Work Text:
“See?” Pence’s voice drifted out from the Usual Spot as Olette ducked into it. “You just had some sand in the charging port. Good as new.”
“You’re a lifesaver!” Kairi exclaimed, making Olette nearly trip over her feet in surprise.
“Kairi?” Olette asked. Sure enough, there she was, in her stupidly cute Destiny Islands school uniform no less, sleeves rolled up to show off her keyblade biceps and tie tugged down loose. Even though school had restarted, Kairi was still tanned golden from a summer break spent training at the Land of Departure, her hair grown out enough to pull most of it back with stray pieces sticking out all over.
It was like she was genetically engineered to give Olette a heart attack.
“Olette!” Kairi looked up with a wide smile as she took her Gummiphone back from Pence. “Hi!”
“What are you doing here?” Olette asked, suddenly having no idea what to do with her hands. She jammed them in the pockets of her Twilight Town High varsity jacket, which meant she had no way to defend herself when Kairi grabbed her in a hug strong enough squeeze half the air out of her lungs. “Whoa! Where did those muscles come from?”
“Oops!” Kairi let go suddenly and backed up a step; Olette had immediate regrets. “I keep forgetting to be careful now,” Kairi said sheepishly. “You know Aqua, every day is arm day. Anyway, my phone wouldn’t charge so I couldn’t run Ienzo’s security updates, so I brought it for Pence to fix."
“Sand again,” Pence said pointedly, dropping onto the battered couch beside Roxas.
“Islander problems,” Kairi chuckled. “All good now.”
“Good,” Olette said. There was a beat of silence, Olette forgetting how to string words together casually because up close Kairi had a scatter of faint sun freckles across her nose and the tops of her shoulders.
“I, um, like your jacket?” Kairi said. Olette looked down at her varsity jacket like she’d never seen it before, the slick purple material making the gold cuffs and lettering stand out in the afternoon sun. Kairi pointed at the TT logo. “Is that for school? I thought you guys didn’t have uniforms.”
“We don’t, it’s a sport. I mean it’s my sport.” Olette felt heat rising to her cheeks. Get it together! “It’s my team jacket for varsity softball.” Olette twisted so Kairi could see the back, with the school name written out in gold and the Hookbats logo.
“Oh!” Kairi said. Olette felt the light press of Kairi touching the logo and was glad she was turned away so she could stare at the sky a second. “What’s softball?”
“It’s um.” Olette turned back around, kneading her knuckles into the lining of her pockets. “A sport.”
“What is she doing?” Roxas asked Pence in a loud whisper.
“Panicking,” Pence answered, long-suffering. Olette shot him a dirty look over Kairi’s shoulder.
“I sort of thought you guys only played Struggle here,” Kairi said. “We have Blitzball on the islands, but that’s in the water, so you probably don’t have that here.” She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. It fell loose again immediately. “You should come see a game sometime.”
“Oh! Yeah, you too! You should come and watch a game.” Olette knew she sounded like an idiot but couldn’t actually stop her mouth from doing it. “A softball game, I mean, not Blitzball, since we don’t have that…here.”
“Holy shit,” Roxas laughed.
“Don’t be a jerk,” Pence told him, elbowing him sharply. “Hey, Kairi, want to come get milkshakes with us? There’s a diner just south of the station we like.”
“Sure,” Kairi agreed immediately. “I’ve got a couple hours before I’m supposed to catch the train to the Tower.”
Thank you, Olette mouthed to Pence as he strolled by. Pence grunted an “Uh-huh,” with a roll of his eyes.
Not that Olette was any smoother at the diner. Sitting on the same side of the booth as Kairi, Olette still couldn’t seem to get her brain and mouth fully reconnected, especially not after Kairi slid in closer to show her a video of Blitzball on her Gummiphone.
“It looks fun,” Olette said, ninety-five percent of her brain cells absorbed by Kairi’s bare shoulder pressed against hers, and the way she smelled faintly of ocean salt and some kind of fruit. “Do you play?”
