DISCLAIMER: I OWN NEITHER KINGDOM HEARTS NOR IT'S CHARACTERS. THIS PLOT, HOWEVER, IS MINE.
Okay, so I've never seen anyone do this AU at all, let alone with Kingdom Hearts (apologies if someone has?)
Silent Wind
Not to get him wrong, Sora normally enjoyed the beautiful flowing piano notes coming the apartment above theirs, but it was three in the morning. He had a test tomorrow. He needed sleep, which was hard to do when someone was playing the Titanic soundtrack at such a late hour.
He rolled over, pillow folded over his ears as he glared at Riku, who was sleeping soundly in his own bed on the other side of the room. Lucky bastard.
With an audible groan, Sora lifted himself out of the warmth of his bed and pulled on a pair of jeans he'd discarded on the floor earlier that day. He was going to have to take the matter into his own hands if he planned on getting any sleep anytime soon.
He swiped his keys off the counter before leaving the apartment, making sure to lock the door behind him knowing Riku would be pissed if he found out he didn't. He got halfway to the elevator before remembering it was out of order and resisted the urge to scream as he took the stairs instead, huffing the entire way up. When he finally arrived on the floor of choice, he walked slowly down the hall, trying to figure out what door the music was coming from. He walked past the same door twice before confirming it to be the one. He knocked. Loudly.
The piano playing came to a sudden halt and after waiting for what felt like an eternity, the door finally opened, revealing a guy with messy blond hair who appeared to be several years older than Sora. College age, to be exact. He probably attended the one across from the academy, Sora guessed.
"Okay, listen. I'm normally very nice and very patient, but my apartment is right under yours and as much as I like The Heart Will Go On, I have a test first thing in the morning and I'm seriously screwed if I flunk it, which I'm most definitely going to do if you don't shut the hell up up here," Sora complained, not particularly enjoying that it had to come to this. The guy looked… guilty and Sora started to feel bad for fussing at him. It probably hadn't occurred to him that he was bothering anybody. His mouth moved silently as he waved his hands around and Sora tilted his head to the side in confusion. "I'm sorry, what?"
The guy frowned, ducking back in the door for a moment before reemerging looking slightly exasperated with a piece of paper that read, My bad. It won't happen again.
Sora blinked in confusion. Was something wrong with the guy's voice? Maybe he had a cold. Sometimes he has a hard time talking when when he has a sore throat "Is your throat okay? I have some cough drops in my apartment if you think that'll help."
The guy immediately started shaking his head before waving his hands around once more before taking the paper back and returning to the apartment, leaving to door open for Sora to enter.
Sora glanced around the half lit apartment. It was nice. Nicer than even Kairi and her father's. The paper was shoved back in his face and he pulled his head back to get a better look before grabbing it. "You can't talk, like, at all?" A nod. "And your name Ventus, but you prefer to go by Ven?" Another nod. Well that explained the jazz hands in the hallway. "Do you live here by yourself? It's kind of big."
Ventus shook his head. I live with Terra and Aqua. They're my siblings… Kind of. We were adopted by Eraqus when we were kids. How old are you? Do you go to the college? I swear I've seen you before.
"I'm fifteen and no, I go to Destiny Academy. You're a student there?" Sora asked, his curiosity making him forget that he was supposed to be sleeping. "Wait a minute. Did you say Eraqus? As if in the headmaster?! You're the headmaster's son?"
Duh. What's it to ya?
"Nothing, nothing. I just wasn't expecting that was all, but I guess that explains why your place is so nice, seeing as how the academy owns the building. I guess he pulled some strings." It was then that Sora noticed the blank look Ventus was giving him. "Uh, not that I mean anything bad by that. There's absolutely nothing wrong with using connections to get nice things! I mean-! You know what, I'm just gonna shut up now…"
Ventus chuckled soundlessly. It's fine. Shouldn't you be getting back to sleep, though? You said you had a test?
"A test? Oh! Crap! I completely forgot. Sorry if I came off as an ass earlier. I have to go. Bye!" Sora shouted as he darted out the door and down the hall towards the stairwell.
