SILENCE BETWEEN SONGS . . . oneshots

🎶 ryder.

apply fic ocs oneshot ; i wrote most of this while on the plane and it's lowkey ass but whatever. shoutout to callumsluv for going along with me and making a sibling oc with me bc im insufferable <3
— warnings : it's so short oops. also i wrote this in present tense even though i can't write in present tense?? mentions of alcohol and bad parenting / bad childhoods.

❝ you just wanted a friend
didn't know it then but now i do ❞

HER STARE PIERCES at the city sprawling below her. She clutches a bottle in her hand with a death grip, debating whether to drop it below. It would take approximately three seconds as gravity pulled down on it before crashing to the ground and shattering due to the force involved. The sound would echo in a radius of give or take thirty feet. Things she easily calculated in her too-good mind.

That's what got her in this situation, anyway. Because if she wasn't born with her father's brain — no, a better brain than his, she's been told this all her life: special girl, gifted child, genius kid — then she wouldn't have been pushed to be him. And if she wasn't pushed to be him, then she wouldn't have hurt the one person who loved her unconditionally. Maybe the only person to do that.

He's the reason why she has the bottle in the first place, after all. He started sneaking alcohol into their hands to rebel against their parents and their expectations for them. He does it to make her feel better, which only makes her feel worse.

Her arm dangles in the air, bottle clutched in her hand. She mentally prepares to drop the bottle. Once her fingers slip from the bottle, it'll fall for three seconds, letting gravity take it, then crash on the sidewalk with a force too great to keep the bottle together, and it'll shatter. The sound will echo thirty feet, but no one will care.

3 . . . 2 . . . 1—

A hand grabs her arm, pulls it so it's inside. The bottle is still in her hand, and not in any danger of dropping and shattering.

"You should know better than to waste good alcohol," he chides, as if everything hasn't changed between them.

She's silent, staring out the window. She's avoiding his gaze, and they both know it. He plucks the bottle from her hand, and she wonders when her grip loosened on it enough for him to take it from her without a fight.

He didn't say anything, not yet, anyway. They both know that she won't say anything. She can't bear to look at him, but she knows he's fiddling with the bottle in his hands. He pops the cap off and takes a drink from the bottle.

She hears it as he closes the bottle and attempts to put his legs up on the windowsill with her, but they've never been able to fit them both on here, not since they were kids.

After a few moments, he gave up, his feet planted on the ground, but he still faced her.

"We grew up together, you know," he says. "I know why you lash out."

"Don't regale me with your bullshit," she snaps back. "Nothing you say will make this better."

"I understand you," he carries on as if he doesn't hear her. Jerk. "More than you think I do."

He doesn't. She knows he doesn't. She looks at the cracks in the windows that were only cracked because of her rage, when she'd thrown a bottle at them so hard the glass cracked.

But then she remembers the castles made out of pillows that he'd made for them when life got too tough. When they wanted to be normal kids who had normal lives. He'd built them so many places to hide from their legacies, from their parents' shaping of them and their futures.

Maybe he does understand.

"I always left you out," he tells her. "You just wanted a friend. Someone to realize your goals, what you wanted. I realize that now. You don't want to be like dad."

"I don't," she agrees. Amelie Tanaka never wanted the weight of her father's last name on her shoulders. She wanted to be Amelie Sinclaire, or even just Amelie, the activist. The girl who would revolutionize the world. "Being him isn't bad. Being better than him isn't bad, either. But that's not for me. I shadow him at work and—" she shudders. "I don't want to be a doctor. I don't want to be a surgeon. There's my youth down the drain, I guess."

He winces, his head falling down on her shoulder casually. Her body became rigid, but she didn't push him off of her. "I'll take all of the blame for every time you cried," he tells her. "You could've cried on my shoulder, like I do on you. I'm lucky that you let me."

"It was the least I could do," she insists. "Considering I was ruining your life."

"How did you do all of that?" he asks. "Besides the obvious."

She shrugged. "It's easier when I'm at home. Have you ever noticed that the sabotage stopped whenever Father took me to Japan?"

He smiles wryly. "I would've had to know that you were sabotaging me in the first place."

Her eyes roll, so hard she can practically see the back of her brain. "Everyone knows you're not the genius of this family."

Sebastian chuckles at that, and although there's a lot unspoken between them, Amelie thinks that they've gotten over the worst of it. Hopefully. "I shouldn't have left you behind," he adds, sobering the mood again.

"We're just kids," she reminds him. "Caught in the crossfire of our parents' expectations for us. But you'll be alright."

He nudges her with his arm. "We'll be alright," he corrects her. "I know it's hard sometimes. But we'll be alright."

Even if their futures didn't end up the way they wanted, Amelie and Sebastian Tanaka would not change as the time fades behind them. They're in it together.

❝ i know it's hard sometimes
but you'll be alright, oh, we'll be alright ❞