“Nah. I did in middle school,” Kairi sounded wistful. “The high school team is all boys, and I’m too busy anyway, ever since…you know.”
“Sorry,” Olette said, wincing at herself.
“Oh no, it’s fine!” Kairi laughed it off, but she clicked her phone dark too, dropping it facedown on the table. “I can always get a few of the boys to play a pick-up game if I want. Show me yours.”
Olette blinked, head empty.
“Your sport,” Kairi prompted. “You have to have videos of your team, right?”
“OH! Oh right!” Olette dug out her own phone out of her pocket and almost fumbled it into her basket of fries. Cheeks burning, she tapped her photo app open and tried to think what she had on her phone. “Uhh…”
“I got you, I got you,” Pence said, sliding his own phone across the table, video already loaded for Kairi to tap play.
It was shot at their last away game with the Sunset Terrace Dusks, Olette pitching during the third inning. Pence’s photography was nicely steady, despite the distance of him shooting it from the bleachers. Olette pitched two fastball strikes before the batter popped up the third one, but Olette had kept her eye on it the whole time, backing up a few steps and letting it drop into her mitt with a satisfying thwack.
“Wow!” Kairi exclaimed. “No wonder you knew how to handle that nail bat!”
“I guess,” Olette muttered, pleasure and awkwardness twisting tighter in her chest. She tried to think of something more to say as Kairi clicked on the next video, but ended up grabbing for her milkshake to keep her hands occupied and drinking it faster than she meant to.
Kairi’s phone vibrating interrupted, the pattern of buzzes peculiar.
“That’s Lea, I better get it,” Kairi said apologetically. “He’s in Dwarf Woodlands with Ven and something always goes wrong there.” Sure enough, when she flipped her phone over, there was Lea’s contact photo, a shot of him with half an ice cream jammed into his mouth. “Hey Le—what? Slow down, dumbass, I can’t…what do you mean you lost him?”
Roxas snorted in amusement as Olette and Pence exchanged a bemused glance. Keyblader trouble always seemed so ridiculous.
“How did you even get into a mouse hole?” Kairi demanded. She covered the phone a second to whisper to Olette, “Sorry, let me out? I think I better take it outside a second.”
“Sure.” Olette stood up from the booth so Kairi could squeeze by, then sank back down into it as soon as Kairi was out of sight. Her head ached with sudden brain freeze. “Ohhh my goddddd.”
“Yeah, dude, what’s your problem?” Roxas asked. “It’s just Kairi.”
“That’s the problem!” Olette groaned. She gestured with both hands through the diner window, where Kairi was on the sidewalk in front of them, one hand planted on her hip as she yelled at Lea on the phone, her outline lit up gold from the sunset. “Look at her!”
“Hmm,” Roxas said, tilting his head and examining Kairi. “Nope, nothing.”
“Yeah, well, that’s ‘cause we all know whose body you came from,” Olette grumbled, grabbing a french fry to dip in her milkshake moodily. “Pence, back me up.”
“Just ask her out already,” Pence said, that traitor. “It’s painful to watch! Ask her to see a movie! Go to a Blitzball game! Hell, ask her if you can touch her keyblade and go to keykid summer camp, anything.”
“Shut uuuuup! It’s not that easy!” Olette huffed. “I don’t even know if she likes…you know.”
“Townies?” Roxas asked.
“GIRLS, you replicated buffoon,” Olette snapped. “I don’t know if she likes girls!”
“Oh please,” was Pence’s assessment.
“I mean, fair,” Roxas shrugged. Olette pointed at him for his solidarity before Roxas added, “I don’t get liking girls either. No offense, Olette, you’re ok.”
“Thank you so much,” Olette said. She shoved a few more fries into her mouth just for the distraction.
“I’m just saying, liking girls doesn’t seem to be working out for you,” Roxas continued, despite Olette’s warning glare. “You could try liking computers, like Pence here, he seems fine.”
