That night Riki holed up alone in a bar on the outskirts for some serious drinking. It wasn't a dive he usually frequented, but he came here for no other purpose than to get drunk. Here, nobody knew his name. It was like sitting at the bottom of the dark ocean atop a lukewarm thermal vent.
He sat at the bar, way in the back. In the subterranean tavern the only other illumination came from the blue glow arising from the glass in his hand. The faint light seemed to draw a line between himself and the throaty, seductive voices and the hoots and jeers burbling up from the pool tables.
He drained each tumbler in rapid succession, but he didn't feel the slightest bit intoxicated. The memory of that chance encounter in Mistral Park stuck in his head like a bullet in the brain: the poisonous gaze penetrating the waves of the crowds, the striking and conspicuous countenance, the vividly felt presence.
And that cold smile that looked right through him.
The freeze-frame of that last moment was enough to make his blood boil, to make every nerve ending tingle with electric fire. As far as coincidences went, this reunion had been too real, too raw. The nausea welled up and his heartbeat raced at the mere thought alone.
Still—still—he had forgotten nothing. Not the perfect proportions of that Adonis, nor the cruel blue eyes hidden behind shaded lenses. Like a talisman etched into his retinas, the mere traces of the afterimage brushing the borders of his vision alone could throw the switch, bringing back to reality those three years effused with rage and shame.
His resoundingly cool voice—a voice full of unwavering confidence —was inseparably trapped in the echo chamber of his ears.
Iason Mink. The name on the tip of his tongue tasted like a harsh, bitter pill crushed between his teeth.
The wellspring of all that bitterness still occupied his thoughts. From this day forward, no matter how deeply he mired himself in the sewer of the slums, he would never heal this wound himself.
The tingling blood lust showed in his deeply furrowed brows, in the angry squint in the corners of his eyes, making his otherworldly nature clear. What had been flying beneath the radar of his consciousness now climbed into clear skies. The true heart of the stranger, having lapsed into a dense, stagnant, fevered delirium, now blazed back to life.
"Hey, who's the bloke?"
"Got me. New face around here."
The buzz ran through the place in a matter-of-fact manner. "Man, that's one bad looking dude."
"Yeah. Let's tear him a new one."
"Hey, hey, before you go starting something, don't you think we should send word to Jigg first?"
The stirrings of interest in the bar were something more than idle curiosity, and suddenly erupted into a bonfire as a lanky fellow with a tawny crew cut casually strode up to Riki.
"Shit, that's Jango."
"Yeah, you're right. It's Jango."
"Jango, you say?"
"See for yourself. Jango, God's own Grim Reaper."
"Serious?"
This was the dingo that was rumored to have provoked the current conflict between Maddox and Jeeks, and his appearance in the bar cast a whole new light on everything. As to how a mere informant came to be called the "Grim Reaper," nobody really knew the details or the truth of the situation. Just the swirling tendrils of rumor and innuendo.
"The man is possessed."
"A guy who tried to cuckold him met a bad end. You don't want to know."
"Look him in the eye and your blood runs cold."
"Word is, gangs that locked horns with him got in way over their heads and ended up in pieces."
Rumors led to rumors, multiplying as the number of mouths multiplied, arousing fear and revulsion that remained at a safe distance and under the breath.
Impervious as ever to the noisy reactions around him, Riki raised the empty glass to the bartender, who handed him a refill without objection or being prompted. Riki eyed it suspiciously.
"Your friend bought you one," the bartender said, with an ingratiating smile.
For the first time, Riki looked at the man who'd occupied the seat next to him and softly clucked his tongue. Drinking himself under the table in a squalid bar at the end of town, the casual observer making note of the glasses piling up would no doubt jump to the same conclusion. But it irked Riki that any guy should consider hitting on him in his present state.
The man's cropped haircut was distinct and set the his profile apart; as a result, he radiated a somewhat foreign ambience. Yet no matter whose perspective it was, he was not Riki's cup of tea. Far from it. Staring at the man with upturned eyes, he growled. "Buster, if you're trying to pick me up, take it someplace else."
"You think I'm stupid enough to try and drag you into bed with a couple of drinks?" He laughed in a strangely meaningful manner. "So, you always been a hard-ass like this?"
The carnivorous cynicism in such a smile momentarily aroused in Riki a curious sense of déja vu. This guy—somewhere—
This unknown man took in his intense gaze and chuckled to himself. "The third time around, and you're still talking to me like that?"
