Do Words Make a Bit of Difference?

We had taken off, fled up the mountains barely visible in the distance from the city, trying to escape the unbearable heat. We’d found a farm abandoned up there, and we stayed there whenever the weather turned so uncomfortably warm it was like a hot, blue bowl settled over the world. We used to fantasize about living there permanently, but none of us knew how to make it away from the city.

It was during one of those forays out of the city that the inconceivable happened. She grew boobs. Not big ones or anything, but noticeable. We’d all take off our shirts when it got so sweltering hot that the fabric would chafe against the sweaty skin of our bodies. The toplessness hadn’t bothered me before, since she’d been so much like one of the boys, so flat and, well, sexless really. But one day, I looked over and she had these nubs. I admit the way I handled it may not have been the best, but I couldn’t help it.

“RUKIA!” I bellowed, suddenly absolutely scandalized by her state of undress.

“Eh?” she’d responded and twirled a finger in her ear canal cheekily, a sunny smile stretched across her face. When had she gotten so pretty?

“You… your…” sheer outrage prevented me from properly vocalizing me feelings. I took a deep breath and pointedly looked away from her exposed chest. I fully intended to take the high road, to be rational. “Rukia, ya got tits!” was what came out of my mouth, despite my best intentions and my hands flailed in the general direction of the offending protrusions.

She looked down and turned bright red as she gazed at the new bumps that had somehow appeared overnight on her still thin torso. “What’re you doing looking at my… chest, you big perv?” she shouted, as she curled her arms around the sources of the predicament.

I felt blood heat my face with what was surely terminal embarrassment. “Look, can’t ya just cover up or somethin’ and then we can argue?” I finally asked, trying to avoid the amused glances of our comrades. I was apparently unable to stop sneaking quick peaks at the still partially nude Rukia and she just sat there with an obstinate expression on her face, so I finally lost it and told her in no uncertain terms to put a fuckin’ shirt on.

She huffed, but I heard shuffling and an exasperated sigh. When I finally ventured to open my eyes, she was tying the strings of and old kosode tight with a disgusted look on her face. I felt bad, like something precious between us had been changed, maybe destroyed. Nevertheless, I was infinitely more comfortable since she’d covered up. I couldn’t help staring at her, specifically the soft points sticking out of her shirt.

~*~


Sometime after Rukia’s and mine various growth spurts I started to notice girls. A lot. Somewhere along the line I discovered how stimulating a good wank could be and so I did that. A lot. Even though it felt wrong, I sometimes pictured Rukia when I did it. Don’t misunderstand, I knew it was totally wrong and I’d feel relentlessly guilty about it afterwards, but I couldn’t help it. In fact, I actively tried to imagine the busty whores who strolled the seedier streets I wandered while foraging for food. Rukia just appeared, regardless of my best intentions.

It’s always been her. Even during the awkward weeks, months, hell it was the next summer and we still weren’t as close as we had been after I’d noticed her burgeoning womanhood. She was still blossoming and becoming even more mature as time went on. Some part of me wished things had stayed the same, but the hormonal boy, the pervert in me kept close watch on her growing breasts.

Our sleeping arrangements had changed. Rukia no longer slept in the crook of my arm. In fact, she was back to sleeping hunched against that wall, alone, the rest of that summer or around Yori and Ai during that uneasy winter. She’d made some remark about propriety and perverts when I’d asked her if she wanted to bunk down with me during a distinctly cold night. I didn’t acknowledge it at the time, but something inside me broke that icy night. Of course, at the time I just shrugged it off like it meant nothing, but I’d missed the hell out of her. The closeness we’d shared, the warmth from her body, her smell…

Sometime that following summer I’d baited her like I did so many times before. It was over something stupid and I wish I could remember what I said. The better to never say anything like that again, but even after all this time, I still don’t know. Things might have been different, hell, I don’t know. People toss around words like fate and meant to be and all sorts of rot, but who knows, she may have gone out that night anyway. Yori might have followed her regardless. I try not to think about what if and could have, should have been and done’s.

