Melee Academy of Higher Learning for Boys
Year Four – The Final Year
-Four-
"Hey, Roy."
"What, Link?"
The hallways of Melee Academy were mostly deserted, as they were becoming more and more. No one knew if it was because more and more students were withdrawing from higher education, or if it was because people were finding better places to meet, like the third floor, or the library, or maybe the cafeteria even.
Link and Roy were the only ones sitting in the stretch of hallway between the chorus room and the bend to get to the main stairwell, which was nice because then they weren't disturbing anyone—or being disturbed themselves. There were other people further down, towards the band and ceramics rooms, but not that many.
"Have you ever noticed that teachers tend to give more homework whenever a big holiday's coming up?"
"I think it's less the fact that teachers give more homework and more the fact that you never do yours until the last possible moment."
Link never thought of it that way. He stared at his science homework with a complete lack of excitement.
"So what's up with you and Ike?"
Link shrugged. "I have no idea, really. He just left me a note one day that said he couldn't handle a relationship right now, that he was so sorry, and then I think he went back to Crimea or wherever and…I don't know anything beyond that."
"That sucks."
"What about you and Marth? Have you finally settled on a wedding chapel?"
Roy shook his head. "Marth and I can't find one we like, unfortunately. Most of them are 'Vegas style', and they're just gaudy and wild looking, you know?"
Link had never been to Vegas, so he didn't know what their wedding chapels looked like. From the description, Link decided he never wanted to see what they looked like.
"All he mentioned," Roy continued, "was that he didn't want one with an alcove of trees. Which is weird because I was going to tell him the same thing."
Link propped his homework against his knees and tried to find a way to bullshit through it.
"You're getting married next month and you still don't have a place to go yet?"
Roy sighed. "To be honest, I couldn't care less where we got married. The important part is the ceremony and the symbolism and stuff, not the place and time."
"So then why not just elope?" He decided to write about cantaloupes for his Environmental Science essay.
Roy shrugged. "Because he really doesn't want to get married in five minutes."
"So then just stall for ten and then it wouldn't be like getting eloped."
Unfortunately, it just isn't that simple. "He's used to all the extravagance and really? I don't want any of that. He doesn't want something cheap and I don't want something overly expensive and it seems everything's either really cheap or really expensive."
"Well… My advice is that The Manse has a nice yard… You can always get married there. Plus it looks nice in the winter, with snow all around. And I've been checking the forecasts and it says you're gonna have a White Wedding, except without the Billy Idol."
Roy just sighed. "If you're so full of advice, maybe you can give me a list of songs that would be good for a wedding."
Link abandoned his cantaloupes essay in favour of taking out his iNintendo, a piece of paper, and his lucky pen.
"Preferably something instrumental and with a lot of violins."
Link looked at Roy strangely.
"…Marth likes violins."
Link decided to not question it and went to his 'instrumentals' playlist.
-x-
"Spike the ball!"
"Set me up, dammit!"
"Since when was this competitive?" Link cried as he spiked the ball over the opponent's net. He nearly hit one of the guys on the other team right in the face. Instead, it hit the boy in the head, knocking him over. The ball bounced off the floor a few times before coming to a stop in one of the other team member's hands.
"Since the guys from the competitive side decided it wasn't good enough, so they had to come over to the side that couldn't care less about points," Roy said as two heavily muscled seniors from their side did some secret handshake.
Link wiped sweat from his brow as Falcon blew the whistle signaling the gym period had ended.
"Fuck yeah; we won two and a half games!"
The rest of Roy's team glared at the two macho men.
"Thanks for hogging the ball, you douchebags."
"Go back to the competitive side."
"Die in a fire."
"Stop staring at my ass!" Link slapped at the one boy, who had a fake tan and an equally fake dye job.
They headed for the locker rooms to change, Link aware of the eyes on his sweaty body. He decided it would be best to change in the shower area, where there was the most cover in the least amount of room. He made a beeline for Roy's locker, quickly undid the lock, and grabbed his stuff so he could hide from the stares. Little did he know he had a giant hole in his pants and everyone was wondering why someone who was almost nineteen had Spongebob Squarepants boxers.