The third time around— More feelings of déja vu burned in Riki's brain.
"Sorry that I didn't hit you hard enough the last time to leave a bigger impression."
Riki squinted at him. "Robby—is it?"
The man—Robby, that is—downed the contents of the glass in his hand. "Well, at least it came to you eventually. I'm overjoyed. Better if you didn't need a multiple choice test, though. Man, you've changed, haven't you?"
Riki took a good, long look at Robby—so long that he became conscious of time passing. "So what have you been eating to make you so fucking big?"
The sarcasm was entirely beside the point. Not having seen Robby in almost eight years, there wasn't much left of the fragments of memories left in his mind. What he did remember of him was the discord and antagonism from the Guardian foster center.
"It's funny, don't you think? As long as you had Guy, you didn't need anybody else, right?" A careless smile coming to his pursed lips. "I lost the most important thing in my life. You alone being happy is what I can't forgive. So you're losing something too!"
A piercing cry. And then...
"You're okay with that? You're really okay with that?"
At the very last, shown a glimpse of his true fury.
It seemed a sin that of all the memories stuck in his head from Guardian, only the ones involving Robby remained. Indeed, like waiting for the hopeful fairy at the very bottom of Pandora's Box, all he could do was bite his lip and ride it out.
"Looks like you're doing okay."
"Thanks. But you haven't changed at all."
A crooked smile of self-derision momentarily twisted Riki's lips. "What's that supposed to mean?" he spat, the words bitter in his mouth.
How much had he changed these past several years? Enough to scald his soul. "Means you haven't changed." Robby said simply, before quickly adding, "Guardian or the slums, whether Mr. Charisma or the underdog, you've always been a stranger."
A beat.
It felt like being kicked in an old, throbbing wound. Riki narrowed his eyes to slits. With no sign of fear, Robby pressed the point with an almost lackadaisical air, apparently intending to rub Riki the wrong way. "I get it now, what Schell really meant back then when he said you were the strongest and the prettiest. You're some freak of nature, man."
"Exactly what is it you want to say?" Riki's low, harsh whisper sharpened to a point. Even the stagnant, alcohol-saturated haze of cigarette smoke seemed to retreat, giving him a wider berth.
"Maybe what I'm saying is that you never figured out for yourself what makes you so damned scary. And that's why you sucked the life out of everybody."
A second later Riki had tossed the contents of his glass in Robby's face. Absorbed in the scene, an audible gasp arose from the mouths of the onlookers. There was God's Grim Reaper, and this crazy son of a bitch was seriously calling him out. He must be out of his fucking mind.
Riki slapped the money for the tab on the countertop and got to his feet. Acting as if nothing had happened, and without the slightest hitch in his voice, Robby spit the booze out of his mouth and looked up at him.
"As soon as you left Guardian, Schell started regressing back to an infantile state. After that, he didn't last half a year. It was like, as soon as the two of you were separated, something shriveled up inside of him and the lights went out. That's how it ended for him."
If Riki didn't intend to stick around for more of Robby's reminiscing, he sure as hell wasn't interested in them licking old wounds together. But Robby held back the best for last and aimed his shot straight for the heart.
"Besides, there's Junker as well. He disappeared from Guardian just like Haruka."
Riki's feet briefly stuck to the floor. "Junker—?" His mind's eyes flashed back to Junker's young face, now little more than a shadow...
"But I guess that's not a subject you'd be interested in—"
These were words that plunged the knife once more into his chest. His heart ached in ways he found hard to articulate. As if to put Guardian and the rest of it behind him, Riki didn't give Robby so much as a backwards glance.
Robby watched Riki leave, not moving an inch. His curtness up till then had been, contrary to appearances, suffused with melancholy. Even after Riki had vanished from the edges of his sight, the connection between them still lingered for a while longer.
"Man, what are you looking so down for? Not the kind of face God's Grim Reaper wants seen in public."
The sudden voice brought Robby back to his senses. He didn't hear any particular strain of cynicism in the voice. Like a light flicking on in the ocean depths of his casually raised eyes, he recognized a red-haired youngster and the tension slipped from his shoulders.
"Not only are you late for our appointment," the boy pouted, "But I find you with your eyes all over some nobody." He sat down on the barstool, still warm from Riki's body heat. "And in the end, he throws his beer in your face and blows you off. Isn't that what they call striking out?"
