The classroom was full of idle chatter as the students waited for the bell to ring. Only a week into the semester, things had settled back into a comfortable routine. Even this was familiar, and Namine felt right at home sitting among her fellow art students. She already had her things out, and only stopped working when Mister Marluxia came into the room.
"I hope you've all used the past week to wake up your minds," the pink-haired teacher didn't bother to greet his students. "Today, the real work begins. Pick your favorite of the projects you've been toying with and finish it. That is your first assignment this semester."
Almost as soon as he finished speaking, a loud ring sounded from the hallway to signal the official start of class. Marluxia looked around the room expectantly then smiled. "Well? Chop chop! Get to work!"
Chatter filled the room again as students abandoned seats in order to gather supplies from the cupboards. It made Namine feel like the eye of a storm to be one of the few people who didn't join the whirl of activity, and she watched her classmates rather than start working again right away. She spent so many hours in this room with them, learning and practicing, but she knew the names of only a few of them, like Belle, who sat beside her. They'd talked about the projects on occasion, but never about anything outside the classroom, despite being within two feet of each other so often. It made her a little sad to think about. She didn't dwell on that for long, though, focusing instead on the project she wanted to finish for her first art grade of the semester. It was just a simple sketch for now, taking up a full two-page spread in her sketchbook. Simple, yes, but she had plans for it.
It would get a canvas, a big one, and Namine thought watercolors would be perfect—acrylic would be too solid. She wanted dreamlike. As for the colors, well, inspiration wasn't exactly hard to come by.
Absently, Namine's gaze drifted away from her sketchbook and landed on the one person she was absolutely convinced she should detest. She'd seen, after all. She knew what happened and that it was far from okay. There was absolutely no reason for her to be so distracted.
I should be afraid of him.
She was, sort of. More like wary and confused than afraid. It felt like that wasn't quite good enough, like she just wasn't trying hard enough. She should be afraid, she should hate him for what he'd done. The problem was, even when it came to Mister Marluxia and what he'd done, Namine couldn't bring herself to hate anyone. And with the fine arts teacher in particular, hate was more difficult to achieve than she'd ever imagined. She couldn't even keep herself from looking at him.
This was starting to make him uncomfortable. Glances he was used to, but flat-out, repetitive staring was something else entirely. He felt like he was being examined, picked apart to be judged by his pieces rather than as a whole. He hadn't felt like this since he was just a boy, being tested for the first time. It'd been too many years since then for him to welcome the feeling.
And yet she was staring again.
She's been doing it all school year, he reminded himself, but it didn't do anything to ease his discomfort. Truthfully, it was the fact that it was her and not a different student that forced him to notice it. If it had been anyone else, he probably wouldn't have cared or really even noticed. The problem was that he'd noticed Namine from day one, if only in passing, and she'd managed to keep his attention. Marluxia didn't trust himself to handle the situation on his own, not after what he'd done to Demyx.
I didn't mean to hurt him.
That didn't change the fact that he'd made a disastrous mistake, even accidentally. Clearly, his experiences were not to serve as examples to follow. So he'd noticed Namine's interest, but he was entirely against the idea of finding out what kind of interest it was. He was not going to make that mistake again.
Still, she was a very talented artist. Some of the best work he'd ever seen came from her, and her skill with her flute was admirable. He would have been able to do more for if her her focus had been on music, but he knew she would do just fine with the skills and talents she had for art. There was still a little he could do to boost her chance for success, at least. He was just going to have to be careful not to overstep his bounds. He'd done well with Demyx, at first, so perhaps he merely needed to find the exact point where things had gone wrong and avoid repeating it. There was no real reason to withhold his knowledge from his students. What sort of teacher would he be if he didn't do his absolute best to pass everything he knew onto his students?
X
Okay. She could do this. Easy. Okay.
The cursor sat there, blinking, it's lack of movement across the page almost mocking her. This was ridiculous. It was just an email, and not even a long one. Just an email to ask one more time and then, as much as she didn't want to, admit defeat.
For what was probably the last time, Kairi was emailing Professor Luxord. She needed to be quick about it, because practices for the spring musical started today and she had to be back in the auditorium within fifteen minutes or her role would be given away. They were only given a short time to take their books back to their rooms and change out of their uniforms. Kairi was using it to attempt to write this, and making absolutely no progress.
Ugh, why was this so difficult? Frustration made her lift her hands to rub at her eyes, but she stopped herself to avoid ruining her makeup. It would take too much time to fix it before practice, and she'd already wasted more than she'd meant to on this.
Dear
No, not "Dear." It was too affectionate for someone who'd kissed her then ignored her completely. Kairi backspaced and started over.
