A/N: My inability to control my creative impulses knows no bounds. I'm a mess. But...BE NICE TO MY DARLING BABY.
Special Dedication: Static Lull--for bein' great & reading it over. You lovely, lovely girl. And RosalynAngel--'cause I read "Existentialism" and I was like "I LUV ME SUM AKURIKU LOL". And I do. There should be more? Why isn't there more? MOAR PLZ. Wow, I'm tired.
Chapter One
"Adolescents are not monsters. They are just people trying to learn how to make it among the adults in the world, who are probably not so sure themselves."
-Virginia Satir
Like most of the people centered in his generation, Riku went through the daily motions of dragging himself out of bed and into the local high school. He would mumble a bleary hello to Sora before ignoring their homeroom teacher's valiant efforts to talk about current events and the state of the world, his head collapsing softly on his unfinished Spanish homework. Tidus would snicker and write something rude and usually oriented around their Spanish teacher's large (and possibly fake, but much like the amount of licks it took to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop, the world will never know) breasts, sometimes accompanied by a picture that may or may not be discovered by Selphie, provided that it got passed to her for a cursory once-over before being handed in. He may or may not get ridiculed during class for screwing up tenses before heading to study hall or an early lunch, where he could watch Tidus and Wakka play table-football on the counter, Sora chew too noisily with his mouth far too open, and Kairi and Selphie simultaneously compare what "that totally hot kid from American Lit, you know the one" meant when he looked in their general direction and starve themselves.
He would walk home with Kairi and Sora, listening to them alternately bicker amongst themselves ("No, Sora, I am not doing Trepe's work for you." "C'mon, Kai, be a pal! She'll never know!" "She always knows. I have no clue how, but she does.") and slip each other underhanded compliments (example: "You just won't do my homework because you think that CP is beneath your AP-lovin' self."). At around this point, Kairi will usually lie about finishing up required reading for the Autism Awareness Club in an attempt to mask the fact that she's going to throw up all three pieces of lettuce she consumed at lunch in her toilet while Sora slouches off to his the house adjacent to Riku's, dead-set on maintaining his D average by killing his brain cells with junk food, video games, and "witty" v-blogs. Riku would bitch and moan for about ten minutes over the phone while he got dressed for work, where he could get cussed out by his hot co-worker and wash dishes, all the while being paid five dollars above minimum wage.
It wasn't heaven, but it wasn't hell. It just was. People talked about things being boring, sometimes but what were they gonna do about it? Nothing. It was such a waste of time, expecting something radical and new and different to pop up. If you wanted something fun, you lied about your age so you could go play beer pong in a seedy club. However, those people usually ended up drugged, pregnant, and/or shot, or were told about possibly becoming all three, so kids usually stayed away from them.
But now…things were not as they were. Something had stirred up the town—or more accurately, the high school (to be specific, the junior class because the freshman were too preoccupied with squealing over being in high school, the seniors were too cool, and the sophomores usually forgotten about).
To be even more direct, Sora Cooper.
It was more than likely that it would've gone unnoticed if Sora hadn't practically broken Kairi's neck by throwing his binder, pencil case, and student planner into the air as he tripped over to them.
"HOLY SHIT." Kairi squealed, rubbing her neck.
"No, wait, shut up," Sora said, "This is like, way more interesting than Senora Lockhart's boobs or whatever you guys are talking about."
Tidus paused in his depiction on the counter, ballpoint pen held poised over the formica table-top. "You lie."
"No way, man. This is better—way better—than that weird lesbian scandal or the footage from the girls' locker room after the Zanarkand match." Sora babbled enthusiastically, emphasizing the better quality by slamming his hands down on the table.
Wakka sighed. "I don't believe it, man. The Zanarkand match was fuckin' crisp."