Wiping the booze from his face with his sleeve, Robby didn't bother asking him whether he was actually asking him, or it was merely a rhetorical question.
"Well? Who was he?" The kid kicked the rung on Robby's barstool in a sudden fit of temper. "Don't you blow me off, neither. If you've got a good excuse, let's hear it. Or if you like, I'll run the bastard down and hear it from him."
"Shut up. Get on that bastard's bad side and you'll end up the worse for it."
"Huh. So you're breaking up with me then?"
"No. I mean he's one crazy dangerous guy."
"How crazy dangerous?" he pressed, leaning forward.
Robby sighed aloud. Why the hell was he so taken with this pissy little kid who didn't look a thing like Schell? But if he tried to explain himself, this cocksure kid would light into him with both barrels: What the fuck are you saying? You think I was the only one curious about hooking up with the famous Grim Reaper?
"He was a blockmate when we were at Guardian together. Haven't seen him in a long time," Robby said in a disinterested air, choosing his words carefully.
After eight years, Riki really had been the last person on earth he'd expected to run into. The moment he'd caught a glimpse of Riki out of the corners of his eyes, his blood stirred in his veins and his whole body started to tremble. His heart and soul weren't throbbing out of some terrible nostalgia. The sense he got from Riki's unexpected presence in a dead-end bar at the outskirts of town—the only place where such an anomaly could slip between the cracks— was enough to make his throat burn.
Driven on by these strange feelings of hunger and thirst, Robby had no choice but to approach Riki. But as they talked, the fever gripped him all the fiercer, shaking his body like the clammy churning of his viscera or the trembling of hypothermia.
"Yeah, but what's your excuse?"
In fact, that incident had been the end product of the antagonism whirling around Riki at Guardian, and he was the only eye witness to the truth. No, at the time, the "truth" that had rent in two the borderline between reality and fantasy—what exactly had he seen? Robby still didn't know for certain.
Just that whatever aura enveloped Riki scorched all five of his senses. The fear and stark wonder that oozed from the pores of his skin like cold sweat had burned into the deepest parts of his memory.
Schell, the foundation of his heart, had died. And even Junker, the instigator of the incident, had at some point vanished from Guardian. Still, the sense of dysphoria in the pit of his stomach had haunted Robby all these eight years, too often screaming back at him in a waking nightmare.
"Maybe he was the first one you gave it up to?"
"I'm not that reckless or stupid."
"You don't say! So now you're telling me there's a player out there who can cow the badass Jango?"
"A player, huh." The remark wasn't necessarily wide of the mark, and Robby responded with a cynical half—smile. If he was the Grim Reaper and hell followed after him, then Riki must be that rare, vampiric beast that seduced men and then sucked their souls dry. "Yeah, maybe so. After all, he was known as Varja."
"Varja?"
Robby gently grabbed the youngster by the roots of his red hair and whispered softly in his ear. "That guy was the Varja of the slums. Riki of Bison."
Watching the kid's eyes fly open wide, Robby stifled a laugh from deep within his chest.
.
.
.
That day, a strange, cold rain clouded the skies since dawn. As a result, the rotting, garbage-strewn streets, the ruined walls of the colony, and everywhere else rested in peace and seemed to draw a sigh of relief.
Yet, the rusted and corroded hours slogged by in the shadow of the garish Midas night, blanketed by the dark veil of the low-lying skies. Groaning deeply to himself as he dragged his leaden feet and ass along, for the first time in a while Riki made his way alone to the safe house.
Kirie wasn't there in his face, haunting his every step. That the little eyesore was nowhere to be seen was enough to drain some of the tension from his shoulders, but he was still left with a strange feeling of malaise. He couldn't help but be struck by the fact that the absence of Kirie alone would suck so much energy out of the place.
"Yo," Guy said, spotting Riki. He rose from the sofa, passing around a glass as if urging him to drink. "What a drag, man. Where the hell you been? Got to thinking you'd picked yourself a different crib to crash in."
Riki quenched his thirst with one gulp and raised his eyes. Guy shrugged his shoulders. "Yeah, he's a whiny brat, but when he's not around it never seems there's anything to talk about."
Riki just looked at him. "He hasn't been very sociable of late."
"All for the best, no?" Riki said bluntly. "I'm sure a kid like him has got plenty of other children to hang around with."
