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[KH] Life Lessons: Song (theme 55)

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Life Lessons, a Kingdom Hearts fanfic series by Raberba girl for Destiny's Call's 100 Things Learned... Challenge

Song (theme 55) [rough draft]

 

KHplatonicLove raffle prize for Medli45

 

Summary: After a bad day at work for both of them, Riku decides to teach Naminé how to dance. This would be easier if he knew how to dance himself.

 

A/N: Takes place between KH1 and KH2.

 

o.o.o

 

"You're already an abomination; I certainly don't need you to be useless as well!"

 

Naminé's eyes stung with tears as she rummaged slowly through the pantry for a can of soup.

 

"Sora should have been awake months ago. Your failure is unacceptable."

 

Her hands were clumsy, and the soup dropped from her shaking fingers. Naminé sniffed back tears and knelt down to pick up the can. It had rolled far under the lowest pantry shelf, and she had to practically prostrate herself so she could reach it. Just as her fingertips touched the metal, she suddenly broke down, and lay there sobbing on the pantry floor until she miserably dozed off.

 

She was awakened by the pantry door slamming back against the wall. Disoriented, she was sluggish to react, and only managed a yelp just before Riku stepped on her. As it was, several packages of pasta came tumbling down on Naminé's head as Riku was startled into jerking back his hand mid-grasp.

 

"Whoa!" Riku leaped away, Keyblade blazing to life in his hands. "Who's there?!"

 

"Me! Me, it's just me!" She cried, struggling to her feet.

 

"Are you...on the floor?!"

 

"I...yes, I fell, and I...."

 

He was frowning as he slowly dismissed his weapon. "Are you ok--?" Then he shook his head fiercely. "Never mind, I don't care." He dropped to his knees and groped around on the floor, muttering under his breath. Naminé nudged a package into his hand, which he squeezed hard as he stood up. He paused, then gritted his teeth and whirled away. She sank back to sit to the floor again and watched dully as Riku slammed around the kitchen, spilling and dropping things in his carelessness as he started preparing dinner.

 

After a few minutes, though, he paused. He crossed his arms on the counter and leaned until his head rested on them for a long time. Then he drew in a deep breath, straightened, and turned around. "I'm sorry, Naminé. I had a frustrating day, and I shouldn't be taking it out on you."

 

Which, for some mysterious reason, made Naminé burst into tears again.

 

Riku crossed the kitchen, cursed when he banged into a chair, and knelt to put his arms around her.

 

"I'm sorry, Riku," she wailed, "I'm sorry, I'm just going to go to bed, I, I...."

 

"Sshh. It's okay. I'm sorry," he murmured, and after a minute, she finally relaxed and leaned against him. He held her until her sobs had faded to little sniffles. "I kind of feel like crying a little bit, too," he said wryly. "My day was...not so great."

 

"I got in trouble," she whispered.

 

"Don't listen to DiZ," Riku said immediately. "He's bitter and biased and doesn't care how hard you work or how impossible his expectations are."

 

"Sora's never going to wake up, and it's all my fault," Naminé said despairingly.

 

Riku's arms tightened for a moment. "Don't say that. Sora is going to wake up. Since he's not able to annoy us into always being hopeful, we have to do that for him until he wakes up again, okay?"

 

"It was a really bad day, Riku," Naminé said bleakly.

 

Riku stood and held out his hand to help her up. "We'll feel better after we've eaten. And then we're going to find something to cheer ourselves up; we are not going to go to bed early and stew over how much we suck."

 

"How much we...?"

 

"Uh - it's slang. I meant, how much we're failing."

 

"We're sucking," she said experimentally.

 

"Um.... It's more like, 'This thing is bad, so it sucks.'"

 

"DIZ SUCKS!" Naminé suddenly yelled, then clapped her hands over her own mouth in horror, hoping that the old man wasn't skulking around somewhere near enough to hear her.

 

Riku burst into laughter. "Look, you've made me feel better already." Naminé managed a wobbly smile.

 

After they ate, Riku led the way to the dusty foyer, and Naminé helped him move the center table over to the side. "Now there's plenty of room for dancing."

 

"Dancing?" she said shyly. She kind of knew what that was, but she had never done it before. "You'll teach me?"

 

"Of course. I, uh...actually don't really know how to dance myself, but I probably know more than you do, so...." He held out his arms, and she went willingly into them, squeezing him in an embrace. He laughed. "I meant, come close so I can--" He had unzipped his coat and was digging through the numerous pockets of the clothes he wore underneath. He finally extracted a pair of odd-looking items attached by a long, thin cord. He placed the incomplete circle around her neck. "These are headphones. I don't have any speakers or anything, so I figured we could just turn the volume all the way up and have these around your neck instead of over your ears, so that both of us can hear it."

 

"I don't know what you're talking about," Naminé said amiably.

 

Riku smiled and fiddled with the little box at the other end of the string. Naminé jumped when music suddenly burst out of the ends of the circlet. "What is it?!"

 

"It's okay, this is just my music player." Riku fiddled some more, and the music changed, then again, and again, very rapidly until it settled on the sound of a woman singing a slow, wistful tune. "Okay." Riku tucked the little box into one of his pockets, leaving his coat unzipped. "Okay, so...hold my hand, and I think you put your other hand...here? And I put my hand on your waist, and...."

