A/N: Feel free to read these characters' verbal exchanges in the thickest Minnesotan accents you can mentally summon; I couldn't bring myself to write out 'you betchas' and assorted 'dontcha knows' more than a few times before the literary snob in me started grimacing (he says, as a native, ex-pat Minnesotan, heh).
Prompt: Y2K (please tell me people know what this is, please don't make me feel ancient having to explain it)
Main pairing: Uh. It was supposed to be AkuRoku, but it somehow turned into a mashup of that, SoRiku, and a generous helping of Hayner/Olette (wtf)
Rating: T (but it really should be N, because Roxas is a big huge Internet NERD in this one)
Prompter: silvermyth (o hai again)
The world as they knew it was set to end on a Saturday, or at least that's what Roxas was claiming. Hayner had his doubts. Personally, the assertion felt a tad melodramatic.
Maybe it had something to do with the ice skating. Maybe all that exposure to glitter, all the flowery arm movements, and anguished, dying swan full-body overtures had threaded their way into Roxas' subconscious and made worrying about World Wide Web urban legends a nervy trait of a certain Midwest tenth grader's personality.
'Cause, c'mon, the new millennium's tech-driven version of D-Day? Yeah, right. More like a major psyche-out scare tactic, from Hayner's vantage point.
He'd humored Roxas with as much attention as he could spare between mountains of sophomore year homework and after-school hockey practice — not to mention that thing he was still trying to figure out with Olette since Sadie Hawkins a few weeks back. With Roxas, at least, he figured it might do the trick just to be present for the act of backing up all the files for his website on two forms of storage. (USB microdrive and CD-RW, Roxas had intoned with a level of reverence usually reserved for ELCA post-sermon potlucks, not that Hayner knew what either term meant, or what Pence's mom had put in last Sunday's nausea-inducing hot dish, for that matter.)
Once Roxas had completed that hours long task, once he'd carefully slipped the last silvery disc into a zip-up CD storage case, they could resume focus on something more interesting with the remainder of their winter break free time.
Except not, because as Hayner was quickly learning, Roxas was borderline obsessive when it came to anything Internet-related.
And it'd been so much worse since he'd first heard about that virus, or bug, or whatever the heck was supposed to happen the moment the 90s ceded sovereignty to the aughts approximately seven hours from now. As Hayner drove onto the street that led into Roxas' subdivision, he couldn't help but feel that those interim hours were going to be make-or-break for his own tenuous grip on sanity when it came to that particular subject.
"What's the big deal anyway?" Hayner'd recently made a mistake in asking. "So a few computers glitch out because they think next year is 1900 instead of 2000. Who gives a flying flip?"
Roxas had looked at him as if he'd just announced Princess Diana's rise from the dead, and as a flesh-eating vampire-zombie hybrid, no less.
"Do you have any idea how much we rely on computers and other technology for pretty much every aspect of our lives?"
Hayner really didn't. He'd gotten a cell phone for Christmas, and it was kind of convenient for making calls, he supposed. But since Roxas refused to use his own Christmas-gifted Nokia to text him, since he'd been stubbornly claiming AOL Instant Messenger was far superior to a clunky mobile phone keyboard, it'd mostly served as a way for his parents to keep tabs on him when he was out of the house — not exactly what he'd call desirable.
He also hadn't been in the mood to argue with Roxas, or even to make fun of his nerdy website hobby. He'd just as quickly stopped being an active participant in the ensuing conversation, had tuned out at right about the exact moment Roxas had started describing the work he'd put into his latest site build. At one point, Hayner heard a biting remark about Netscape, a few high praises for the vast superiority of Internet Explorer. Then he was back to nodding dumbly, to thinking about hockey practice, while Roxas started up about something else that was way outside of his realm of general computer knowledge.
Really, Hayner had no idea how his friend had become such a nerd. It's not like Roxas was ugly or anything, not even socially awkward compared to some of their classmates. They'd gone to the same private day school since kindergarten, called most of the same people friends too, so it wasn't like a disparate environmental influence, or whatever. As far as Hayner could tell, Roxas had been fine until his parents had gotten a personal desktop computer and second phone line mid-way through ninth grade last year. Then, suddenly, it was Geocities website this, or HTML markup that, and drawn-out monologues comparing the pros and cons of AOL IM versus ICQ.
It wasn't even like Roxas' parents were that big on technology themselves to encourage his stupid fixation. Both were, like, dentists or oral surgeons, or something equally uninteresting.
As Hayner paused at a stop sign a block away from his pickup destination, he scanned the homes around him without much interest in scrutinizing. Each house was familiar, developer-built, cookie cutter. The same went for his own lake-facing community, for pretty much any of the upper middle class neighborhoods that lined this side of the sprawl of their suburban Midwest town. His home was close enough that Roxas could have technically walked over; having just gotten his license and being the sole person among his friends in possession of a four-wheeled vehicle bestowed upon Hayner the default honor of toting everyone else around, however.
