Chapter Text
“Everyone, I’d like you all to give [Name] here a big old friendly greeting,” only one or two people were smiling, and the rest of the class gave a tired groan which was honestly fair. “Alrighty then, kiddo,” The strangely eccentric (to a scary degree) teacher pointed to an empty seat at the back of the class on the rightmost side, just by the window, “You can sit over there and feel lucky,”
Oh boy, did you feel lucky.
But there went all your luck for the year.
The back row of any classroom was a child’s ultimate chaos dream paradise. Was that stuffy old English teacher asking random questions about that cursed summer reading assignment you’d forgotten ages ago? For some reason, you’ve always associated the back row with that one place magically left untouched by those sudden, scary questions that you had absolutely 0 answers to, it was always the middle row and the row behind that but rarely in your lifetime had it been the back row. On the off chance that someone did get called, which was like ten (?) times a year, you could just pull out your phone, open Google, and type your way to salvation. Or you could just mouth some random words and pray the teacher didn’t hear it but just presumed it was the correct answer. It was a blessing.
A blessing you’d never had the luxury of gracing.
There weren’t a lot of blessings that you ever had the luxury of gracing anyways.
Lady Luck was a cruel mistress.
But finally, after all those torturous years of squeaking by math class and praying to whatever cosmic deity controlling your fate, you’d lucked out.
Which naturally means the rest of your year is going to be absolute shit.
You walked your way past your very clearly sleep-deprived classmates. Along the way, you spotted a spiky brown-haired kid who was one of the only people from earlier who seemed at least a little bit excited by the notion of a new classmate, giving you an eager smile like he was a child the night before Christmas. He MIGHT have waved at you but what were the chances it was directed at you? So you just awkwardly wiggled your hand a bit before walking at a faster pace.
You got to your seat and settled down as quietly as possible. You took a moment to scan your lane mates and the people in front of you as sunshine annoyingly shone straight in your face. So much for luck. In front of you was a girl with black hair and a short bob cut, fiddling around with her pen, clearly not paying attention to anything but an angelic blonde girl who was sketching something in her notebook, 2 rows over. If you thought your classmates were sleep deprived, then more so was the blonde on your left, a boy this time, and he was fast asleep, his head buried in his arms on the table, probably dreaming of better times and better places. Then in front of him was an identical blonde boy who, guessing by the grumpy, disheveled look on his face, probably had to handle the trauma of waking up in the morning again. You blinked once, twice, thrice, to make sure you weren’t hallucinating one of the 2 boys. But they were still there, still in the same position. Maybe you weren’t seeing someone. Maybe. You blinked one more time at them before you noticed the crabby identical boy who kind of reminded you of an angry cat for a moment, giving you an unwelcoming stink eye. You immediately darted your eyes to your desk, looking at some ancient scratch marks on it like you were the first scientist who found the cure for the common cold. Except the closer you looked at it, the more it looked like a middle finger.
A great start to this school year.
“Well, I’m gonna take attendance now, stay sharp,” The teacher, whose name you hadn’t caught, boomed with an unnerving smug undertone, putting emphasis on his last comment, a playful jab to the classroom that was looking more like a wasteland by the minute.
“Riku,”
“Present, sir,” he replied rather cooly.
“Sora,”
“Present,” He chirped. You then recognized him as the boy who might have waved at you earlier.
“Zexion,”
You couldn’t hear any reply from where you were sitting but you did see a boy mouth an answer and the teacher just shrugged.
“Demyx?”
“Gift,” He said lazily without a thought behind those eyes before those very eyes widened when he realized what he said. You stifled a snort as the teacher gave a chuckle, continuing to read the list of students.
Your mind then wandered away, trying to remember what you had for dinner last night and the dream you had where one of your old middle school teachers was transformed into a spaghetti monster and was trying to use pre-calculus to explain why dinosaurs were humanity’s greatest asset for universal domination to a bunch of sleeping kids and your grandma.
Sleeping…
Wait- That kid next to you who has a creepy clone of himself (maybe he was the clone) was asleep.
The feeling crept onto you, you felt like you had to wake him up. OR just ignore him.
But if you did, you’d feel guilty afterward.
But if you were to wake him up, then how would you even do it?
…Maybe you can let someone else deal with him.
