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My Kind of Guy
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Chapter 8
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Why did girls always assume that just because you're gay, you loved to go shopping? Yeah, Roxas couldn't figure that one out, either. Because right now, he'd rather saw off his own foot.
He was beyond grateful that Olette had agreed to go to the mall with him and had no problem when she started checking out the clearance racks for a swimsuit for herself (not like he could stop her, the girl was a closet binge-shopping veteran).
He knew why she was doing this, of course. Hayner was clueless about it, but Olette had been harboring a crush on the boy since he had saved her from being bullied by Seifer all the way back in third grade. Olette, of course, was equally oblivious that Hayner had had a crush on her for just as long. It would've been funny if it wasn't so annoying, like it was right now. Not being a scrawny little twig anymore, Olette fully planned to exploit her developing curves to garner Hayner's attention and clue him in that she was interested in being more than just friends. But she had to find just the right piece so not to come across as sleazy. If there was little that Olette detested more than a girl who flaunted her butt and boobs just to land the hottest guy possible.
But every last swimsuit she'd tried on hadn't fit right one way or another, and she seemed to require her blond friend's opinion on every last one of them. He loved Olette dearly, but she was asking her to analyze her in ways that, quite frankly, was weirding him out.
"Olette, if I was straight, I'm sure I'd love to hear all about this, preferably with hands-on visual aids. As I'm not, please for the love of God and my sanity, do not ask me this!" the poor boy cried.
He could practically see her scowling at him through the door. "You wouldn't mind shopping if Sora was here," she said, poking her head out of the changing room.
"There's a lot of things I wouldn't mind doing with Sora. Your point?" Roxas snapped.
When Roxas finally made it to the Usual Spot, Olette was the only one there. As his unofficial love councilor, Olette had immediately recognized the pensive look on her blond friend's face and knew it had something to do with the blue-eyed brunette he was crushing on. Roxas had tried to skirt around the issue, but Olette managed to wrangle the truth out of him anyway. She didn't seem at all surprised at Sora's strange answers and behavior, just smiled that annoyingly knowing smile that all girls have, patted him on the back, and dragged him to the mall to shop for a new outfit for the party tomorrow.
So here they were. Roxas and Olette glared at each other from opposite sides of a changing room door for a minute before Olette gave a frustrated huff and ducked back inside.
"You want my honest opinion?" Roxas asked through the door.
"Absolutely," the girl called back.
"Just go with whatever makes you happy, not what you think some guy would want you to," he replied.
The door opened and Olette came out again. "Hayner's not-"
"Hayner wouldn't want you to change who you are just to impress him," he told her. "He thinks you're perfect exactly as you are, sharp tongue, massive brains, and all."
Olette slowly looked from her friend to the two-piece she was wearing. Roxas could see that she had been truly touched by what he had said, eyeing herself in the mirror. "So, the green one, then?" she asked demurely.
"Definitely," he told her.
As she changed into her regular clothes, Olette said, "That goes for you, too, you know."
"Huh?" Roxas asked.
"Sora wouldn't want you to change who you are for him, either."
The blond looked down at the shopping bag in his hand. He could just make out the articles of clothing it held underneath all the tissue paper. "You," he choked, "you really think he likes me?"
Olette came out of the dressing room, fully dressed again. She took one look at her friend and immediately sat down next to him on the bench, throwing her arms around him in a hug. Despite all his courage and strength, Olette knew how fragile his kind heart could be. And while he may have only had a crush on one Sora Leonhart, those feelings had grown over the past few weeks into something much deeper. It was one of the reasons why she was trying so hard to get them together.
"Absolutely," she reassured him gently. "He had a pet name for you ready and waiting, didn't he?"
Olette smiled as Roxas blushed at the notion that the brunette had really given him a pet name.
"But how do you know?" he pleaded. "What makes you so sure?"
"Roxas, I'm going to be honest with you," Olette said, looking him in the eye but not unkindly, "like really honest."
"You are kind and sweet and infinitely adorable, Roxas," she told him gently, "But you do have a selective interpretation of things, sometimes. You don't think to watch for those kinds of signals from him because in your mind, Sora is so completely out of your league, it never occurred to you that maybe he likes you back."
Olette knew that Roxas loved her, Hayner, and Pence dearly, but deep down there was an insecurity in him that made him all too conscious of how people thought of him and it was eating away at him from the inside out. She saw it, Hayner and Pence saw it, even his family knew about it, which was why they quietly manipulated Roxas into moving to Twilight Town in the first place. It was why Cloud was so fiercely protective of his little brother when it came to relationships.
