Imagines || shows and movies characters x reader

Sister's bond || Riley [Inside out 2]

Riley sat at the kitchen table, absentmindedly twirling a spoon in her cereal bowl. The clinking sound echoed softly in the otherwise quiet room, sunlight streaming through the windows, casting long shadows across the floor. The house felt too big, too empty. It always did when Y/n wasn't around.

She hadn't seen her sister in weeks—maybe even months—though Riley had lost track of time. Y/n had been busy with college, work, and whatever else she never seemed to talk about. It wasn't that they had fought or stopped talking. But there was something—something unspoken—hanging between them, a weight that Riley couldn't quite name.

"Still playing with your food, I see," came a voice from the doorway.

Riley looked up, startled, and found Y/n standing there, a small smile tugging at her lips. She leaned casually against the doorframe, but her eyes held something deeper, something cautious.

"Y/n," Riley said, a little too quickly, her voice betraying a mixture of surprise and hesitation. "I didn't know you were coming home."

Y/n shrugged, walking further into the kitchen. "I didn't know either, but... here I am." She glanced at the clock on the wall as if measuring how long she could stay, and then pulled out a chair to sit across from her younger sister.

An awkward silence settled between them, thick and heavy like a fog. It wasn't always like this. Once, Riley and Y/n had been inseparable, sharing secrets late into the night, laughing until their stomachs hurt. But as they got older, the space between them had grown wider, filled with unspoken words and lingering hurts.

"How's school?" Y/n asked, breaking the silence in that casual, surface-level way that people did when they didn't know how to talk about what really mattered.

Riley shrugged, pushing her cereal around the bowl. "It's fine. Same old stuff."

Y/n nodded, and another quiet moment passed between them. The tension was palpable, though neither would say it aloud.

As Y/n shifted in her seat, Riley noticed the small lines of stress around her sister's eyes, the way her smile never quite reached them anymore. She looked different. Not just older, but distant, like a part of her had drifted away to some place Riley couldn't follow.

"Mom and Dad said you've been working a lot," Riley ventured, her voice tentative, like she was testing the waters.

"Yeah," Y/n replied, staring down at her hands. "It's been... busy."

There was something in Y/n's tone—something weary, as if 'busy' was a stand-in for everything else she didn't want to say. Riley wanted to ask more, to push, but instead, she just nodded, feeling that familiar wall rise between them.

"I miss you, you know," Riley said softly, not daring to look up from her bowl.

Y/n glanced at her, her expression unreadable. She hesitated, as if weighing the response in her mind before she spoke. "I miss you too, Ri."

The words were there, but something felt off, as if they were said out of obligation, not truth. Riley's chest tightened, but she swallowed the feeling down, like she had done so many times before.

They both sat in the quiet again, the moments slipping by like sand through fingers. Riley had always been good at reading the emotions in a room—thanks to Joy, Sadness, and the rest of her emotions working overtime. But when it came to Y/n, it was like there was a block she couldn't push past.

"So... how's everything been with you? Really?" Riley asked, trying to sound casual, but the concern was clear in her voice.

Y/n sighed, running a hand through her hair. "It's... you know. Life. It's just a lot sometimes."

There it was again—that vagueness, that distance. Riley wanted to reach across the table, to break whatever invisible wall had built itself up between them over the years, but she didn't know how.

"You never talk about it," Riley said, her voice quieter now, more vulnerable. "I don't know what's going on with you anymore."

Y/n's gaze flickered, and for a moment, Riley thought she might say something real, something honest. But instead, Y/n just gave that same tight smile, the one that didn't reach her eyes.

"I'm fine, Ri. I've just been... busy."

That word again. Busy. It felt like a knife twisting in Riley's gut, a flimsy excuse that masked something deeper, something Y/n didn't want her to know. The silence stretched between them, more painful now than before, and Riley fought the urge to just scream, to tell Y/n to stop pretending everything was okay when it wasn't.

"I'm here, you know," Riley said after a long pause, her voice barely a whisper. "If you ever want to talk. About anything."

Y/n's smile faltered, just for a second, and in that brief moment, Riley saw something—an echo of pain, of sadness—but it was gone before she could make sense of it.

"Thanks," Y/n said softly, standing up from the table. She grabbed her coat from the back of the chair and slung it over her shoulder. "I should go. Got a lot to do today."

Riley nodded, her heart sinking, knowing this was how it always went. Y/n would come and go, leaving behind the same unresolved tension, the same unspoken hurt that neither of them knew how to fix.

As Y/n headed toward the door, Riley bit her lip, her mind racing with all the things she wanted to say. But she said none of them.

"See you later?" Riley asked instead, her voice hopeful, though she already knew the answer.

"Yeah," Y/n replied, glancing back over her shoulder. "Later."

And with that, Y/n was gone, leaving Riley alone in the too-big, too-empty house, the weight of what hadn't been said hanging in the air.

Riley stared at her half-eaten cereal, feeling that familiar ache in her chest. Whatever had come between her and Y/n over the years wasn't going to go away on its own. It would take more than these fleeting, shallow conversations to bridge the gap. But for now, it was all they had.