GREATEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES
I do not own any characters in this story. They belong to Treyarch. The pairing in this fic is Richtofen/Dempsey. Rated T for strong language, mentions of abuse, alcohol use, and drug use. Rating may change.
This chapter has been rewritten. The others have not. There might be some confusing shit when you switch from one to two.
Iron fences stood straight above him, rusted at the tips of worn-looking spikes. Charming. A chipped sidewalk led to a tall brick building. It looked like it'd been around for generations. A sign ruined by rain spelled out Treyarch's Academy for Boys in large block letters, though he could hardly read the third word. His suitcases felt heavier the longer he stood there. His parents shipped him off to a boarding school in America.
It'll be a fresh start, he'd thought, even though he felt like he'd vomit up his guts when he got the news. And, well, he couldn't object without dear old mom and dad hitting him as their goodbyes. He'd be spending the next four years in the place, save for holidays when he'd go home or to his American aunt and uncle. He wondered if he should run back to the taxi. The reminder of the fare- well over fifty bucks- and the smell of chewing tobacco kept him rooted in place.
It'll be better than home, if nothing else. That shook away what remained of his fear. His old public school had been a nightmare, whether he was thankful for his upper arm strength earned from scrambling into hidey-holes to escape playground bullies. He puffed out his chest and faked a confident swagger that took him to the entrance.
He was in America alone for the first time. A minor surrounded by tens of thousands, none of which, he was sure, were mildly schizophrenic Neo Nazis. That loneliness weighed him down more than his bags. Don't be ridiculous, it's not as if you haven't felt alone before. Your dad was in a business trip in South Carolina when you were eight and he locked you in a closet while he had a hooker over.
Edward Richtofen, Jr. stepped up on the grey concrete, offering a last look back before he shifted the weight on his shoulders and pulled the door open. A woman sat at the reception desk. He crossed to her, quiet despite a heavy pair of steel-toed combat boots. She looked up at him and pointed a sharp, blood red nail at a clipboard, the other tapping away at a keyboard. "Write your name down, sweetie, we gotta keep track of who comes in. You're the Richtofen boy, yeah? Your roommate'll be down to show you around soon." She returned her attention to the computer, working a jaw full of gum.
He looked down at the paper and signed, wondering whom his roommate would be. He'd received the news along with his acceptance letter and schedule. He'd written it on his hand. He set the pen on the clipboard, pushed it toward the woman, and opened his clenched fist. In the familiar scrawl of his handwriting, smudged by hours of planes, trains, and taxi rides, during all of which he'd sweated, were two words. They shouted the typical American way. Tank Dempsey.
Will it be a jar-headed jock? Maybe. His name's Tank. What if he's some scrawny kid? I am in the land of the free and the home of the brave, now. Here, you can have an unfitting name. Richtofen dragged his bags to a chair and looked down halls that split left and right, both sealed by heavy doors. Anxiety flooded him.
A boy with blond hair burst from the door on the right, sporting the same uniform as Richtofen. He grinned, lighting up his face, looking friendly. The woman at the desk rolled her eyes when Tank extended his hand, Richtofen standing up on his own before shaking it. "Name's Tank Dempsey. Welcome to this horrid excuse for a school." He winked and Richtofen resisted the urge to hide his face in his hands. Per to his old therapist's advice, he forced his hostility away. He'd be civil with Tank. He'd give him a chance.
"I'm Edward Richtofen. Pleasure to meet you..." He let go of Dempsey's hand, never having liked human contact. Maybe it was the way his voices snickered, muffled by his medication, and how a flush was spreading from his neck to his cheeks. His thin lips twitched up in a nervous parody of a smile when Tank looked him over. He was just as Richtofen imagined. A tall, muscled guy, with the stereotypical blond and blue. His very own Captain America. To Richtofen's five ten, he had to be at least six even.
"Enough of the damn formalities. Call me Dempsey. I'll call you Richtofen." No use in taking friendships slow. "Come on. We've got the afternoon ahead of us. School ain't started." Dempsey moved across the tiles, fluid, leaving Richtofen to scramble after in the odd way that came with his lanky body.
Several boys leaned against black lockers in the hall past the door. They all were staring at him, he knew it, and those whispers of theirs were all about him. He stared right back. Down at his shoes, keeping in step with his American roommate. A few whistles and catcalls resounded through the hall.
"Dempsey's got a boytoy!"
"How much you cost, sweetheart?"
Richtofen did scrub his face, rough, with the heel of his hand. The boys were silenced with a cold glare from Dempsey, and he gestured for Richtofen to go through a door leading to a stairwell. Floors 4-5: Dorms.
