Chapter Text
It's the night before the recital. Mari wants to practice again, to get that one harmony just right, but Sunny can feel something creaking behind his jaws. Something is about to break, he can feel it. He wants it to be perfect too, he wants it to be just right, but he can't. He wants to throw his violin down the stairs and give up forever, tell her to do it by herself and never talk to him again, to accept his place as the disappointment kid brother. Something budding dark and vicious in his heart tells him to hurt her like she hurts him, barbed words and sharp nails. As Mari demands that he "do it again, but pay attention to the tempo", Sunny drops his violin in a fit of frustration and storms out of the house. If this keeps going, he's going to do something that he can't take back. He needs an escape. A refuge. The treehouse is too close, too obvious.
Sunny runs down the street, sneakers slapping on concrete, warm evening air on his skin, mailboxes flying by as he races faster than he ever had in gym. Mari yells something from the front step, probably about how he's a quitter and how he sucks and how she'll tell everyone he wimped out on their promise to do the recital together. His eyes burn. The lake. The lake is fine, it's safe, their friend group is the only one who goes there, and they leave toys and things there that he could use to pass the time and take his mind off things. He can hang out there until...until...
Mari immediately went into damage control. Sunny running away from home is dangerous. He could get hurt, he could get in trouble, what if something happened to him? Hero lived next door, she could get him to help her wrangle her kid brother. In turn, Hero recruited his kid brother Kel, who recruited Audrey and Basil. Understanding that while it was unlikely that Sunny was in any real danger or had gone too far, the group convened to designate search parties. All of them had some inkling of where Sunny had most likely gone, but Basil was the first to volunteer to search the park. Normally quiet and content to fade into the background, Basil felt the need to stand his ground and refuse any offered help, determined to go it alone. As much as Aubrey and Kel want to help, Sunny would probably feel overwhelmed and shut down if faced with too many people right now, and Basil managed to speak up first. Besides, Hero reminds them, there's still the mart and the school grounds to search!
There are still a few people milling about in the park, but nobody gives Basil more than a passing glance as he jogs through to the gang's not-so-secret hideout: the lake. The trees and undergrowth are enough to hide it away from the main park, the little path unkept and forgotten by most, sticks snagging at his shoelaces even on the trail they'd kicked mostly clear. When he emerges from the copse of trees and peers beyond the faded road blocks he sees exactly what he expected: Sunny, hunched on the end of the peer. A little pile of sticks and pebbles beside him, plunked into the lake one by one. His shoulders raise at the dull sound of footsteps on grass, apprehensive.
"Sunny!" Basil calls out, not wanting to startle him when he steps onto the pier. Sunny's shoulders lower and sag. With the pile of sticks and pebbles between them, Basil sits on the rough old planks and dangles his feet over the water. "Mari's looking for you. Did something happen?" Sunny's face is blank as always, but radiates an air of misery. "Do you want to talk about it?"
He...doesn't know if he wants to talk about it. What could he say? Is it his fault, her fault, both? It's hard to put a name on what he's feeling or decide how he should act. All he could think to do was to run away so that he didn't...didn't what? It's stupid, he should be better than this, more mature. If he could just get the stupid tempo right then Mari wouldn't have yelled at him, but why couldn't she just leave it alone? He's just her dumb shitty kid brother who can't do anything right, not like her. The sticks make tiny splashes that ripple away when he throws them in, then bob back up to the surface for a few moments before they saturate and eventually disappear in the depths. The stones plop right in and disappear immediately.
"Is it about the recital?" Basil asks, picking up a stick with loose lichen-covered bark. Sunny thought it was, but maybe it isn't? Maybe it's just about Mari. Maybe it's about himself. Maybe it's about expectations. Maybe if he can't be the best, he's just the worst. Basil peels the bark off in little crack-crack-cracks, dropping the flakes onto the surface of the lake where they slowly spin and eventually sink. "I don't have an older sister--or any siblings, but I can kind of understand. Mari seems really sweet and cool, but she's a perfectionist. You don't have to feel guilty about not being perfect, we're just kids. We can't be perfect. Not even adults are perfect, you know? She's not perfect either." The inner bark of the stick is the same pale tan as the backs of Basil's hands, Sunny notices. The barkless stick doesn't float when Basil drops it in, like a stone. "I can talk to her for you if you want. I can tell her that you wanted to play for fun, and that you agreed to the recital because you wanted to do something with her and because you love her."
That sounds right. Mostly. Basil kind of gets it. Better than Mari does, anyway. Sunny's throat still feels knotted and dry, his eyes hot and unfocused and pointed in the direction of Basil's hands. They pick up a rock and rub away a lump of dirt before dropping it into the water, like it needed to be broken into component parts first.
"Sunny...do you even want to do the recital? You don't have to," Basil says softly.
He does, he wants to, but he'll let Mari down, he'll let himself down, he'll mess up so why even try, why do anything when it'll just be annoying and frustrating and disappointing for everyone. Sunny pulls his feet up onto the dock and crosses his arms over his knees, hiding his face in the dark space. Maybe he's just overwhelmed? Maybe he's scared. He's definitely weird. He can't cry even if he wants to. "I...dunno."
"If you decide to do it, I'll come to cheer you on," Basil reassures him, "And I can stay by you before and after to stop Mari if she tries to say anything mean?"
"Maybe," Sunny sighs, "It's a lot. It's..." He struggles to find the words, like wrestling an overstuffed suitcase to zip it shut, but not everything will fit in just one bag. He's scared, he's angry, he wants to do well too, he wants to be perfect too, it's just too much, Mari is Too Much. It's a lot, he decides, it's just a lot.
"Yeah," Basil agrees. His hand is warm on Sunny's back. "I might not get siblings, but I can be here if you need a break." A stick makes another splash in the water. "Actually, do you want to spend the night at my house? Getting some space might help. We don't have to do anything at all, and if anyone asks you're fine and need some time to yourself. Grandma can call your parents about it."
The idea rolls around in Sunny's head like a marble, swirling, plunking into yes as he tilts his head. He scoots a little closer to Basil on the dock, sticks and pebbles poking his thigh. The hand on his back slides up onto his shoulder, squeezing reassuringly. His throat still feels dry and tingly and his fingers itch like they did when he first started developing callouses, but he doesn't want to scream and hit and disappear. Something about this sands down all the sharpest pointiest bits of him, makes him smooth and handle-able again. Basil. Basil helps. "Okay," he says, head tilting further until it thumps into Basil's shoulder, "But can we...sit here for a while? It's nice."
"Yeah! Of course!" Basil's almost too enthusiastic, but that's nice too. Someone is enthusiastic about him, about spending time with him. Even if he's not fun to be around, even if he's depressing, even if he's annoying and can't say anything right. It's...nice.