Rainbow Connection, AFTG ✔️

2.13

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JAMES

James woke up to a mass text from Wymack. It was about two hours late by the time he read it, but Wymack's morning message woke him right up: Kengo Moriyama was hospitalized again.

He flickered through sports channels for news while he drank his coffee, and Neil -- already awake -- seemed to know what he was looking for. Apparently, the text had woken him up, and he'd already scanned the news. Neil gave him his report; there was no new news yet, but Neil knew there'd be an update as soon as someone made it out to Castle Evermore to harass Riko for a comment. James knew he was right.

It was a heavy thing to carry around, knowing James had just recently crushed Riko's concept of love and control on top of Kengo's illness. He wanted to stop thinking about it -- about Jean and Vincent -- but it seemed to be impossible. All of his class notes were hastily written, nonsensical, and James barely absorbed his lessons, too consumed with empty pain. He found a way to shut his brain off when he did training with Kevin, and that meant James had been kicking their training up to eleven.

On Friday, Hayden invited him to flee the state. He hadn't phrased it like that, but James found it far more pleasing in the framework of running away from their stressful lives and hiding in the mountains of South Dakota.

Renee and Hayden's foster mother had just closed on a house, and the siblings wanted to go home and help her move that weekend. Matt was willing to get tickets for himself and Dan if she needed help. That meant that -- for at least a weekend -- James got to get out of school, exy, and just be a normal guy. That being said, he was a normal guy who was nervous to meet his boyfriend's mother.

"The first time I met her, I started crying, so I think whatever you do, she's mentally prepared for it," Hayden's advice was hardly helpful. They boarded the plane early in the morning, free from their classes, and Hayden took the window seat, leaving James sandwiched between him and his sister.

"Did you take your meds?" Renee asked early into the flight. Hayden had been tapping his finger rapidly and staring off into space. At her reminder, he took a drink and swallowed a pill.

The flight was short enough compared to some of the flights James had been on, but Hayden was eager to pass the time, so they switched between travel games like rock-paper-scissors and I Spy. Renee and James traded idle conversation about the magazines they were reading, and Hayden wouldn't stop singing Stephanie's praises.

"She kept looking for loopholes to adopt a legal adult," Hayden said, "If we'd met even a few months earlier, I'd be Hayden Walker right now."

"Doesn't have the same ring to it," James scrunched up his nose, "I think it's cute that we're Bishop and Knight, right?"

"You think we're cute?" Hayden smiled smugly and held James' hands on the armrest between them.

James rolled his eyes and deadpanned, "We're adorable."

At the airport in South Dakota, Stephanie picked them up in a rental van. She was younger than James had pictured her, brunette, and smiled as calmly as Renee. Hayden seemed to relax immediately when she hugged him, and James watched him curiously.

"It's good to see you two again," Stephanie told Matt and Dan. She settled her gaze on James and opened her arms, "James?"

"Yes," He nodded. After a second, he hugged her, shocked by the way they were received.

"It's very kind of you three to come up here to help me move," Stephanie said, "Really, these two shouldn't have dragged themselves out here, let alone you too."

"Matt can lift all the heavy things for us, Mom, don't complain," Hayden chided jokingly.

She smiled and drove them back to her new home. It had at least an acre of land, and James assumed that was common in somewhere as rural as South Dakota. He couldn't imagine people having neighbors in states like Montana. The porch wrapped around the left side, the home was two stories, and the UHAL truck was about two-thirds of the way unloaded already.