"Hey, you know that's not true," Guy countered. His tone of voice revealed a degree of worry and concern about which he was powerless to alleviate. He looked softly into Riki's eyes.
"What?"
"What do you mean, what?" Guy asked, beating around the bush. When he saw that he wasn't about to break through Riki's poker expression, he sighed. "Well, whatever, I guess."
He drained the glass with an air of resignation. Regardless of how Guy really felt, Riki honestly couldn't have cared where Kirie was, who he was with, or what he was doing.
It's got nothing to do with me.
Dismissing the subject, Riki also meant to vanquish that sense of Iason's existence coiled around his innards. Attempting to forcibly push it to the peripheries of his brain, he changed the subject.
"Guy—"
"Yeah?"
The ice broken, Riki continued in a disinterested tone of voice. "I ran into Robby."
Guy's eyes widened and Riki shot him a skeptical glance, juggling his glass in one hand as he talked about not recognizing Robby's face after eight years. Schell's death, and the mystery of Junker's disappearance.
While Riki spoke, Guy only responded with the occasional "Huh" and "Really?" and other meaningless conversational noises. When Riki arrived at the end of his narrative, Guy warned him in a muted tone. "Riki, Robby is bad news all the way. Best to not get involved with him."
As much as he hated to admit it, Riki had become aware that more than the appearance of the slums had changed in those three lost years, and it wouldn't be easy filling in the gaps.
"What kind of bad news?"
"He's a dingo. An informant. A real badass that people call God's Grim Reaper."
Yet the look on Guy's face suggested a degree of personal dislike that was less than what the intensity of his words suggested. As Riki gazed back at him, the cynical smile on Robby's completely changed countenance came to mind.
"That's harsh, man."
"Hang with Robby and people are bound to jump to the wrong conclusion about you."
"He's hooked up with Jeeks?"
"That's right," Guy stated, in an unusually assertive manner. "For every one of us possessed by the ghosts of Bison, there are those fanning the flames from the sidelines, and opportunists waiting for the chance to take us out."
Riki—or rather, Guy and the others—had taken the wind-blown remnants of the Bison and continued to burn in a different form, their sentimentality and expectations placed on indefinite hold.
Not to mention that the Jeeks gang now made no secret of their call to extinguish Bison. Returning to his old haunts after three years, Riki had unwittingly brought with him a gust of glowing embers back into a roaring flame.
The shadowy rumors that Bison's resurrection might be at hand were little more than comical speculation to Guy and the others, but they could not simply be swept aside.
"Yeah, but it's all bullshit, right?" Riki murmured dully.
All Guy could do was flash a wry smile. Not long thereafter, his more pressing concern became a reality in one fell swoop: the crumbling building they used as their headquarters and safe house was blown to bits in a single, raging inferno.
.
.
.
In the blink of an eye, the rumors raced throng the slums.
"Hey, looks like it finally started."
"So it seems."
"You hear about it too?"
"Yeah. Herma's crib got smashed to smithereens."
"He who strikes first wins the day, eh?"
The buzz of shock and amazement.
"Jeeks is taking drastic measures."
"Those little bastards of his know no fear."
"That's for sure. But only because they got no clue how great Bison was at its peak."
And more fervent than the blindly enthusiastic acclaim, the handicapping of the opposition.
"Even Maddox is running scared now."
"You think Jeeks got the jump on him?"
"If anybody does, it's gotta be Jeeks."
And a touch of anxiety welling up.
"Maddox and his mates gotta be stamping their feet in frustration."
"That's just a feint, don't you think? Word is, they're waiting for Bison and Jeeks to cannibalize each other before moving in for the kill."
"And take the lion's share for themselves?"
"But that doesn't mean they've got it in the bad already."
"Yeah. After all, Bison quit when they were at the top."
Meanwhile, the intense interest in every scrap of information did not flag.
"It's only a matter of time before total war breaks out."
"You really think so?"
"Bet your ass. Getting hit like that in broad daylight and doing nothing—the name of Bison ain't worth crap anymore."
Venting feelings of impending doom.
"You think Riki's going to make a move?"
"Naw. What can that loser do?"
"Right. Maybe the old Riki, but the new Riki came back missing a pair."
Bystanders to the real action bitterly bitching among themselves.
"Those little twerps that Jeeks has soldiering for him aren't the brightest bulbs in the marquee either. When it comes to Riki, best to let that sleeping dog lie."
