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complicatedandstained · 4 years

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The Other Day at Hot Topic: Do No Harm

It feels a little bit like the role of Vanitas has been recast halfway through their shift.

The guy has started doing his work like a regular human being, going as far as offering to help Roxas finish restocking the piercing display and then not giving him shit about it.

Although, to be fair, this could be because Vanitas was losing patience. Roxas, admittedly, has absolutely and entirely no idea what he is doing. Aqua had assumed Roxas knew a lot more about which metal stabs through which piece of skin than he does.

Actually, Vanitas has taken to not talking to Roxas at all. He has his headphones back on and, if his volume is any indication, is doing his damnedest to broadcast his music throughout the entire store. Roxas has to refrain from singing along when Fall Out Boy comes on.

But either way Roxas slices it, it’s a definite improvement.

And then this super old man comes in, chugging along on a walker with balloons tied to his wrist. Orbiting him is a chattering, hyperactive, wholesomely chubby child, the kind of child you kind of want to hug.

The old man has a scowl etched onto his face like it’s been there a while. He almost immediately begins to grumble about the low lighting and the loud music and the tight spaces between the aisles that make navigation with a walker near impossible.

The child is wearing an extremely yellow Wilderness Explorer uniform, and explore he does—every square inch of the store seemingly all at once. He bumps off of display cases and walls like a human pinball, poking at the cheeks of stuffed animals and brushing his hands through the fabrics.

The old man continues his complaining from the front as he eyes the display cases, muttering about the dark colors and the flimsy material and the skimpy cuts.

Vanitas keeps glancing between the two of them from his station near Anime where he’s restocking the Hello Kitty plush. Roxas imagines he’s examining camera angles, trying to decide who would be easier to take out first. Another glare the old man’s direction, and Roxas decides to step in, before his coworker does.

“Hey there! After anything in particular today?” Roxas asks. He’s halfway through adding new buttons to the magnetic boards of the display case by the register, and he holds out a handful with a smile. “Button?”

The old man looks taken aback. “Thanks, but,” the old man offers a quiet smile in return, tugging at the lapel of a worn suit jacket, where he has a round, pop bottle cap of his own pinned, “I have the only button I need.”

Roxas feels a strange tingling in his chest at the sudden softness in the gruff man’s tone. Someone special must have given it to him. For a split second Roxas pictures Axel, hands splayed, eyes bright, telling him about stained glass windows.

The conversation shatters as a childlike someone shouts, “I found it! I found it!” followed immediately by the sound of several hundred small boxes crashing down, and then a delayed, much quieter, “Uh-oh.”

“Russell…” the old man groans, shutting his eyes.

The old man has stopped near the entrance, as he cannot easily navigate the tight passages between Hot Topic’s displays, so Roxas nods to him. “I’ll make sure he’s alright.”

Roxas power walks through the aisles, until he gets to the wall-length Funko Pop display. Half a shelf is on the floor between Vanitas and the chubby, adorable scout, who has a single box clutched to his chest.

“This is the one!” The child beams and waves the box close enough to Vanitas face that Roxas is concerned the kid will lose a finger. “The Snipe! I found it!”

Roxas freezes as Vanitas’ face twitches. With rigid movements the guy yanks down his headphones, says flatly, “Congratulations.”

Compared to all the potential curse words Roxas feared would leave his mouth, Roxas considers this reply basically praiseworthy.

Vanitas eyes flit down to the mess again, his arms crossing, and the kid notices.

“I am sorry about the mess,” Russell says, his bright voice painstakingly articulate, like maybe English isn’t his first language. Russell frowns, his dark eyebrows dipping low, troubled, dimples appearing in his round cheeks. “I will help you clean it up though!”

Roxas takes a step forward, fully prepared to bodily restrain Vanitas if need be.

“Psh.” Vanitas swats his hand toward the pile dismissively. “I’ve seen worse.”

Roxas is ready to give Vanitas a promotion at this point.

“Why don’t you go show Gramps your weird-as—weird-butt...bird thing.”

“Okay!” Russell nods purposefully and then frowns, laughs. “Mr. Fredrickson is not my Grandpa though.” Vanitas’ face scrunches in mild confusion. “Oh?”

“Mr. Fredrickson is my best friend.”

This is perhaps the single sweetest and saddest thing Roxas has ever heard.