Plus, it was well below freezing, one of those twenty degree days that felt closer to zero thanks to an unforgiving windchill that this part of the country was infamous for.
It also didn't hurt that he felt like a total badass driving around town in his new Dodge Durango. Newsflash: freedom from lack-of-license house-arrest was bliss.
As he pulled into his Roxas' driveway, Hayner parked but didn't turn off the ignition while reaching for his cell phone. Might as well keep the car warm while he waited for his friend to grace him with an appearance.
He dialed Roxas' private line, fiddling with the stereo until he found a station playing a song that didn't totally suck, phone rising to his ear as he waited for the call to go through.
He was greeted by a sound so static-horrible Hayner was surprised his ears hadn't started bleeding as a form of physical protest. He dropped the call a second later with an exaggerated grimace and, banking on Roxas having his cell phone off or on silent, typed in another string of digits, this time to the main home landline's number.
Roxas' mom picked up after a handful of rings, her voice considerably more soothing than the fax-on-crack noisy dialup his eardrums had just been assaulted with.
They exchanged standard greetings, then Hayner got down to his main reason for calling.
"Can you let Roxas know I'm waiting outside? I tried his line but he's not picking up."
"Of course," was the answering response. "He's in his room, but probably on the Internet. Just a moment. I'll tell him you're waiting."
The Internet. Shocker. He never would've guessed.
Fingers thrumming against the top of his steering wheel, he hummed along to "Wonderwall", then the beginning of a Wallflowers song that was being abusively overplayed by virtually every radio station in the greater Twin Cities metro area before his friend finally appeared.
Bundled in a Columbia ski jacket, nose tucked beneath its fleecy collar, Roxas made his way from his house's front porch toward Hayner's car, taking care to watch where he stepped. Even so, he ended up having to check his balance a handful of times in light of the ice that glittered in the last vestiges of afternoon sunlight, twinkling crystalline veins amid a layer of packed dirt and snow along both driveway and sidewalk.
By the time he made it around to the passenger side door and swung himself up into the Durango's leather bucket seat, his fair complexion was flushed pink care of a godawful Minnesota windchill, brows furrowed in sharp diagonals that nearly converged at the bridge of his nose.
Lowering the radio volume, Hayner glanced at his friend while shifting the SUV into reverse. "What up?"
Roxas shrugged in response.
As he pulled out of Roxas' driveway, Hayner suppressed the urge to eye roll. Apparently the prospect of a New Year's Eve party had done nothing to lighten his friend's mood. Gee, this was gonna be a blast if Roxas was going to spend the night sullen and glowering while the rest of them were trying to enjoy themselves.
Determined to get his friend talking, maybe even into a less fatalist frame of mind while he was at it, Hayner launched into what by all accounts amounted to an over-explanatory ramblefest.
"Gonna pick up Pence first, then Olette."
A light flush crept up into his own cheeks at the mention of his …girlfriend? Did she count as that? Hayner wasn't really sure. Nevertheless, he was grateful for the cover of cold weather, even Roxas' enduring inattention, to an extent. He wasn't in the mood to talk relationships, especially with someone who was surrounded by mostly girls every skating practice but hadn't shown even an ounce of eagerness to start dating. That, despite seemingly plenty of interest coming from more than one of them. When it came to boasting anything worth knowing about the mystery teenage girls engendered, they were both pretty much on the same level playing field — or sheet of ice, as it were. Even if he'd been in a better mood, Hayner figured Roxas wouldn't be much help in that regard.
"And then we'll head back to my place for pizza and games until it gets closer to midnight," Hayner forged on, expression set and determined not to overthink the business with Olette. "We've got the whole house and backyard. Mom and Dad are going to their own party at the Almasy's, which kinda sounds like torture to me, but whatever."
When that garnered no response, Hayner stole another look at the passenger seat. Eyes still down, Roxas had pulled in his elbows, shoulders scrunched and hands in front of him as he fiddled with his cell phone's various clock face display options. Eyes back on the road, Hayner forced himself to let a frustrated sigh die in its infancy, but just barely.
"This thing is so useless."
His gaze flickered to Roxas for context.
"What, the phone?"
"Yeah." He could hear the frown in Roxas' tone. "It's, like, one of those tech ideas that will never catch on. The signal's awful, texting is clunky and takes forever, plus it's heavy as sin."
Having virtually no opinion on cell phones one way or the other but eager to keep Roxas talking, Hayner did his best at offering an adequate response. "I guess, yeah. At least they're smaller than the last ones my parents bought. Those looked like military-grade walkie-talkies."
When Roxas didn't respond to his comment, both boys lapsed back into silence as Hayner pulled out onto a small county road on their way to Pence's house.