Not that Roxas knew he was being guarded so. He would think that they all thought that he couldn't take care of himself, that he was weak. It was the complete opposite, of course. Olette thought Roxas to be one of the strongest, kindest people she knew. But his just barely standing and infinitely fragile self esteem would crumble like a house of cards because he'd take it that way anyway.
This dark spot in Roxas wasn't nearly the gaping hole it used to be, and the blond had come a long way in recovering from it.
But it was still there, still festering, still rearing its ugly head once in a while to cast a dark shadow over her precious friend's smile.
Roxas didn't… he didn't expect love and acceptance from his friends and family, rather he knew that it was freely and willingly given, and for that he loved them more than he could possibly ever say. They had healed every part of his heart that they could reach, but the problem was the blight extended to a place they couldn't reach; romantic love. They couldn't reach that place to heal it.
But Sora could.
Sora was popular and he was kind. He could give Roxas the validation and the confidence that his friends and family couldn't.
She saw it in his smile every time he spoke of the brunette, a quiet happiness she hadn't seen for some time that even the darkness couldn't touch. It gave her hope that Roxas may yet be fully healed, especially when she noticed a certain brunette sneaking glances at a certain blue-eyed blond. Olette knew Sora was going to make his move soon. She just had to make sure Roxas didn't inadvertently sabotage himself and his chances.
Roxas would be good for Sora, too. From working on that lab together in Chemistry, Olette had gotten to be fairly good friends with Namine, and from casual conversation with her, Olette had learned a few things about the spiky haired star of the Underclass dueling team.
He was lonely.
Considering how popular he was, it might have sounded silly, but it was true. Sora had a core of about a dozen or so friends at school that he trusted inexplicably, but the rest of the time… People tried to associate or go out with him just because he was popular. Girls only wanted to go out with him because of the trophies he'd won or the people he knew or because he was cute. They tried to change him, use him for their own goals.
Roxas wouldn't do that. He already loved Sora for who he was.
People often dismissed teenage love as just rampaging hormones, and much of it was, but not this time. No, Roxas' feelings for Sora were absolutely serious.
"So, tomorrow, open you mind and your heart and you will see for yourself how much he really likes you," Olette counseled, the certainty in her voice absolute.
And later that night as Roxas examined himself in his new outfit in the mirror, he hoped, prayed even, that she was right.
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A.N. Sorry this chapter's so short. It's the shopping scene between Roxas and Olette that was supposed to be at the end of Ch. 7, but I couldn't write it in time to post it with the rest of that chapter. Buuut… the tone and dialogue of it didn't really fit in with what is now going to be Ch. 9, either. So I just made it into a chapter of its own, abet a short one. And just so you know, I'm trying really, really, really hard to have Ch. 9 posted by the end of the month. :)
I do need to have a serious word with you guys, though. As of the time I posted this, MKoG had 241 reviews. That's a lot by any standards, and I am damn proud of that.
But that's also out of 15,430 hits. That's a review rate of 1.6 percent. I put a lot of effort into every single chapter of my stories, and it takes a while for me to come up with this stuff, so I readily acknowledge the month-or-more long gap between updates, but even with half of the hits dismissed as rereadings, that's barely even 3.3 percent.
If you have ever reviewed any of my fics, know that this rant is in no way intended for you, even if it was something as simple as "Squee!! So cute!!"
Feedback in the form of reviews is vital to authors. We set out to tell stories of our own creation and reviews are often the only way we know how we're doing. Not getting reviews is like a musician playing a solo out in front of an audience and receiving only silence at the end. And it's not only the quantity of reviews, but the quality.
Reviews are also forms of encouragement as much as they are feedback. Every author on this site has a life outside of fandom, and those lives can get very busy and demanding. Sometimes my life gets so demanding, I forget all about my fics, or I only remember "damn, I meant to work on MKoG or Shadow or FtD" (and I am working on those two, by the way, they are far from dead) until I go to bed at night. By reviewing, you let me and all the other authors know that there's still interest in our work, a gentle nudge in the right direction. I hate it when stories that you're really into get left unfinished by the author, but that's often why they are abandoned.
Like AngelicLucifel said, it's no fun to write for a fandom that's already dead. Not that I think SoraxRoxas is dead (far from it), but it's easy for an author to get that idea if no one reviews their stuff.
Seriously, it only takes a minute or two to click on that little blue-gray button at the bottom of the screen and leave a review.
There, rant over.
Oh, and by the way, for all the people who tell me, "Sorry for the lame/stupid review," don't worry about it. You reviewed and that's enough.