Luxord,
I still don't understand why you won't respond to me. Whether it's my age or the fact that you're my teacher—I know those aren't the real reasons. If you really believed that then we never would have gone out that night, and you wouldn't have kissed me. There has to be more to it.
Please, just tell me. I'm willing to at least try to work it out. But if you're not, then don't reply to this, and I'll accept it. I won't bother you anymore.
Still yours,
Kairi
There, that sounded sincere without being too sappy or dramatic. It was a perfectly reasonable thing to ask, and a promise she fully intended to keep.
He probably won't respond.
It made her sad to think about, but she refused to play the role that was typically assigned to girls in movies. She would not pine over him for hours on end or continue chasing after someone who had rejected her. Persistence was great and all, but there was a line. Kairi didn't want to fall into the clichéd role of the heartsick teenage girl, which was made even worse by the fact that it was her professor she was interested in. It was a situation that could easily be made into something far more perverted or insane than it actually was. There was not a single particle of her being that was okay with that happening.
This email would be the end of it.
Forcing herself not to hesitate or change her mind, Kairi clicked on the Send link, and watched the screen flash.
Message sent!
Kairi thought it was far too cheerful a confirmation for what she'd just done.
X
Clink.
"Hah."
Clink.
"Hah."
Clink.
"That's eight." Sora grabbed the bar and helped Riku set it back into place on the bench's rack. The older athlete sat up and caught his breath for a moment, shaking the tension from his arms, then stood and traded places with the brunet. Months ago, they'd have had to take the time to switch out the weights, but not anymore. The competition between them had driven Sora to the point of being able to bench just as much as Riku could. Admittedly, he struggled with it more than the other boy.
Lying back, the brunet settled as comfortably as he could on the thin padding, then looked up to find Riku smirking down at him. "…what?"
"Nothing."
"Yeah, right." The sarcasm in Sora's tone was interrupted by the strain when he lifted the bar and carefully lowered it to his chest. His breath hissed between his teeth as he pushed it back up until his elbows nearly locked. Then down again.
Thanks to the still very cold weather, they were, unfortunately, confined to the gym, pool, and weight room for their workouts. Once they finished in here, they'd go jog a few laps in the gym to loosen up and cool down, then a quick round of stretches before showering. They were going to have the locker room to themselves, and were looking forward to it more than either wanted to admit.
"Hhhhuah," Sora's breath left him in a grunt of effort as he lifted the bar, blue eyes finding Riku's face once his elbows had locked.
"That's seven."
Despair that he still had to do another one filled the brunet's expression. His arms trembled under the weight of the bar, and most of his face was red. One more. It would be his thirty-second rep on the bench press, the last of three sets of eight. They'd done just as much at the other stations—squats, rower, leg curls and then some—and Sora was nearly exhausted. This last rep was going to suck.
"Come on, Brat," Riku had that smirk again, "it's only one more."
Sora rolled his eyes and fixed his grip on the bar. "Easy for you to say."
"Just do it."
"Yeah, yeah." Slowly, he lowered the bar towards his chest until it just barely rested there, then suddenly found Riku's face right above his own. The older boy was leaning over him, hands gripping the bar to take some of the weight off Sora, and he was smirking in that infuriating way of his. It made Sora more than a little suspicious, which he expressed in the form of a glare. "What?"
"Nothing." Riku began leaning closer.
If he could have, Sora would've moved away, but he was trapped on the bench by both Riku and the bar on his chest. There was nowhere for him to go as the silver-haired boy came close enough to kiss him. Sora didn't mind that at all, but he was annoyed by how soon it ended.
"All that for one measley kiss?" he scoffed as Riku let go of the bar and straightened. With a little difficulty, Sora pushed it up and set it on the brackets, then sat up and turned towards the other athlete. "Seriously?"
"You gotta wait 'til we hit the showers for the main event, Brat. That was just a little preview."
"Wow." Sora acted entirely unimpressed even though he was really looking forward to finding out what the "main event" was. "You're a cocky piece of shit."
"And you're a hot piece of ass. Can we go jog now?"
It was just like Riku to switch from teasing insults to sexual compliments during completely mundane activities. Okay, so working out together had always been sexually tense rather than mundane, but still, it was probably inappropriate.
As he stood, Sora stretched his arms over his head and cast a sidelong glance at Riku. "You know, you comment on my ass a lot, and call me sexy, but somehow it doesn't make me feel very attractive."
The older boy just looked at him, waiting for him to finish that thought, and Sora shrugged.
"Maybe it'd be nice to get a….polite compliment for once."