Clicking through the handful of radio stations that generally had song lists he found more or less tolerable, Hayner gave up after the awful realization that all of them were currently playing an ear-bleeding combo of Britney Spears, Savage Garden, and Ricky Martin. With a resigned sigh for real this time, he shut the stereo off with a bump of his index finger knuckle and tried to come up with another topic that'd get Roxas talking again.
"How's skating going?"
Making a disgruntled noise at the back of his throat, Hayner heard Roxas smack his hands and cell phone against the tops of his Levi's-clad thighs and slouch down further.
"The season ended when I didn't qualify out of Sectionals, remember?"
Oh, right. How he'd managed to forget about that when he'd actually been in attendance, had actually seen Roxas take a fluke fall on a jump that he could usually do in his sleep, was beyond him. He also remembered Roxas being righteously furious at himself over it. In retrospect, bringing up skating hadn't been the brightest of ideas.
Unaware of Hayner's ex post facto regret, Roxas continued his mini-rant. "Now it's just a bunch of pointless club competitions, my coach making me stay at Novice for another year when I should be testing up to Junior, and feeling like a loser because of that story the local papers ran before Mids about me going to Nationals."
Ah, heh, wow. Yeah, that was the epitome of insensitive now that Hayner took a minute to think about it.
Relating it back to hockey, there was pretty much always another game on the roster to look forward to when his team screwed up or lost a match, along with the coaching team's confidence in their ability to improve over the course of an entire season. And usually, the entire team accepted the consequences when one person botched something. A singles skater like Roxas, though. Well. Hayner supposed it must totally blow to be the exclusive focus of a small town's expectations, along with the associated disappointment when you failed to live up to them.
"My bad," he offered, before turning into Pence's front drive. In contrast to Roxas, Pence was ready and waiting and already heading out the front door before he could shift gears to park. Much like the pair of them, Pence was outfitted in a thick winter coat, dark tufts of hair sticking out at odd angles from beneath a large fleece headband, fashion be damned in favor of just trying to keep warm.
"Not like it matters anyway." Roxas scoffed. "If everything goes to hell in a handbasket tonight, skating's gonna be the least of my worries, don'tcha think?"
Mercifully, it was at that moment when Pence opened the door to the Durango's back seat and trundled on in, complaining with unmitigated disdain about the bite in the air making his nostrils frost up for long enough that Hayner found himself conveniently not having to respond to Roxas.
Olette was up next, just a few doors down from Pence. As soon as Hayner parked, Roxas hopped out of the car without a word and re-entered through one of the back doors to give Olette the honor of sitting shotgun.
Considering the awkward 'is it or isn't it' status of their current relationship, Hayner didn't know whether to thank Roxas or consider the options for his friend's painful demise.
More frustrating still, Olette was acting like her usual bubbly self, making it impossible to get a read on her one way or another. And Hayner had zero inclination to ask anything even remotely Sadie Hawkins-associated with two other friends present. For the time being, he guessed he was at an impasse.
As Hayner headed back toward his home, conversation turned from weather to school sports teams, hockey in particular, since Hayner was a JV forward, Olette a cheerleader, and Pence an avid sidelines fan and occasional action photographer for the school newspaper. Roxas was usually pretty open to hockey talk too, although it'd have been hard for an outsider to tell today, given the current radio silence from his side of the back seat.
Eventually, Pence picked up on it and decided to intervene, twisting to look at Roxas from the seat adjacent him.
"Sora's coming too, right?"
Brows rising in exasperation, Roxas glanced sideways but didn't turn his head. "Doesn't he always?"
In an exaggerated motion, Pence threw his hands up, mittened palms facing out. "I was just checking. Don't go shooting the messenger."
"It looks like he's already here, actually." As Olette spoke up, Hayner's skin prickled with unidentifiable heat. Unaware of the effect her voice was having on him, Olette pointed toward the car visible and idling at the curb next to Hayner's house. "I think I see Kairi and Selphie and some others with him too."
Roxas didn't respond. Once relatively close, he and his cousin had grown apart seemingly the moment Sora had chosen hockey over figure skating after becoming one of the youngest students to make their school's varsity team. At the time, Roxas had insisted the decision had very little to do with the evolving distance between them. Still, Hayner couldn't help but feel it at least had plenty to do with Roxas' newfound aloofness, in his increasing reliance on Internet message boards for the purposes of social interaction. It could even have been the catalyst for his growing disenchantment with this whole competitive ice skating business, for all Hayner knew. Whatever the case, and despite Roxas' insistence that nothing had changed, it was pretty obvious Sora's switch in exclusive sports participation focus was affecting more than just his cousin, even if just indirectly.
Or it might've been that Roxas had seemed to hate Riku, another varsity team member Sora'd started hanging out with, from the moment they'd been introduced a few months back. That too.
