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Riz Gukgak is many things. Riz Gukgak is a bad kid and a good son. The Ball. The briefcase kid. A Goblin. A Rogue. A nerd. A friend. And a target.
Riz Gukgak is many things but he is not and will never be a romance partner. This is a strong sentiment to be sure. One that he had seen questioned before.
"You're so young."
"How can you be sure."
"You just haven't met the right person yet."
Riz had yet to be on the receiving end of these questions, because Riz was a rogue and as such he was very good at hiding. Hiding was easy. Especially when you are very small and very dexterous.
Especially when you have no friends.
Hiding with friends was both better and worse. Better because sometimes they gave you the help action, better because being useful made something buzzing in his skin quiet. Worse because there was someone looking for him now, someone other than his mom with tired eyes and an understanding pull to her lips.
People would ask him questions and wait for answers. People would follow him when he ran, poke him when he went quiet. After so long on the edge, in the dark, been seen felt a like burning.
He loved his friends, sometimes he just wished they loved him a little less, a little quieter. The way he was used to being loved.
Milk in his cereal, a note on the fridge. Waiting up past his bed time, because Penny went home at 9pm and his parents didn't. Riz liked the quiet. It was easy, waiting gave him structure. He wasn't sure what to do with people who didn't give him the chance to wait. People who wanted to wait for him.
It felt fragile.
He talked about it sometimes, with Gorgug and Adaine. They understood some of his, like he understood some of theirs. They were the quieter kids, the kids who grew up underfoot or overhead in Gorgugs case. They didn't know how to be a friend all of the time, none of them had much practice. It felt like improv, like trying to "yes and" yourself into being memorable and likeable and worthwhile.
Every time Fabian, Fig or Kristen would reference something vital they must have done before they would try and decode the experience. Sleepovers were embarrassing and hard to remember but fun, sneaking into movies was embarrassing regardless of success at this point in time, most of the experiences seemed embarrassing to summarise. Sometimes he would miscalculate. Their group was a mishmash of people who had experienced abnormal childhoods one way or another and sometimes nodding along would garner him concerned looks.
The general rules were don't agree with Kristen on religion, Adaine on parental punishments, or Fabian on any substance use. Kristen was raised in a cult and thought that everyone grew up with threats of hell threaded through their lullabies. Adaine was still coming to terms with her parents abuse. And Fabian could not actually remember the first time he drank or did drugs. His father told them all a story about Fabian mistaking snuff for sherbert as a toddler, which had not been fact checked. Noone felt like it was necessary.
Hiding was easier when you knew what you were trying to blend in with.
It had been another miscalculation. This whole mess.
It was Fabian. Of course it was Fabian. Fabian was everything Riz had wanted to be, to start with. He was broad, handsome, tall, rich and popular. It felt like if he could get Fabian to like him, then that would somehow validate everything he was. Short, poor, off putting and a goblin. If Riz Gukgak was Fabians' friend, his best friend even, then everyone who ever bullied him would be wrong.
Then Riz got to know Fabian and that was almost worse. Fabian was kind, in a stunted honest way. He hid his caring behind wealth and a cocksure attitude. Fabian was funny, smarter than he thought and so sad. He hid it. But you cant really hide from Riz, his passive perception was higher than some peoples active. Fabian was lonely, he was popular and brilliant and he was lonely. Just a little boy in a big house, the boy grew up and the house got emptier. And Riz stopped being able to see that ideal, that paragon of popularity that could make him worthwhile, and he started to see Fabian.
So, of course when Fabian started teasing him about never being kissed he over corrected. Fabian was still... Fabian. He didn't know when to stop pushing, hadn't grown up learning that you cant replace everything that breaks.
Riz felt his hiding spot crumble, felt the approaching conversation.
Being seen.
Weighed.
Judged.
He lied.
Not just a little lie either, like implying that you understood a glance you did not understand, or suggesting that you may have had sleepovers before, when the closest you had was when you feel asleep before Penny left, because you pulled an all nighter assembling your dads' clues.