Polite compliment? What, he wanted to be told how pretty he was? That he had stunning eyes and a stupidly cute grin? Fine, then Riku would tell him.
With hooded eyes and just a hint of a smirk, the older athlete slipped his arms around Sora's waist and gently pulled him close, until their chests were pressed together with only Sora's shirt between them. The brunet let him, suspicious, but didn't react when Riku leaned his forehead against the other's.
"You want nice compliments, Sora?" he whispered, looking into the younger boy's eyes. They were still suspicious, but the lack of his usual nickname and Riku's tone made the flush in his cheeks start to darken again. "You want me to tell you how much I like your laugh? That you have the most amazing eyes I've ever seen, and that I picked on you all year so I wouldn't have to admit that I could've kissed you the first time we met? Or that your skin is so soft I wish I never had to stop touching you?"
Sora's face was deep red and still darkening, and Riku wasn't finished yet.
"I hated seeing you flirt with Kairi. Hated it. She was doing it to make me jealous, but I wouldn't give in. I should've, though. I should've kissed you the time we met, when you slipped and I caught you. You looked at me with your big blue eyes and I didn't even know what hit me. I panicked. I tried to push you away but I knew you'd accept the challenge of it. You're too stubborn not to. So I had to ignore your eyes and your smile every damn day, and then we became friends and I swore that was it, that was all we'd be, but you wouldn't let me. You just wouldn't let me forget about you. So, yeah, maybe I don't always give the politest compliments, but you'd better believe it's only 'cause I've said them so many times in my head that it's almost impossible to say them out loud. You're beautiful, Brat, and you've got another thing coming if you don't think you're attractive. You're beautiful, all right? Beautiful." Riku smiled then, just a little, because he didn't think he'd ever been so completely honest about his feelings before, not even to himself. And his little rant had left Sora so red in the face that the brunet couldn't even meet his gaze, but that was cute, so he just kissed the younger boy's nose and hugged him so Sora could hide his face in Riku's shoulder until the color started to fade.
"Thanks, Riku," he mumbled after a few minutes, relaxed as he listened to the teal-eyed boy's heartbeat.
"You're welcome."
They drew apart and smiled at each other, a little shy, then traded arms around waists for laced fingers to walk hand-in-hand from the weight room to the gym. Neither of them much felt like jogging anymore, but they were too dedicated and too familiar with the routine to let themselves skip it in favor of going straight to the locker room. So they jogged two laps around the basketball court lines, shooting frequent glances at one another accompanied by nervous smiles, then gathered their water bottles and Riku's shirt, and headed for the locker room.
Nerves made Sora's fingers tremble as he opened his locker and proceeded to strip out of his sweaty clothes. He'd already been a little shaky from how tired his muscles were, but this was different. This was excited nervousness because they were going to shower together and probably do more than just kiss like before. All they'd ever done was kiss, and hold onto each other's waists or hips or hands, but Riku'd said there was a main event, and now he was only a few minutes away from it. Geez, he needed to get this shaking under control or the older boy was going to think he was scared, and then nothing would happen at all. It wasn't even that he was scared at all, he just wasn't entirely sure what was about to happen. They hadn't really talked about things, other than agreeing to take their relationship slowly since their friendship had been pretty rocky at times. Besides, they'd only been together for a couple weeks, and hadn't even gone on an official date yet.
"Ready?"
Startled by the sound of the other boy's voice, Sora nearly jumped out of his skin, then forced a smile and gathered his shower things into his arms. "Yep." He'd never been so nervous in his life.
"Come on." Riku smiled at him, and it was surprisingly calming to see. The older boy didn't seem nervous or jittery at all.
Since their arms were full, they couldn't hold hands on their way down into the shower pit. Sora wished they could—it probably would've calmed him down a bit more. To be fair, he knew there was no real good reason for him to be so nervous. Riku'd been his friend for a long time, and being boyfriends didn't mean a whole lot had to change between them. They'd already flirted nonstop for most of last semester and pretty much all of break, and now they were actually doing something real. It was a natural step to take, and, more importantly, one he wanted to take. He wanted to know what it felt like.
His towel draped over his shoulder, Riku arranged his soap and shampoo on the small metal shelf just above the shower handles. "One shower or two?" he asked, gaze landing on Sora, who was self-consciously hiding his body with his towel.
Shit, what did he say? The water pressure wasn't quite enough for two people, but he didn't want to say two showers and seem like he was trying to keep space between them. "Uh…two, at first," he answered after a moment, smiling crookedly in a way he hoped would say that he did want to do whatever Riku had planned. The older boy smiled back and reached over to turn on the shower next to his own. Shy but doing his best to hide it, Sora hung up his towel and stepped under the spray of water.