Strange Shapes Snippets Volume 2
Here is more of my incredibly long Malik/Ryou problem!
Today’s Adventure: having long distance feelings with Monster World
Upon confirmation that Malik both has and can use video capabilities, they struggle through an hour or more of configuring and compatibility issues before the first connection works. The image of Ryou moving on screen sets off a spark of much wanted reunion and reignites whatever it was that made Malik put an ancient artifact into a bag destined for airport security. It’s the first time he’s seen Ryou’s face since they were separated.
Ryou is pretty even when lagging and pixelated. His clothes look too big and his hair kind of flips at the ends and the light from his monitor gives him a glow like the moon against his vaguely defined apartment.
“Sorry about the mess. I’m still finishing a project.”
Malik is not looking at the mess.
“What is it?”
“Oh, it’s kind of a redesign of a game world I made before.”
“Can I see?”
“Um, we can try. Can you even see me?”
“Yeah.” And he’s so happy to see Ryou at all and looking real and he’s adorable and beautiful and weird and makes sense all at the same time and Malik still does not see a mess. “It’s a little bit choppy, but it’s okay.”
“Okay, hang on.”
Ryou gets close to the screen and then the image gets patchy, flashing in and out of dark as Ryou unhooks his camera from whatever he has it balanced on. When things stabilize again, it’s difficult to tell what the camera is pointing at or even from what direction.
“Hello?” Malik tries.
“Still here, can you see?” The image is a little unstable but when it focuses it does so on a tiny village in the middle of getting a new paint job.
“Oh, yeah, there it is.”
“I’ve just been making some small changes right now. Colors, mostly, but I might change the setting a little, too. I played a game with Yuugi and the others with this, and it was really special to me, but I just have to change some things about it now.”
“Why?”
At first, Malik thinks the connection has frozen, but then Ryou moves the camera view to include himself next to his fantasy world. The scale is surprising.
“Sorry, I think I’m just used to hesitating when I talk to people about this. But I don’t need to do that with you.” His tone shifts from polite apology to casual confiding. The glow that accompanies Ryou smiling even through unpleasant memories might just be a lighting problem with his camera. The warmth of being some kind of special exception is definitely from the camera. Definitely.
“You remember I told you about my hand?” Ryou holds up his left hand as he talks. “The spirit in the Ring used my diorama to do it. Something I made for fun. You see the castle?”
The image swings from Ryou and shakily centers on a grey building painted to resemble stone. The tops of all its towers come to points, except what should be the largest one, which is missing.
Ryou continues, his voice sadder than Malik remembers. “He used the top of the tower. It went the whole way through.” Ryou puts his hand into frame palm up and lowers his arm, simulating the impalement. His face is off screen, but with the camera pulled toward him his voice is louder, clearer, closer, realer, like he’s right there. “I tried to clean it and put it back to the way it was afterwards, but the force and the blood… It was ruined. I’ve needed to make a new one since then. Now that everything is over I actually have the chance.”
Malik curls his fingers against his palm imagining the force of the injury. In various places around the world, people are living with similar damage that is directly Malik’s fault. His fingers curl tighter, pressing fingernails into his palm.
“Is your hand okay?” It’s too small a question for the size of the event. He didn’t give the injury the weight and consideration it was due while Ryou was in Egypt. It’s another pang of guilt, even though, at the time, he’d fully expected to deliver his apology and then be asked to never speak to Ryou again. Now, he’s finding himself aching to offer comfort he doesn’t know how to provide for an injury that healed long before he met its owner.
The tiny figures are, unsurprisingly, cute. Even through the awkward lighting of the camera, they look like Ryou’s friends, especially Yuugi, who has to have been a particularly custom-heavy job.
“I love making these. I still have a lot from before… so it’s nice to be able to make new ones.”
“You just use them like tokens?”
“Not like you’re thinking. They just represent where and who you are in the world.”
Malik laughs. “I could use one of those.”
Either missing Malik’s existential joke entirely or choosing to ignore it, Ryou leans enthusiastically toward the camera. “We should play! I can make a miniature for you too!”
“I’ve never played that kind of game before.”
“It’s fun!” He glances at the little figure in his hand. “And, you know, a bit of an escape.”
“Still escaping, huh?”
Ryou’s gaze on the miniature softens into tenderness Malik feels he shouldn’t be seeing. “Always, I think.”
Perhaps fueled by the feeling that he shouldn’t, he just wants to look. Whatever Ryou is feeling is pretty and real and makes Malik ache and just seeing it will be better than hearing the rules of another kind of game, no matter how fun.
“You should teach me, then.” He says it quietly, maybe reluctantly.
Instead of vanishing, the soft expression turns toward Malik. “Really!?”
“Yeah,” he replies weakly.
Ryou’s glow for this topic is enchanting. Tenderness is replaced with the camera shaking with his enthusiasm, but it’s just as wonderful. “Let me get you some materials, we can see what kind of character you’ll be!”
He’s grateful they aren’t playing Duel Monsters, but if anyone could make Malik feel like going near it again, it would be Ryou.
☆☆☆
Ryou holds the figure close to the camera. At first it’s too close and he has to pull back. “Here we go. What do you think?”
The tiny sculpture even has an extra swish of dark paint under its eyes and over its cheeks. It’s simple but touching to look at something made for him (and of him).
“It’s great. I like his eyes.”
“That’s my favorite part too.”
The pause as Ryou smiles at the screen wraps itself around Malik’s lungs and for a very warm breathless second he could swear Ryou is not talking about the figure.
Ryou reaches off screen and the moment vanishes only to be replaced by one just as warm.
“Here,” Ryou says, putting a white figure with a hood next to the tiny fantasy version of Malik. “Now they can go together.”
The white figure has Ryou’s eyes and his hair and is a healer.
“That suits you.”
