A/N: Annnd the last chapter! I hope you all liked the story! Some nice closure to this thing, I think. I don't have much more to say here, really.
Just, thank you everyone for your reviews and everything! You're all super duper epicly awesome people :D
With that, I bid you adieu, until the next story!
Read, review and enjoy!
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The final two weeks of school passed in no different a manner than they had before the two days of prom.
Meaning, Lal and Colonnello left their friends dumbfounded as they returned to their usual interactions. Colonnello continually managed to make Lal angry, and Lal continually used Colonnello as a human punching bag. Even Luce was at a loss as to what the hell had gone wrong – and she was pretty much a psychic.
But if their friends had paid closer enough attention, they would notice that beneath the 'anger' Lal displayed was a playfulness that Colonnello mirrored as he bugged and teased her. And for some mysterious reason, both Lal and Colonnello disappeared at the same time every day, for roughly the same amount of time.
The second oddity went more unnoticed because the two of them disappearing during their free periods at school was nothing new. The fact that the two were always seen together directly after that time, in the same hallway by the gym was what caused Reborn to finally guess something was up.
But he said nothing, sticking to speculation only while he watched the interactions of the two so-called enemies. The only other person who knew what he thought he did was Luce. He didn't trust any of the others to keep quiet – not even Fon.
Graduation was getting closer, and both Lal and Colonnello believed that they had gotten away with their "I still hate you so much" charade. Colonnello had announced that he was being forced into attending college prior to enlisting in the army, but refused to say where. Lal knew, though. And his destination made her more than happy to continue to hide their growing relationship.
While it wasn't completely necessary to be so secretive, sneaking around behind the backs of their friends was much easier than having to endure the endless teasing, lewd comments and probable cockblock attempts by Reborn.
Things were just so much simpler when nobody knew how fake their public interactions truly were.
Lal sat in her car while she headed to graduation, taking her own car so she could have at least a little peace and quiet for the day. After this ceremony would be party, party, party thanks to her mother.
With a smile, Lal moved her thoughts to other, more important things. Such as the conversation she and Colonnello had had after the shower incident weeks ago.
"Well...they know now." She had muttered while he untangled her now slightly less disgusting hair.
"Maybe." Colonnello had replied, a grin on his face. Lal saw it in the mirror in front of her and frowned.
"Maybe?" How was there anything 'maybe' about this situation?
"We might still be able to convince them we're drunk." Colonnello's 'bright idea' made Lal sigh.
"Do you really think that'll work?" she sure as hell didn't.
Colonnello shrugged.
"Who knows? It's worth a shot." He replied. It was their only real idea to remedy the situation. Their serious conversation had ended there - what followed made Lal grin at the memories.
"Hey, why are you so good at fixing my hair, anyway?" Lal had asked. "Are you secretly a hairdresser?" She grinned at the thought, giving Colonnello no time to respond, "You so are. Don't deny it." There was a pause as Colonnello leaned on the bathroom counter next to her, looking incredibly unimpressed.
"Remember how I had my hair long in seventh grade?" He asked. Lal grimaced. She had made fun of him mercilessly for it for the longest time.
"Eeeexactly." He laughed. Lal's expression had been enough to tell Colonnello what she was thinking of.
Lal pulled into the student parking lot of her school, the memory coming to an end. She stepped from her car and waved to a few friends, about to walk over to them to go gather where they were going to receive their caps and gowns when she felt hands at her waist. Suddenly, she was spun and lifted off the ground enough to be kissed quickly.
Lal was too surprised to react for a few seconds, so Colonnello leaned down and stole another kiss, grinning as Lal smacked his shoulder afterward.
"Everyone can see us you know!" She hissed, glancing around and then relaxing only when she was sure no one could see the two of them talking.
"It's graduation, we'll only see them a little over the summer. Don't forget the physical training we have to do for West Point." Colonnello reminded her. Lal shrugged.
"Yeah, yeah," Lal replied, waving her hand dismissively. "Besides, I got plenty of physical training in the gym with you." Lal grinned as a subtle blush that crept across Colonnello's face.
"Aw, did I embarrass you?" She laughed, reaching up and patting his cheek affectionately before she turned and began to walk off, waving at the still flustered Colonnello over her shoulder. Colonnello shook his head and forcibly removed those memories from his head for the moment, waiting a few moments before following after Lal. He hoped that someone would join him so he wasn't left with just the thoughts inside his head.
Graduation came and went without incident, and there was a short time after all of the formal ceremonies where the senior class wandered aimlessly around the school's green, talking amongst themselves and their friends and family. Reborn was having a conversation with Luce's parents, while Luce was off talking with some of her friends. He looked up when he heard his name being called, smiling at Luce's parents one last time and wrapping up their conversation before going to join Fon, Viper and Luce.
"Have you seen Colonnello or Lal?" Fon asked, while Luce waved Yuni and Skull over.
"No…I actually haven't. Why?" Reborn replied while giving Skull a good-natured punch in the shoulder.
"Ow! What the hell?" Skull whined, "Luuuucee!" He added looking at the older girl for support. Luce just shook her head at them.
