a/n: I've gotten hooked on Riku & Olette. There need to be more cuddly friendship pieces. I adore them.
our time
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Biking up and down streets with baseball cards in the spokes to make it sound louder. It's not the speed, says Riku, juice dribbling down his chin, it's the noise. It makes it better 'cause it's louder. He was ten and she was nine, and it was around that time they should've stopped being friends. 'Cause, you know, girls are icky.
(At least that's what Roxas said before he pushed her off the swings and stopped sharing his cupcakes with her at lunch. He had now formed some weird masculine bonding with Pence and Hayner, and they spent recess being stupid and grunting at each other.)
"That's stupid." Riku says. He inspects the limb that she shoves in his face, eyes trained on the Batman band-aid on her elbow. He kisses his thumb and presses it against the wound, saying with finality, "All better." And then, brightly, "You need to learn how to hit. So you can clock jerks like Roxas when I'm not around to help out."
She is ten and it is summer and Riku is curling his fingers over her tiny hand, spreading grape juice all over the length of her palm.
She doesn't need to learn how to throw a punch properly until she's thirteen. The semi-formal is two days away and Riku can't take her. He's got his own woman—some devastatingly pretty, hopelessly nice girl who is friendly to Olette whenever they stop by. And besides, Riku's up at the high school with his high school friends and couldn't possibly want to come back to middle school just to go to a dance.
And besides, Selphie tells her between giggles, Roxas is gonna ask you! And he thinks you're, like, super-cute! And he totally like-likes you!
Um, okay. Roxas had ignored whatever friendship they'd had in elementary school in favor of snapping her bra strap and stealing her iPod during homeroom, scrolling down the Playlist and dubbing every artist as "seriously lame". Olette's not sure that she wouldn't prefer being pushed down instead.
Not to mention being stood up on the night of the dance. Jerk.
When Roxas strolls up when the dance is over, she pulls back her fist and just lays into him—clocking him right across the face. It swells up almost instantly and he blinks, looking as if he might cry.
"That hurt." he says, surprised.
"You bet your ass it did." She is not going to cry. She is going to turn on her heel and walk away and make a perfectly dramatic exit. Screw Roxas. Screw him and his nice hair and the way he smelled really good and-and-everything about Roxas.
She takes out her phone and calls Riku, who is all "um, I'm kinda busy right now" when he picks up. She explains that she is going to commit a homicide if he doesn't show up.
He promises to be there as soon as possible.
When she is sixteen, her life kind of falls apart. Junior year is stressing her out and suddenly, her friends all seem to hate each other. Roxas and Hayner fight constantly about who is better at what and sometimes over dates. Selphie turns out to be sleeping with Pence's brother, who is the TA at their school for AP European History. Seifer is still hitting on everything that moves. Rai is going to blackmail Zexion into letting him be the valedictorian. Fuu still hates her guts.
Roxas still stands her up. Asshole.
Prom comes and she's the only junior present. She's so, so pathetically excited for this, and she's spent over a month planning how she was going to wear her hair. She's going to go with Tidus—which would explain why Selphie isn't talking to her at all; it's her ex-boyfriend…but that was, like, two years ago.
She gets all dolled up for Tidus, who gives her the wrong colored corsage for her dress (a dark green color that matches her eyes and that Tidus simply comments on as, "Good thing you're hot, you look like a forest in that.") and then paws at her while the limo drives to the place where the prom is at. They manage to dance to three songs before his hands zero in on her breasts.
When she smacks his hands away, he reaches for her ass…and then promptly pukes all over the front of her dress.
Olette controls her temper and settles for only hitting him twice with her clutch before storming off into the women's bathroom to try to clean up. She wants to cry, but she's not the type.
"Vomit is a nice color for you." Riku cackles as he barrels his way into the bathroom. He leaves his squealing date outside the door, snatching a handful of paper towels from the dispenser. "Very nice. Matches your skin tone marvelously."
She likes how he tries his best to help clean her up. She likes that he leaves his girlfriend outside, where she claws at the door and finally stomps away. She likes that he doesn't go after her.
She likes how he eventually gives up and turns his back as he hands her his tuxedo jacket, allowing her to rant about how stupid Tidus is. She likes how he marches outside to whisper something loudly to Sora, and then right back in to retrieve her so they can walk to Sora's car and drive somewhere else.
She likes how she can dry into his shirt and he won't say a single word about how much snot she got over it.
End of junior year. Riku's going to college. Olette's leaning against his fence like she wants to say something, watching the muscles in his back contract as he loads stuff into his car.
"You're gonna go soon." she says forlornly, scuffing at the grass with her sneakers. "I'm gonna miss you, loser."
Understatement of the century. She's going to cry her eyes out when he leaves.
Riku comes to the fence and sighs, wiping his hands on his jeans. He reaches out and touches her face softly, saying, "You're grown into a very beautiful woman, Olette," which sounds like something her dad would say, except it's Riku so it isn't.
She is not going to cry, she is not going to cry. "Promise you'll visit and call and all that stuff?"
"Promise." He holds out his pinkie, smiling.
She links pinkies with him and tries not to start bawling right here and now. She orders herself not to think of him as leaving. He is her friend and they love each other like family and families don't just leave each other like that.
It will last longer, it will be so much better than any romance, even if Selphie squeals that they would've been ohmigod, soooo cute together! It's better because he knows her enough to put hher trhough crap just to get her attention (like Roxas), because she knows how to let him go so that he can find his way back to her again.
Because they love each other like friends don't in this space of time.
And they won't forget each other, like how Roxas says they will (jerk). They will not ignore each other whenever he comes home and they will go out to eat in nice restaurants, without sulky Roxas or Riku's girlfriend-of-the-month.
Because, "I won't bother to miss you because I know you'll be back when you're ready."
She smiles back. Right now, there isn't such a thing as Roxas or Selphie or Tidus or Riku's girlfriend. This is their time. This is just for them.