Selphie paused in her lunchtime ritual of ripping her salad into pieces and dissecting tomatoes to say frantically, "There wasn't really a camera, was there? Ohmigod, you have to be joking—I was in that video, wasn't I? Could you see my cellulite? Shit, you could, couldn't you? I knew I should've done that fucking lemon-water fast, but I'm allergic so I thought I could just get—"
"ANYWAYS," Sora interrupted, leaving Selphie to gibber to herself, "there's a new kid and he looks like a sad clown. And he's, like, new but also not, and he's in this totally weird thing; it's like, a gang or something. There's a secret tattoo that all of them have. Initials, or something." He looked at his friends excitedly, blue eyes blazing with the adrenaline rush that comes with having the freshest gossip.
He was greeted with silence, and ultimately, disappointment.
"Jesus, Sora, you gossip like a girl." said Riku abortively, rolling his eyes. Honestly.
"Gossiping is wrong!" Kairi piped up. Riku gave her a Look and she had the grace to blush. He'd once seen Kairi practically body-slam a freshman in the quad for information on the American Lit kid.
"Totally." Selphie said, having gotten over being taped changing, as she was unable to extract any more information from Tidus, who had merely cackled something about it getting nearly five thousand views before returning to his artwork. "I mean, it's so old school. Who cares what some weird transfer kid does?"
"Unless it's in relation to Lulu." Wakka put in. His gaze shifted towards Sora, and then Riku before adding slowly, "It's not…right?"
Lulu was Riku's co-worker, Sora's second aunt twice removed (or something equally ridiculous), and the unwilling object of Wakka's devotion. She was twenty-something goth-in-a-box with a body that could rival Senora Lockhart's.
"It's not." Sora said dismally, recognizing that he was losing his last possible audience member. "You wanna know, right, Riku?" he pleaded, eyeballing his friend.
Poor kid; you must be desperate. "No," he said flatly. "Can we just eat, like normal? Except for Kai, 'cause she's about to hurl. Bye, Kairi, have a nice time." He waved at the redhead, who was halfway out of her seat, plastic container of salad clutched in her hand.
"Bulimia is so '87, Heather." Tidus simpered, batting his eyelashes at the slowly reddening girl.
Riku relaxed, settling back into his seat as he watched Wakka and Sora snicker as Kairi slowly sank back down. Selphie snarled at all them for being insensitive, then slapped Tidus none too gently on the back of the head for making the suggestion that Senora Lockhart 'hearted' anyone, least of all a shrimpy junior with a bad highlighting job.
Normal. Average. Ordinary.
Just like always.
[--]
"You're late again, kid." Lulu scowled, standing akimbo in the doorway. As nice as she was to look at, she was blocking his way so Riku gently pushed her to the side. He reached underneath the sink for spare sponges, ignoring the brunette as she launched into a tirade about his chronic tardiness and lack of respect for the restaurant.
"…and that's why I'm giving you the noob, okay? Show him what's going down." Lulu finished, punctuating the finale of her rant with a sigh. She cuffed the side of Riku's head lightly with her hand, straightened her tie, and made to march through the double-doors—or at least she would've, if not for her (least) favorite busboy's hand on her arm.
"Wait, what? What noob? I don't see any noob." Riku said desperately.
"Over there, kitchen bitch." Lulu snapped. "Jesus. If you spent as much time paying attention to what I say as you do looking at my rack, maybe I wouldn't have to repeat myself. Fuck!" She stormed off.
Riku cursed under his breath; there had been a reason that the manager had pleaded for him to keep Lulu cheery throughout their shared shift—not only was she the most valuable waitress that the Usual Spot employed, she was also the only one on the waiting staff to actually show up on time and take, at a minimum, two smoking breaks. And if she went out for a lunch break, she at least had the decency to come back—much unlike Rikku and Paine, who had been the Usual Spot's dynamic duo until they'd left to go to Mickey D's and had 'accidentally' went to Vegas instead.
And now Lulu was pissed off. She was probably going to make an unsuspecting customer cry for ordering meat.