With another radiant smile missing a couple key teeth, the child hugs his find to his chest once more and toddles off to the front of the store, chattering to the box, “I think I’ll call you ‘Kevin.’”

And for just a second, before Vanitas slips his headphones back on, with a slightly miffed shake of his head, Roxas thinks he sees Vanitas smile.

Vanitas’ headphones have been off for a half hour now. Once Roxas had checked out Russell and Mr. Fredrickson, the Hot Topic workers set to doing serious damage control on the Pop Funkos. This entailed extensive sorting by platform, movie, and sale price, and some minor bickering about characters belong where, which made it abundantly clear that Roxas is the bigger nerd of the two and that Vanitas knows a weird amount about Star Wars.

“God.” Vanitas passes Roxas the last couple obscure collectibles and whines, “Ordinarily, I’d just shove them all back on the shelf, and be done with it. Fucking kid. Fucking Axel. Fucking…” He leans forward to fix the one box threatening to fall back over.

Roxas had thought Vanitas wanted to get fired, and now suddenly he’s vying for employee of the month. He shakes his head, sliding a hand in his pocket and looking out across the empty store. “I don’t get you.”

Vanitas lifts an angry-looking Hello Kitty penguin plush from the ground beside him and stares into its eyes like he sees some wisdom there. “You think I should just shut up and do my job, right?”

For a second Roxas wonders what the chances are that Vanitas hadn’t heard him and is simply talking to the penguin, but he decides those chances are fairly low. “It’d be easier…” Roxas mutters, fishing a few furry Chococat eye masks out of a cardboard box on the floor to help Vanitas with the display.

“Wrong. You want to know why I wanted to get fired? This ‘job’ is a waste of my fucking time. I should be studying, interning. Literally scratching my eyeballs out would be more productive than this.” He lifts a Hello Kitty plush dressed as a cheeseburger up and shoves it in Roxas’ face like he’s trying to suffocate him and the plushie both.

Roxas rolls his eyes, and pushes Cheeseburger Kitty away. “Yeah, I’m sure the eyeball scratching pay is great…” I’ll ask Xion’s cat and get back to you.

“Ugh.” Vanitas adjusts a stack of Hello Kitty notebooks (regrettably not burger-themed) and accepts a handful of cat head topped gel pens from Roxas to add to the display cup beside it. This done he glowers at Roxas impatiently. “I forgot you don’t know shit. Look. I didn’t work my ass off getting a full ride to med school to wind up slaving away next to a bunch of sexually frustrated, punk wannabes.”

Roxas should be more offended about the last bit, but his brain gets stuck elsewhere. “You’re in med school?” A smile hits him in spite of himself. “Did they not warn you about the Hippocratic Oath?”

Vanitas rams his shoulder into Roxas’ not hard enough to hurt, not light enough to be friendly. “Shut the fuck up.” Roxas considers Vanitas’ situation again, wondering why Vanitas is opening up to him now. “So, if you got a full ride, why work here?”

Vanitas sighs and shifts a few Sanrio nail polish sets over, then checks his own glossy white paint. “How much do you know about Xemnas?” Roxas glances up from his digging through the box. “The sexiest man alive?” Vanitas cringes, his fists balling up. “I fucking hate this place.”

“You…” Roxas hands him a couple more boxes of the polish sets, “disagree?”

“He’s my uncle,” Vanitas says with venom. “He recently collected the family inheritance. He’s only in his thirties, and now he’s rich. Like, the filthy kind.”

“Oh.” Roxas feels an uncomfortable pang his chest. Basically, Vanitas is telling him someone in his family recently died. So, either Vanitas is actually upset about that, or Vanitas didn’t know them that well and is just pissed he got the short end of the stick. But wouldn’t Vanitas’ parents have been next in line? Maybe they’d all been skipped? “I’m sorry.”

Vanitas doesn’t seem to hear him, pushes on, “Dear Uncle Xemnas is supposed to be helping me pay my rent and my bills, but he’s gotten it into his head that I need to learn to ‘be responsible’ and ‘make friends’ and all that elementary school bullshit. So now I’m working this stupid fucking minimum wage job. And if I don’t, I’m on my own.”

Vanitas isn’t even looking at him anymore, he’s gripping the metal shelf of the display so hard his knuckles have gone bloodless. The sleeve of his blazer has slipped down, and Roxas can see tattoos running up from his wrist, red and blue veins, like his skin’s been flipped inside out. Med school, huh? Inheritance, suspension, friends…

Roxas wonders if maybe Vanitas was just in desperate need of someone to dump this to. But why me? And how misanthropic do you have to be for your sexy uncle to blackmail you into having coworkers?

