Warning: Sora x Riku, Leon x Cloud, etc, etc…Boy x Boy warning, essentially. Not your thing? Don't read it.
As a boy who likes boys, however, I must say, I don't quite see what's so offensive!
This is T, may turn M later, we'll see just how slashy I'm feeling soon enough. For now though, a tidbit/ prologue thing. Sorry it's short-ish but it is a prologue!
Let me know what you think, since I'm a pushover for reviews...or whatever you call it.
The Game of Pretend: Prologue
"Wake up Sora...Sora...come on...SORA YOU LAZY BUM!" And with that Kairi Yamato poured a pitcher of ice water unceremoniously onto the head of the twin bed's occupant.
The resulting yelp could be heard for miles...and miles...and miles.
"KAIRI!"
Kairi, a sweet teen girl with reddish hair, violet blue eyes and an impish smile that had manipulated its way into and out of many a situation, batted her eyes, the picture of innocence—except for that smile, anyway.
"What?" she asked and without waiting for an answer zipped out of the room. Sora Kobayashi blinked at the space where Kairi had been a second before, his ocean blue irises glistening in the morning sun that came through his window.
"Aw man," he sighed, but the soft smile on his face spoke louder. This was not the first time Kairi had used the 'wake-by-water' method...and probably not the last. With one deft motion the brunette had his bedding rolled up under one arm and a set of new clothes under the other. Passing their small laundry room he grinned as he saw Kairi's back turned to him, just closing the dryer door. "Think fast!" he said and tossed the bedding at the redhead who turned just in time to get hit in the face with the sheets. A shaking fist could be seen peeking from underneath the pile, but Sora made a quick escape to the bathroom for his typical morning shower.
"Sora!" Kairi pounded on the door.
"Your fault, your fault!" Sora taunted back, and he was right, technically. The pounding stopped.
"Fine, but don't spend three hours in there...you're worse than a girl!" Kairi huffed and Sora laughed good-naturedly as he listened to her footsteps lead away from the bathroom door.
It'd been like this for about a week, sharing a living space. But having grown up together, it wasn't very surprising to him after all this time that they had a certain harmony living together, even if that harmony included some...er...drastic measures.
Sora quickly shed his somewhat damp clothing and welcomed the white steam that drifted lazily around him, the showerhead blasting. He was almost drifting himself when Kairi's voice sounded through the door again.
"Hey Sora!" she knocked on the door, noticeably lighter this time. Sora quirked a brow, looking at the door through the glass shower door.
"What?" he called over the dull roar of the water.
"You better hurry!"
"Why?"
"We're going to be late. It's almost 7:15 now!"
Sora blanched.
"Why didn't you wake me up earlier?" he exclaimed, soaping up in record-speed. Outside the bathroom Kairi rolled her eyes in an explicit 'duh' fashion.
"I tried, Sora. You're the one who sleeps like a rock," she replied, somewhat amused, somewhat frustrated.
"...alright, sorry. Out in a few!" Sora said at last and ducked under the showerhead to rinse his hair—also in record-speed.
The dash to school was almost epic...the kind of epic worthy of exclamation points!
And the like.
Sora and Kairi ran neck and neck, and to any onlookers it might have seemed they were racing each other, but this of course was not the case. Both sped into the front hall of Kingston High, huffing and puffing. They'd made it in under five minutes.
Typically, it would take a normal person about ten to reach Kingston from their dwelling.
Lucky for Sora and Kairi, whatever they were, it was not 'normal' by any stretch of the word...so their peers would all nod heads and agree, anyway.
"Kobayashi, Yamato, you're late." The professor sat at his desk, chin leaning in a lazy fashion on his hand, a lazy fashion no usual teacher would have been so bold or careless to show during work hours. But then, Leon was not your typical professor.
"Sorry," Sora averted his eyes to the floor a bit nervously. Professor Leon always made him just a little bit...jumpy.