Pulling up into the driveway, Hayner hit the garage door opener, noting the small army of students hopping out of Sora's car in the short interim between pressing the button and rolling to a stop within the two-car garage's concrete confines. Sure enough, Riku was among their numbers.
Personally, he'd never figured out why Roxas had decided to take such a royal dislike to the guy, unless Roxas knew something about Riku that he didn't, which Hayner doubted. A year ahead of them, Riku was popular among his classmates, but not obnoxiously so like some of the rest of that crowd. He was also a double threat in terms of athleticism, playing football during fall trimester, varsity ice hockey each winter, which majorly upped his chances of getting a scholarship to play in college, not that any of them really needed the financial incentive. Their parents all made decent enough money for them to attend the town's private day school, and most had reserves saved up to pay for college. Riku's parents in particular had spent bucketloads to adopt him as an infant from some country half a world away, at least if what Hayner's mom had once claimed happened to be true. Information most wouldn't consider relevant, or even all that fascinating, it was the nature of small town locals to root out any information of even the most questionable interest level for gossip-prone, stay-at-home mothers to over-analyze when the subject of focus wasn't within earshot. Hayner's mom was no different in this respect.
Being on the JV team, Hayner hadn't had much opportunity to talk with Riku personally, but the guy seemed nice, and it was kind of cool that he was chill enough to be down about attending a sophomore New Year's Eve party when he'd probably gotten a ton of other invites. In Hayner's view, it was Roxas who was being unreasonable and not wanting to play nice.
Sora's group was approaching, making their way carefully up the driveway to avoid slipping on glare ice beneath the recently shoveled snow. Eyes still glued to his phone's digital read-out with wariness bordering on straight-up paranoia, Hayner momentarily ignored Roxas, brushing past him on his way to greet the new arrivals.
"Dang, you fit a lot of people in that car of yours, didn't ya?"
"You betcha." Sora offered a grin. "Selphie ended up having to sit on Wakka's lap but it works out pretty decent, at least on shorter trips."
Hayner returned the grin with a smile of his own, noting that while most of Sora's entourage had started conversing with his own three friends, Riku had stopped short, was now standing slightly behind Sora.
Glancing up and over Sora's shoulder, Hayner was quick to acknowledge him. "Hey there."
Riku, in turn, inclined his head, responding back with a one word greeting of his own.
Sora looked between the two, obviously pleased that Hayner didn't seem to harbor the same dislike for his new teammate that Roxas was still apparently hellbent on maintaining. Gaze traveling toward his cousin who was standing a few steps apart from the rest of the group, his expression turned hesitant.
"How's ...er, things?"
Although Hayner had a hunch as to what Sora was asking about, he shrugged, made the gesture as noncommittal as possible. Roxas might've been getting on his last nerve with his most recent sour attitude and Internet conspiracy theories, but they were still best friends. That meant not ragging on him to others, no badmouthing either, not even to a concerned family member.
"Not bad," he offered instead. "Had a week off from hockey practice just like your team, got some good Christmas presents." He retrieved the Nokia phone from his pocket, and flashed Sora and Riku a quick view of it.
Although Sora's expression fell for an instant, it was quickly replaced by a polite smile. "Oh, cool. Yeah, I really like the one my parents got me. It's great for texting."
I wouldn't know, Hayner thought, thinking of Roxas' patent refusal to use the device for its proper purpose and the fact that neither Olette nor Pence had cell phones of their own yet.
He nodded instead, echoed the sentiment, then turned, beckoning them over toward the door that would lead them into his home. Taking note, everyone else soon followed. Despite his best efforts, Hayner couldn't help but see the portentous look Roxas was still sporting, all the while eyes fixed down, fingers still clutched tightly around the cell phone he was holding like his life depended on it.
The world probably wouldn't end tonight, technologically or otherwise, Hayner figured. Roxas' social life though? As far as he was concerned, that was something that hung far more tenuously in the balance.
o - o
Despite his concerns, the night wasn't going as badly as Hayner had anticipated. Between Sora and Kairi, plus Olette and Selphie, there was more than enough bubbly enthusiasm to counter Roxas' foreboding silence. Riku, Tidus, and Wakka were also easy conversationalists when it came to anything related to high school sports, with Pence occasionally supplementing.
The generous delivery order of pizza and wings, of multiple-liter bottles of heavily caffeinated pop, also hadn't hurt. It was hard to be a pill while stuffing your face with the best pizza in the south metro.
True to their word, his parents had by and large left them alone, having paid for the delivery food, then made their way out of the house for their own New Year's Eve festivities. That'd left their group with time to spare, with a few hours to play Apples to Apples, then a game of Truth or Dare. That had mostly just involved stupid truth questions since no one had any good ideas about dares to play indoors beyond the usual spin the bottle tropes of boy-kissing-girl that it'd been quickly decided they'd all outgrown freshman year.