Then again, he did try to punch me in the face.

“I mean…” Roxas considers patting Vanitas on the back with the Hello Kitty in his hand, but stops himself because he doesn’t want either to be ripped to shreds. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

Vanitas whirls on him, face contorting. Roxas congratulates himself on the instinct not to give the guy a soothing pat.

“You would say that. It’s fucking ridiculous. So what if I almost got suspended? I didn’t. So what if I don’t have any friends? I don’t need them.” Vanitas has gotten up in Roxas’ space again, the words harsh and direct, straight in his face. Roxas can feel a little spit fly. Roxas takes a long look at him, taking in what he’s heard, and maybe it’s just because Vanitas reminds him so much of a young Sora throwing a temper tantrum, or maybe it’s the two fights they’ve had earlier, but Roxas can’t bring himself to be angry with the guy any more. In fact, he’s starting to pity him a little bit. Roxas stares levelly, offers calmly, “Maybe friends would help.”

Vanitas sneers, seizes Roxas’ shirt in his fists. Roxas lets him.

“Wake up, sunshine. You’re not in elementary school anymore. Friendship isn’t magic. People always let you down. They let you down or they leave. Axel’s going to let you down. It’s better not to get attached.” Vanitas shoves Roxas’ chest and stalks off a few steps, but Roxas, being a black belt, catches himself easily, which seems to piss Vanitas off further when he glances back to see him still standing there.

“You’re right,” Roxas says.

“Huh?”

“Nobody’s perfect.” One of Roxas’ hands leave his pockets, lifts in a shrug. “Sometimes my best friends screw up. Sometimes they screw up a lot.” He almost laughs, thinking of Hayner, how many times he’s had to climb out of bed to pick him up, stumbling drunk. “But so do I.” I mean I dated Seifer, for Pete’s sake. He hadn’t thought anyone would forgive him for that, but, somehow, they had. “And at the end of the day, isn’t it enough that they care about me and that they tried?”

Roxas shifts his other hand out of its pocket, bringing a pack of Pop Rocks with it. “I don’t know what’s going to happen with Axel. Maybe he is going to hurt me, but maybe our friendship is going to be amazing. I’m not going to let maybe stop me from trying. And neither should you.”

“Ugh.” Vanitas runs his fingers down his face like he’s trying to scrub it clean. But when he drops them his tone seems more level, “Forget the advice, you’re a hopeless sap.”

Roxas smiles sadly. “Whatever you say, Vanitas.”

Vanitas eyes him, more wary than annoyed. “You’re setting yourself up for disappointment.”

Roxas shrugs. “Maybe I am. What about Aqua?”

Vanitas stiffens. Roxas feels like he’s just watched his defenses go up, an invisible shield.

Vanitas flexes his hand against the stuffed animal he’s holding a few times. “What about her?” he says at last.

Roxas keeps his words soft, “You guys are friends, aren’t you?”

“She’s not my friend,” Vanitas counters, words quiet but forceful. His nostrils flare, staring at Roxas and then he turns sharply, like he doesn’t want to look at Roxas anymore, and goes back to shoving stuffed animals onto a shelf with unnecessary force. “She’s a hopeless sap like you. That’s why I’m standing here balls deep in Hello Kitty merch. Doing my fucking job. Tell Axel that.”

Roxas has no idea what to make of this. There’s obviously a lot of shit going down with Vanitas that he doesn’t know the first thing about. He decides it’s time to tap out. Defuse this situation before Vanitas makes with the punching again.

Vanitas is still waiting for a reply.

Roxas frowns a bit. “The Hello Kitty thing, or...?”

Vanitas takes a step forward, like a bull stomping its foot before the charge.

Roxas raises his hands in surrender accordingly. “Okay, okay. I’ll tell him you were doing your damn job. Gees.”

There’s a tense moment as Vanitas considers Roxas’ sincerity and then he nods. “Thank you.” He tosses another Cheeseburger Kitty at Roxas’ face. “Now fuck off.”

#kingdom hearts #vanitas #roxas #axel #up #xemnas #akuroku #hello kitty #the other day at hot topic #my writing #tw: language #tw: loss #up pixar

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