Urrrgh, high school is the still their touchstone. I have never been fond of high school fic (nothing against it, it just isn't my thing) and somehow I've found myself half writing one. What is this!?
Anyway, finally some Rufus POV. He was a stinker for real back in the day (hey he starts out a villain right?) but most teenage boys are kind of stinkers in general.
Still working in ficlets atm but my brain is churning over a meatier chapter. Processing...
Disclaimer: see part 1
As he climbed onto the uncomfortable bleachers along with cheerfully talking strangers massed together in rough family groups, he slid on some sunglasses to fight the glare and eyed the sections above in the shade where he might have sat if he hadn't spent so much time trying to talk himself out of this. There was a madness of a sort in this kind of behavior, closing in on obsession, but he shoved those misgivings aside. The poison known has hope had clouded his judgment and today he would be a slave to it, as a tall wide man in a Hawaiian shirt laughed loudly and snapped some pictures in front of him.
He hadn't even attended his own graduation from college, but he figured it was similar to graduation from high school only the participants were less pimply. Smiling faces as far as the eye could see, and here he sat alone but for one of his silent bodyguards (Elena today, who was in a white short sleeve business shirt and black slacks due to his order of "come dressed casually" which she had freely interpreted). They were dressed so similarly, and both blond in sunglasses, they could have passed as twins.
"Which group do you think she's in?" Elena was scanning the crowd as well as the graduates, but her flickering gaze was keen.
"Sir, my guess would be she's among that group in front. Green hoods."
Rufus spotted the sage green group, a small cluster, near other hooded graduate students. All the tassels blew in the wind, distracting the eye, but there was one student with a fat brown braid and he suspected he knew who that might be. He saw her turn to scan the buzzing crowd, confirming her identity and forcing him to hold his breath as he half expected her to notice him. That had not been the goal, but he reminded himself that no one was going to see anything other than the jovial Hawaiian shirt in front of him. She spotted who she was looking for and waved, somewhere to the left of him her friends and family must be gathered.
The students settled down and as the ceremony began he stuck his earbuds in his head and let his phone run financial news and updates. Calls came in and he ignored them, only willing to risk basic rudeness and not interested in interrupting whatever life lessons other people were getting from the commencement speech. Around him some people looked weepy, others elated, and he was struck by how messy this all was. So much emotion at the end of the journey, and it hadn't even been their accomplishment. His own diploma sat in a box somewhere, an afterthought and mostly only present to give his qualifications some sort of legitimacy rather than imply his journey to the top had been purely nepotism.
Before long they were calling people up, and he took out the earbuds which were only delivering news to him of a labor dispute in a third world country over textiles anyway. He made a note to himself to look into buying stock if it was going to have a temporary lull from production slows, and waited for the moment he had come to see.
All the physical therapy graduates had worn the same green tennis shoes, but from the sparkles and the odd paint swathes he could even see from the stands they had personalized them. He wondered what Tifa had done with hers, but odds were good he'd never be close enough to examine them and see how revealing it might or might not be about her character.
"Tifa Lockhart…" he clapped, politely, and to the left a roaring cheer went up from her little section. Wallace had always had a loud voice, so he was probably leading that charge.
She hugged the diploma case to her chest and Rufus mopped his face with a handkerchief and cursed the sun. She was wiping tears off her face as she was taking her seat again and Rufus wondered anew why they hell he had come here today to witness this useless ritual. All the work had been done, and the work was what mattered. Why didn't people cry every time they turned in a big report? It made about as much sense to him. Oddly enough, he felt a bloom of happiness for her anyway in his chest. The names droned on, and Rufus replaced his ear buds but didn't hear anything else that was said as he fell into memory.
He had dreaded most the day every year a week before the end of classes when they all received yearbooks. As a principle he didn't sign his full name on anything so he'd usually opt for one of three or four pre-decided ambiguous phrases and his initials in print. His natural cursive, tight and hard to read, he saved for his own note writing purposes and legal documents. Everyone at school may have been his own age but he had a hard time thinking of them as peers. His yearbook was frequently asked for and he'd pass it around sociably, but never read anything people wrote to him. Rufus saw them every day, and he would see them every day following summer. In the interim he had work to do for his father, and social gatherings to attend with his mother (and sometimes on her behalf when she was too wrecked from pills to walk and talk straight).
"Rufus! Give it over man, I've still got to find a bunch more people. You're pretty easy, just look for the crowd of girls, right?" Reeve was annoyingly outspoken, but Rufus admired him from the perspective that he was at least self-made. He'd spent last summer swimming and weightlifting to effect his transformation from pale, soft and spindly to tan and muscular with drastic social effect.