"Whoa, man. You gotta watch out for the hot ones—they can snap, yanno?"…And now he had some freak of a customer all up in his face, probably wondering about why a busty brunette had spit into his chicken parmesan.
"Customers aren't supposed to be back here, sir." Riku said, sounding (for once) professional. "If you have an issue, please take it up with Xigbar. He's the fucking weirdo—" Not supposed to cuss in front of the paying people, crap. "—lovely man by the entrance. Odd hair, eye patch, attitude problem. Can't be missed." Should that fail, please look for a mysterious cloud of smoke. Somewhere in that smog should be our darling manager. If he's not, you know, too busy smoking up to actually do his job.
"But," said the customer who, like, really needed to go or something before Riku accidentally decapitated him with a bottle of Scrub-Buster, "she told me to look for a kitchen bitch. And…you're the only one here. Besides for the hobo on the outside porch, and I don't think he's part of the establishment."
Riku whirled around, intent on lecturing this customer (be he paying or not) on the use of proper employee terms—he was a busboy, dammit, not a kitchen bitch. "Look, can you just…" he thundered, only to be greeted up by an up close and personal grin.
"Hey, man, I'm Noob. What can I do you for?"
Kill yourself, thought Riku meanly, and he threw the Scrub-Buster into the sink in a fit of irritation.
[--]
Noob turned out to be an awkwardly put-together boy around his age. He informed Riku (who wasn't listening) that he'd moved in a couple of weeks ago with his parents after having left a couple of years previously. "Glad to know this place hasn't changed," he said happily to the uninterested male next to him.
You're washing the dishes wrong, you stupid Neanderthal. Rinse, soap, rinse, soap, DRY. Learn and live it, noob, Riku thought viciously. He settled for a polite smile before replying, "Yeah, same as always. But why'd you leave in the first place?"
Noob—no, wait, Axel, that was his name—stopped and cocked a thin eyebrow. "You're kinda nosy, aren't you?" he said lightly, putting a plate into the cupboard above the sink.
Riku suppressed the urge to behead the noob's head with a butter knife and serve it up to some unfortunate CEO. He settled for a shrug and an apology. "Just asking."
"Well, since you're just asking—" I'll kill you, Riku thought, fingering the butter knife longingly. "—I'll just tell you, I guess. I got into some trouble a while back. Dogs eating dogs and so on. You know what I mean."
Uh, no. "Sure I do." Riku lied. "Happens to me…all the time."
"Really." Axel said flatly, leveling Riku with a blank stare. "Ever gotten stupid pranks played at your house? Sex calls to your mom? Harassed during school, the whole shebang?"
Uh. No, but Riku and his friends had caused some of that; not that it'd be wise to mention it.
"Harassed?" he asked weakly. "Oh, man, that…sucks. Yeah. Totally. What for?" Don't tell me, don't tell me, I don't actually want to know, please don't tell me.
"Hate crimes." Axel leered. "The rainbow army can't get a break, yanno?"
"…You're gay?"
"Been a verified Friend of Dorothy for four years now. Gotta membership card and everything."
"Really now." How very AWKWARD of you to say so. Riku scrubbed a dish with more intensity than was strictly necessary and blurted out something about throwing away the trash before it overtook the room. He ran towards the garbage disposal and hefted out the trash, nearly sprinting towards the dumpster.
Axel followed him.
"I got it, man." The redhead said, knocking away Riku's feeble protests with a sweep of his bony hand. He reached for the trash bag and swung it up and over the dumpster's rim. The motion raised the hem of his shirt by the merest centimeter—enough for Riku to see the slight curve of the letters S and C.
"What's that?" Riku asked curiously.
"What's what?"
"The letters."
"Dunno what you're talkin' about."
'There's a secret tattoo that all of them have. Initials, or something.'
"C'mon, the letters, man. What do they mean?"
Axel smiled—well, not so much a grin as a twisting and unfolding of lips to bare teeth and gums. "I'd tell you," he said, laughing, "but then I'd have to kill you."