"You have two floors just for dorms?" Richtofen asked, wheezing out the words after a breath. His bags were weighing him down like nothing else.
"Yeah, bro we got plenty of kids around. There's forty dorms per floor with two boys per dorm, so that's..." the awkward pause showed his first name might give a clue of his strength and intelligence. "One hundred sixty kids!" Dempsey said, oozing confidence, stomping up the steps faster than Richtofen could keep up. He smiled despite himself, having done the math in the first few seconds out of the ten it'd taken for Dempsey to do it.
They were up the stairs after a useless rambling Richtofen only half-listened to. Dempsey shoved open a door with his shoulder. Another label on it told him it lead to floor five. "Dorm 539's the place we're goin'."
"Danke Gott," he muttered to himself, "these bags are heavy!" His back ached from dragging them around over the past day and a half. He managed to keep up with Dempsey through the hallway full of boys, careful to not lose sight of him. These Americans all look alike... Richtofen thought. Dempsey disappeared into one of the doors. He followed, kicking the door shut, into the dorm he'd be sharing for the next one thousand four hundred sixty days.
"I got top bunk. Jus' slam your shit wherever you wanna, by the door, wherever, I gotta piss." Richtofen dropped it at the foot of the lumpy bed, flopping down face-first. The sleeve of his shirt pulled up past his wrist, showing a tattoo of an Iron Cross he'd had since the age of thirteen, when his gang first picked him up. He remembered the sting of the needle, remembered biting his lip to keep back tears of pain, and remembered rubbing cream on it to keep it from getting infected. It was nothing compared to the Imperial Eagle between his shoulder blades that held a Nazi flag within the crest on its chest.
Richtofen tugged his sleeve back down and glanced up. Dempsey closed the bathroom door. He hadn't seen.
He waited on the bunk until Dempsey came back out, gesturing at his bags. "Where should I put my stuff? Do we have communal drawers, or do I stick them under my bunk?" Dempsey smiled and chuckled. Richtofen's brow rose. He was sure he'd not said anything funny. Then again, he lost track of what he said sometimes. Shit.
"Sorry," Dempsey straightened and looked down at him, the smile on his face not fading. "I can hardly tell what you're fuckin' sayin' with that accent and how fast you're talking. If my granddad was here, he'd be runnin' up and down the hall screamin' there was gonna be a Kraut invasion. Just keep it in that nightstand or whatever the hell that is or under the bunk. Like you said." Richtofen nodded and stood, ducking out of Dempsey's way and picking up the bag with his clothes. He pulled it to the nightstand.
He knelt by it and checked to see if his clothes were neat before he began to pack them in. "When does school start?" he asked, refolding a shirt. The letter he received hadn't given him a date, but it was the seventeenth of August. His parents enrolled him in time to start freshman year, which was lucky for him. In fifth grade, he'd stalked into homeroom halfway through the year. By the end of eighth grade, he had more scars than he could count on both hands and feet from the beatings he got from his peers.
"Nineteenth. Gracious, yeah? You'd think they'd make us start today, since we all got here on the sixteenth 'cept you and a few other fellas, but they ain't. Two more days of the principal and such dealin' with douchey teenagers, yeah?"
Dempsey'd climbed up onto his bed, but he shot up, smacking his head on the ceiling as he did. Richtofen looked up at him when little flakes of eggshell paint stopped drifting down, curious and concerned. "My friends and I are goin' to a party tonight. We're seein' if we can score some numbers, get into some pants. You gotta come; have a little luck before you don't got no more during school."
Richtofen said nothing for a moment, consumed by the repetitive task of putting away his things, though he'd registered Dempsey's offer. Getting invited to a party was odd. He'd never been to one, never kissed anyone but his mother, and never done any sort of drug. He'd only been drunk once, and that was when he was fourteen, just a year back, with his father at a business meeting. He was allowed a drink with the men. It was there he learned, unlike his peers and most men there, he couldn't hold his liquor.
It was a tempting idea. He wanted to kiss folks and test his drinking capacities. Maybe take a hit of one of the many drugs around. He was in Colorado, and they'd legalized weed in 2012. Besides, he couldn't shoot down Dempsey. He'd been nice so far, and he didn't want to make an enemy. He knew boys would get pissy over rejection. Richtofen tucked a pair of pants away before turning to him. "Sure. When is it? I need a nap."
Dempsey looked at a note he'd written on his wrist. "Nine," he said, and flipped his arm to check the time on an old, leather-bound watch. "It's six. I can get you up at eight forty or something and we can head out." Dempsey's mouth was running nonstop, and it was nice to hear the chatter of someone other than his voices. Speaking of the damn things... He had another dose of medication to take when he woke up.