Anyway, Rukia ran off into the night, even though we all knew how dangerous it could be out there after dark. Bigger and more mature or no, there are predators that stalk at night that would never touch you during daylight. When Rukia and Yori didn’t come home once the moon rose to its zenith, Kenshin started talking about how he wanted to go out and look for the girls. I convinced him, shit, I convinced all of us that they’d be fine.

“They’ll be just fine,” I said. Funny I can remember those words so distinctly, but not what I said to drive Rukia off.

Hours later I was still awake waiting for the girls to return. Dawn came and Rukia had skulked back into our makeshift camp. Unhappy and still mad, but relatively unharmed, except for a black eye. Relief coursed through my veins the second I saw her scowling face. I looked around for Yori, totally expecting her to show up at any moment. She didn’t and Rukia had looked around, obviously searching for her friend, the girl who had become a sister.

I assumed, for a few minutes anyway, that Yori would turn up like she always did. A goofy smile on her face and some tall tale of narrowly escaping a shopkeeper she’d stolen some smoked eel from, or something. She’d make breakfast and everything would go back to normal. Her absence resounded through our makeshift campsite like a ringing gong. Takashi had to restrain Rukia from running out to look for her. Kenshin and I went out instead as Rukia screamed bloody murder at being left behind. Ai seemed to know without being told that she was to stay were she was and for once didn’t argue about staying put.

“Rukia,” I tried my best soothing tone, the one that had gotten me a cheap feel of full, round hooker breasts a few weeks prior, “Rukia, I’ll find her. I’ll bring her back. I promise.”

I should have known better. I’d known somewhere deep inside that my words were rash and stupid, but at the time, I was full of confidence and swagger. It turned out that whatever gods look after homeless children hadn’t looked after Yori that night. We had found her broken and bruised body under a heaping pile of trash. Kenshin, normally so stoic and with a cast iron stomach capable of eating even the smelliest fish, had puked his guts out at the sight.

Kenshin had taken off before I could stop him and it hadn’t been long before Rukia was beside me, crying. Her sobs tore my already broken heart from my chest and stomped on it. Guilt, the likes of which I had never felt, even in my darkest days, descended like a ton of bricks on my soul. Rage narrowly edged out the guilt. The need for revenge nearly ate me whole.

We were a bunch of poor street rats and there was no way we could afford a proper burial for Yori. The Rugonkai Funeral Bureau offered free cremation to us poor folks, and a spot in the pauper’s cemetery with a simple wooden stake to mark her place. It wouldn’t even bear her name. It tore me apart that I couldn’t even provide a proper headstone for her.

I went to the cemetery, wanting to make sure that it was at least a place she would rest comfortably. It wasn’t- it was awful. The stench, the crowdedness, everything about it was wrong. I knew we couldn’t put her there. Then I remembered that place, our secret place up in the mountains. After the bone picking ceremony, we left right away, taking turns carrying her simple ceramic urn.

We stole copious amounts of sake, incense and camellia blossoms and did the best we could, decorated the grave we made high up there with flowers, and poured sake on the ground. Then we all walked in complete silence the long way back to our home, heads bowed. It wasn’t much, a bunch of maudlin teenagers who still looked like kids drinking the premature passing of the sweetest girl any of us had known.

I woke the next morning wrapped around an unconscious Rukia. My kosode was gone and I felt every curve of her reed slim body pressed against my naked chest. I felt terrible from the hangover and also like the luckiest guy in the district. I pressed her closer, determined to enjoy the feel and scent of her as long as I could. When she finally woke, she cracked open those violet eyes and looked at me. To say that she had looked absolutely horrified would be a complete understatement.