It was Riku who suggested they venture out onto the lake.
In retrospect, it probably hadn't been the most inspired idea. Good old reliably bone-chilling Midwestern windchill had driven the temperature down even more than the thermometer read-out was indicating, and there was nothing all that fun about traipsing around after dark, shin deep and caking your jeans in crunchy snow, just to get to another sheet of ice when everything from the nearby sidewalks to his home's wrap-around driveway similarly qualified.
Be that as it may, the moment Olette got on board, the mere instant she turned to him with an enthusiastic flutter of lashes and her trademark luminous smile, Hayner knew he was screwed for suggesting a warmer, indoor alternative. He was a little too busy managing the head rush of confusing emotions that her attention seemed to unfailingly induce to figure out a polite way of saying no to her — or anyone else in their group who wanted to follow Riku, for that matter.
Much to his surprise, even Roxas hadn't protested. Hadn't said much of anything all night, actually, but still. Hayner had expected a snarky remark at the very least, with Riku being the idea's proposer.
Now, as they stood shivering by the edge of Hayner's property, he took a moment to eye the family dock, to think back to last summer vacation when everything had seemed so much simpler.
It was hard to summon an image of the fleeting summer months, of sun that offered genuine warmth, gently lapping lake water against metal dock posts, and the smell of moss and pine mingled with a spritz of bug repellant to keep mosquitos at bay. They were already well past winter's mid-afternoon sunset, and snow covered the surrounding trees; with the dock raised up out of the water for the duration of the cold season, and the family boat stowed away in off-site storage, the setting was a stark contrast that Hayner found hard to reconcile. While others talked in hushed tones around him, voices an audible teeth-chattering staccato, Roxas finally decided to break his own self-imposed silence by offering a few sage words of observation.
"This is boring as hell." He followed it up with a scowl.
For his part, Riku merely glanced at Roxas, expression impassive. By his side where he'd been glued for pretty much the entirety of the evening, Sora shot his cousin a conciliatory smile.
"It's not exactly shorts weather, that's for darn sure."
Next to Hayner, Olette was shivering as well, her breath misting the air in front of her, shoulder occasionally brushing against his arm through no fewer than six layers between the two of them. Just the same, the cold quickly gave way to a brief tingle of heat and Hayner found himself returning the gesture as subtly as possible. Out of the corner of his eye, just above the line of the scarf his face was half-buried under, Hayner noted that Riku and Sora seemed to be performing a similar choreography of clandestine arm-brushing.
Quickly, he redirected his gaze, decided not to comment or make a big deal about it in case he was misinterpreting on account of his own Olette-induced emotional confusion.
"Hey, guys."
Sora's voice rang out in its standard combination of enthusiastic and hope-filled. "Maybe we could move around a little. That'd probably keep us a smidge warmer." Taking a few steps toward Hayner, Sora came into view again, brows rising beneath a fleece beanie, and just visible above a wooly-thick scarf. "Do you think your neighbors would mind?"
Hayner shook his head. "Not if we don't make too much noise, I'm guessing." Even though he couldn't see the lower half of Sora's face, he noted the corresponding tapering of eye corners that implied he was smiling.
"Besides," he added, "they can't complain as long as we stay on the lake and off their property. It's a holiday. Plus tomorrow's Saturday."
When no one else offered up a better alternative beyond turning heel and going back inside to wait out impending midnight, their group started off, walking along a nearly invisible border where frozen lake water met private property boundaries. In truth, it really wasn't helping warm anyone up as far as Hayner could tell, since they were moving pretty slowly to avoid multiple slip-and-falls. With Olette walking next to him, occasionally still brushing against him, he also couldn't really say he minded though.
It was no surprise that it was Sora who was the most animated among them, with Selphie a close second. Both chattered and laughed as though the cold was only a minor nuisance. Both also slipped multiple times across the ice's opaque surface in their haste to talk to everyone, Kairi and Riku following closely behind to help them right themselves whenever feasible.
From Hayner's vantage point, Sora was gradually angling himself ever closer to Roxas who, per norm of late, was trailing behind at the tail end of their group.
Eventually, Sora seemed to steel himself enough to tug down his scarf away from his mouth and call out to him.
"Hey, cuz. I bet you can't spin on ice without skates on."
"No shit, Sherlock." With hardly a passing glance away from his phone screen, Roxas deflected the good-natured challenge, and what Hayner could see of Sora's happy-go-lucky expression crumbled in tandem.
Taking in the exchange, Hayner noted the corresponding glower Riku shot over toward Roxas without comment, simply filing it away along with other information about the two of them he'd been mentally compiling all evening. Something was beginning to piece itself together in his head, something that made him default to uncomfortable although he'd have been hard-pressed to give a logical reason why that was.