He was so screwed. Oh so very screwed. There was no way he was going to be able to get up in the morning. He'd stayed up for far too long. He was going to sleep through his test and he was going to fail and then he was going to get held back, he just knew it. Riku was already a year ahead of him. He wouldn't be able to bare not having Kairi with him either. This was horrible! He was mentally screaming as he slammed into his bed, struggling to find a comfortable position... And just like that, he was awoken by the sound of Oath coming from his phone and the smell of Riku's black coffee wafting in the air like some sort of holy smelling salts. He didn't even remember falling asleep, just freaking the fuck out over how life as he knew was going to come to an end.
Riku sat on the edge of his own bed, pulling his silver hair into a bun before taking a sip of his caffeine bomb. "Where did you go last night? I got up to pee and you were gone."
"I had to tell the guys upstairs to stop playing the piano," he informed him as he finally managed to dismiss his alarm. He groaned as he forced himself to sit up. "I made a total ass of myself, which was horrible because he seems like a nice guy? You wouldn't happen to know him, would you?"
Riku shrugged. "I don't know. What's he look like?"
"Older than us. He's not that tall, but he's taller than me. It looks like he stuck his head out the window of an airplane." Sora thought for a moment, feeling stupid for getting forgetting one specific fact. "Oh yeah, and he's a literal mute."
Riku blinked slowly. "He plays piano and he's mute?"
"Oh, and he said his name is Ven… tus."
The look on Riku's face made Sora feel dumber than he already did for the whole fiasco. "You mean the headmaster's son Ventus?! He assists in the music room on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, you dolt! Of course I know Ven! Why didn't you start with his name?"
"Because I didn't think you actually knew him!"
"How did you not before now?"
"Because I don't take classical music anymore, Riku! I switched it for German at the beginning of the year," Sora shot back, suddenly looking and feeling a bit more awake.
"Which you're failing, by the way," Riku smirked, dodging Sora's pillow with ease.
"Shut up and drink your coffee, you jerk!"
Sora continued to grumble to himself as he pulled on his uniform, demanding Riku tell him why he didn't bother to wake him up when he checked his phone for the time.
"I tried, but you kept swearing at me," he deadpanned in response. "I left you a waffle and some eggs on the stove, by the way. You might wanna hurry seeing as how we have to leave in less than five minutes. If you're not ready by then I'm ditching you."
It took Sora more than five minutes to get ready and Riku did not, as Sora already knew he wouldn't, ditch him, but rather stood impatiently at the door while the brunette wrapped his eggs in his waffle like a taco before barreling out the door, the occasional egg flying free and onto the pristine hall carpets.
Riku, of course, had no choice but to ditch him and make a run for it when they arrived at the school's gates seeing as how his classroom was farther away than Sora's. The winded brunette somehow managed to make it to his desk right as the bell rung, a trickle of sweat running down his back as he panted heavily, leaning back into his seat as he struggled to catch his breath.
"You know, you could try leaving earlier for once," Kairi chuckled, twisting around in her desk to get a better look at him. Her hair was done up in a fancy bun, which meant she was going somewhere with her dad after school and wouldn't be able to join him and Riku at the arcade. He groaned. That would be the third time that week.
"Not my fault. I overslept because the guy above wanted to play cheesy romance music at three in the morning and when I went up to complain I ended up liking him and talked for too long. It's a miracle I'm even here right now." He defended, flopping lifelessly onto his desk as the teacher walked in. "Pretty sure Riku was about to leave me."
"He wouldn't do that."
"Nah, you're right. He would've eaten my breakfast then he would've left me."
"As you all know," Xigbar started as he pulled out a huge stack of papers from his bag before slinging it onto his cluttered desk. "You have an exam today. This counts as forty percent of your grade for this semester. I hope all of you studied. Especially you, Sora."
A low chorus of laughter flowed throughout the classroom as Sora sunk further into his desk, his cheeks turning pink from the unwanted attention. Leave it to good ole Mr. Xigbar to call him out like that.
"Take a test a pass it back," He instructed as he handed a small stack of tests to the person at the front of each row. "Be sure to fill it out correctly. You only get half points for correct answers if I have grade it manually because you couldn't fill in the dots correctly."
He suppressed a groan when he received his test. He should've know taking german was a bad idea. He should've either stuck it out in Classical Music or taken Japanese, which he already knew because of his heritage, but nooo, he had to take German because Kairi was taking German, which she was, unlike him, actually good at.
"I'm gunna fucking fail," his hissed under his breath as he read the first question.
Two hours of testing later, Sora was finally free from his torment, though he still very much wanted to cry at the knowledge that he'd done horribly.