“Sometimes I really understand why Ansem digitized you into a locked data world,” Pence said.
“Hey!”
They were too involved in their argument to notice that Kairi had finished her phone call and headed back inside. The result was that Olette nearly choked on her milkshake when Kairi suddenly tapped her shoulder.
“Hey, Kairi,” Roxas said, “Olette wants to know if she can touch your—“
Olette was already swinging her foot for the kick before registering that interrupting Roxas’s question was worse than letting him finish it.
“My what?” Kairi asked, obviously trying not to laugh, and Olette covered her face in her hands. “Hey, sorry to run, but I’d better head out.” She started digging around in her pockets for munny, but Pence waved her off.
“Don’t worry about it, townies’ treat,” he told her. “Ice cream’s on you next time, right?”
“Sure,” Kairi agreed, smiling warmly. “Come visit Destiny Islands and try a real flavor.”
“How dare you!” Roxas said, indignant. Then he added, “Olette should walk you to the station. So you don’t get lost.”
Kairi blinked. “Lost going to the…giant clocktower? That you can see from anywhere in town?”
“Yes,” Roxas said. Pence and Olette both groaned. “What? I’m helping!”
“Please stop,” Olette begged.
“I think I can handle it,” Kairi said. “But you could walk me anyway?”
“Yeah?” Olette asked, heartbeat suddenly doubling.
“Yeah.” Kairi tucked the same piece of hair back, which fell right back into place. “If you wanted.”
“Yes! I mean yeah, that’s…” Olette scrambled out of the booth, almost tripping flat on her face, but Kairi caught her by the shoulders and hauled her upright with that same surprising strength. “Good, yeah.”
“Good,” Kairi agreed. “I do like girls, by the way. I would like to go a movie or a Blitzball game, I don’t know if my keyblade woud get you into keykid summer camp but you can touch it if you want to, and that diner window is absolutely not soundproof.”
Olette, Roxas, and Pence all swung their gazes from Kairi to the window, where the lower part was shut, but the top third was hinged open, swung out to catch the breeze.
“Huh,” Pence said. “Look at that.”
“I’ve changed my mind,” Olette said. “I’ll just stay here and die, thanks.”
“Oh, come on, you baby,” Kairi said, hooking her arm through Olette’s elbow and dragging her towards the door, waving at Roxas and Pence over her shoulder.
Silence hung over them for the first block or so of walking. Olette’s face was still on fire and she couldn’t think of a single thing to say. She felt silly still clinging to Kairi’s arm, Kairi’s skin warm under her fingers, and didn’t want to let go either.
“We don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Kairi spoke up, making Olette startle. Her face was pink too when Olette looked up, but she was smiling a little. “Sorry, I’m not good at silences. I really can find the station on my own.”
“That’s not it,” Olette said, forcing the words out. “I want to.”
“Good, because you’re absolutely killing me in that varsity jacket,” Kairi said, making Olette splutter. “So if you don’t mind a girl who plays Blitzball and has weird muscles, I’m prepared to accept that you dip french fries in your milkshake.”
“I’m killing you?!” Olette demanded, and Kairi burst out laughing. “Showing up here in your cute plaid uniform with your knee socks and your sleeves rolled up like a delinquent! You did this on purpose!”
“A little, yeah,” Kairi admitted. “Selphie taught me to roll my skirt up. Riku said I couldn’t give him shit anymore when I was being a coward too, so I didn’t have a choice.”
“Well, I’m into it, obviously,” Olette said. “The muscles too.” The wind kicked up the hill, and Olette didn’t miss the way Kairi shivered a little. “Wanna wear my jacket to the station?”
“Yes,” Kairi said with delight, flexing her fingers in the gimme motion. “You can have it back when you take me to a movie next weekend.”
“Deal.” Olette was already stripping her jacket off and holding it up for Kairi to slip her arms into. “Comedy or horror?”
“Guess,” Kairi said with a grin that Olette understood immediately as a challenge. “If you get it right, maybe I’ll let you touch my keyblade.”