Chapter Text
Now is the time between birth and slaughter.
The words are Sunny's favorite, so far. This book is agonizingly boring, so far. Maybe boring isn't the right word. More, slow. Of course, his friend had warned him this was the case. Told him, "It starts slow, but I promise that when it picks up, it really picks up." ....Sure. Any day works for him, really.
Sunny drags his highlighter across words that mean nothing to him, but may mean something to Basil. Since Sunny moved, he'd kept in touch with his friends. Basil had--albeit timidly--suggested they send books back and forth. It was nice. Basil annotated wonderfully, his handwriting soft and curvy and cute. He just highlighted things that stuck out to him, he said, and left little comments beside for 'clarification.'
Basil is doing better now, he thinks. After their fight, they'd both ended up hospitalized, but naturally, Basil had received more intensive care, given his state. Sunny doesn't know much about it. Just that nobody could contact Basil for three months, and for the four months following that, they were only allowed phone calls.
Then, Basil was shaky--at least when on the phone with him. His breathing was always a bit uneven, his voice a tone too pathetic. The thought of that Basil made Sunny want to throw up.
Sunny glides his fingernail over the indent of Basil's pen in the novel in his hands. It's deep--not excessively so, just normally. Good. When they'd started, his words were light and shaky, which made it safe to assume he was those things also. Over the past six months, it's changed drastically. The smooth strokes of the pen were clear, as well as the strength behind them. It makes Sunny happy to imagine him better. Maybe that's why he pretends to care for words he'd laugh at if he were reading on his own time, yeah?
He lets the hope of that thought carry him from his rocking chair to his kitchen, suddenly inspired to have a meal. Hero had sent him a recipe for some of Mari's Rain Soup just last week. Sunny was never sure why that memory stuck so strongly with him.
It's not like the soup was exceptional, or anything. It really was just a traditional recipe: he could probably Google it. They called it rain soup because the one time they'd had it for a picnic, it had been raining. Eugh... he couldn't even tell where the soup ended, and the rain began. That thought makes him smile, too.
Smiling has been easier, recently. A lot of things have. College is good for him, he thinks. Recovery is good for him. He's doing well, too. He's been able to keep himself on track, even though he's living alone. Sometimes, the Sun is too bright, or his food isn't appetizing. But he takes it a day at a time, as his mother tells him.
It's not as scary as he thinks.