And That's The General Idea

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"Dammit, Kairi, why don't you just go out with me?" Sorry, Roxas, she likes her boys to be able to form coherent sentences. KairiRoxas.

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Kairi is going on and on about arm muscles – because apparently well formed biceps are of great importance to her now that she has entered the threshold of eighteen – and Roxas is trying to flex to make himself look stronger but he's too short, and he kind of already knows this.

Still. He should get points for trying.

"And then – aw mi gawd – get this: he tells me he's in the Destiny Islands militia. Can you believe it?"

Roxas' face scrunches up; something unpleasant and much akin to a washboard.

"Yes, but can he form a coherent sentence?"

Kairi rolls her eyes.

"Pu-lease. It's not like I actually talked to him."

"No – of course not. Just gandered."

"I'm entitled," Kairi informs her companion, who's face was still trying to unravel from its previous contorted visage. "Besides, you would have too if you had seen his biceps."

"Would not," Roxas spits defiantly. "Though I may have asked to see his badge. Police really seem to be cracking down on teenage prostitution these days."

He eyes Kairi's child size tank and boy shorts that are practically riding up her butt. He knew it was summertime, but did that really make it socially acceptable to paint on your clothes?

"Gods Roxas – I'm not that bad!"

She pulls her shirt down for emphasis.

Truth is: yes, she kind of is that bad. Everything has gotten shorter and everything has gotten tighter since her ascent to the twelfth grade. At first, Roxas pretended not to notice. She was his best friend and best friends are not supposed to have boobs. But testosterone and an ample amount of hormones had prevented him looking the other away for long.

Especially given Kairi's current…ensemble…at the moment. There wasn't enough fabric to constitute the aforementioned as an actual outfit.

"So, tell me Kai, is that a skirt or a very wide belt?"

She hisses through her teeth and doesn't bother to correct him in that they are shorts and not a mini skirt. They had a button, for gods' sake.

"You know what your problem is?" she cuts in, disregarding the courtesy of actually answering his previous inquisition.

"I'm too perceptive?

"You think you're funny and you're not."

"Um, correction. I know I'm funny. You just don't appreciate my subtle hints of very tasteful humor. Maybe you should stop renting out your frontal lobe as a loofah sponge."

"Again; not funny."

She's laughing on the inside. She must be.

Well. Let the boy pretend.

Roxas watches Kairi eye up some nondescript guy at the hot dog stand. (Well, he thinks he's nondescript – apparently she thinks otherwise.) He doesn't see any bulking arm muscles, and he's wondering why she's so infatuated with a boy who has done nothing so far as to prove he has three working brain cells.

"He doesn't have any biceps. Why are you gawking at him?"

"Dimples," Kairi supplies, and continues to stare. Roxas half expects her to start fanning herself. Which would really be something. Because she's hardly wearing anything as it is.

"…I have dimples."

Kairi turns to inspect this apparent phenomenon.

"No you don't," she concludes, after staring at her comrade's features. "You don't smile enough to have dimples."

Roxas frowns at this, thus further proving her point.

"Did this militia guy have dimples?"

Kairi thinks back on the man in question. It's a fond recollection, Roxas can tell by looking at her eyes. She's never looked at him that way.

"He had a six pack. I remember that."

"What the hell were you doing staring at his six pack?!"

"…Beach?" she reminds him.

He chastises himself for momentarily being so stupid.

"Well. So? He has a six pack. Big deal. Bet he failed his SATs."

"Roxas," Kairi begins with a characteristic roll of her eyes. "Please. He was so hot even you'd go gay for him."

This comment makes Roxas want to temporarily gorge out his own eyeballs. Not that it would help any as far as the mental imagery was concerned, but his hands were itching to claw at something in response to his confronted masculinity.

"I like boobs," he finishes up with, thinking of nothing else better to say in his defense.

Kairi momentarily looks down to inspect her own. "I think mine are actually getting bigger." This comment comes absent mindedly, because she is the company of her best friend, and she faultily assumes that makes him without a libido.

Roxas tries to avert his eyes, but they're kind of duct taped to Kairi's bosom.

"Kairi. Please."

It comes out as a sort of plea, but not really, because Roxas doesn't beg. Ever.

"What?" she asks innocently enough, completely unaware of the powers her newfound womanhood posses.

It's Roxas' turn to hiss through his teeth, though it sounds more like he's choking on something, possibly his own tongue, as opposed to a dismissal of annoyance.

"…I thought we were here to buy new school clothes."

"Oh, yeah!" The purpose of this venture to the mall had completely escaped Kairi's mind, what with so much scantily clad young meat wandering around.

Not that Kairi really wears all that much to begin with. But there is a dress code as Destiny Island High, and Roxas can't believe he's the one enforcing it.

It beats getting caught being hypnotized by his best friend's budding curves, at any rate.

Damn it. Why can't she cover up?

Kairi begins to squeal at the prospect of entering Forever 21, because 'ohmigosh Roxas they're having a sale!' but Roxas doesn't hear much of it because he's too intoxicated with the way Kairi's hair smells, for she's flipped it no less than five times his presence, and loose strands keep getting caught in his mouth.