"I'll see plenty of you on student council next year; you don't really need to 'find' me." Rufus said, handing over the slim glossy volume all the same. The hallway was humid as Midgar High students rumbled about trying to find one another in the chaos of the free period they'd been given for the purpose of yearbook signing. Rufus just stood near his locker, everyone was bound to come to him anyway.
A slim blond girl with bright red lipstick slid next to Reeve, running her fingers up and down his arm near his bicep. "Me next, Reeve."
"Goddam it Scarlet that's distracting." He pulled away a little bit, but she was persistent. Reeve wasn't fond of the beautiful blond, having been the butt of her jokes when he was a freshman. While his transformation had changed her ideas about him completely, he still didn't like her much. Rufus respected him for that, too. Scarlet was as sexy as any girl in this school could get but she had opportunist written all over her.
"There we go!" He punctuated his sentence with a green sharpee exclamation point and rushed off once the yearbook was in Scarlet's hands. "Hey Barrett…!"
"So what are your summer plans Rufus?" Scarlet pretended like she hadn't already tried to find out this information a week ago. Rufus wondered if she had any other hobbies besides social climbing, she was a smart girl after all.
Reeve giving Barrett and elaborate high five and handshake before laughing gave Rufus an ugly jealous feeling. He didn't have any friends he could "bro out" with, and he suspected that it would just be awkward if he tried. Something in Scarlet's favor, shockingly, was that she treated him like a normal boy as part of her tedious efforts to wind him around her finger. Having people suck up to you was something he was all too familiar with.
"Same as last year. Work. Family obligations." That vague response delivered over and over, and he had yet to have anyone ask him any deeper questions.
One of her long red nails poked him in the chest and he wondered at the contrast against his white t-shirt as he met her eye dispassionately. "Make sure you save some time for fun," she said coyly. The unspoken 'with me' was assumed, and he would consider it if it was convenient for him.
Another girl came to talk to Scarlet and ask for Rufus' yearbook and Scarlet's attention was totally overtaken by this supposed rival. The guffawing from Reeve and Wallace drew Rufus' eyes back to the boys. They were talking about baseball, both being on the team, and he could hear Wallace laying into Strife even at this distance about quitting track ('running in circles') to come play a real sport.
Rufus closed his eyes, and smoothed clammy hands down his jeans. If Strife was there then Lockhart wasn't far behind. The two were practically attached at the hip. True to form, once the tall boys started to roughhouse, Reeve putting Strife into a friendly headlock and Wallace telling him baseball would make a man of him she came into view, her laughing face slightly concerned. The baggy shirt she wore couldn't hide the strain her chest put on the fabric, and her long peasant skirt was all part of her muted color scheme. It was like she was trying to be invisible.
It never got any easier, her presence reminding him that without the money, the name, the looks he was just an emotionally cold lump of flesh with a disagreeable personality. She didn't have anything to recommend her, but everyone went to her when they were in a fix. When in doubt ask Lockhart, she would be there for anyone at any time and she worked hard. Lockhart made him feel like less of a person just by existing, and he hated feeling less. That his eyes wanted to linger on her curves and his hands itched to touch her was insult to injury. In his neatly ordered and planned life she was entropy. He tried to blame it on the hormones but Scarlet for all her beauty didn't entice him the way Lockhart did. Logically he knew he wasn't supposed to want her, but whatever he felt when he looked at her wasn't based in logic. And just like his father, what he couldn't have he'd rather see torn down.
"Hey Scarlet, looks like Lockhart might finally be moving in on Reeve." Sick the wolves on her, his mind screamed, but he hated himself for it at the same time. It was a joke, everyone knew she was practically pair bonded that that passive blond mess.
But even knowing all that Scarlet would have to reassert her claim. "That little…" Scarlet started to march over where Tifa was laughingly pulling at Reeve's arm (which still contained Strife's head) and he ruffled her hair fondly. She gathered her posse and Rufus stood back, watching the girls initiate.
Somehow his yearbook ended up back in his hands, and he resisted the urge to tear out all the pages. One more year in this dump, and then he wouldn't need to deal with any of this anymore.
A hand on his shoulder broke his reverie.
"Sir, we'll need to leave soon if you're going to make your next appointment." With her sunglasses on Elena's face was impossible to read. She was professional, as always, but forgetting the time wasn't like him and he could sense her hesitation at needing to touch him at all.
Rufus shook himself out of the paralyzing nostalgia he rarely allowed himself to indulge in. Not much in those memories he was proud of, so he tried not to revisit them. Mentally he sighed, but outwardly he nodded to Elena and put away his phone. When you were in the business of making money your work never seemed to cease.