A/N: What's this? A new chapter? I actually have been writing a lot, just… I don't write chronologically. I have couple chapters worth of stuff at least, just they're all over the timeline.
Ending of an Acquaintanceship
After talking briefly to the group, they decided to split. The girls went to Namine's house, Roxas and Axel walked home together, leaving Sora and Riku to walk home together. As they went their separate ways, Sora noticed Roxas and Axel bickering.
"Do they do that a lot?"
"Who? What?"
"Axel and Roxas. Do they fight a lot?"
Riku thought for a moment. "They don't really fight, more like squabble. Often enough I suppose."
"Have they ever had a serious fight?"
"Not that I know of. They've never not talked to each other for more than a day though. They're too close."
"Oh, okay. That's good." Sora smiled, and Riku bemusedly smiled back.
"Why is it good?" Sora laughed at Riku's response.
"Well, 'that's good' was really just a closure phrase. But, it's also nice that I won't have to mediate any arguments."
"Do you do that often?"
"Only when I have to. I hate getting in the middle of arguments, but sometimes it has to be done. I'm good at it, at least."
"How can a kid be a good mediator?" Sora smiled wryly.
"You're only two years older than me; you shouldn't call me a kid." Riku smirked back at him.
"Oh, I am so much more mature though."
"Apparently." They smiled, and Sora continued speaking. "But anyway, I stay unbiased. And obviously so. I see both sides of an issue, and I basically make them understand each other."
"Never a right or wrong side?" Riku joked.
"Actually, a lot of the time there is. People can be really stupid."
Riku was surprised to hear such a negative thing come from the perky boy, but he didn't comment. Sora continued, "I'm optimistic, but I have to be realistic too. People don't always do the right thing."
"True dat."
"What." Sora's expression was incredulous.
"Come on, you know what 'true dat' is, right?"
"Well, yeah, I can guess. IT just sounds so…" Sora searched for the right term.
"Ghetto?" Riku ventured.
"Yeah. And I mean… you're… really, really not."
"I say it as a joke. But I heard it from some ghetto friends of mine, so it's not that random."
"Yes it is." Riku's explanation had not helped Sora get over what he felt was such an awkward sounding phrase.
"I moved here in seventh grade."
"So you have friends from a ghetto."
"Yup." Sora mused on this for a moment. A question popped into his head.
"Hey, Riku, where do you live?"
"Down the street form you." Sora could only emit a strangled questioning sound, at which Riku laughed. "Yeah, I saw you guys move in."
"I, uh… Okay then." Riku chuckled at Sora's surprise. "When were you going to tell me that?"
"Um, I was just going to say bye when we got to my house, and let you figure it out." Sora seemed at once bemused and incredulous.
"Tch, what next."
"Kairi's my neighbor, so you'll be seeing a lot of her too."
"Oh." Sora was slightly less surprise this time. "That's good. I like Kairi."
"She's pretty sweet."
After another few minutes of walking and chatting, they arrived at Sora's house.
"Well, this is where I live now, so… Bye, I guess."
"Yup. Nicest house on the block and it's all yours." Sora laughed.
"At least it's not on a base. See you tomorrow!"
Riku laughed in return. Smiling, he replied, "Yeah, see you," and went to his own house just a mere, now that he counted, five houses down from the brunettes.
m0.0m
Riku found it slightly disconcerting to click with someone so quickly. He and Sora got along unbelievably well. Riku was not a solitary creature, but he was not good at making friends himself. All his close friends he had gotten though Kairi, his neighbor and best friend since seventh grade.
He thought about the strange creature that was Sora. Not so strange actually. Everything that Sora did was what one expected friends to do. He stole Riku's stuff, teased him, joked, and complained. It was just that Riku had known Sora for what, three-ish hours?
"Let's see, it's after four, and lunch is at…" He checked to see what time lunch started. "One. Ish."
He stared at his math homework, which was not done as it usually was. Because of Sora. He smiled, inwardly grimacing that the fiasco that math was sure to become.
"Ruined forevermore. Wait, shouldn't it just be evermore? Is forevermore even a word? Probably not. Let me check…" He paused. "Math, yeah! Right!" He viciously rubbed his face in frustration, trying to get his concentration back.
"Exactly my point." He stared at his homework, having no desire to try to finish.
"Riku," he heard his mother yell as she enter the house, "How's homework coming?"
"Fine!" He yelled back, then to himself, "Why hello there motivation, nice of you to join us." And he started his homework.
m0.0m
Sora sat in his work room, pleased with himself. Not only did he not have any homework, he'd already made a bunch of friends. It was nice to not have to work very hard to fit in. He happily sketched away, doodling in his corner.
"You know, I really like this place. The people are nice." He smiled, still sketching away. "I mean, it seems like people are pretty accepting here. I won't have to be all sneaky about coming out!" He thought about Riku and wondered if he was gay.
"I mean, on one hand, I've never actually seen a gay guy with long hair. Especially not in high school. But on the other hand, he played with it. I've never seen a straight guy play with his own hair…" He hemmed and hawed on the subject, turning his doodle into a sketch.
"We'll see. It'll come up eventually." Once on the subject of his new friend, his mind couldn't leave. "Pretty cool guy. Good taste in music. Not super serious, just a bit quiet. Well, not quiet…" Sora thought a minute. "Thoughtful. Yeah, think-before-you-speak type. Verrrry charismatic though. I like him." Another thought crossed his mind.
"He's pretty." Sora laughed. "Poor guy. Pretty." He chuckled to himself.
"I'm kind pretty too though. Oh well."
m0.0m
Kairi sat in her room, listening to music and finishing her homework.