"Lal's mom wants a picture with all of us…" Viper didn't seem too thrilled by the idea. Nor did he seem too thrilled by graduation, either.
"Lal could be with her other friends. I'll go look for them." Luce volunteered, walking off and disappearing in the sea of green and white graduation gowns, the number dwindling as kids took them off and returned them. Reborn tuned out the conversation Fon and Viper were having about the location of their two friends, thinking back to the weird way the two had been acting the past two weeks.
He found himself thinking of the numerous times that Lal and Colonnello had been found outside the hallway by the gym, always looking a little bit flushed and untidy. At first he thought that the two had been using the free period to do a little training – it was a well known fact that they were both going to pursue military careers.
But it was then that Reborn decided he knew where the two were.
"Fon, Viper, I know where they are." He said, interrupting their arguing.
"What?" Viper asked, while Skull and Yuni looked interested, since Reborn seemed so certain.
"Come on, follow me." He said, adding afterward, "Yuni, Skull, you find Luce and tell her to come to the Gym hallway. You two can stay here." He smiled when Yuni looked pouty, patting her on the head.
"This is something you probably don't need to see, sweetheart." He chuckled, and then walked off.
Luce joined their small group outside the entrance to the equipment room portion of the gymnasium, opening her mouth to ask why they were there. But Reborn put a finger to his lips and then grinned, looking a little bit evil as he did so.
Now that Luce was here, he proceeded to quietly open the door to the room, feeling only a tiny bit skeevy when his theory was proven correct, and he saw Colonnello and Lal doing some serious face-sucking.
He almost let out a yelp when Luce punched him in the fucking spine, not taking the time to glare at her – because he was too busy thinking of the perfect time to interrupt these two. He found his moment when Colonnello lifted Lal onto a desk pushed up against the wall. He leaned casually against the doorframe and noisily cleared his throat watching the reactions of his two friends with amusement.
Fon and Viper were having a hard time holding in laughter as Colonnello and Lal heard the noise, and a few hysterical giggled broke through Viper's clenched jaw when both the blonde and raven-haired girl froze, with their eyes popping open in panic.
Colonnello moved away from Lal's face, his hands still braced against the wall behind her as both he and Lal turned their heads to the source of the noise at the same time. Colonnello's mouth dropped open when he noticed their four friends in the doorway, showing various expressions of amusement. Reborn had this arrogant smirk slapped on his face that Lal, who was now bright red, wanted to punch off.
"So what did Colonnello have for lunch today, Lalu?" Reborn asked. Even Luce allowed a giggle at that.
That was the last straw for Lal, and she attempted to jump from the desk with the intention to probably beat the shit out of Reborn. Colonnello put an arm around her waist and held her back, however, muttering something to her that the others couldn't hear. Whatever he had said caused the girl to relax and Colonnello let her feet touch the ground. He kept the arm around her waist, holding her against himself, just in case. Also because at this point there was no way to convince these four that they were drunk, and he liked to have Lal close to him.
Lal had a narrow-eyed stare trained on Reborn, and if he was honest it unnerved him a little bit.
"Who told you we were here?" Colonnello asked. Lal seemed unable to hold a conversation, and the redness in her face seemed less and less like embarrassment by the second.
"Reborn just told us he knew where you were," Fon said with a shrug, "I can say that I wasn't expecting this in the least." Viper nodded, still grinning and making Lal even angrier. Luce stepped forward, in front of the three boys and then said with that mom-voice of hers, "Okay, I think we've done enough damage. Time to go – your mom wants a picture with us all, I guess." She looked back and forth between the two groups of people with a calm smile, the look on her face daring any one of them to suggest otherwise.
Of course, no one dared raise a single word against the pleasantly smiling girl.
After about a million pictures, Lal finally escaped the torture of being squished between Reborn and Colonnello, both of them taking turns punching one another in the shoulder whenever there was a pause in pictures. Now she sat on the grass, leaning back against Colonnello's chest while eating a massive piece of corn on the cob, using his bent knees as arm rests.
Now that she wasn't bleeding murderous intent, it was actually nice to be able to be close to Colonnello as well as talk with her friends. She laughed as Skull attempted to toss up grapes and catch them in his mouth, and then threw a handful of salad at Reborn's face when he attempted to imitate her and Colonnello, from earlier on in the day.
The whole group whooped and hollered when Luce placed a kiss on Reborn's cheek, and it was Lal's turn to make fun of the blush that burned on his face. It was weird, realizing that this was really the last time that she would get to see her friends in this kind of playful, carefree atmosphere. In two weeks, she and Colonnello would be going to the West Point campus to begin the mandatory cadet training. The others would be preparing themselves for their futures, with the exception of Skull and Yuni. But everyone would be too busy moving forward to spend time like this again.
Colonnello broke Lal's depressing thoughts as he hugged her close to himself, leaning down to say something in her ear.
"I'm glad you went to prom." Lal looked a little surprised at the words, as they were unexpected and a little random. But she turned her head to kiss his cheek before smiling.
"Me too." Was all that she replied.
But that was enough.