 

Naminé obediently followed his directions, then waited, feeling that light, happy emotion she always got when Riku was nice to her and taught her things, as Riku surveyed their positions.

 

"I think this is right. Okay, now...just follow my lead, um...and it's, like counting to three...."

 

"Three?"

 

"One, two, three," Riku murmured, shifting her gently. "No, relax, just kind of sway along with me. One, two, three; one, two, three...."

 

It felt strange and kind of awkward, and Naminé stumbled once or twice. After a minute, Riku stopped altogether. "I think I'm doing it wrong."

 

"Sorry."

 

"Don't apologize; I'm doing it wrong. I could have sworn.... But it doesn't match the music, does it."

 

Naminé simply stood there in his arms, not understanding, but not really caring as long as Riku was holding her and only bemused rather than upset or angry.

 

"Okay...okay, let's forget the counting, and just try to move along with the music." His arms tensed around her, and she tried to keep up with him as they both stumbled around. The song trailed off, then guitar chords suddenly burst out of the 'headphones,' along with a man's voice enthusiastically yelling. Naminé found herself hopping a little, since the movement seemed more suitable to this much faster-paced song.

 

Riku groaned. "Wow, I'm even worse at dancing than I thought."

 

Naminé stopped hopping. "Are we not supposed to jump?"

 

"Ummmm...I mean, I guess we can?"

 

Naminé smiled and hopped again, but then stopped when Riku didn't join in. "Do you not want to?"

 

"No, I mean...I mean, my parents would probably kill me if they saw me making such an idiot of myself, but--" His mouth tightened. "They're not here. No one's here to see me look stupid except you." His hand on her waist stroked briefly up and then back into place. "You never judge me. It doesn't bother you when I'm not perfect."

 

"I don't think you're an idiot."

 

Riku suddenly started hopping. Delighted, Naminé hopped along with him. They jumped more and more intently in time to the music, as the singer screeched happily from around Naminé's neck. Then Riku burst into laughter. "This is ridiculous!" He took out the music player again to fiddle with it some more, and the song abruptly changed into garbled switching again. "We both need help. So let's pick a song that will tell us what to do." The music settled.

 

As the beat echoed up from the headphones, Riku gently pushed at Naminé until the two of them were standing side-by-side instead of facing each other. "Okay, so, what'll happen is the guy will sing the instructions, and we just do what he says."

 

"This is something new: the Casper Slide, part 2," said the headphones.

 

"Oh!" Naminé squeaked in surprise, hearing spoken words instead of singing. "Hello, um--!"

 

"It's a recording, Naminé. He can't hear you."

 

"Everybody, clap your hands!"

 

"Clap your hands, Naminé," Riku said, demonstrating.

 

"Clap, clap, clap your hands!"

 

To Naminé's delight and Riku's relief, the song really did kindly spell out instructions.  "One hop this time!"

 

"Just one!"

 

Naminé stopped hopping with a giggle.

 

"Cha Cha real smooth."

 

They both looked at each other. "What does that mean?"

 

"I...can't remember...I was too busy laughing at whatever ridiculous thing Sora was doing to pay attention to what Kairi was doing."

 

The next time the song instructed them to 'Cha Cha,' Naminé said, "It kind of sounds like...this." She curled her fingers and poked at the air.

 

"I bet it involves shaking your butt, too. I get the impression that you can't go wrong with dancing if you shake your butt." Riku did so, poking at the air at the same time the way Naminé had. He looked so funny that Naminé had to laugh before she imitated him. Then they had to catch up with the song, which had cheerfully kept plowing ahead.

 

The song seemed to end too soon, and in response to Naminé's wistful look, Riku offered, "We could play the same song again."

 

"Ooh!"

 

So they danced to it all over again, and this time, when the song ended and moved on to the next, Naminé was more confident and Riku was less self-conscious. They made up their own dance moves without bothering to care what they looked like, and were both laughing so hard by the end that when they finally called it a night and went to bed, neither of them remembered why they had been so upset just a couple of hours earlier.

 

o.o.o

 

Author's Notes: Thanks for reading! Please review~!

 

The main song in this fic was "Cha Cha Slide" by DJ Casper.

 

I finally finished a story! 8D Although I've been writing off and on all this time, I hadn't been able to post anything in nearly eight weeks. And I finally posted something for Kingdom Hearts again, wooooowww! Thank Medli45. :) Although I've been trying to write some new KH stuff, and I've had a little bit of inspiration lately, she's the one who won one of my prizes for the KHplatonicLove raffle (which gave me more incentive to get this written quickly), and suggested some cute ideas for me to write. The RikuNami one made my fingers itch to type the most. RikuNami is adorable, and Riku himself is also my best hope of KH inspiration these days for some reason.

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TaliaxLatia's avatar
I came across this as I was going through notifications, normally I would read and review on AO3 or FFN but I'm afraid I'd forget to and also forget where to find it.  XD  I love this though!  It's so random and cute, plus Riku dancing stupidly is hilarious all by itself.  Lol I can relate, a box step waltz is the only dance I know how to do, and the Cha Cha Slide was like the standard song of every church dance I went to.  XD