Roy was lucky enough to not have a hole in his pants, so he had no one staring at him except for the remnants of Terry's brood. They had cornered him once, and when one was finally brave enough to try to make a move, Roy had run like hell and escaped without them realising it until five minutes later. Anyone else would have filed a sexual assault lawsuit against Remnants of Terry's Brood (as they called themselves now), but Roy was just…too nice at times. That and it wasn't worth it.
"Hey, Link, did you ever finish that homework for second period?"
Link came out with his hair undone, his shirt half buttoned, and his blazer slung over his shoulder.
"Uhm, I think so. Why?"
Roy shook his head. "No reason. I was just curious." Roy nearly tripped over his own pants and used the locker to steady himself.
Link sighed as he sat on the bench, buttoning his shirt as he waited.
"What's wrong?" Roy was pretty much dressed now. He sat down next to his friend so he could retie his shoes.
"Why is it that all of a sudden people are trying to get into my pants?"
Roy shrugged. "Probably because you're a nice looking guy and you're single again?"
Link took out his homework for Environmental Issues—his name for Environmental Science since there really wasn't much 'science in it—and stared at the questions he left blank, which was just about every one except the first and last questions. He even left his name blank, not because he didn't know what it was, but more because Link never put his name on anything.
Maybe that was the reason his teacher seemed to have all these homework assignments, but no one to give credit to.
They left the locker room in silence and met Falcon by the bleachers, where he took attendance and Falcon Kicked his book into the male gym teachers' office. It made a book shaped hole in the plate glass window.
-x-
Link stared blankly at his textbook, where very little was in English and most of it was in Altean. His head was beginning to ache and so he stole a sip from his Mountain Dew flask to stave off the inevitable caffeine crash. Roy tapped a pen against the book as he listened to Marth explain something to him and six other students. Were people really that interested in learning Altean, or were they just shoved in there because they needed the credits?
One student raised his hand.
"Yes, Michael?"
"I thought 'The cat sleeps on the roof,' was 'Die Katze schläft auf dem Dach.'"
Marth blinked a few times. "No, it isn't. Maybe it is in whatever language you're speaking, but not in Altean."
Michael looked confused. "This isn't German 2?"
"No, dumbass," said one kid, whose name was almost impossible to pronounce. "That's room 223, in case you couldn't read numbers."
"But it says room 221 on my schedule for German 2!"
"It's a typo then," said Ohfdghau, who was called "Ohfid" for short. "That's supposed to be 223."
Michael, who was really embarrassed, promptly left his seat and went on a very short journey to room 223, where his German teacher was hurling death threats at them. They could hear him down the hall saying, "Sie undankbare Schnorrer! Sie sind alle glücklich, dass ich davon verboten werde, Sie zu töten, oder Sie würden alle das tote Mann-Wandern sein." Since no one else in the school spoke German except for Mr. Tillermann, no one knew exactly what he was saying.
"Are there any normal teachers in this god forsaken place we call an institution of knowledge?" asked another boy named Opii.
Marth was half-way through with writing something on the chalkboard when he heard Opii's comment.
"Plenty," was all the Altean said. "For the curious, this is how you say 'the cat sleeps on the roof', just as an example of how the grammar works."
Link wasn't sure which word meant 'cat' and what was the punctuation.
-x-
Roy took his place near the middle of the room, not too far back so as to be suspicious, but not in the front enough so that his every move could be monitored. Link sat next to him and made himself comfortable.
"So do you have a list of instrumentals yet?"
"Right here," Link said, passing it to his companion. "It's not a hundred percent complete, but it's good enough."
"'Meadows of Heaven'?"
Link shrugged at Roy's look. "It has lots of violins and a weddingish sound to it. I envisioned you walking down the aisle to it in a believable way, so I think it's good enough."
Roy wasn't in the mood to argue. Winter break was next week, which meant he had a week left to plan the rest of the wedding. They still hadn't found a place yet and Roy's search through every last wedding chapel and church magazine on the market ended in about twelve different 'maybes' because Marth couldn't just decide on one—he was afraid this was going to rest on a match of Rock Paper Scissors or a coin toss. Hell, he didn't even have what he was going to wear planned yet and there were very few tuxedo magazines. Mostly because the wedding market couldn't care less about the groom and it was all about the bride. And neither of them was going to wear a dress, so that point was made and subsequently shot down.
