Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts. Also, have I already said that I do not own an arcade?
Warnings: This fiction contains and is not limited to boy/boy moments, the use and abuse of stereotypes, hints at original pairings, very despicable people, emo-Riku, lustful teenagers, underage drinking, a mix of the last two points, questionable situations, morally ambiguous choices and a few, occasional and really shy attempts at humor.
Chapter 15: Wild Dreamers
Riku had spent the last ten minutes staring at his phone and wondering how ridiculous he had to look for doing so. His last class had just ended and he knew that a trip to the arcade was in order: after all, the last time he had been there was 48 hours before, a record for his standards. But for some reasons, he felt like going there without Sora would've been wrong.
His finger was on the call button of his phone, but he didn't dare to press it. What could he tell him? 'Hey, I wanted to invite you to the arcade with me?' Nope, it sounded too much like a date. 'I was just wondering what you were doing?' No, no: way too girlish. 'I didn't see you after breakfast today, so I was wondering...' Argh, even worse, even to himself he sounded like a crazy stalker.
'Maybe... maybe he's already at the arcade and I'll find him there. Yes, the best thing to do is go there and search for him!'
He finally put his phone back in his pocket, deciding against calling his friend.
When Riku finally reached his destination, he went straight to the Pac-Man coin-op, hoping to find Sora there, uselessly trying to top his record.
But much to his surprise, he found only a couple of fourth-graders. Maybe he was playing some other game...
He didn't even try to hide his disappointment when, after having inspected every single spot, he couldn't find him. He finally headed towards the bar, a last faint hope to find Sora there drinking something.
"Oi, Riku." Cid greeted him. "Something to drink?"
"Just a coffee, please." He hesitated. "Err... have you maybe seen..."
"Your friend?" the man asked, guessing Riku's thoughts. "Nope, he's not come here today."
And so, it was definitive. 'Shit, I should've called him.' Riku thought, trying to ignore the stinging feeling in the middle of his chest. For some reasons, he was sure that he wouldn't have appreciated the games that day. He took place on a faraway table, intentioned to quickly drink his coffee and get home as soon as possible.
"Hey, Riku, are you ignoring us?"
Riku looked up, surprised. Who the hell could know him in that place?
To his surprise, a grinning boy with blond, disheveled hair was standing in front of him. There was something bizarre about the way he was dressed: he had uneven trouser-legs and the t-shirt he was wearing was ripped on multiple spots. If not for the way he had called him by his name, he would've never imagined himself talking with someone like him.
"Have we met before?" he asked, midway through indifferent and irritated.
The boy tilted his head slightly. "Uh? It's me, Tidus!" At Riku's skeptic look, he kept on talking. "Don't you remember? A couple of days ago? On Tuesday? You were here with your friend Sora."
At those words, scattered memories started to resurface in Riku's mind. He tried to focus on those fragments to fill the blank that was the evening he had spent with Sora at the arcade.
"Tidus... right..." He remembered that, before a few 'victory toasts' -that most certainly had to play a part in his amnesia of that evening- Sora had expressed the desire to meet the group of guys that was always there. 'Oh, god! I can't believe that he really dragged me to meet this bunch of weirdos.'.
"Uh, uh, you seem lost." Tidus grinned. "Well, you were pretty high the other day, can't blame you if you have a few blanks. Come on, join us."
With those words, the strange boy turned back, starting to walk from where he had come. Left with no other choices, Riku reluctantly followed him.
Sora entered the principal office, just after his last class of the day.
"Did you want to see me, sir?" he asked, forcing himself to sound as nice as possible. He looked around him: he was standing in the middle of a big completely white room, if not for a few black articles of furniture and a few bizarre paintings hanging from the walls. 'Art' he thought chuckling.
"Yes, take a seat, please." The deep voice of principal Xemnas startled him, interrupting the flow of his thoughts. The man had long white hair and he was sitting on a black mahogany desk towards the end of the office.
Sora didn't answer, instead he took place into one of the chairs in front of the desk.
"I suppose you already know why you are here." the principal started again, this time looking directly at the boy. Sora thought that 'creepy' was the most fitting way to describe that man.
"Frankly, I haven't the slightest idea, sir." he lied nonchalantly.
Xemnas stared at him for a second, his yellow eyes trying to find some signs of fear. Vainly. "It is my intention to inform you about the rules and the disciplinary measures in this school. My school." Sora noticed how he stressed the penultimate word of that sentence.