"Diss the Varja of the slums to his face and he's not just going to stand there and take it, is he?"
"He that bad, this Riki?"
"What do you think? We're talking about the Riki of Bison. So, fuck yeah."
Shooting the shit with nothing but their own egos to guide them by.
"Yeah, it's gonna be eye for an eye."
"Right down to the flesh and bone."
And so the rumor-mongering only grew.
.
.
.
"What do you want to do?" Sid asked. He stood in front of the ruins of their old crib and drew himself up to his full height, his face fiercer than usual.
"What do you want to do?" Norris echoed with a dismissive sigh. "Smashed in broad daylight like this, what the hell am I supposed to do about it?"
That wasn't what Sid had asked, but Norris didn't know how to deal with the real question they were faced with.
"Maybe this will finally be enough to light a fire under somebody's ass." Luke said, as if articulating the thoughts of the others. He took a drag from a cigarette and kicked the rubble at his feet.
Riki cast him a sideways glance, a vertical line creasing his brows. He couldn't know for certain, but the truth seemed pretty obvious. Beating the tar out of those Jeeks kids might not have been the best of ideas. I've no doubt been showing my true colors for a long time now.
He wasn't to blame for everything, but he certainly provided the impetus, struck the spark that lit the flame.
"In any case... we can crash at Laura's," Guy suggested, and nobody contradicted him.
.
.
.
A siege mentality and an unrequited hunger. Back during that brief period of madness and fury when they'd ruled the roost in the unregenerate slums, the members of Bison had learned the pointless stupidity of constantly baring their fangs. But there was simply no comparing then and now.
Then, they could placate their hot-blooded emotions and calculate when and where to blow their tops, increasing the exact amount of tension to the bursting point.
Then, the sight of the charismatic Riki alone was enough. His words intoxicated them. They shared equally in every moment of his burning zeal. The tremendous sense of exuberance that came from being around him was more than enough.
But now Riki had nothing to say. The power of his charisma had been extinguished and this defanged Varja had no direction to point them in. They must have been coming to this realization for a long time now, but the mortification of seeing it displayed right before their eyes lay far beyond logic and reason.
.
.
.
The slums were restless and astir, as if poised on the balls of its feet, ready to flee at the slightest notice. Trembling, off balance, staring down at its own uncertain feet, and checking out the face of every stranger.
Amongst all that, a new rumor made the rounds. "Are you shitting me? I heard Kirie's procuring partners for those mechanoid bastards."
"Yeah, I heard it's a good way to earn a little on the side. They say the latest big thing with those types is doing it with a human."
"They can't even get the professional ladies in Midas to look their way, so they set their sights on us mongrels?"
"Idiot. Androids don't get a jonesing for sex like that. There's got to be a catch somewhere."
"Probably. Hey, you know Tom from Creutz? He took Kirie up on the offer—half out of curiosity I'm sure—but got seriously addicted. Now he skulks around all day looking to get hooked up again."
"You think maybe they're using us as human guinea pigs for that new drug? They say you shove it up your ass and you come, like, instantaneously. And it doesn't leave a trace behind."
"Yeah, but if you're telling me that's my one ticket to paradise in this world, then regardless of the money I'd like to give it a shot just once."
"No way. I'm telling you, a bunch of fucked-up, burned-out guys like us are getting the thumbs down from a mile off."
"Hell, even those guys can't be too picky, man. Anyway, it's just little kids getting the offers from what I hear."
"Yeah, it's pretty damn obvious they're narrowing the target. I'm telling you, something hinky is going down."
"And Kirie and the others are taking some sort of cut?"
"Seems so. Bastards have got their bases covered."
"Tightwads is what they are. You'd think they'd want to toss a bit of change to the rest of us. But no."
It was hard to tell with Sid when he was joking and when he was being serious, so the rest of them dryly and half-heartedly laughed along with him. But once that awkward interruption was over, the tedious silence again descended.
No longer able to abide the strained atmosphere, Norris broke the ice. "When it comes to stuff like that, Riki was the one who did the thinking. He was the one who brought us the kind of stash the slums had never seen."
Only reminiscing about the past could tide over the listless, wasted hours.