"So close…" she muttered to herself, working fervently on the last problem. She finished violently, throwing her pencil down. "HA! Take that homework!" she gasped a bit, looking around to see if any one had heard her. After deciding that no one had, in fact, heard the outburst, she relaxed.
"Now what. Hm…" She put on some music and lay on her bed, enjoying the lack of things to do. She thought about her day, and eventually her thoughts came to Sora.
"He's cute. Like, like… cute." She giggled again at the though. "Is he gay though? I hope he's bi at least. Then I'll get a chance!" She giggled again at the prospect.
"I wonder if Axel will really 'ravish' him, or whatever." She made quotation marks to herself. "I kind of' hope he does. That would be entertaining." She didn't giggle this time, her thoughts floating.
"Maybe Roxas would get jealous enough to realize he like Axel. And then do something about it. That would be so nice!" She rolled over onto her stomach.
"Stupid boys. Jeez Louise. Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid! Boys, uch!" After years of close contact with the species, she had decided that very few men understood their emotions, much less how to express them.
"What they would do without me and Namine, I have no idea. Shoot each other probably. Well, Sora seems to be more in touch. He might help out a bit." She thought some more about Sora.
"The kids got spunk!" She giggled, and then paused.
"Why am I in such a good mood?"
m0.0m
Roxas sat at his desk, doing homework. He'd bee trying to work on it all afternoon but had had a mental block. After deciding to just get down to work and stop messing around, he found himself staring at his blank paper. He looked at the question, the wall, and back at the problem.
"God damn it! I need to finish this!" He sighed. "I blame the new kid."
Roxas had found himself unable to stop thinking about Sora. Not in a sexual way, but the twenty minutes they had spent together would not leave his head. He replayed Sora's spunky "Word to the wise," over and over in his head, enjoying the memory of Axels shocked face. Roxas hoped that he didn't have a crush on Sora.
"That would just be so… not me. I'm not a fall in love at first sight type of person. That would be weird. I mean, I don't feel like it at the moment, but you never know. Definitely think he's cute though. Axel was right about that. That is one attractive boy. God, this is annoying." He scowled. "This is due tomorrow! Argh!"
Roxas forcibly moved his attention back to his homework. At some length, he devised a way to BS his answers, and finished quickly thereafter.
m0.0m
Axel sat on the couch, watching TV and having a snack. He could never work on homework until his brain had been given time to get out of school mode and switch gears into homework mode. It was his way of justifying procrastination, and always involved vegg-ing out on the couch.
He heard a door slam, and his mother yell "Axel, babe, could you help put away the groceries?"
"Yeah! One sec!" he sighed at the prospect of getting off the couch, then launched himself up and into the kitchen. He gave his mom a hug and asked her, "How was your day?"
"Oh, fine. It was one of the kids birthday today, so we had to give them cupcakes." Axel's mother was a daycare provider. She ran a small preschool for three and four year olds.
"Was it a total disaster?" Axel asked as he put away some pasta.
"Oh, not quite as bad as usual. We gave it to them as one of the last rotation activities. We all sang together at the beginning, and then broke into the usual art-playground- learning stations, except we gave the cupcakes at the end of art and before they went to the playground." She placed bags of vegetables on the counter.
"I assume it was your idea?" He took the vegetables and began placing them in the appropriate drawers.
"Yeah. Who else's would it be?" She began putting things in the freezer. "Axel, I've told you to put things in the freezer first. They turn into giant lumps of frozen whatever. Right?"
"I know. Except that you have some strange organization going on in that freezer and I always do it wrong." He grinned and bent down to give his mother a kiss on the cheek. She rolled her eyes and finished putting the boxes of frozen food products away.
"Oh, go away. You need to do homework, I'm sure."
"Not as far as you know."
"Go do it."
"Later. There was a new kid at lunch today."
"Oh! Really?" Axel's mother was instantly diverted.
"Yeah, his name is Sora. He took finals at his last school, so he doesn't have to take them here." Axel leaned on the table as his mother set about getting herself a glass of tea.
"Lucky him. If the finals are as bad as you and your lazy butt make them seem." Axel's mother often ribbed him for complaining about tests, which he always did well on.
"Very funny. Well, as far as I can tell, the kids pretty smart. His dad is a major in the army, so they go to different bases around the country boosting morale and such for the troops going into the war."
"Oh my. That sounds hard. Especially since that means he hasn't been doing it for very long, if it started with the war." Axel could tell that his mother's maternal instincts had been switched on.
"Well, he's pretty outgoing. I think he's probably gotten used to it. He's not like you'd expect a new kid to be."
"Well, that's good to hear. You guys made friends with him then?" Axel grinned at the memory.
"Yup. Made a fool of myself doing it too." His mother grinned at this as well.
"Good. Teach you some humility. Lord knows you need it."
"Thanks Mom, I love you too," he replied dryly. She chuckled a bit.
"Go do your homework."
"I don't want to."
"Go."
"Fine."
m0.0m
Namine, like Kairi, had relaxed after finishing her homework. Unlike the rest of her friends however, Sora was not on her mind.
Roxas was. Like she did almost every evening, she angsted over the boy. Roxas was gay. He didn't pretend not to be, and hadn't done so for several years.
"It's just… I like him because he's so comfortable with himself. Which is like, I like him because he's gay. Uch, irony sucks. Screw you irony." The closest she ever got to swearing was her nightly what she termed "teen drama fest." No one knew of her crush on Roxas, not even Kairi. And hopefully, no one would ever know. All she wanted was for Roxas to be happy, and confessing her love to him would definitely inhibit that. It would create awkward complications in their relationship that she could definitely do without. She sighed.
"I almost wish I was fickle, so I could just get over him. Ah well, I'll just hope it never becomes obvious. It's hard enough to act normal as it is." She sighed again.
"I wish this wasn't so complicated."