It's not girls you want to kiss. What about your new American boy? You heard those boys in the hall... One piped up as Richtofen continued to unpack his clothing. He'd decided long ago that he was pansexual, but his voices didn't help with internalized homophobia.
Fuck off; I don't like him like that. I don't know him. It's been less than an hour since I got here. Richtofen zipped his bag closed and shoved it under his bed, closing the nightstand with a boot. He sat down on his bed and rolled onto his side. "Thanks for inviting me and thanks for waking me up." He murmured, wriggling under the covers and tucking them under his arm.
"No problem, buddy, I got your back." He heard that and some incomprehensible mumbling before he let out a sigh and passed out in an unfamiliar bed. Normally, he would've been cautious. He would've stayed up and made sure Dempsey didn't try anything. His exhaustion got the better of him.
For the next few months, he wouldn't have to think about seeing any family. It was him, his studies, and the other one hundred fifty-eight students he'd yet to meet.
Richtofen woke at eight forty, give or take a few minutes, with a rough hand on his shoulder. "Hey, wake up. It's time, Richtofen." He opened his eyes and looked into Dempsey's. For a moment, he had no idea where he was, and he flinched away from the touch. "Dude, it's just me, Dempsey!"
He remembered as soon as Dempsey said it. He was at Treyarch's Academy for Boys, away from Germany. He knew the stranger standing over him. Richtofen sat up, kicking off the blanket. He smoothed down the front of his rumpled uniform shirt as an excuse to break eye contact. "Ja, ja, the party. Almost forgot." He jammed his knuckles his eyes and yawned.
"Well, hope you got a good sleep; 'cause we're gonna be partying all night." Richtofen slipped out of his bunk and stumbled over to his drawer. "Don't bother with the uniform. Just wear your gym shorts or something." Dempsey said, disappearing around a corner. Richtofen nodded, mostly to himself, picking out a pair of shorts.
He loosened his tie, folded it, and set it down on his bunk. Richtofen had a need for things to be need. Some of his friends in Germany called him a stiff on every occasion. They asked him why he'd never calm down and have a little fun like the rest. He didn't want to say he'd tried alcohol before and he didn't have any interest in making out with some poor soul and waking up the next morning with a headache. He was a strange drunk.
Richtofen pulled his shirt over his head, leaving him in his undershirt. Thankfully, it hid the tattoo on his back. He stepped into the bathroom. Dempsey was waiting at the entrance. Richtofen closed the door and changed, tossing his uniform pants on the bed with his other clothes when he walked out.
"Geez, Richtofen, did you take long enough? I'm lucky the guy'll start late." Richtofen offered a small smile as he slipped into his shoes, following Dempsey out the door. He had no idea where he was going and would have a hard time navigating anywhere but the front desk and his floor. The other two were likely for classes, and he had no idea if there was such thing as a sixth.
"We got floor three for recreation and arts, so that's where the vending machines and gym and shit are. There's dance and drama classes if that's your sorta thing. One and two are for academics. Plus the nurse's office and main office are on floor two. You get to the gym from just about anywhere, I think." Dempsey prattled on as they made their way down the hall. Richtofen looked at a crowd of seven kids of all shapes and sizes waiting at the stairs. Dempsey wasn't lying when he said he was going with some friends.
Richtofen stayed close to his side, anxious at the presence of the other boys. He'd have to admit he trusted Dempsey even though he'd only known him for a few hours. Dempsey slung an arm around Richtofen's shoulders. "Guys, this's Richtofen. He's a German or something. Richtofen, meet the guys."
In a slur of voices all in different pitches, the guys introduced themselves. He picked up a couple names, or at least, he thought he did. Frank, Raul... What the hell kind of name is Soap? A surname? A couple clapped him on the back with enough force to make him stumble.
"Dempsey, how're we gettin' there?" one asked, leading the pack stomping down the stairs. Dempsey looked up at them, already at the bottom of the stairwell. Richtofen, though he was a stiff, understood Dempsey's eagerness. There'd be no time for a social life in a school like Treyarch's.
"'S only a few blocks. We're walking," Dempsey replied. Richtofen noticed everyone was above the normal level of fitness, including Dempsey. Richtofen felt out of place, being scrawny and short. Even the guy who was shorter than him by an inch or so was muscular. If he was going to hang around them, he'd have to toughen up.
They left the building, Dempsey winking at the woman at the reception desk. She'll be alone tonight. These boys will be stuck in classrooms and trapped under strict schedules... Everyone up at seven, classes are done at four. On campus until six. Free roam until nine. Ten is lights out. For once, Richtofen was glad to be good with numbers.
Richtofen sighed and kicked a stone on the sidewalk. An interesting start to these next four years. I wonder if this school will be any different from the rest...