A few minutes pass, and names and conformations are thrown around, but no one has even bothered to look at the back. What luck.
You stare at him as your mind quickly goes into overdrive, constructing daydreams different scenarios, and scenes of how you would wake him up and what would happen next and how’d he react while you spend the next minute contemplating this very life-changing decision.
You could hit him with a notebook? Nope, that’s out of the question. What about a ruler? Nope, no thank you. What if you just shoved him then and there? But that’s just even worse? What about something milder? Poke him? With a pen? Maybe?
Would it work?
Well, guess you could always go with the tried and true method of fuck around and find out.
You slowly unzip your pencil case and pull out a ballpen, cautiously moving it like you’re holding a knife. Actually, it feels more akin to hesitantly holding a bug spray against the most ferocious of creatures to have ever existed, the horrendous cockroach that lives in your bathroom.
For a split second, you pause and stop your advancements as anxiety creeps into your stomach and settles there, like an old friend who comes unwelcomed. You slowly retract your arm back…
Only to immediately stab it shakily yet swiftly into his arm.
“Wake up,” You hiss under your breath, hoping that no one notices.
His eyebrow twitches for a bit but it looks like he’s out cold. Great.
You gulp as you think about trying it again. You slowly move your hand back, getting ready to do it again, maybe with a bit more force, but a voice stops you.
“Hey,” You turn your head diagonally to meet the eyes of the other blonde boy who looks identical to the boy you just rammed your pen into. “Hey?” You repeat, accidentally. He just looks you in the eye, not even mildly impressed by your act of courage and instead treating it how he would if someone tripped over on themself, “He isn’t gonna wake up,” You squint your eyes at him, “Well he has to,” you say suddenly, then poking your pen on the other boy’s sleeve even harder than before. It felt odd, it felt like you were talking to the same exact person. By this time, you put 2 and 2 together and figured they were twins, and that he knew his twin better than a girl who just poked him. Honestly, the resemblance was a bit uncomfortably uncanny, like they were just copy-pasted into existence. You felt yourself stiffen, but now with that reply, it didn’t feel like you could back out and swallow the embarrassment.
“Not by doing that,” He huffed, looking more annoyed by the minute. The cat comparison you made earlier is subtly showing. “Then by doing what,” You asked, continuing to poke his sleeping twin. He was about to say something, maybe something rude, but he stopped himself and instead, zipped his bag open and revealed…pad paper?
“By doing something like this,” He replied before instantly slamming down the pad paper on his twin’s head. The sound of the impact made your heart skip a beat but his face just made it seem like he dealt with this every other day.
His twin jolted straight up, his eyes widening with visible panic.
“Good morning, sleeping beauty,” The boy said dryly
“You flatter us too much, thanks though Rox for the gentlest wake-up in the world,” The now-awake twin smiled a bit sheepishly with a hint of irritation in his voice, scratching his head with his hand.
Your eyes bulged open, mouth agape as if you were ready to scream but it never left your lips, desperately trying to let your breath go as your grasp on your pen faltered.
There was a very obvious blue-colored partially wet stain that took a form of a crooked line that crawled from the sleeve of the boy’s jacket, cut off at his neck, then continued to his cheek that wasn’t there before.
Your pen was fucking clicked.
Well, shit.
You weren’t the only one who noticed it, the other brother, who you think was named Rox or something had the look on his face change from a tired scowl to a kid’s face when they threw a baseball into their neighbor’s window.
“Uh,” You said as you slowly begin to process what you’d just done.
“Why are you two looking at me like there’s a spider on my face?” The still unnamed blonde kid asked, smiling. He was so blissfully unaware and that just made things even worse.
“Well there is something on your face, your cheek specifically and your sleeve,” Rox revealed slowly with an unsure expression on his face.
“What do you mean?” The boy asked, looking at the wrong sleeve.
“Other sleeve,” You blurt out fast, his eyes wander towards the opposite side before his face blanks.
“What the fuck?” You can hear him barely whisper before his eyes augment, the realization slowly sinking in.
“Thank the talented artist, [Name], here,” Rox sighed quietly.
“[Name]? We don’t have a batch mate called [Name],” He muttered confused, turning his gaze from his sleeve to you. His blue eyes locked on yours. This wasn’t going to be good.
“When did you get here?” He asked.
