’t heavy. Evan just needed a moment to absorb not just what those menat, but what they meant to Riker.
Whose soup bowl was nearly empty. Riker said he couldn’t eat all the sandwiches, but Evan was going to have to send him back with some soup and bread and cheese to sprinkle on top, that was indisputable at this point.
“I don’t get told that a lot.” Sure, he had people that cared about him. He knew they did, he didn’t question that. It just wasn’t often that he got to stop and think about the impact he had on people that weren’t bound to him in one form or another.
Evan looked a bit flustered, himself but he was putting in a good effort to keep himself calm about it.
He knew it wasn’t just about the food. Riker wasn’t so simple. There was a lot here that he didn’t see, even if he was looking.
“But it means a lot to me. I really appreciate that, Riker. You know you’re important too, right? Probably to more people than you know. I really want you to come by more often. I don’t feel like you have enough people to worry about you.”
Riker went to school, were other people believing that the stairs scratched him? It wasn’t even the first mark he’d seen on his face. And if he was a Knight, was someone keeping tabs on if he came and went at night? And were his parents just oblivious to the way his brother treated him, or were they as under his thumb as Riker seemed?
Maybe he needed to hear that he mattered to other people, too.
“And you’re important enough for me to worry about. Especially since I know you’re a Knight. I can’t imagine that’s easy.” At his age, juggling that and being a teenager? Evan felt exhausted just thinking about it. “ Is there anything I can do to help?”
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Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2024 6:49 pm
You know you’re important too, right?
Riker shrugged as he stared down at the bowl. His face still burned, and Evan was saying nice things that he didn’t feel like he deserved.
But he liked the idea of coming by the food truck more often. Maybe he would work up the courage to bring his friends. Well… his acquaintances. They didn’t all know he was Riker, and that was probably for the best.
As for what Evan could do to help…?
“I don’t know,” he mumbled. “Not worry too much? I can handle myself. I’ve had worse.” A cut was nothing. A few scratches was nothing.
“And you should probably be told that you’re important more,” he shrugged again, this time glancing up at Evan. “You’re pretty cool. For an adult.”
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Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2024 7:07 pm
Evan laughed but shook his head. “Thanks. You’re pretty cool, too. And I know you’re tough and brave and all. I’ll try not to worry, but just because you’ve had worse doesn’t mean the worrying just shuts off. I’d have killed to have someone worry about me. So, I know you and I aren’t exactly alike. And I know it’s not fair to just think about what I would have wanted at your age, but I’m not that old, I remember being fifteen, sixteen. I would butt heads with people, I’d get mad if people told me what to do, or if they told me I was making bad decisions or judged me for anything. But it was so easy to lash out because nobody really cared. It was just me on my own.”
He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth because he wasn’t sure if he was just infodumping and making this about him or if he was getting across what he was trying to say. “Anyway, the point is that you can handle yourself. But did you have anyone worry about you when you had much worse, or did you just take care of it by yourself and carry on?”
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Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2024 7:15 pm
Would Riker have liked someone to worry about him? Well… yeah, that would have been nice to know that someone actually cared. He didn’t want Evan to stress about it, though, so of course he was going to tell him not to worry. He knew he was a lot to deal with sometimes, but he hoped it wasn’t too bad.
He liked being able to just sit and hang out, even if Evan was a not that old adult.
Stubbornly, Riker shrugged about if he just took care of things by himself. What else was he supposed to do? Whine about it and hope someone came to pat his head and tell him things would get better? He was surviving. He was a knight now. He was doing okay. It wasn’t like he was starving or didn’t have clothes on his back.
Just… resented.
“I’m more worried about you getting attacked by youma,” he huffed and carefully set the bowl on the counter once it was finished. He pushed himself up from his chair and started picking up anything that he could tell needed to be cleaned up.
“You need better defense out here.”
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Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2024 7:23 pm
A smile twitched onto Evan’s face again. He passed Riker a sponge. If he was going to help clean, Evan might as well try to make it easy on him.
“Yeah, I know. It took me by surprise. It came out of nowhere, I didn’t have any idea. But I’m usually not in a place that’s just so dead. Almost gave me a heart attack. But I did okay!” He hadn’t gotten hurt. Or dented or scratched any of his knives.
“I should have powered up sooner. I was just worried someone would see. Stuff like this used to terrify me. It’s why I couldn’t go out alone. You sure you’re done eating? I’ve got more. The offer’s open, no pressure. I’m going to have some before we head out.”
Evan might have had a ritual when it came to cleaning up but he didn’t mind working around Riker.
“Did you have any ideas for how to up my defense? I know a Mauvian, I guess I could ask him for…I don’t know, something. Have you met one yet?”