"So the best man has to match," Link said as Mr. Georgeston came waltzing in. "I only look good in earth tones, so don't pick something like…orange or red or something weird like white."
Roy took out his copy of Beowulf and placed yet another magazine on top of it, this time one about wedding cakes.
"Just wear whatever you did for Zelda's wedding—I'm not gonna be picky about it."
Link gave him an are-you-serious look. "But that's bad luck considering how their marriage is turning out. You don't want to end up like that, do you?"
Roy was on the verge of ripping his hair out. "One week just isn't enough time to finish this crap."
"That's why couples spend a year on it and not seven months."
"You're not helping me right now."
Mr. Georgeston went on about the senior thesis he was going to assign at the beginning of next semester.
"Well, what do you want me to do?"
Roy evaluated his mental To-Do list. "I have to buy the wedding rings, for one thing. For another, I need a tuxedo or something formal. And then I need to check out a wedding chapel or five or a hundred because Marth is just so non-committal about everything—" He looked to Link and saw him zoning in and out of the conversation.
"Sorry, I'm ranting again."
"That's okay, I'm used to people ranting away at me, except you're not pregnant and going on about how a hair was on the chair."
Roy didn't know what to say about that.
"I'll be glad when Zelda's had the baby because she is driving me nuts. Coming to me saying I was right and she was wrong and then sobbing all over the place. Her hormones are all over the place so now she's reduced to saying all this made-up stuff."
Mr. Georgeston handed out a packet of paper to each student with information and instructions on the thesis. Link nearly cried.
"Our grade is dependent on this?"
"Yes, Link," said Mr. Georgeston, who patted him on the shoulder. "So you'd better get started."
Roy tugged on his hair in an attempt to pull it out. "I so do not need this right now."
"I hate life," said one kid in the back.
Link flipped through the pages. "Fricken Middle Ages. There's a reason we're no longer in them."
Roy held his hand out. "Give me your flask."
Link looked surprised. "How did you—"
"Just give me the flask."
Link handed it over without another word. Roy took a swig and felt his heart beat just a little faster from the caffeine.
"The extra sugar in the Mountain Dew calms you down, doesn't it?" Link asked, taking his beverage back.
"Yeah," Roy answered. "I think the almost-heart attack makes everything better."
-x-
"So did you decide on anything yet?"
"I can't focus on that, I have a paper to do," Roy said in response to Zelda's question. "And my grade depends on it, so unless you want to write it for me…"
"Have you seen Marth?" Link asked, poking his head into the recreational room.
"He's out," Zelda said, rubbing her heavily pregnant belly as if reminding everyone of why she was so hormonal.
"Out where?"
"Looking at the extremely long list of wedding chapels," Roy said, taking notes on his research done thus far. "I told him to pick what one he wanted, so he had to go and physically check them out, make sure the bathrooms are really clean… That stuff." He looked up from his paper to gaze quizzically at Link. "Why?"
"No reason," Link said, crossing his arms. "I just had a question about the wedding."
"And what would that be?" Roy asked, wondering if Link forgot who Marth was marrying.
"I can't tell you—Marth said it was a surprise."
With that, Link walked out of the room.
"If it's a surprise, he shouldn't have mentioned anything in the first place."
Roy simply sighed and went back to his research when suddenly the front door swung open and hit the adjacent wall.
"I found it!" Marth shouted, running into the recreational room.
"Your marbles?" Roy asked.
Marth frowned. "No, I found those a long time ago. I found the perfect place." With that, he grabbed Roy's hand, pulled him from the floor, and dragged him outside to his car where he hurriedly shoved Roy inside, got in himself, and nearly ran over Young Link and Ness playing ball outside, he was so excited.
Zelda simply shook her head. Ah, love. It makes you go crazy.
-x-
Author's Note: It's been almost what, six months since I last had an update? In those six months a lot happened. I temporarily left all of my fandoms for a new one by the name of Weiss Kreuz, an d it's still my love of the moment. But I got a review recently for this fic and I remembered it existed, so I reread it and decided to open up chapter four and finish it. So here it is, chapter four. I can't promise I won't go another six months before I update again, but we all get busy sometimes, right?
See you next chapter!
Jayden