"You couldn't have done that bad. I helped you study all week," Kairi told them as they walked through the halls to meet Riku.
The three of them had Study Hall together, though they rarely ever used it to study seeing as how Teacher in charge didn't care what anyone did so long as they didn't interrupt him reading his fantasy novels or his planning for his next D&D game with his boys, as he called them. Sora was mainly just bewildered that a guy that old was into such things. Riku had argued that joy doesn't have an age.
They often spent the time to share whatever weirdness may have happened in their respective first blocks, others trying to figure out Merlin's real name -even the academy staff was at a loss to what it was.-
"So what was all that noise in the music room? It sounded like someone was still going hard at it when we picked you up," Kairi said as she dug through her bag for her beloved Cheese Doodles. The noise she made as she crunched down on one was nothing short of pleasurable.
"You know they ballet thing in a few weeks?" Riku asked, continuing only after Sora and Kairi nodded in affirmation. "Well, they have to practice everyday until the day of and the music room at the college got damaged by some asshole, so they're using ours until it's fixed."
"Why would someone do that?" Sora asked, wrinkling his nose. He didn't like music class either, but that seemed to be going a bit far. Whatever it was, it must've been personal.
"Someone who was kicked out and looking for revenge, perhaps?" Kairi offered.
"I dunno, maybe. Ven seemed disconcerted about the whole thing. I think he might know something, but I didn't want to pry," Riku explained as he rested his head on his arms.
"Ven?" Kairi asked, confused.
"The guy that lives directly above us and one of the Headmaster's kids. Nice guy. Pays the piano fantastically, but I think I'd enjoy it more if he didn't wait until after midnight to start playing," Sora told her. She nodded.
"OK, but what makes you think he's knows what happened?" Kairi asked Riku, finishing off her snack and wiping her fingers clean on her handkerchief. "Did you hear him say something?"
Riku couldn't help but laugh at this. "Sorta. He and his sister, she's one of the ballerina's, were arguing about it outside the classroom when I got there. He seemed hella pissed, though I don't really know what he was saying, you know, with all the hand dancing."
Now Kairi looked really confused. "Hand dancing?"
"He's mute," Sora and Riku said in sync.
"Jinx, you owe me some ice cream," Riku quickly told him as he punched him in the shoulder.
"Dammit, you always say it first. It's not fair," Sora whined as he rubbed his shoulder bitterly.
"Wait, wait, wait. Let me get this straight," Kairi said, waving her hands theatrically. "This Ven guy is one of the Headmaster's kids, he lives right above you and pissed Sora off with his piano playing, and he's probably connected to the college's music room getting completely and utterly trashed?"
Riku nodded. "Pretty much."
"You can't write this kind of shit," she deadpanned.
"I say we investigate further," Sora happily announced, standing in a super hero pose with his hands on hips until Riku jerked him back into his chair by his belt loop.
"Sticking our noses in things that aren't our business and get in trouble, you mean" Riku drawled, releasing the hyperactive brunette.
"Awe, come on. It'll be fun. You do remember what fun is, right? Or are you too busy playing the jello to hang out with us?"
The corner of Riku's lip twitched. "Cello. It's called a cello, Sora."
"That's not an answer, jello man!"
"Now you're just doing it on purpose!"
"Guys!" Kairi hissed, pointing to Merlin who was peeking over his book at them.
"We don't need a repeat of next week, do we?"
"No, sir," they chimed all at once.
A wave of muffled laughter washed over the classroom as Merlin returned to his book, pushing his spectacles up his nose as he did so. The trio sunk into their seats embarrassedly.
"Fine," Riku grumbled eventually. "But if we get in trouble I'll say you blackmailed me."
"Killjoy," Kairi giggled. "I won't be able to help until tomorrow, so you guys are on your own until then."
"If you're going to one of those fancy pancy places, bring us leftovers," Sora demanded, leaning towards her over the table.
"The speed in which you changed topics the second you thought food was involved is scary," Kairi whispered, holding her book over the lower part of her face. "Oh, and about the snooping, don't do anything that might get you suspended."
"Like what?"
"Starting fights."
"We won't," Riku drawled.
"Promise me! No. Pinkie Swear! I thought I was going to die the last time you two got suspended. It was so boring," She whined, slamming her book down on the table, pouting for emphasis.
"Fine."
"We pinky swear."
"Good. And be sure to tell me what you find out."