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Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2024 7:34 pm
Riker took the sponge and then eyed the bowl for a few moments. If Evan was going to have some soup before heading out, then he didn’t see any problem with helping him out by having some more.
“Yeah, okay. Thanks. I’ll keep the bowl to the side then. It’s nice,” he said with a nod to it. But then he made a bemused face when Mauvians were mentioned.
“I’ve been told about them. Seen some cats running around. Haven’t had any, uh… conversation with them.” It was weird thinking about talking to a cat, but then again, that seemed to be more of a Senshi thing than a Knight. Not that Mauvians couldn’t help them both, probably.
“But… I don’t know. Maybe a bodyguard,” he half joked, but also was kind of serious because Evan deserved to be safe.
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Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2024 7:39 pm
Another smile flitted across Evan’s face. “A bodyguard? Those can get expensive. One of my friends is a bouncer, that’s kind of the same thing. He used to come out with me, when I was first starting. Him and our friend, Cambria. Well, his girlfriend. She used to take orders for me so I could just stay in the kitchen and not have to talk to people. Sometimes he’d take orders, but he’s better at scaring people off. Why, do you think you want to be a bodyguard when you grow up? I could ask him for some tips.”
He was only slightly teasing, but it was probably more likely that Zac would scare Riker off, too.
Maybe not. Riker was stubborn. He and Zac might have had a lot in common.
“I still don’t like to be out at night. It’s not so bad when there are a lot of people around, but sometimes I still get a lump in my throat and forget how to breathe. Probably not so good for a Senshi, but I am who I am and therapy only helps so much.”
He shrugged, and though he was only doing chores he seemed to put his heart into making sure his truck was spotless. “If you ever want to talk to a Mauvian, let me know. I know a few, but Soleiyu’s the one I see most often. He’s always making things. Want to upgrade your phone? I get service anywhere, and I don’t have to pay anything, either. He made some upgrades to my truck, too. He’d probably build you a car if you asked, he’s been itching for some big project.”
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Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2024 7:53 pm
Did he want to be a bodyguard? No, probably not, but he would if it meant keeping people he cared about safe.
He could feel his ears burning as he shrugged, trying not to look as flustered as he felt. He was glad that Evan had a lot of friends at least. Better than being on his own. Although they should tell Evan that he was important to them more often.
“I wouldn’t have anywhere to put a car,” he admitted, as amused as he was exasperated about the idea. “Does he want to make one that could fly? I’m kidding. I have no idea what Mauvians can do. A phone upgrade would be nice. Maybe one that guarantees locking out anyone trying to get into it.”
He didn’t go into more details, and shrugged again because it wasn’t really a big deal, just the first thing he could think of. He worked on cleaning instead, trying to follow Evan’s lead and not get in his way.
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Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2024 7:58 pm
“Well, one day you’ll have one. Soleiyu might try to do that. A hoverboard or something,” he hummed. Evan wasn’t too technical so all he could do was speculate, but if he could imagine something he was sure Soleiyu could make it.
“But a phone is small and easy. He could definitely do something like that. Mauvains can do…I don’t know, it feels like everything. And even if they help Senshi and all, I know Soleiyu is friends with Knights. He doesn’t really discriminate.”
He liked to show off how clever he was almost as much as he liked to help. A phone upgrade seemed like something right up his alley, especially because of all the extra precautions Soleiyu had already taken to make sure their phones were as safe and functioning as possible.
“He could probably even make a fake profile on your phone. If someone was trying to break in to see what you were up to, it could just show them that instead? I don’t know exactly. But if you ever need any fancy tech or anything, I’ll get him. Or if you need anything, let me know. I mean, I figure you’ll probably convince yourself that maybe I don’t mean that or something, or that I’ll let you down, but at least give me a chance to try. Especially because you’re saving me a lot of time. I really appreciate you helping out. And jumping in to rescue me. I need to make sure you’re okay so you can make sure I’m okay, deal?”
And because he did actually care, but he wasn’t sure if Riker would believe him if he just said that instead.
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Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2024 8:05 pm
Jumping in to rescue Evan was… both the obvious choice and also something he was embarrassed about. Evan was clearly able to handle himself. And he knew how to take care of youma, especially. Still, Riker was glad that Evan was okay.
He frowned a little when Evan wanted him to give him a chance not to let him down. He didn’t expect Evan to do that, but he also didn’t plan on asking for any big favors. He could take care of himself. For the most part. He was worried about putting more burden on Evan. More burden on everyone.
But Riker eventually nodded.
“Yeah, deal,” he agreed. He didn’t mind helping out, and while he was interested in an upgraded phone, he wasn’t about to insist on getting it. If it happened to work out then sure. But as long as he was trying to help make Evan’s life easier, then he was content with whatever he got.
“Thanks, Evan.”
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