"I wonder what the hell he did," Luke pondered. Knowing that wasn't enough, he added, "Wouldn't surprise me if he did the same thing Kirie did, you know?" Muffled laughter rose in his throat. "Instead of selling out his mates, what if somebody got the drop on him instead? But isn't that what Kirie always says?"
Nobody laughed. After a few moments, Luke's provocative remarks simply evaporated away without further comment.
"Hey, what's the big deal? Or are you all saying I hit the nail on the head?"
The derision was obvious in Luke's irritated tone of voice. Despite what he said, Riki let it all flow over him like water over polished marble. Luke narrowed his eyes more intensely, unable to stomach this nonchalance.
"I really don't care if you think so or not. Go ahead and believe whatever you want," Riki said.
The blunt brush-off made Luke suck in his cheeks in disdain. "You know, Riki, seeing that side of you makes me want to puke." He spit the words out in a strained voice, as if wringing the breath out of his windpipe. "You piss me off so bad I want to bend you over and fuck you up the ass until you're weeping for mercy."
Nobody thought this was Luke's sense of humor getting out of hand. The alcohol had revealed the true nature of his exasperation, now glistening everywhere like sweat on a runner's body.
Perhaps poisoned by Luke presence, or perhaps entangled in his own fierce feelings flailing beneath the water's surface and wanting to hammer the nail down in a single blow, Riki responded. "If that's what you want to do, then give it your best shot. But I don't want to hear any whimpering after I turn you into a dickless wonder."
Riki delivered the threat deliberately and slowly. There was no ragged, angry edge to his voice, only cold indifference. Yet the searing fire hidden in his clear black eyes like a sheathed sword revealed itself in his strange and intimidating aura. Everybody caught their breaths and stilled their voices. They had seen what they were not supposed to see and felt the punishing lash reserved for such trespasses.
A heavy, suffocating silence followed. Unable to stand it any longer, Norris abruptly averted his eyes. Sid held his breath and let it out, repeatedly licking his smarting lips. And Luke made a big show of downing his entire bottle in one gulp.
Guy alone continued to stare at Riki with troubled eyes.
.
.
.
Had he dared to assume the pose of a beaten dog in order to maintain his freedom? No. That was not the case.
He was a captive of the ghosts of the past, and his sin was coming to see himself in those terms alone. Was facing the truth directly and being too hardheaded to be swayed by emotion all the product of his ego?
No, it was not the current state of his pride that stood him in the dock. The party under indictment was the passion that had sprung forth from that surprisingly naive and clueless period in his life. Though these passions had long since spent themselves, the revering, upturned eyes all about him had not changed.
He was far beyond being fed up with it all, to the point that his simmering irritation was close to boiling over. He would be a slave to no one. No shackles would bind his hands and feet. He would be free, and yet the fetters of the past that he wished to cast aside instead held him fast, an invisible weight burdening his every step.
.
.
.
The summer neared its end. It had been "summer" in name only, unaccompanied by the heat of a scorching sun, a fleeting season that passed quickly by, leaving behind only taut and turbulent eddies in the air.
.
.
.
"Eh?" Norris responded reflexively, as if thinking he had somehow heard wrong.
Though it was noon, the Laura hideout sat in darkness. Norris was sharpening his keepsake butterfly knife, to him more a curious artifact of the past than an old-school antique.
"We jump Riki tonight," Luke blurted out.
"That's not funny." Luke scowled at Guillory and Sid.
"I'm being serious."
Norris snorted. "Stop talking through your ass. Guy will be with him, you know."
"Hey, haven't we already plowed this ground? It's been over between the two of them for a while now. Didn't you know that?"
Finding himself at a loss for words, Norris sank back into silence.
"Since Riki's return, I haven't heard any talk about Yori coming back."
Norris said mostly to himself, "Doesn't mean a damn thing. You could turn heaven and earth upside down and Riki's never gonna be your bitch."
Whether they'd broken up for certain or whether Guy was taking Yori back, it was all beside the point. Riki and Guy were entwined at a much deeper level, deeper than the sex. There was more than enough evidence of that fact, enough to make him absurdly jealous.
Luke should know all this as well, so why was he still beating this drum? Norris couldn't begin to imagine what was going through Luke's mind.
"Yo, Luke. What're you still holding this grudge for? Give it up already... even Guy's not laughing anymore. And besides, Riki wasn't yanking your chain about what he'd do to you."
"Yeah, interesting, isn't it? You all reacting like this. Me, frankly I've been getting real bored of late with guys like you sticking their asses out without even being asked."