A big lie. A fact checkable lie. A lie you got teased about and couldn't stop yourself from repeating and defending.
Thus, Baron was born. Baron from the Baronies. Riz is fairly certain that the only reason his friends didn't call him out on that was because they were too focused on how funny they found it, and on trying to make him feel bad for lying to them by pretending to believe and support him.
He refused to entertain the possibility that they just trusted him too much to question it. He loved his friends, but... No thats a terrible way to phrase it. He loved his friends, and they were assholes.
It was embarrassingly bad as far as lies went. He may have even found it funny, if he hadn't been so painfully aware of what was under the lie, what they would find if they just shifted it to the side.
It terrified him. In a manner beyond concrete fear. Of course he knew his friends wouldn't hate him for this, for being different. But hate wasn't the only thing he feared. He imagined pity, denial of him from the people he loved.
He imagined fading interest, moving on. Everyone having someone. It terrified him.
The Baron was almost less scary. Sure they had a blank face, and otherworldly powers fuelled by something called the "Nightmare King", and maybe they came through his mirror and kidnapped him. But that was adventure.
That was a fight. And Riz could handle a fight, could count on his friends to come for him and to fight with him.
Being... not like everyone else wasn't as simple. It was inside of him, a little blackhole that sucked in good feelings, compressed his lungs and hollowed him.
Riz had made a place to hide, and it stoped feeling safe, stoped feeling like a choice and became a need. He learned what he was hiding from, it wasn't the baron wasn't a monster. Riz was hiding from himself. And that was a kind of fear that didn't leave, a kind of fear you cant face.
At least not without a mirror and Riz had never replaced his. Hadn't felt right. He didn't need to see himself anyway.
The bad kids had done what the bad kids did, they beat the bad guy. They died and came back. They gained trauma, scars and friends and they went home. The battle was simple. It was terrible and awful and scaring, but simple. There's the bad guy, banish it, punch it, shoot it. Baron was gone. It saved him a conversation. Riz was still hiding. Still felt the fear like icy hands on his ankles, dragging him into dark and cold nothingness. Like being abandoned or like hiding forever. He didn't know which was worse. He didn't want to chose, maybe he could let it split him, like a deer in headlights. It would barely be his fault. No more than anything else that had already happened.
Baron was gone. Riz was still here. Riz Gukgak was many things, he felt like he was failing all of them. Baron was gone, his secret was burning him inside out. Baron was back. And he was being asked a question he didn't want to answer.
"What was up with Baron? The Ball were you really dating that guy?"
Luckily as previously stated, his friends were assholes and he loved them.
"Whats wring with Riz dating a guy? Homophobe!"
"What? Kristen, no. I'm not homophobic, okay? It's not the guy thing, it's the crawling on the fucking ceiling thing!"
"I don't know Fabian, seems a little homophobic to me."
"Fig, stop. Ragh, Ragh tell them I'm not homophobic, please."
"Woooooow, Fabian pulling the ol' I have gay friends card, classic homophobe!"
"I love you man, but you can't use my identity like that."
"That was pretty fucked up Fabian."
"Et tu Raugh- and Gorgug? What happened to Owlbears forever?"
"Pretty sure Gorthalax implemented a strong anti-bigotry rule after Daybreaks' whole mess."
Adaine sat next to him as everyone continued to decline into increasingly absurd bickering. It seemed to have passed onto Daybreaks' sexuality, a topic that Kristen and Ragh had fiercly opposing, yet parallel, opinions on.
He looked at her, but she looked straight ahead, eyes locked on their friends. She looked tired, and a bit bloody from her run in with Baron-Fabian, half healed and beautiful. He felt guilt curdle in his stomach, his friends had been hurt because of him. Adaine was still bleeding a bit.
She put her hand on his knee. He slumped into her shoulder like his strings had been cut.
Poor choice of words.
They sat quietly. Together.