The proximity between the two is suffocating, but they've been operating that way for years, so why change it now?

It's not like there's anything there. Right?

Kairi drags Roxas into the store, pumping full of mostly naked young girls and too loud music, and he cringes when he realizes what he's just gotten himself into. The yapping of one hundred adolescent females fill his ears and he's pretty sure, if he does not find some way to subdue the volume, his brain will explode and Kairi will be left to clean up the mess.

"I think I'm going to die in here," he notes. And is ignored. As usual.

"Oooh! Mistress Rinoa just released a new line of fall clothing! Help me pick stuff out."

It's not a suggestion, it's a demand, and Roxas knows better than to argue. Even if he is certain his death is imminent and unavoidable.

"What if I don't want to?" he grumbles, mostly to himself, since Kairi isn't giving him the time of day.

He sulks behind her, aware that this is not helping him on his epic quest for dimples. But he's just not in the mood.

And because he has somehow inadvertently pissed off every deity ever created, Kairi bends over – right in front of him – to pick up the shirt she just had to drop on the floor right as he was walking by.

Roxas momentarily contemplates humping the leg of the headless, faceless mannequin to his left – just to get this inevitable horniness out of his system. Then maybe he'll be able to resume eye contact without choking.

But he somehow doubts the store employees would appreciate that. And, besides, the faceless mannequin didn't really have that impressive of a chest, anyways. Roxas assumes they were all modeled after the same anorexic chick, for he has yet to see one with noteworthy hips.

"I like this one. I'm going to try it on."

"You go do that," Roxas' responds, devoid of emotion. He's eyeing up the Victoria's Secret mannequins now – for they are much more well endowed and only across the hall.

Also, they actually have faces.

Roxas decides to name one Gertrude. Just because he can. Besides, he likes the juxtaposition of dubbing a sexy model with such an unsexy name.

Give him a break. He's bored.

Kairi disappears into the dressing room, and Roxas wants to follow her in, but somehow finds it within him to resist. That a boy. Now all you have to do is resist the urge to jump her when she comes out. Let's see if you can keep the boy scout act up.

She eventually emerges, after much time is dedicated to fussing in the mirror and fixing her hair which always looks the same no matter how much she brushed it, and asks for Roxas' input with her eyes.

It's some flowing, flowery, peasant top ordeal, and it doesn't look the least bit complimentary on her.

Roxas racks his brain to think up something nice to say.

"That shirt makes you look like you're in your third trimester."

He determines, quite proudly, that that was a lot kinder than it could have been.

"Thanks, ass hole," Kairi grumbles, but she takes heed of the less than stellar review even if she was pretty confident in the fabric before hand, and bolts back into the dressing room before someone can steal her stall.

Roxas is convinced he's aged about five years by the time she comes out again.

And during these apparent five years, he has spent some time brooding. He's trying to figure out how to put words to what is currently marching merrily through his skull, and he finds the feat rather difficult to accomplish. Words are not his thing. (He is good at math, however.)

Granted, that skill is rendered pretty much useless given his current predicament. Unless he could somehow manage to win Kairi over by reciting a quadratic equation and solving them in his head.

Some girls would find that hot. But not the same girls shopping at Forever 21.

He'd probably have better luck at Gamestop, that being the case.

Maybe a Verizon Wireless store, if he really got desperate.

But he wasn't desperate. He knew what he wanted. And right now what he wanted was currently on the other side of the dressing room door.

Clothed, of course.

Isn't that right Roxas?

Kairi eventually makes her triumphant return, this time sporting a snug camisole of some type of cotton or another (Roxas assumes every piece of clothing is made from either polyester or cotton – fashion design never being the boy's forte.)

"And?" she prompts.

Roxas stands there, trying to retract his lower mandible which has just finished up on its descent to the floor.

"And why don't you just go out with me, dammit?"

Way to be subtle, kid.

Kairi stands there, eyes wide, whites showing, lips pursed and hands on hips.

There is a pause in which the silence – if you ignore the incessant chatter of the other shoppers and the way too loud music that Roxas drowned out a long time ago – is practically deafening.

"Okay."

"I'm sorry – what?"

"I said okay," she repeats, nodding in conviction.

She then walks over to him, piling a load of various jeans and tank tops into his outstretched arms. (And here he was thinking he'd get a hug.)

"And since you're my boyfriend now," she begins, adding a stray necklace to the pile, "you can buy me these shirts."

She then walks back to the dressing room, and Roxas is left standing there, slack jawed and dumb founded, unsure if he should either laugh or cry.

Perhaps both are called for.

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Author's Note

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Written for the lovely olive embers. And totally fluffy and pointless as a result. Hope you enjoyed, m'dear.

(And before anybody kills me, I'm one of those girls who would rather shop at Gamestop than Forever 21, so no, I was not dissing the nerds who like their boys to be able to solve quadratics in their head. Lord knows it's a turn on for me. XD)

Thanks for reading!