"I said you can take a seat," Leon's voice bordered on impatient as it broke into Sora's default nervous space-out and, yep, you guessed it.
He jumped, an admirable three or four feet up in the air, actually. Kairi whistled as she took her seat. Sora, face redder than a tomato, mumbled another apology and sunk into his own chair in the desk next to Kairi with a sigh. Well, technically things could've been worse. They could've had detention.
"Oh and Kobayashi?" Leon intoned, flipping through a file Sora hadn't seen before on his desk.
"Ah, yes, professor?" Sora replied, meeting Leon's unreadable gaze with some difficulty.
"Stay after class. I'll write you a late note to your next hour."
Sora's insides squirmed.
"Okay," he said and class commenced, as usual.
Somewhere in the middle Kairi passed Sora a note, but before he could open it, Leon, back still turned to them as he finished writing the day's in-class assignment on the board, said:
"I'm sure he can tell you why I asked him to stay later, Yamato."
This time even Kairi sank noticeably lower into her seat.
Though not so much as poor Sora.
Later came and all the students quickly filed out of the room, as usual. No one really wanted to be stuck in a room with Leon for too long...especially alone. He had made making people uncomfortable without even trying into the finest of arts and as a professor, that effect only seemed to intensify. Kairi, letting her worried and curious look flit towards Sora for a moment, patted him on the shoulder as she too made her exit, her last few steps being a little hasty, as if she was in a hurry to escape.
With the door shutting, Sora shifted from foot to foot. Leon sat, arms crossed on his desk, eyeing his pupil with well hidden amusement. He knew the effect he had on the kids. And he liked it that way. Unapproachable and just a little more than a little...well, scary.
His apparent lack of people skills had snuffed out many a student crush on him from each incoming year of female students and also kept students from asking an inordinate amount of what he deemed to be 'stupid questions'.
Yes, Leon believed in such a thing as 'stupid questions'...and stupid people, and stupid things...and well, anything else really.
"Take a seat Kobayashi," Leon said blankly and Sora obediently sat...on top of the nearest desk. Leon arched a brow.
"I meant in the chair..." he said and Sora looked momentarily mortified but before he could slip into the seat, Leon finished, "But whatever. It's fine, since it's only you."
Sora's posture relaxed and his anxiety eased just a bit. Maybe this wouldn't be quite so bad.
"I have a favor, actually, more of an assignment for you," Leon stated.
"Not the homework?" Sora asked, feeling disquietingly dumb.
"Ah, that too, but this is what you'd call a special assignment," Leon said, still vague as ever and Sora, as his imminent fear of his professor began to ebb, began to feel the beginnings of a slight annoyance. Just what was Leon getting at?
"I don't understand," Sora frowned, crossing his arms.
"I haven't finished," Leon said calmly, ignoring Sora's small 'oh' as he continued, "We're having a transfer student, unusual at this point in the term, but that's the word from the higher ups, and can't do anything about it. So your job, your assignment, is to get this student acquainted with the school, the whole welcoming committee gig. Headmaster Strife suggested I do it, but I'm sure you've noticed how well I work with people," and here Leon did something frighteningly unusual.
He smiled.
Only a little.
And more of a smirk.
Oh but it was there.
Sora became nervous again.
"Ah, well," Sora stumbled over his reply. He wouldn't lie to this man. That would be...stupid. But he didn't really feel like saying, 'Well, yes, you have the manners and people skills of a block of wood, only less so.'
"Forget it," Leon said, smirk/smile gone as he then said, "He starts tomorrow and all the kids like you. You're the man, Kobayashi." Leon tossed a file at Sora, who surprised himself by catching it with one hand, almost without thinking.
"I...uh...alright," Sora relented before he could dig his grave any deeper and gave a quick bow before dashing out of the room. Leon watched him go, slightly amused, his previous small smirk back again. The boy had forgotten his late note...
As if on cue the door to the room slid back open.
