“Do you just go around getting everybody who steps within twelve feet of you killed? Getting real old.” The words catch, barbed and tangled at the backs of his teeth–swilled against tongue and cheek and spat across the short distance between them, low and just barely under his breath. “When I asked if you could get any dumber, I didn’t mean for you to prove it.” And they misfire, language so much different from twitching fingers on a trigger; he hadn’t heard him, and maybe that’s for the better, for upon approach, he realizes something he’d missed before. Something important.
If Sora hadn’t swallowed down that lump playing homemaker in his throat in the seconds before he’d put eye-to-scope and finger-to-trigger– and maybe if he stopped to really think, he might find he’d been a little scared for Riku, too. Instead, he steps into Riku’s immediate space and scrutinizes him with brows drawn. A long moment passes between them just like this before the tension in Sora’s expression finally eases and he breathes a sigh, biting down the fiery tongue of his own temper in a last ditch attempt at something like ‘understanding.’ Slowly, he lifts a hand to pass searching fingers across the pale of Riku’s neck, thinking, thoughtful– and he has a thought about half-formed as he puts a slim measure of space between them.
“You’re okay–” they speak at the same time, back off at the same time. He doesn’t miss the quirk of Riku’s mouth, dropping weight unprecedented on words unspoken between them, ‘it’s not your fault.’ Heavy more for being Sora’s admission to himself than anything else, he thinks as he leans to examine the corpse he’d made. It really hadn’t been Riku’s fault. These men… blighted, he notices and so, desperate. And Riku, so unaccustomed to life outside a city whose very walls had betrayed him, of course, would believe anything of just about anyone. After all, Sora had known that same look down the barrel of his own rifle. Fear. Riku’s fear. Fear, and… the courage to swallow it whole.
Sora tugs the man’s wallet free of his back pocket, snapping it open and flipping through cards and cash alike, searching for some kind of identification. After all, if they didn’t take his wallet, someone else would and the ID would be lost to the world at large. He tugs a few cards free and gives them a quick once over, tosses them flippantly over the body, stuffs $25 into his own pocket, and then drops to one knee, card in hand. He’s just reaching for the chest pocket of their blighted acquaintance’s open flannel when he sees them.
Dog tags. Military? Why–? Though that might explain how they’d known to single Riku out, it doesn’t explain why they’d… A quick pass of his tongue over his lower lip and he proceeds to stuff the ID card into the pocket, patting it flat. Face no longer recognizable, at least now if he’d had friends, they’d know him then. Sora could offer them that much and no more. After all, they’d tried to– oh right, Riku.
Doubtless, Riku would follow him back to the jeep, parked haphazardly halfway into a ditch (passenger door hanging open where Sora had scrambled across and out before the poor thing had even rolled to a full stop) though it was. Yet another sigh, this one passed through his nose what with his lips pursed around another biting remark as they are. “Close? You know what’s between us and the next outpost? Dirt.” Balls up his shirt at the hem and rubs half-heartedly at some blood caked to his temple, and through the shirt, “Know what’s behind us? It’s more dirt, Riku. So…” Mostly satisfied, Sora wipes bloodied hands down the front of his cargo shorts and then wipes the wet away from his nose, gauging Riku with eyes narrowed– challenging. “You asking me for a ride or telling—?”
A partially formed and intrusive ‘I didn’t--’ dies somewhere en route. Riku’s jaw sets, barring any remnant of it from escaping.
There has been no disruptive quip or sorely misplaced snort and that alone is more glaringly odd than the act itself has ever been. Riku’s defensive stance falls gradually in spite of it. The bitterness and cynicism are apparently absent from Sora’s demeanor, substituted for simple anger. He can find no better word; And regardless of its trajectory, which Riku can’t quite determine, it’s strange. There are eggshells beneath him that he’s sure weren’t there before. So, Sora is erratic at times; Less than a day needs to be spent with him to gather as much (at least in Riku’s case). If that could account for this, then... As he kneels to inspect the stranger at his feet, Riku turns his attention elsewhere, only aware of Sora from his peripheral. He can ignore the sun, the dirt, the blood, and the ringing in his ears long enough to pick up a piece or two in his mind, but no more than that. The haze remains; an afterthought of more mindless days.
It passes. The world shifts back to that ‘supposed’ state that neither of them much care for but Riku follows, mostly unbothered. He pockets those few pieces for the time being and prepares to be slighted once again, if a sigh from Sora has become any indication.
Two words haven’t left his mouth before Riku knows what he’s in for, effectively braces himself, and closes his eyes just long enough to roll them. As it turns out, he’s learned something new about himself through Sora’s indescribable apt for antagonizing him, and it’s that he really just can’t let it go. It takes some amount physical restraint not to force some of that same dirt in Sora’s general direction. Later, maybe. By ‘accident’.
“Dunno. 'Asking’ doesn’t usually go over too well with you.” Weight shifts subtly from left to right leg, then back again, subconsciously initiating that borderline skeptical stare--he’s already taken the leap, may as well go the extra mile, “Gonna make me walk?”
Two mistakes. Riku could outrun Sora if he really wanted to; he'd taken note of this a while ago, but is also very aware that Sora is irrefutably the better shot between them. And, hypothetically, if Riku did make it to the jeep, the keys are in the pocket of Sora’s shorts (and Sora isn’t exactly an idiot). Still, two seems to be record-setting so far.
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