“About a minute or two ago,” You say swiftly, “New student,”
“Oh,” His eyes widen before putting on a polite smile despite the mildly irking vibes you got from him, “Hope you like it here, [Name],”
“Ven,” Rox called out, “Smiling won’t remove the stain on your jacket,”
The boy who now you know as Ven’s eyes squinted a bit as he instinctively rubbed the stain, blurring the line, creating a more noticeable smudge for the world to see.
His senses didn’t seem to be working right now, likely cause he just woke up to whatever the fuck this was.
It only made you feel even more guilty.
“Good work, genius,” Rox snapped sarcastically to Ven while you scrammed through your bag, pulling out lemon-scented hand sanitizer with a bit of glitter in there.
“Here,” You say as both of their attentions turn to you, panicking, your finger slips and you spray one of the twins with alcohol in the face.
Except it wasn’t even the right twin. He didn’t have your masterful pen streak running down his face.
Rox coughed, scrunching his face up, “What the hell is that,”
“Alcohol,” You say quickly, immediately turning towards Ven, refusing to look at the damage you’d done and spray his hands. Ven begins to continue rubbing his sleeve with one hand and his face with the other that looked a bit weird but you weren’t gonna question that as you profusely apologize while Ventus has a mixture of mild annoyance, concern, and panic. Not after what you’d just done.
“ACHooew,” You switch your gaze to Rox, who just sneezed in lowercase, holding his mouth closed in a line in a half-successful attempt to hold it in, getting an annoyed look from the girl in front of you.
Funnily enough, your nose was feeling oddly bothered as the scent of lemons seeped in, like you were going to sneeze and your gut felt that it was the same with Ven, whose eyes were furrowed and clearly holding his breath. Or maybe he was just really agitated. Which was fair.
“Ventus?”
“Pre, Present,” He said quickly in a muddled manner before shutting his mouth with a lot of effort.
“Roxas?”
You could tell he was clearly holding his breath, grumbling, “Present,”
Oh, so that was their names.
You looked over to Ven and his face showed a clear struggle. Okay so he was going to sneeze too.
But he was GOING to sneeze, you, on the other hand, couldn’t hold it any longer.
You covered your mouth and pursued your lips in a line, clawing your hands at the air, as if it’d do anything to avert the inevitable sneeze. But just like Roxas before you, you sneezed, much louder than his.
And the whole class was looking at you too.
Shit.
The teacher just gave a small grunt-chuckle noise before continuing on with the names. You felt like you were spared from the jaws of embarrassment.
Not like this was embarrassing enough anyways.
Then Ven sneezed.
And then Roxas, before he sneezed again.
And then Ven sneezed a few more times.
Then you sneezed a lot more.
And it continued. Over and over again while the roll call continued.
The three of you garnered what seemed to be a ton of side glances, and annoyed looks, and there were some people that were fucking laughing at you three.
The black-haired girl next to Roxas tried to hide her laughter but she wasn’t doing a very good job.
This was doing wonders to your confidence that never existed.
Lady Luck must really love you, especially today.
“And [Name],” The teacher shouted playfully, taking note of all the sneezing coming from the back row.
“PRESENT,” you replied rather loudly before shutting your mouth again and sneezing.
Your hand reached out to your sanitizer which was left on your table to clean your hands but Roxas grabbed it first. Strangely, he didn’t use it but was looking at it like it was a dead centipede.
“Don’t,” He gritted his teeth in a menacing manner that you couldn’t take seriously because of how stuffy he sounded right now.
“Why-” You ask a bit annoyed but you shoved all those undertones aside, not wanting to cause any more trouble.
“It's cause of that fucking alcohol,” He said in a low whisper, “That piss-colored and scented piece of shit is the reason we’re sneezing like we’re in a cartoon,”
“It’s lemon,” You huff, holding in a sneeze.
“No difference smells and looks like piss,” He snaps back.
“You look like piss,” You blurt under your breath, feeling beyond shame now.
“What?” Roxas and Ventus say in unison before giving each other a grimaced look.
“Nothing, nothing,” You cough. Ventus just shrugged and continued trying to rub the ink off which was working (at least on his cheek), while Roxas gave you an unconvinced squint, “Yeah, right,” He spouted. From the corner of your eye, you felt like he gave a smile.
You couldn't help but feel like you messed up big time.
What else is new?