"Sorry, forgot my pass!" Sora exclaimed, swiping the piece of paper with a rushed thank-you and hurling himself out of the room again only to run straight into someone. Sora fell back with a resounding thud.
"Late?" an indifferent but not unkind voice asked.
"H-headmaster Strife!" Sora picked himself, the file of the new kid, and his late pass back up hurriedly. "I am so sorry!" he bowed. Sora refrained from groaning. He'd been doing an awful lot of apologizing in one morning...
"Don't worry, just go on to class," the blond said, absently smoothing out his jacket and shirt collar. Sora nodded balefully and exited much more quietly than before.
The door closed.
Blue and blue stared at each other a moment, as if sizing each other up.
"Headmaster," Leon nodded nonchalantly.
"Professor," Cloud nodded in return.
"What brings you here?" Leon asked, not budging from his desk in the slightest. Cloud took seat on top of the same desk Sora had just occupied. Leon's smirk became a rare full-fledged smile—which was only a more definite upward quirk of the lips for him, but, as he would say…whatever.
"What's with that face?" Cloud replied almost haughtily.
"You like this face," Leon said coolly, not missing a beat. Cloud shrugged and Leon, seeing it fit, got up and circled his desk to stand in front of the headmaster. "And your tie's crooked, idiot," he added as if in after-thought and began to adjust it without waiting for an answer. Cloud watched his subordinate thoughtfully for a moment, the easy silence of the room quite unlike the previous bemused tension.
"Did you ever think I might wear it like that on purpose...professor?" Cloud asked mildly. Leon paused in his adjustment and then, suddenly, tugged on it slightly, bringing Cloud's face nose-to-nose with his own.
"I thought about it," Leon said and brought their faces that crucial last centimeter closer, angling his down just slightly.
There were no locks on the doors in Kingston High.
Lucky wasn't it, that Leon had a free hour.
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"You're assigned a student?" Kairi wrinkled her nose at the idea before biting into a rice ball. She and Sora sat during lunch every day underneath the courtyard's Sakura tree.
"I know, but I couldn't exactly...er...refuse," Sora mumbled the last bit.
"Ah yes, Professor Leon. He's a little scary," Kairi laughed softly. Sora rested with his arms behind his head against the base of the tree, eyes closed. Kairi looked down at him thoughtfully. "Wonder who this new kid is though," she commented. Sora tossed the file toward Kairi from his bag. Kairi flipped through with the occasional 'ah', 'hm', and 'interesting' until Sora himself became intrigued and was looking over her shoulder. "He's good looking at least," Kairi remarked, flashing Sora a grin, which Sora openly returned.
"Getting ideas Kairiiii?" Sora poked his best friend in the side playfully. She giggled as only a tickle could elicit and shook her head.
"No! You, on the other hand," she began.
"Oh stop," Sora pouted. "I'm not!" he stated and crossed his arms.
"'Oh stop'?" Kairi mimicked with a limp wrested hand gesture.
"Kairiii!" Sora pouted further, but a smile was working its way onto his face regardless of his strict effort not to.
"I see that smile Sora Kobayashi. You can't fool me. Maybe you aren't but you've thought about it, so help me!" Kairi poked him back and they paused, stared at each other silently, and broke into fits of shared laughter, unbridled and infectious.
"...yeah, yeah," Sora replied, neither completely shutting out Kairi's theory, nor owning up to it.
"But anyway, Riku Miyahara, guess we'll get to see the real thing tomorrow?" she pondered aloud.
"Yep," Sora replied. With a brief furtive look, Sora snatched one of Kairi's remaining rice balls and enthusiastically began to eat, adding after his first swallow, "No big deal. I'll show him around, and that'll be it."
Well, that's what he thought anyway.
So this may be a bit rusty. I apologize. I've come off of a long hiatus after finally getting my schoolwork together. So long, I had to get a new penname because I couldn't remember my old password or e-mail I used for it.
Heh.
Love the Sora...who loves the Riku...and...yeah.
-slashable Riyu