He spoke lightly, but if his intention was to settle the matter among his mates in a joking manner, it didn't help in the slightest.
"You think maybe you've been downing a bit too much stout and losing a few brain cells in the bargain?" Norris kicked back on the sofa, stretching out his legs, as if asking what sense there was to keeping at it like this.
Nevertheless, Luke was undeterred. "I'm not saying I need any of your help. Just that you keep yourselves nice and wasted until the deed is done."
"Well excuse fucking me."
"For old time's sake, we'll treat this as a joke. But not a second time."
Luke grinned. "What are you getting all freaked out for, Sid? It's been a long time since Riki was running Bison and settling scores. It's a little too late now to start playing the hero."
"What the hell are you trying to say?" Sid asked. In most cases Sid was fairly indifferent to Luke's oddly roundabout way of pushing the matter, but this time Luke was really getting on his nerves.
"The Riki of Bison you used to fawn over is nowhere to be seen. You understand? That guy is a beaten dog, but he's got the same fucking beautiful body as usual. Ass as tight as a drum. Just thinking about him down there makes me hard. No shit. Same for you too? That's why you chatted up Kirie, right? Because he's the splitting image of the old Riki. But doing the real thing? That'd even get a little pecker like yours up."
For a long second, Sid goggled at him with a blanched face, as if all the blood had drained from his head. Only his bugged-out eyes burned red, as if another person had peered inside the heart and laughed and what he found there. What Sid was feeling at that moment was more the pure blood lust of murderous desire than simple rage.
Rather than having them go at it right then and there, Norris cleared his throat ominously.
"Look, Sid, when I look at Riki's smug, don't-give-a-shit face, I get so pissed I can hardly stand it." He spoke in a completely different register than the cynical tone he'd used up till now. In the strangled depths of his voice Luke's true intentions were laid bare. "With the old Riki, you got the feeling that an unwelcome touch would singe your fingers. He was on fire, man, a force of nature. Just standing next to him was like standing next to a roaring fire."
The memory was forever green and alive in his mind, down to the heat of his body:
"And Luke! Don't fuck around with the small fry! It's just Barth! Drop the bastard! Okay? Let's not screw this up, people!"
Riki's pep talks tore through the clamor like a sweet elixir, giving them an adrenaline rush more powerful than any drug. Those coalblack eyes. That voice. The pleasant, tingling feeling when he called them out by name inspired them to believe that anything was possible, no matter how reckless.
"Despite that indifferent air of his, when he was out in front he was a fucking fireball. No matter how deep in the shit we were, no matter how crazy things got, he was up for whatever came our way."
The roar of the tricked-out jet bike leading the charge. The hot, stinging blast of air in their faces. That real sense of "oneness" that came when Riki was leading the pack was better than the ecstasy of sex.
Hot. Throbbing. Deafening. Burning. Benumbing.
With Riki at the tip of the spear, standing at his back was like standing behind the white-hot afterburner of a jet engine. When Riki and Guy were on the bike together, it was Guy's prerogative to make Riki ride shotgun.
"If it's a two-seater, you're in back, Riki. I can't stand you treating this valuable piece of machinery like a toy."
It was only in this case that the always reserved Guy wouldn't hand over the keys. It wasn't that the bike was valuable. And while it didn't necessarily constitute a criticism of Riki's throttle-wide-open driving style, Guy wasn't the only one with his hands over his eyes. As far as Guy was concerned, seating Riki behind him was a thousand times better than watching his back and having the anxiety give him ulcers.
Not only Luke but Norris and Sid as well (though they wouldn't admit it in so many words) wanted to complain. Why is Guy alone allowed special privileges like that?
If such outbursts of jealousy scoured their hearts, in time it would eat them through and through.
"When you were with Riki you felt the blood pounding in your veins, you fell like you could do anything, like you weren't afraid of nothing. You know?"
Sid and Norris didn't hesitate in nodding vigorously in response to this indictment. They had been similarly bewitched by Riki's charisma.
"But when I think about it now, compared to what it meant to be the pit bulls of Hot Crack back then, we're a bunch of runny-nosed kids. That's why, even when Riki says he's quitting Bison and takes off, nobody grabbed his ass and hauled him back here."
But that was so much crying after spilt milk. You're just gonna cast us aside? Maybe if they'd told him off, dug in their claws and not let go, things would have worked out differently.
