Vanitas is used to the dirty looks that his studded leather jacket attracts. So as the pastel frat bros jog by on a breeze of spray-on cologne, he returns theirs with a glossy white smile that noticeably quickens their pace.

Granted, it could be that he's leaned up against an actual fricking pillar, combat boots crossed in front of him, TØP blaring from the headphones around his neck, with his butt on the sign reading "Nomura Hall." A living stain on the front patio of the postcard picturesque red brick dorm that Res Life booted him from freshman year.

It could be that he is doing this at the ungodly hour of six in the morning.

It could be that they are thinking that it is too damn early and too damn hot to be that much of a punk.

And they would be fucking correct.

Sweat glues the white button down to his back, and he can smell the gel flattening his perpetually mussed hair melting like plastic.

But it's probably the jacket.

Vanitas usually has a retort to go with that look, the kind of thing that would, say, get him jumped and booted from a freshman dorm. But this morning he's distracted, and he doesn't need more trouble anyway. His phone keeps pinging, forcing his eyes to take in an unprecedented number of emojis.

The Pink One: You in, Van?

Prayer hands, kissy face emojis, winky emojis, sparkle emojis.

This is the chick that beat my sorry ass with the bouquet I brought her when I was nine.

Vanitas feels a derisive chuckle die in his throat and powers down his phone without answering.

He closes his eyes, lets the drumbeat rattle his eardrums senseless until calm washes over him, and his pulse slows. He makes a decision.

Time to give sleeping beauty his wake up call.

The front door clicks as somebody pushes out of the dorm. A girl scowls as Vanitas gets up, but he just cocks an eyebrow at her, her rubber duck print pajama pants, and steps out of her way. She doesn't hold the heavy, off-white painted door for him, and he lunges and just manages to stop it with his motorcycle helmet before it can slap shut. The girl shuffles blearily toward a dining hall, unaware.

Another ping. Vanitas swaps his helmet with his heel to keep the door propped open as he slides out his phone. He doesn't read the message before tapping 'reply'. Kairi's texts give him a migraine.

I can't say no to you, he types back.

Time to work some not-so-Disney magic.

Hi fucking ho, bitches.

Ventus clips the mirrored, magnetic name badge to the left breast of his lime green Wayfinder University resident assistant polo.

It's the free one he got as part of a larger bribe to stay in the dorm all summer as an RA instead of catching his usual flight to his mother's two-bedroom coastal apartment or retiring to his dad's ranch style place, just forty minutes away, nestled in the endless cornrows of suburban Ohio.

But Ven hadn't done it for the polo. He did it for the streak.

Ven wipes a fingerprint smudge from the badge and frowns at the shadows beneath his baby blue eyes in the mirror, not quite hidden behind the glasses that get him dubbed a hipster every time he makes the mistake of carrying around a latte.

With a final stroke of the fair stubble he doesn't have time or willpower to shave, he pushes himself away from the closet and leans across his desk to mark "358" in permanent marker across the day's date on his wall calendar.

358 days without getting fired. My personal best.

Of course it hardly counts, since Vanitas has only been back for two.

Ven sighs and circles the date, mid-May. 358.

Tomorrow will be blank.

Unless I tell the truth.

There's a pounding on the door, a quick succession of strikes that can only be his twin brother or law enforcement. He can tell it's Vanitas because it's accompanied by Panic! exploding from the headphones perpetually draping his neck and perpetually dialed up to maximum volume.

You're a regular, decorated emergency

The bruises and contusions

Will remind me what you did when you

"Wake up, skater boy! If we're late you can kiss your precious community showers good-bye."

Grabbing his wallet, Ven's gaze has dropped down to the cluster of framed family photos on his desk, next to a green, stained glass star. His eye catches on the one on the left. Everyone wears white karate robes and goofy grins. Fourteen-year-old Ventus and Vanitas proudly clutch the new black belts they had coveted practically since birth.

Can't take the kid from the fight,

Take the fight from the kid

Their father, Master Eraqus, to his pupils, stands beaming in between them, a hand on each of their shoulders, while their older brother Terra with his beefy arms, and his super long term, just-get-engaged-already girlfriend Aqua with her choppy blue mom bob, sandwich the twins on either side, each holding up a muscled bicep.

Just sit back, just sit back

This all back before Vanitas' motorcycle stunt YouTube channel took off. Before the groupies and the novice film crews and the endorsements and the tours. Before Ven became his cameraman. Before Ven quit being his cameraman. Before.

The photo just to its right is one of those blurry roller coaster snapshot ordeals, a memento of Ven's first and only trip to the Magic Kingdom. Taken at the peak of Splash Mountain, seconds before the drop. Purchased for the look of sheer horror on Terra's face and glee on Ven's. He'd had both arms up, a smuggled, slightly damp cotton candy in hand. Aqua's seated between them, a vice grip on both of their shoulders, like she can single handedly protect them from the inevitable plunge.

Jutting slightly in front of this, the most recent photo, a Christmas present, the frame hand-decorated with small, white shells. The boys' mother and youngest brother Sora, lean together and facing away from the camera, toward the ocean, flower wreaths askew in their chocolate brown hair, arms deeply and permanently tan, surrounded as always by sunset and surf and sand.

It's not so pleasant and it's not so conventional

It sure as hell ain't normal but we deal, we deal

He sighs.

You can take the kid out of the fight

"Ventus!" Another set of door rattling knocks, like Vanitas is using his helmet instead of his fist.

Ven's lip curls as he pockets the wallet he always drops beside the frames. He had better not be knocking down all my door tags.

