A/N: hugs to all Thanks for the reviews! Never have I got so many reviews by the day after I posted the chapter. Quicky thanks-MidnightStarfire, Zonr-00, Shadow Fox 05, The Hunted(), anyone(), ayachan21(), and SoulessCalibur!! Zonr-00- Thanks, but I'm sticking with DL and SK. Think of it this way. In Spiderman, Mary Jane wasn't always called Mary Jane. She was called MJ. So, that's their nick names. I promise I won't do Zel or Mal, and Link would look like a typo if I tried to shorten the name into a nick.

Leeta- hugshugshugs Thanks a bunch! Glad you could finally read my work! BTW, I'll add a private lil' something special at the end just for you since you're not a Link/Zelda person. -

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Chapter 2: Love and Humiliation; Show-Biz

"I hope you two boys are happy. And right in front of the junior's soccer club." The principal browsed through the files of the two boys sitting in front of his desk. "Dark Shadow Link, I'm not surprised, but Linkaniel." Two folders smacked down on the desk in front of DL and Link, one rather large, the other commonly small. The speech carried on as Link gazed at the ground and held his bruised shoulder shamefully, yet at the same time disgustingly while Dark Link snickered holding his palm against the black and purple skin next to his eye. "Mr. Shadow Link, I find nothing funny about this! You should know at least by now that physical contact such as kicks and punches are not tolerated and will be punished stern-"

"What about sticks, your principalness?" The shadow stretched an arm out smirking, really showing off the 3-inch wide mark that ran up under his shirt, resulting in a long scratch and a bruise.

"Well, yes! Yes, sticks will not tolerated either. Both of you, detention for a week."

Dark Link groaned, yet the blonde boy shot his look up in surprise. "You mean…I can't do the play then? That's great!--I mean….that's too bad. I was really looking forwar-"

"Oh, don't worry about that because your detentions will be after rehearsals. I called your instructor, and since this is one of your first, and hopefully last offense, we organized a way to pay your time and rehearse for the school play."

Link cleared his throat and leaned back, side glaring at Dark holding in his laughter from the flaws in the Hylian's new schedule. The weeks following would be long, hard, and chalk full of his best shadow friend's side comments.

"He made up your name again." The shadow chucked as he hopped over the side and plopped on the couch. "Linkaniel? Ha, guess he doesn't think your real name's proper enough to be chastised with." There was no response to the shadow's comment, yet another boy was calming going through the mail of their apartment on the other side of the room at a counter. "C'mon, man. Are you seriously mad? I'm doing you a favor, being that Zelda's the female lead and now you're the male lead. Isn't that what you wanted?" He smirked but it was soon replaced with wincing as he accidentally leaned on his arm when reaching for the remote.

A fist slamming down a bill on the counter clearly responded to the shadow's taunts. "What I wanted? What the hell are you talking about?! Do you seriously think I want to be humiliated in front of the whole school, including her? And that those wasted hours of rehearsing something you yourself claimed was 'sappy lovey dovey' is suppose to be attracting to me? What the hell were you thinking?!" The Hylian rubbed his eyes in frustration and took a deep breath.

"Link, relax. Think about some of the positives. You may humiliate yourself, but you'll be doing it with Zelda. You'll be playing a gay part with Zelda. Point is, you'll be spending embarrassing time with Zelda and I can get a good laugh out of it. Sunrise, sunset."

The young Hylian sighed and sat down on a stool hiding under the counter, resting his head on it while his arms wrapped around his head. "Ya know what?…Sometimes I really do hate you, Dark."

"I know, Link, but you'll thank me for this. Now-" A cell phone flipped open as the shadow pushed speed dial 7. "-you up for Chinese?"

"O Romeo, Romeo, brave Mercutio is dead! That gallant spirit hath aspired the clouds, which too untimely here did scorn the earth."

"This day's black fate on moe days doth depend; this but begins the woe others must end."

"Link, more feeling! Like you had done yesterday, that was marvelous. Your acting now is like a child learning to read!" The instructor waved her hands in a chastising motion as Link flung his script to his side. The boy next to him sighed and stretched his shoulders while rereading the latest scene with Romeo and Benvolio. "This but begins the woe others….must end. Do you see the difference, dear?"

The Hylian's mouth twitched as he nodded. To be addressed as dear at the same time as being insulted was something that made him cringe. She yelled to take it again from the top, and when Link's acting soon followed up to her lowest standards, the instructor ordered that he'd take a try at the popular balcony scene with Romeo and Juliet.

Through the constant insults towards his acting and series of you-need-to-focus comments, Link never once clearly thought of the two main roles since the rehearsal began. Romeo and Juliet was a play, a play about a tragedy, a love tragedy. It wasn't until Juliet, Zelda, had begun walking up the stag steps without her script that Link realized the main part of the whole play was Juliet and Romeo falling in love; kissing.

"Hi, Link." She faintly waved at him and casually smiled.

He simply nodded, still lost in thought and going over and over what Skull Kid had told him earlier about the main parts in the play.

"Now, take it from 'But soft-'. Link, I trust you studied your lines well enough."

Of course I did. Why wouldn't I want to study my lines over punishment, torment, and non-sleeping stress? After all, I'd hate to forget a single syllable for this Goddess forsaken play. Link nodded and gazed down at his script for a moment before glancing up to see that Zelda had her eyes closed and wasn't holding anything that would tell her the lines of Juliet. "Where's your script?"

She opened her eyes in an irritating manner. The Hylian boy realized that she was playing over the lines in her head. Zelda had memorized her lines. One of many bursts of embarrassment erupted as Link felt stupid having not memorized the first scene like most of the cast. Zelda leaned a hand on her hip and casually looked away. "I'm trying to rehearse without having to always look at my script. Most of this scene is popular so it's easy to remember, anyway." She looked up at Link, almost hesitantly as he nodded back, shamefully.