After all, they were just bullshitting around. "But for whatever reason, doesn't that mean we're all hot about Riki in one way or another?"
Strangely enough, without pretension or self-consciousness, this proposition carried the day. And so it was logical to ask: "But what's with him now? He's always getting shit-faced on stout with that half-stoned look in his eyes."
The air of disappointment was doubly so. Even fully aware that this was an irrational reaction, the feelings festered like slow poison and tore away at their hearts of darkness.
"Always giving us these looks like we aren't welcome in his presence any more."
Meant to be the final word but smacking of so much regret that they came across as a bunch of sad sacks, forever dragging the anchor of the past around with them.
"That being the case, we keep riding him until he can't ignore us any more."
That being the case, they should call his bluff, get in his face, and keep at it until the bitter end. That's what Luke was saying. Such an approach was far more attractive than inconclusively dragging things out like this forever.
Sid and Norris glared unblinking at Luke.
Were they so taken aback by his arrogant speechifying that they'd lost any will to take him down a few notches? No. The two of them simply had nothing to say. Voicing his incomprehensible anger towards Riki, Luke seemed to be speaking for all of them, and they felt no need to pile on at this point.
The feelings of superiority and self-satisfaction they had shared with Riki were coupled with an all-too-sudden sense of loss. An ineffable hunger and thirst replaced what they should have had in common after four years. Still, they knew they couldn't go to the same extremes as Luke. Dumb with consternation, their rationality warped and refracted, the silence stagnated and the time passed for them like prisoners wasting away in solitary. In the heavy gloom it became hard to even breathe.
The familiar sound of the door opening and closing suddenly disturbed the air.
They all gulped, their shoulders shrinking. As if by the sound of a gunshot, their eyes were drawn toward the doorway.
"What? What's going on?" Riki asked, pausing on the spot with a perplexed expression on his face.
But nobody opened his mouth, each in his own way awkwardly averting his eyes.
"Where's Guy?"
Luke answered curtly. "He wasn't with you today? He did say something to the effect of having a prior engagement with somebody."
Sid gave Luke a threatening look. Norris clucked to himself as well, finally grasping why Luke had been talking up his plans for tonight.
Ignoring the bad vibe that the rest of them were filling the silence with, Riki said nothing himself as he sat down in his regular place. Luke held out a bottle of stout. "Want one?"
Riki answered with a nod. He chewed on some tasteless but solid food and washed it down, then brought the stout slowly to his lips. Rolling the stout back on his tongue, he felt the particularly piercing bitterness stabbing like tiny needles, little by little working it towards the back of his throat.
He'd gotten used to it by now. Riki took a deep breath and let it out, and then passed the bottle around. Norris shook his head. Well, that being the case... Riki's gaze shifted encouragingly to Sid.
"No thanks. I'm not in the mood tonight."
Luke smiled thinly. Whether a bitter or derisive smile, it was hard to tell. Riki made nothing of it. He shrugged and took another slug of the stout.
Before long, his eyes began to steep with the watery, intoxicating haze. Stretching his languid limbs, a faint smile rose to his lips. Norris gulped despite himself, his eye opening wide. The sigh that spilled from Riki's lips seemed to have an air of almost dejected wistfulness. The daydream that Norris imagined was so entrancing that it made his throat tremble.
Riki had exposed to their eyes his frank and unguarded countenance.
Ordinarily, overtaken by the waves of pleasure together, they would have overlooked this hidden side of him. That, together with the absence of Guy—the only person who could act as a check valve for Riki in these situations—unexpectedly etched the vivid image on the backs of their retinas.
Sid pressed his lips together and glued his eyes on Riki, as if to devour his entire being. A moment in which he grew hesitant even to take the next breath. A moment in which the euphoric desire to take and penetrate him—
Within the strained silence, each of their breaths synchronizing with Riki's pulse, pushing them higher and higher towards the edge of the abyss—
.
.
.
But nothing happened that night.
In the face of Sid and Norris's unusual display of gallantry, Luke was forced to exercise a bit of prudence. Or perhaps more importantly, he was never given an opening in which to act.
Even with the two of them awkwardly rushing alternately off to the john, overwhelmed by Riki's aura, Luke didn't bother to flash the thinnest of derisive smiles. But the hunger churning in his chest was so much worse than he imagined, and that realization scalded him to the core.