As he turns to go, Ven's eyes wander to the well-worn skateboard collecting dust under his bed. A red, black, and white checkerboard relic of his high school self. Not unlike the thin silver ring piercing the right side of his lower lip. No amount of internal nagging could convince him to part with either.

Not exactly Res Life approved, but heck.

Hell.

Fuck it.

He slides the board out with his foot, the music in the hall blaring louder, lyrics he used to scream sing from the back of one of Vanita's crews' pick-up.

What have I got left to lose?

Because I can't tell the truth.

Ven kicks up the skateboard and catches it, then crosses the room and swings open the door to meet his brother.

Vanitas looks a bit more like Sora than Ven, but the twins share a similar face shape and the same lean, muscular physique. Vanitas is a bit shorter and a bit stockier, but he struts like he's 6'8, so it balances out.

The biggest crack in the mirror image is Vanitas' hair, dyed jet black and permanently mussed into oddly angled spike-like tufts from his helmet. It's a distant departure from Ven's golden blonde, swept up to the front left like a model if you were being kind, or bedhead if you were not.

The biggest crack in the mirror image is Vanitas' eyes. Their light brown irises glint an amber yellow in the sun, making them somehow less innocuous than Ven's dark-lashed ice blue set when coupled with Vanitas' trusty wicked smirk.

Ven catches Vanitas with his signature black and silver motorcycle helmet raised, poised to pound on the door again.

"Chill, sunshine." Ven claps his brother on the shoulder and slips his door shut, before Vanitas can freak out about how orderly his room is now. "You're going to wake up all of my residents."

Former residents?

Vanitas slides him a wry smile and ticks up the music to an ungodly decibel. "Least of our problems. Let's go, loser." He pushes the helmet into Ven's arms. "Expulsion or bust."

"It's two doors away." Ven shakes his head, and follows Vanitas toward the stairs.

Vanitas hops backward onto the first step and pauses, mockingly incredulous, "So I got here early for nothing?"

"Had to make sure you actually showed."

"Ah. So you scheduled in time to chew me out. Classy." He tilts his head to the window, smirks. "Guess we better take it outside."

"Nah." Ven waves off the notion with a flick of the wrist. If I hadn't gotten him caught, it would have been harmless enough. "I missed you, Van."

Vanitas chuckles and gives the helmet and Ven a playful shove. "Yeah, you did."

While Ven spent most of his high school summers on Destiny Island getting into mischief with Sora and his friends, and the rest in rural Buckeye country shadowing Terra and Aqua as they taught half-pint warriors in Master Eraqus' dojo, Vanitas spent his training.

Master Eraqus had a friend from college named Gregory who would come around once every few years to reminisce about the usual things: old friends, lost loves, research projects gone horribly awry.

A towering, bald, muscular man with golden eyes, brown skin, and the wizened voice of a movie narrator, Greg made an immediate impression on the boys, even before their father told them of his glory days. Way back when, Greg had one of the premiere traveling trick motorcycle riders on the West Coast. He went under the stage name Xehanort. He nearly died seven times.

When Xehanort offered to give the boys a few lessons, well, Ven had never heard Vanitas give a more enthusiastic or more immediate "Yeah, okay, sure, I guess" in his life.

The lessons did not stop at two, and Xehanort began to mentor Vanitas in spare months and spare weekends until the boy had skills that rivaled his own.

Already on his poetry kick, Ven had artfully named the stunt channel Vanitas launched Unversed. Ven dutifully filmed videos perched on ladders, rooftops, and most notoriously, a moving skateboard, and Vanitas did the rest.

Taking the skills he learned, Vanitas built a bad-ass brand, nabbed a sponsorship from Monster Energy, and accumulated a cult following. And if it had cost him his grades freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years of high school, well, Vanitas had never seemed to mind.

Vanitas didn't land the tour until his freshman year of college, though, not long after he was kicked out of the dorms. And the deferment began. Sophomore year and then junior. Master Eraqus trusted Xehanort enough to keep his mouth shut about the potential ramifications on his future, but Terra, who has no such qualms, hasn't spoken to Vanitas in upward of 26 months.

Ven had refused the invitation to accompany him. They didn't need an amateur cameraman where Vanitas was going, and Ven wouldn't have said yes, even if they had. Watching Vanitas risk his life grew more stressful and tiresome with every waking minute. Besides, he liked college. The impromptu friendships, the coffee binges, the late night study sessions, the pervasive smell of laundry detergent, and, most cliche of all, the independence.

Ven hasn't seen Vanitas in person since Christmas.

Monthly video-chatting, occasional texting, and even watching every behind-the-scenes video before it went live on YouTube hadn't come close to filling the Van-shaped void at his side.

Then, abruptly, it was May, the tour had ended, and Vanitas had come back. Re-enrolled. Picked up some kind of pre-law major. Just like that.

And I'll be damned if I let history repeat itself.

"I mean it." Ven stops at the top of the stairs and really looks at his brother, already halfway down the flight. His distressed black skinny jeans have been replaced with black skinny dress slacks, and his black cotton tee swapped for an only slightly wrinkled white button down. This concerted effort suggests that whatever he might say, he had really intended to return to school for more than two days. "And I'm not going to let them kick you out."

Vanitas halts as well. He leans back, his arms splayed across the handrail, uncomfortably cool despite the school budget's allergy to AC, and glances up to ensure his brother catches his eye roll as he cranks up his music. "Tell it to the judge, Ven."

Ven frowns back, spinning one of the gritty skateboard wheels under his palm. "I will."

The I.V. and

Your hospital bed

This was no accident,

This was a therapeutic chain of events