Scampering up to Sora, almost taking him out as her heel slipped on ice underfoot, Selphie made a wild swipe at his coat collar, by some miracle managing to find her equilibrium at the last possible second. She laughed it off a moment later like she hadn't just been four feet shy of almost landing on her head.
"Who needs fancy skating tricks," she yawped into the dead silence of the sky above them, and even though Hayner couldn't see Roxas' expression, he just knew his friend was scowling; he'd been lectured long ago that figure skating jumps and spins were called elements (with a haughty sniff and upturned chin, no less), not 'tricks'. Undeterred, and probably wholly unaware of her egregious skating terminology faux pas, Selphie followed up her 'who needs skating tricks' spiel with, "when we can do butt slides instead!"
Without a word, Hayner cocked an eyebrow. Okay, so, they'd outgrown lame games like spin the bottle in ninth grade. But sliding on your tush across a frozen lake in the pitch dark of night? That was still a totally reasonable action to engage in, apparently.
With a delighted squeal from Selphie and good-natured hooted encouragement on Sora's part, Hayner watched as Selphie took a running start, then off-kilter skidded as she leaned back far enough to plop down onto the ice surface. She came to a gradual stop in the distance, a muted dot of ski coat sunshine yellow in the otherwise inky dark lakeside setting spread out before them.
Still grinning, Sora went next, his oversized boots clapping a muffled beat against the thick sheet of ice beneath him. To his credit, Sora managed to build up commendable speed with movements reminiscent of stroking on hockey skates, and Hayner took a moment to consider that the dual ventures of figure skating and hockey training probably gave him an uncontested advantage over Selphie.
As anticipated, Sora far outdistanced Selphie when he finally started butt-sliding. Given his speed at the outset and the dark shade of his navy ski coat, he soon slipped well beyond the limits of their night vision.
With Sora off in the distance, Selphie half-gliding, half-skidding after him, and everyone else trudging along in small groups at their own variable paces, Hayner figured now was as good a time as ever to see if he could get Olette into the frame of mind to offer some thoughts on what was going on between the two of them.
He turned to her, realizing only a moment later that he'd seriously miscalculated his ability to have a serious talk at this juncture of the evening.
"What the —hey!"
The far-off shout was followed by a quick slew of curse words and a smattering of indistinct, anger-tinged sentiments that came from a distinctly more female-sounding speaker.
Glancing between his friends, gaze lingering on Riku's concerned expression, Hayner began to sprint toward the voices in the distance, careful to keep his knees bent and weight slightly forward in an effort to avoid losing his balance and wiping out. From of the corner of his vision, he saw Roxas doing something similar, phone pocketed and movements faster, more vigorous, than Hayner had seen all evening. The sounds coming from his blind spot over one shoulder indicated Riku was probably not too far behind either.
Soon, Sora came into view, along with a handful of others, faces obscured by hoodies pulled up and out of their uniformly dark coats. Offered a hand by one of the strangers, Sora was just starting to steady himself by the time Riku caught up to Hayner and Roxas.
"I'm alright!" Sora called, brushing a dusting of snow and ice shavings off his jeans with both gloved hands. He turned toward the stranger nearest to him and added a sheepish, "sorry about that."
"Nah, dude, all good. Anything to get Larxene to shriek like a crazed twelve year old NSYNC fan is worth a few bruises."
Weirdly enough, the voice sounded familiar. As Hayner came to a stop next to Riku, and Roxas sidled slightly more off to one side to resume his antisocial distance quota, he squinted, trying to make out any distinguishing features beneath the shadows of the speaker's hood.
As though sensing his scrutiny, the speaker paused, craned his head a little, looked over at him.
"Hey there, you're one of TwiHo's varsity forwards, yeah?" The guy's two nearest companions looked over a moment later.
Hayner blinked, cold momentarily forgotten in lieu of the newfound spotlight that felt like it had just been aimed at him. The sound of multiple footfalls indicating the others were nearby was also throwing his concentration. Before he could form words to refute the incorrect portion of statement, Riku spoke up, expression still hinting at subtly troubled as he stole a glance at Sora.
"I am, yeah."
Mouth half open, Hayner snapped it shut. Oh. He wasn't even the person that guy had been referencing. Doy.
"Cool beans. I'm a goalie for Northstar's varsity team." The guy pulled back his hood just slightly, revealing tufts of sandy blond hair around his temples, then exhaled a long breath of mist into what little space remained between them.
Looking from Riku to the original speaker, Hayner found himself nodding to no one in particular. Oh yeah, he remembered now. This guy had done a local news interview with a few other Northstar team members after they'd won in an upset at State last year. That would make him a …senior now, probably. Hayner didn't really know a ton about Northstar students, although the school wasn't located all that far away from Twin Hollow Preparatory's campus. Northstar was a public school, serving the greater southwest metro area, with 'greater' being a bit of a stretch as concerned accurate word meaning. Hayner would've been surprised if their town had managed to exceed anything beyond a twelve thousand headcount last census, at most.