It had taken me a moment or three to process what could bring about an expression like that, but the nights events came back with horrifying clarity. Ai fell asleep first and then Takashi had passed out, followed by Kenshin shortly thereafter. This had left Rukia and I alone to stare at the few stars visible through the smoke and lights that filled our district. We’d drank in utter silence for what had seemed like hours, but probably wasn’t all that long, considering we weren’t used to drinking.

She’d started crying after she lit the last stick of incense and I’d slung an arm around her. It was an attempt to comfort her, I swear, not a lascivious attempt to take advantage of a grieving girl. Whatever my motives may have been, they changed when Rukia looked up at me with those limpid purple eyes of hers. Her lips had parted so sweetly and I’ll blame the ill-conceived alcohol for what I did next. I kissed her. I have no excuses for my behavior except that I was drunk and feeling especially low. Her lips offered comfort unlike anything I’d felt.

She had loosened the cotton string that tied my hair back and she’d run her fingers through it length, like she had years ago, before the weirdness. I could taste the sake we’d shared on her lips as I had gently pressed my mouth to hers. I had smelled the sweetness from the incense and the scent that was her. I had been too drunk to resist the impulse to tug her onto my lap and unable to stop my hands from wandering down her back. The kisses had gone on and on and from far away I thought that Rukia must have known what she did to me.

Her soft moans and whimpers, the pleas to never stop, her lips against my neck and her hands tangled in my hair. When her hands had released my hair to settle at my waist, I did nothing to stop her. When those hands had tugged the tie of my kosode, I still did nothing to stop her. When her hands reached under the fabric and gently pushed the garment off of me, I reveled in the feel of her hands against the bare skin of my chest. Her tentative exploration of the ridges of my ribs and muscles made me sigh contentedly in her mouth. I had wanted more, but I did stop myself from that.

The last thing I remember after stretching out on a tatty sleeping mat and pulling her close was whispering that I loved her into her hair. She’d sighed and slung her arm around my chest and tangled her legs with mine.

*~*

To say our relationship changed even more after that would be an oversimplification of epic proportions. It was strained and awkward at best, contentious and argumentative at worst. She acted like she detested me, could barely stand the sight of me for too many changes of seasons to count. We never touched, even accidentally, during that time. My feelings for Rukia hadn’t changed, I still loved her to pieces, but it was hard to deal with her apparent dislike for me. That girl’s always been able to hold on to a grudge for a long time.

At the time, it hadn’t mattered much. My actions in the months following Yori’s death left me feeling at once dirty and liberated. Getting back at the person who’d taken Yori from us was so important I lost a piece of myself in my headlong rush into violence. Strange dreams about a white creature whispering to me plagued the few hours of sleep I managed every night, leaving me sweaty and shaky upon waking. The need to make the bastard pay consumed me.

All those contacts, all the people I knew in all those low places had turned out to be useful. After a few discrete inquiries, it wasn’t hard to find the old drunk who’d left her in that alley. The fucker had even bragged about the sweet little virgin who’d barely struggled. Shit, for a shot he even volunteered the whole disgusting tale when I found him in a dump that served the cheapest rotgut around.

I’m not sure what disgusted me more, how easy it had been to slide the knife between his ribs and twist while his blood ran red between my fingers or how easy it was to feel good about it. That thought plagues me still. It’s like I should have felt guilty for taking his life, but I couldn’t and that made me feel bad in and of itself.


*~*


So yeah. I had to kill off the cute little girl. But it was for a reason. And no smex, since well, they're still underage. As far as I can figure anyway. Patience. Smut is coming. No pun intended.

About the title, I've always had a thing for David Bowie. He's just so unapologetically, delightfully weird. Some of my all-time favorite lyrics are from Changes:

I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence and
So the days float through my eyes
But still the days seem the same
And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They're quite aware of what they're going through

Anyway, that's what I was listening to when I wrote this. Do I have to say it? Sigh... Nope, don't own or make money from anything Bowie related either.

Be kind- Rewind. Uhm, review. Pretty please?