THERE WERE TWO THINGS RAPHAEL ZHENYA WAS GOOD AT- Hiding and, the odd times, surviving. The man couldn't count without using his fingers, but he could put a bullet in your skull before you even knew he was in the room with you. Those were two of the very limited talents and skills that had helped Ralph all throughout his life, even before... Everything.
He was always able to sneak an extra soda out of a store, or slip an answer sheet off of a teacher's desk, and everytime he did it, he would be gone without a trace.
He was always able to name any animal he saw and then offer you a list of ways to turn it into soup or cook it over a fire, and it was unnerving, but proved to be more than helpful.
Many people called Ralph stupid for caring about such stuff. It was stupid. Why would you need to know how to make rabbit stew if you had a pantry full of Goldfish?
Sometimes, Ralph would get bashful about it and agree, say something like "maybe I'll need it one day!" and then laugh it off as if he wasn't super embarrassed. However, all those times Ralph had joked about "needing" those skills at dinner parties and high school reunions soon proved to be true.
Maybe Ralph could add "being right" to his list of skills.
...
'MORNING.' Ralph smiled at his daughter, watching the girl shuffle down the hallway and fall into a blob of tiredness at the kitchen table, awaiting her daily meal of cornflakes and apple juice.
Lou made a grumbling sound to let him know that she had heard him, and then promptly smacked her face down onto the furniture below her. It thumped, and the utensils on the table rattled, but she didn't bother to lift her head back up, not even when her cereal was planted in front of her and her juice was placed next to it.
'Come on, Lou. Lighten up.' He mumbled, giving her a tap on the side of the head. She didn't move, still like a corpse.
'Can I have a snow day?' Her voice came from over his shoulder whenever he turned his back, suddenly bright and happy.
'It's summer.' He laughed.
'No, it's not. This is all a dream. Wake up, dad! Wake up!' She said jokingly. Even though his back was turned, he could tell she was doing all of her dramatic little hand gestures and head movements to further sell the act she was putting on. 'Seriously, though. I think it would be... Beneficial if I stayed home today.'
'Beneficial? Do you even know what that word means?' He taunted, even though there was a hint of seriosity to it. God knew he didn't use fancy words like that.
'Duh. I'm not fourteen, dad.' Ralph ignored the snide comment, taking slight offense because he definitely wouldn't be saying "beneficial" at fourteen, and looked down at his watch.
'Yeah, big talk for a fifteen year old. Now, eat.' He said, acting all hurriedly all of a sudden. He walked past the table and tapped it a couple times to get his point across before continuing down the hallway and out of sight to his humble abode at the end of the corridor. Lou stood up and leaned across the table to watch him.
He stopped infront of his bedroom door, reached for his keys, unlocked it, stepped inside, closed the door behind him.
Out of every single thing to happen in her life, that was the one thing that happened every single day. Her dad would disappear into his bedroom for a handful of minutes and then lock the door behind him and not touch it until the day ended and it was time for him to sleep.
Aside from that, Lou began to review her options.
What would buy her a day off of school?
Maybe, if she ran across the hallway, Tess would hide her behind the couch and cover for her. But Joel wouldn't like that, and Joel was spooky. He was never mean to her or anything, quite the opposite infact, but Ralph seemed scared of him. So that must've meant something.
Ralph was scared of, like, everything, though. He hated birds and insects and he couldn't stand meeting new people. He didn't even speak to Tess and Joel that much, even though the duo had a spare set of keys to their apartment, and vice versa. Lou had been hassling him into getting back into the dating game, but he had gotten into many arguments about it. She even offered to set him up with Tess, but he had declined.
'Tess is scary. Now, can you leave, please, sweetheart?' He had shook his head and ushered her out of his bedroom one afternoon, acting like he had just seen a ghost when he noticed her standing in the doorway. By legalities, Lou wasn't even in the room, but he still grabbed her by the shoulders and steered her like a go-kart into the kitchen.
Despite what many people might've joked about (or geniunely believed), Lousie Yugen Zhenya was not stupid. Her dad was hiding something. The question was what?
Drugs? Money? Guns? Weed? Porn? All of it was a mystery, and all of it hid behind her dad's bedroom door.
...Hm.
Maybe she had found something to do on her day off.
...
NOTES!
remember when i said ralph was a normal guy??
yeah i lied this mf is shady as SHITTTT
this chapter is rly short SORRY
this is just meant to be a tiny introduction bc i'll be posting chapter 2 tomorrow
i love lou
i love ralph
zhenya supremacy
ok bye!
YOU ARE READING
borderline - the last of us.
Fanfiction'we're on the borderline, caught between the lines of pain and rapture.' in which ralph leaves his bedroom door unlocked, a nosey neighbour blackmails him, and now he's stuck backpacking across the country with his daughter and a strange little...