Still inscrutable, Riku's expression didn't change, not even when Sora scampered up to him, arms out and shoe treads skidding until Riku offered a hand to help steady him. Eventually, he looked back up at the goalie from Northstar to continue the conversation. "It's Demyx, right?"
"Yup! And you're Riku. I heard you've made some awesome plays so far this season. It's gonna be fun when we get to go head-to-head, I bet."
Riku nodded slightly but didn't say anything. As the rest of their group hovered nearby and chatted among themselves, Hayner finally spotted Roxas lingering to one side, close to one of the Northstar kids. Head down, phone back out, he still didn't seem to be actually talking to anyone though.
Following Hayner's gaze, Demyx craned his neck over one shoulder in Roxas' direction. "Axel's on the varsity team too, actually." He waved a hand off toward where Roxas had planted himself. "Only one who's not is Zexion over there. He's just home from college for a few weeks. Graduated last year." He nodded toward a shorter boy with a swath of dark hair covering half of his features, seated a few yards away on a fallen tree trunk by the lake's edge. "And Larxene, obviously."
Shooting Sora an apologetic look, Demyx seemed content to keep chattering. "She's our resident bitch, so don't mind the less than enthusiastic welcome when you crashed our little get-together."
Still eyeing Roxas, it took Hayner a moment longer to realize that the twin trails of breath misting up above the two students in the distance was smoke rather than more naturally occurring half frozen exhalations. His observation was followed by a resounding series of coughs on Roxas' part, a bit of amused laughter from the guy next to him.
Whose name was …Axel, Hayner reminded himself.
"He's a defenseman, right?" Hayner pointed over toward the two boys.
Sora's sudden snort drew Hayner's attention back to Riku, eyes finally trailing down to the shorter student by his side.
"More like a grinder, actually. I don't know what it is about girls and sports-related violence, but he's seriously popular."
"Yeah." Demyx grinned, then twisted a longer strand of hair between two flushed red fingers exposed to the air via the tips of his cotton glove cut-offs. "Girls love him. Right, Larxene?"
He was gifted with an unimpressed look and a decidedly unladylike, "fuck off."
Still grinning, Demyx leaned in toward the three of them, expression turning conspiratorial as he whispered an exaggerated, "they used to date but it didn't go all that well. Axel kinda-sorta bats for the other team, if you get what I'm saying. A few weeks with Larxene and he came out like gangbusters."
"Um, gross?" Coming up from behind Hayner's left shoulder, Pence wrinkled his nose and received a light slap from Olette who'd been trailing along next to him. Taking up the tail end of their group's processional, Selphie slid to a stop nearby, plopping down to a seated position in a move that was hard to interpret as more purposeful than accidental. Lowering themselves on either side of her, Tidus and Wakka settled down on the frozen lake surface as well, with Kairi opting to remain standing just slightly behind them.
Demyx shrugged at Pence, apparently nonplussed. "Ah, is it?"
The question hung in the air between them, felt awkward to Hayner, although Demyx didn't seem particularly fazed by either the implication of his inquiry or their resounding inability to provide a satisfactory answer.
It was Kairi who ultimately broke the silence, tactfully opting to change the subject, eyes traveling toward Larxene, smile tentative but friendly.
"I think I may have seen you at some of our games last year. Are you a cheerleader?"
As Demyx guffawed, Larxene turned, hauled off and punched him in the shoulder hard enough to elicit a wounded yelp.
"Does this face," Larxene extended two fingers to her temple, then lowered them to her chin in profile, "look like it's made of enough sugar and spice or whatever the fuck nice to flounce around verbally worshipping self-absorbed dicks on any kind of playing field?"
While Kairi stammered a string of unintelligible words, and even Riku adopted a look that seemed borderline offended, another voice chimed in from behind Demyx.
"Ignore her," a voice called. Leaning slightly to one side, Hayner saw Axel a few feet behind Demyx. "Larxene likes to get a rise out of pretty much anyone she encounters."
Yeah, he thought, unless you happen to be a straight-up flaming gay. Then all that female 'charm' just ends up going to waste...
Keeping the thought to himself as much as he did the acknowledgement that the only thing noticeably flaming about Axel was the color his hair was dyed, Hayner directed his attention to Roxas trailing a few steps behind Axel, cigarette still glowing red and held between a gloved index and middle finger. He took a moment to wonder if this was the first time his friend had ever tried smoking, and why now, in front of veritable strangers of all people.
"Unfortunately for the rest of us, she's got a natural talent for it."
The final pronouncement came from Zexion, off in the distance but apparently still within hearing range of their conversation. Did all public school students have such weird-ass names, Hayner took a second to wonder as he turned his attention toward Zexion. Under closer scrutiny, he could see a hardbound book resting on Zexion's lap. With only the faint light of neighboring houses giving off any tangible form of luminescence, Hayner had no real clue how it was possible to read at this time of night — or why anyone would even want to.