"Okay, then, dears. Begin."

Link cringed when a few seconds past and he realized that the irritated stare he was getting from the instructor reminded that he was the first to speak. He didn't dare look at Zelda, her face was probably annoyed more than the instructor for working with such an amateur. "Oh! Sorry…heh, wrong page." Fake laugh and pathetic apologetic smile. As fast as he could, Link fumbled through the pages of his script, wondering if he might of past the scene. He let a small sigh of relief out and repeated 'sorry' after finding the page. "But soft; What light through yonder window break. It is the East, and Juliet is the sun! Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon, who is already sick and pale with grief that thou her maid art far more fair than she." His long lines continued, a bit shaky from speaking such a foreign sort of speech, especially when he barely knew what half the words he was saying meant.

Then she spoke. "Ay me!"

It was short, as Link knew from glancing down at the script, but a sudden urge to beat her led his script to fall by his side. "O, speak again, bright angel! for thou art as glorious to this night, being o'er my head, as is a winged messenger of heaven unto the white-upturned wond'ring eyes of mortals that fall back to gaze on him when he bestrides the lazy-pacing clouds and sails upon the bosom of the air."

She spoke again, not Juliet, but Zelda to the young male Hylian. "O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father and refuse thy name; or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love, and I'll no longer be a Capulet."

"Brilliant! Much better hands down, to both of you! Link you were a bit dull in the beginning, but it grew to far higher standards. And Zelda, you seem to improve with the scenes including both lead parts." Zelda blushed and Link gawked at her for a moment. Was did it mean with Zelda improving with the Juliet and Romeo scenes? It occurred to him that he never really had seen her perform other than with him. "You two work well with each other. Now one more part and we can make that a rap for today." The Hylian boy prayed the scene wouldn't include him, yet the instructor seemed obsessed with perfecting every line Romeo spoke, so it seemed he was in every part of the whole rehearsal. "To end today's first rehearsal, we'll end with a popular part. I know we're taking it easy and going through the script slowly, but I believe that jumping through the script will help you all remember it better." Link hid his disgusted look as he walked off the stage and over to the small beverage table. "Let's take it when Romeo believes his love is dead and stabs himself, only to have Juliet awake and kiss him before she di-"

"WHAT?!" Both Link and Zelda yelled, Link spitting over his jacket the Cherry Coke he had been drinking and Zelda almost tripping over her feet as she exited the stage.

"What's the problem, dears?"

Zelda had taken her script up quickly to look over the scene the instructor spoke of, staring at the line in italic that read (Kisses him). "Don't you think that's a little too far, Miss? Going fast like this may…may interfere with our practices! Shouldn't we start somewhere in the beginning?"

To the terrified feeling of Link, the instructor shook her head and repeated that it would be good practice. Both Hylians walked unto the stage, accompanied by the few other cast members that also recited in the scene. A member from the backstage crew pulled out a table, padded with blankets as Zelda reluctantly thanked them and slowly laid herself down and closed her eyes. "Right. Now, Romeo, think: you have just returned from your duel with Paris and now you come to see your love in a death coma, unaware of their plan. Aaaannnndddd, go!"

He swallowed what felt like a large spiky rock that formed when the instructor announced which scene that would end the rehearsal. "Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on the dashing rocks thy seasick weary bark! Here's to my love!" Link drank an empty cup that was given to him earlier, pretending it was filled with poison. Mentally, he had wished that it wasn't pretend, but it seemed that torment would follow him until he had retired in a cozy fenced up retirement home towards the end of his humiliating life. "O true apothecary!" He dropped the cup, it bouncing off the wood and rolling off the stage. "Thy drugs are quick…Thus with a kiss I die." He fell to the ground before the table Zelda rested on, hoping he would mentally survive what was to come.

The scene carried on with the other cast members reciting their lines. It soon came. When the rest of the cast had left the stage, Zelda was leaning over Link, his eyes closed and his mouth still. "What's here? A cup closed in my true love's hand?-" (Though the cup had rolled off, one of the crew members had thrown it back up from the front row of the auditorium with a side crack from the instructor that this shouldn't happen on opening night.) "-Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end. O churl! drunk all, and left no friendly drop to help me after?" Zelda quivered at the next line. "I w-will kiss thy lips. Haply some poison yet doth hang on them to make me die with a restorative." She leaned down, holding the sides of Link's head.

As their lips grew closer, their faces almost touching- "That's a rap, dears!"

At the sudden relief, Zelda dropped Link's head onto the wooden stage. He grunted and quickly stood his upper body up with his elbow while his other hand pressed against the back of his head. "…oh, sorry, Link…" It was weird. The cast emptied out and the instructor soon finished packing her things, yet the two barely moved from where they sat. The call was close, but it would soon come, wanted or not.

Dark Link patted Link on the shoulder, grinning, as his best friend finished the detail of the rehearsal. "DL, you wouldn't have paid off the instructor or anything right? It's just too…"

The shadow only smiled as they walked down the hall to a classroom that labeled DETENTION. "Don't worry yourself."

"But the scene."

"That's one scene out of how many?"

"That's just it. The death kiss scene seems to be the instructor's favorite! I swear she's trying to get at me."

"Relax, Link. It'll find it's way of working out. Trust me, it must've been nice having Zelda's hands around your head."

Link chuckled a bit and nodded. "I guess, but I doubt she liked it."

"So?" The shadow elbowed Link a bit and a small shove was given in return while they laughed.

The two boys entered the classroom and, to their disappointment, there stood the principal with two pieces of chalk in his hands while a clean chalk board lay waiting behind him.