Oh My God, They Were Roommates

28 | Every Breath You Take

a/n: Reminder that translations are in the comments for now until I think of a better system :D

"So... you weren't an escort for my dad," Ray reiterated, and for the hundredth time, Sora nodded against the hand he used to hold his head up above the kotatsu table.

Ray put his elbow to the table surface and sighed. Sora glanced at him, curious as to what, exactly, was happening. "I feel... weird calling him 'dad'. Do I just call him 'Matias'?"

"Call him whatever you want. He started a literal brawl in a white-collared event full of CEOs," Sora said. He dropped his hand down as Ray hummed, sounding far away. "You've really never met him?"

Ray shook his head. "No. My Aunt Natalia raised me," he said, only to shake his head. "Mom. She's basically my mom. I don't—I don't know who my actual mom is, but she's basically it."

"And she never... talked about Matias?"

Again, Ray shook his head. "Whenever my abue mentioned him, my ma usually changed the subject. Or she'd start cursing at him. Or... throw something. She doesn't think fondly of him."

Sora licked his bottom lip and sighed, "Right." because he didn't know what else to say to that. Sure, he had family issues, but he didn't talk about them. He didn't even know how people would cope with the amount of shit on his plate, so he just kept it to himself.

But now he was intrigued, so he decided to keep Ray talking. "Did you know he lived in San Francisco?"

Ray shook his head. "No. I didn't even know he was in the US, honestly. I figured he was still back home. Like, in Mexico."

"Oh. Does that... bother you?" Sora asked, and Ray glanced up at him, lips pursed. "I mean, it's fine if you don't want to meet your dad. I guess I just want to know how you... feel about him?"

"Indifferent," Ray decided. He pushed to his feet then and said, "I think I'm gonna go to bed now."

Sora watched Ray walk off to the open bedroom door. He had hoped telling Ray would ease some of his own anxieties about the night, but it only fueled them. As dismissive as Ray was trying to be, Sora was all to familiar with liars.

Ray shut his bedroom door behind him. He turned off the lights and, dressed in his grubby basketball shorts and tshirt, collapsed onto his bed. He wormed his way under the blankets and laid there, facing the window, his brow strung tight. It grained on his aching brain and the muscles in his forehead until the morning, when he didn't realize he fell asleep like that and woke up with a raging headache.

Distantly, he heard the buzzer in the foyer going off. It was only nine, which meant that Sora was probably still around to see who was at the door. Sure enough, Ray's phone blinked on the pillow next to him—a text from Sora.

Ray picked up his phone, curious and frowning. He couldn't seem to unstick the sour expression from his face.

"Xavier's at the door. Do you want me to answer it?"

Xavier was in the same boat Ray was in, and recognizing this had Ray realizing the very reason his forehead hurt so much. His father—No, Matias de Lucía. Just Matias.

Sure, he could go around telling Sora, Leo, or even Huey that his father was back, but they were never there. They weren't there for the eighteen years of his life in which Matias just didn't exist. He had no notion of a father. Aunt Natalia was it all—his primary caregiver, his guardian, his mother in all sense of the word.