"If I can ask," Riku spoke up, his voice steady and calm amid the rise-and-fall tones of everyone else around him, "what are you all doing so far out here this late at night anyway?"
"Last I checked, pretty boy, this isn't private property." One side of Larxene's lips curled up into what seemed like a well-practiced sneer, and Hayner found himself impressed by how little the jab seemed to affect Riku's composure, the slight rise of one eyebrow an exclusive indicator that he'd even heard it.
Sora, on the other hand…
Hayner blinked, glanced up at Riku, then back down at Sora next to him, wondering if he'd imagined it. But nope, it was still there. Sora was practically shooting daggers at Northstar's resident bitch.
"We're just here to ring in the millennium, same as you guys, I'm guessing." Axel offered a shrug in conjunction with his words, Demyx nodding enthusiastic confirmation in front of him. "Even though Zexion over there keeps reminding us it's not technically a new century until 2001."
Having returned to squinting at his book, Zexion didn't deign to look up, merely raising a hand to indicate he'd heard Axel's comment, head bobbing slightly as though in agreement.
"Actually, we should check and see what time it is to make sure we don't miss it." Unbeknownst to Hayner, Olette had skirted around Pence while he'd been eyeballing Zexion. The proximity of her voice startled him, induced a mortifying flush into both cheeks, which he was quick to cover by turtling his neck into the folds of his scarf.
"Does anyone have a watch?" Glancing around, Olette's gaze fell on Hayner. She looked up, eyes smiling from beneath a dual-toned green hat. "Or a cell phone?"
"I, er—uh." In his haste to speak, Hayner bit the inside of his cheek, and in the quarter of a second it took the pain to register, he'd already gone through every swear word he could think of in English, then moved on to his grandparents' native Swedish. "Left mine back at the house," he mumbled, face still burning, eyes dropping toward his boots in an attempted blush coverup.
"It's 11:32."
Surprised to hear Roxas actually bothering to contribute, Hayner momentarily forgot himself and looked up, eyes returning to the cigarette between his friend's fingers before finally noticing the cell phone in his other hand.
Turning toward Axel and Larxene, Demyx bounced a little, rocking back to his heels, and by some miracle didn't slip straight onto his ass in the process of redistributing his weight back to the arches of his lace-up Dr. Martins. He gestured up and away from the lake, toward one of the public access paths that led back up to a neighborhood street.
"We should probably go grab the supplies, eh?"
From her cross-legged resting place between Wakka and Tidus, Selphie sat up straighter, hair bouncing along with the quirk of her head as her expression turned curious. "Supplies?"
"Oh, yeah." Demyx offered a toothy grin that from the looks of it Selphie found utterly beguiling. "We figured we'd ring in the new year with pots and pans and band instruments."
"Seriously?" Beside Selphie, Tidus looked up. "In this neighborhood? That's going to piss a lot of people off."
"Fuck every single one of 'em for sixty full seconds then." Shaking her head enough for her hood to fall back, Larxene made an unsuccessful attempt at smoothing down a few pieces of hair sticking out at nearly symmetrical upright angles above both narrowed eyes. "Rich people get upset about the lamest things anyway."
Behind her, Hayner saw Axel grin. What surprised him more was the hint of a smile tugging at one corner of Roxas' mouth in response to Larxene's comment.
Huh.
Looking momentarily thoughtful, Demyx nodded like he was coming to some long-sought revelation. "We've got extra. Maybe not for all of you." He surveyed the group of private school students as though performing a silent head count. "But some of you guys can share, if you want."
When no one initially responded, Demyx took a few steps in the direction of the shoreline. "And just in case we don't make it back here in time, we can bang shit down the street instead."
Yeah, Hayner thought, the neighbors were sure going to love that brilliant alternative.
So, it was butt-sliding on ice and banging pots and pans at midnight to ring in the new millennium. Somehow instead of becoming more mature mid-way through his sophomore year, Hayner was starting to feel like they were all regressing to the status of first year middle schoolers.
Yet, somehow, that didn't stop him from letting a smiling Olette grab his hand, and he didn't stop once to protest about being subsequently pulled along toward the public access path, Kairi and Selphie and the others following closely behind.
Oh well, Hayner figured, stealing a glance at Olette's gloved hand wrapped comfortably around his. There would always be another opportunity to start acting more his true age come morning — assuming Roxas turned out to be wrong about Internet D-Day, that is, and the world was still spinning along on its proper, predestined course.
A/N: FYI for non-US readers: Sadie Hawkins is a high school dance event where it's traditional for the girls to ask out the guys. Some schools (translation: mine) encourage students to dress in matching attire, as if high school dances aren't already awkward enough.