"Well, thank you, but I've already read that cute little pamphlet that I received a couple of weeks ago." He was not lying. After all, you need to know the rules to break them.
"Then, I suggest that we take a moment to revise them quietly." Xemnas' voice was calm, yet somehow menacing. As if that could be enough to scare Sora.
"I suppose that's a standard procedure for every new student..." he couldn't resist but ask, with just a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
"Only for those with a checkered past."
And if he still had some doubts, they were all washed away by that sentence.
'So, he knows.'
Sora watched in silence the principal extracting an impressive pile of documents from a box on the ground and placing them carefully on the desk. He recognized some of those papers immediately.
"You know what is this?" the old man asked quietly.
Sora took a moment to look at the impressive pile of files resting on the desk. "The school yearbook?"
"This is..." Xemnas paused, ignoring him and clearly savoring the moment. "...a quite exhaustive collection of disciplinary measures taken against you that my dear friend from Radiant High, principal Lexaeus, provided me with."
"Ah." Sora answered, not really impressed. "If you already knew what it was, why did you ask me?"
None talked for the next few seconds. "Lexaeus warned me of this arrogant attitude of yours. Stay assured that if it was up to me, you'd already be expelled from this school."
"But it looks like this isn't the case." Sora rebutted boldly. "As per the school rules, article 10, fifth paragraph: 'the expulsion of a student must be motivated by serious and objective violation of school rules'. On the contrary, the article 18 says that: 'students encountering difficulties in integrating, following classes and/or respecting school rules have the right to benefit from the pedagogical support service'." He paused for a moment, offering his biggest grin to the headmaster. "You see? You have to sustain me, not threaten me."
"Very well, it looks like you revised your lesson." Xemnas granted, keeping his cool. He then entwined his fingers and closed his eyes. "As much as I'd like it, I cannot expulse you from this school. For now." He paused for a moment. "Just know this... at the first infraction of the slightest rule, you'll find yourself on a train for Radiant Garden before you'll even have the time to realize what you've done."
"Of course, sir. If that's all..."
"Just one more thing, Sora." a nearly imperceptible smile manifested on Xemnas' face. "Considering your troubled past, I find appropriate to put in place everything possible to prevent a repeat of your past mistakes. After all, as you've correctly remembered me, we have a moral obligation of helping 'difficult students'." Sora didn't like the direction the discussion was taking. At all. "You'll take psychotherapeutic sessions on a weekly basis with our school psychologist." Before the boy could object, Xemnas quickly added. "Try to skip just one single session and you'll be out of the Struggle team."
"How do you..."
"I figured you should be pretty interested in that vulgar sport, considering that your old coach personally recommended you to old Auron." His smile was wider than ever. "As you can see, you're not the only one to have revised his lessons."
Sora didn't react. He simply stood up after a moment and asked if that was everything. At Xemnas' gesture, he walked away. Just before leaving the room, he gave a last glance at the pile of papers still on Xemnas' desk and smiled. "Fine, I'll see your psychologist. I just hope it will last more than the one from Radiant Garden."
Riku was stunned.
The five people he was sharing the table with were the biggest geeks he had ever met in his whole life. Tidus was literally a videogame addict, to the point that he remembered the release date of every known game of the last twenty years. His friend, an easy-going brunette called Selphie, was pretty much the same, but her focus were TV series. Riku also quickly noticed that she had a thing for romance and drama.
"So, Riku, have you checked the series I told you about?" a chubby short boy asked him. Riku had no idea what he was talking about, of course.
The small girl next to the boy rolled his eyes. "Pence, he barely remembers having met you two days ago, how can you pretend that he remembers your babbling about your stupid cartoons?"
"It's 'anime', Olette! And it's something completely different from your 'Disney cartoons'!" the boy answered angrily, his very soul clearly wounded by that incautious affirmation.
The girl looked at him in a strange mix of amusement and compassion. "I'll teach you a lesson for free. 'Anime' is short for 'animation' and it probably comes from the French 'dessin animé', which means literally 'animated drawing', also called 'cartoons'."
"I don't care about the etymology, the very essence of anime goes beyond the simple concept of occidental cartoon and it is now a very distinct entity."
"Maybe... but that won't stop me from calling them cartoons."
"Oh, come on. What would cost you to call them with their proper name?"
"I find disturbingly satisfying the way you react when I say 'cartoons'." Olette snickered: she was clearly enjoying the back-and-forth with Pence.
"Are those two always like that?" Riku asked lowly to the last person on the table, a blond, quiet girl intent on drawing on a big sketchbook.
"No, sometimes they bicker." Naminé simply stated, lifting her eyes from his drawing and meeting Riku's. She offered him a big smile which made the upperclassman slightly blush.
"Uhm... what are you drawing?" he asked, wishing to end the silence between them as fast as possible.
"People, mostly." she answered quietly. She had a nearly unnatural calm, to the point of making Riku relax a little. "It's a portrait of Cid, the barman, what do you think?"
She turned the sketchbook to show it to Riku, whose mouth nearly fell open with awe.
"It's... amazing." he finally managed to mutter. The portrait was effectively perfect, to the point that it didn't seem believable that it was realized by someone who was not a professional. "It's precisely that grumpy old man's mug."
"I heard you, Riku." Cid's voice resounded in the whole room. "Watch your words, if you don't want to find yourself kicked out of the arcade for a month."
Everyone on the table laughed, Riku included. Then, a few moments later, Naminé looked at him again. "Is Sora a good friend of yours?"
Those words threw him off: he had surely not expected such a personal question out of the blue. Tidus, Selphie, Pence and Olette also went silent and started paying attention to the conversation. "I... suppose you could say so."
"Tuesday you seemed to smile a lot more than today. I was thinking that it may be because you were with him." she started to calmly explain. She then went back to her drawing.
"Yeah, Riku, Naminé is right, wouldn't he happen to be... your boyfriend?"
Selphie's question made him nearly fall from his chair. Did they know that he was... "How do you know... I mean, why would you think..."
Even if he couldn't bring himself to end the phrase everyone understood perfectly what he meant by those words. Tidus was the one to answer. "Man, even if you didn't know us, we go to the same school, you know? We were there when you got outed. You were the talk of the week. For like... ten weeks."
Riku was shocked by the boy's directness, to the point that he barely acknowledged Selphie elbowing him while murmuring: "Show some tact, animal!" None talked for a moment, then he felt a hand on his left arm, making him snap out if his trance.
"Must have been harsh." Naminé said in her usual gentle voice. And for some reasons, that simple gesture managed to reassure him. "What Tidus meant, is that we don't care if you're in a relationship with Sora or not. That's your business."
"Of course it is." Selphie stressed. "But that doesn't make me less curious, that'd be sooo romantic."
Riku would have preferred to spend the evening with Seifer than having to face that discussion. But, at the same time, he couldn't help but feel astonished at the way those relatively unknown people were not showing any kind of judgement towards him. To the point that he couldn't help but ask the question that was tormenting him.
"You mean that it's... not a problem for you that I... you know..."
"What? That you're gay?" Tidus interrupted him, showing once more his impressive lack of tact, but also a frankness that Riku couldn't help but admire. "Why should we? The fact that you may like guys doesn't mean that you'll jump on me or Pence. It's not like I sexually assault every girl I see just because I'm heterosexual."
"I think whoever knows you would disagree on the last part..." Pence murmured chuckling.
Riku couldn't help but smile. "Of course, but you know, I've had... a few bad experiences." It was surprising how easy it was to talk with those guys.
"That's because you spend too much time with normies." Selphie exclaimed, the disgust evident in the way he was pronouncing that word.
"'Normies'?" Riku asked curiously.
"People who tends to homologate their way of thinking and acting to the context they live in. People that act a certain way because society dictates them to do so." Naminé explained without stopping drawing.
"More simply, people who are mainstream." Selphie precised while Tidus, on her left, was theatrically putting two fingers in his throat.
Riku couldn't help but think how much of a 'normie' he himself had always been, if nothing else for the fact that he had always kept a secret his frequent visits to that same arcade.
And then, while Naminé was intent on drawing, Selphie resumed her tirade about the latest series she had watched, while Pence and Olette went back on discussing, with Tidus interrupting all of them once every three words.
And Riku started to wonder what really mattered in his life.
End Notes: Yeah, I know: another chapter without Sora and Riku interacting. I know, I know, I'm a bad guy. To excuse myself, the next chapter will... just entirely focus on that ;).
Preview: Time for Riku to start facing his feelings!
Next Chapter: Heart to Heart