Work Text:
Sometime in between first and third period, Cloud's locker had been stuffed full of frogs. Live frogs.
The one on top stared back at him as he blinked dumbfoundedly at it.
"Ribbit," it said, before using his head as a springboard and escaping. The others followed its lead, hopping and croaking in various directions down the hallways.
"New kid, huh?" someone said as they passed him in the hall; sympathetic, but not actually stopping to help. It wasn't fair, he hadn't even gotten to use some of those books yet. He wondered briefly how he was going to explain swamp-related damage to the school librarians.
"Must've been a long summer," someone behind him said. "That's creative, even for Reno."
He turned around. The other student looked a little older than him, maybe a junior or senior. He wore a varsity jacket and had dark, unruly hair and a grin to match.
"Um, hi," Cloud said, just as a drop of something greenish slid down his hair and splashed onto his nose.
The other student laughed and held out his hand. "I'm Zack," he said. "Come on, let's get you some paper towels," which was how Cloud made his first friend at Shinra High.
---
"Don't take it personally," Zack said, over a slice of pepperoni pizza in the cafeteria. "It happens to all of us when we're new. My freshman year, it was pages of Playbee pasted into my Health Sciences textbook. Man, the principal was not amused, even when I told him some of the anatomy was actually more accurate than the original illustrations."
"Doesn't everyone know it's Reno doing it, though?"
"Oh, they know, they just don't try to do more than run damage control," Zack said. He shrugged. "I'm pretty sure this is his third or fourth senior year, but I don't know if it's because he actually fails, or because they've decided it would just be criminal to let him loose in society."
"Oh," Cloud said, chewing thoughtfully. His mom had warned him about the dangers of urban schools, but he didn't know if this was what she'd had in mind.
"Don't worry about it. He'll let it drop once the novelty of you being new wears off. You can put your stuff in my locker for now, if you want. Hey," he said, helping himself to one of Cloud's french fries, "you ever thought about trying out for sports?"
---
The lacrosse coach took one look at Cloud and said, "Come back when you grow a couple inches, kid." He still went to the field to watch the team practice almost every day, though, and sometimes when there wasn't practice Zack would teach him the basics of how to play, showing him where to place his hands on the crosse, how to throw and catch the ball in the net.
Cloud was secretly relieved not to have to compete, but he liked learning how to play; and he found that by hanging out with Zack, he managed to avoid most of Reno's more hazardous pranks. There was still the laxative in his Home Ec baking project (which had earned him an F, once the teacher had returned from having his stomach pumped), the food coloring in the locker room showers that briefly turned his hair blue, and the pair of his underwear that mysteriously showed up on top of the flagpole; but after he survived the first few weeks, they dropped off.
Meanwhile, he shared small-town growing up stories with Zack, who turned out not be a city kid after all, and got to know some of his friends. On the weekdays, he watched Zack practice, and on the weekends, they would haul their textbooks down to the local burger joint and Zack would help him study and tease him about the way he blushed whenever he talked to the pretty girl behind the counter. And one day, when he still hadn't quite gotten over the fact that the captain of the lacrosse team would nod at him in the hallway, he realized he hadn't been pranked in over a month and was surprised to find that, hey, he wasn't a new kid anymore.
"Congratulations," Zack said, patting him on the back—and Cloud reached back to snatch the "kick me" sign from his shirt half a second before he took off down the hallway after Zack, yelling; which landed them both in detention, but on the other hand, "Nice tackle," Zack said. "Maybe you should try out for the football team."
---
"No way."
"Oh, come on," Zack said. "Why not?"
"Because," Cloud stressed, "I don't want to die."
Zack dismissed this with a wave of his hand. "Whatever. It's just as safe as riding in a car, and I'm an excellent driver. Now put on your helmet."
Five minutes later, Cloud was hanging on for dear life, eyes watering from the wind, as Zack whipped around corners at a terrifying speed. He wondered if he would at least get a small mention in the newspaper: High School Students Killed in Tragic Motorcycle Accident. Oh god, who would tell his mother?
"Almost there," Zack shouted over his shoulder. They were approaching the outskirts of the city now, where rows of apartment buildings gave way to tree-lined lanes. Zack steered them onto a narrow road that wound up the side of a hill, stopping when they reached a grassy ledge overlooking the city. Cloud slid off the back of the motorcycle and collapsed into a grateful heap on the ground as soon as Zack turned off the engine.
"See? That wasn't so bad, was it?" Zack said cheerfully, and Cloud would have argued with him except that he was still working on seeing straight; and when he did, he had to admit that, okay, the view was maybe worth it.
"Wow."
"Pretty, isn't it?" Zack said, sitting down next to him. "Quiet, too. That's why I like it here; sometimes you just have to get away from the city."
They sat in comfortable silence for a moment, watching the late-afternoon sun slowly lower in the sky, lending a golden tint to the scenery below them. Cloud turned, puzzled, at the touch of Zack's hand on his; just in time for Zack to lean in and kiss him.
"Oh my god," Cloud said, pulling away, "are we on a date?" and Zack grinned at him as if to say, "Of course, idiot."
"Oh my god, I should have known, all that talk about stick-handling had to mean something—"
"Cloud, shut up," Zack said fondly, and kissed him again.
"Okay," Cloud said breathlessly, a few minutes later, "wow, so, I feel like I should send Reno a thank-you note—"
"I'll bring the toilet paper if you bring the spray paint," Zack said, grinning, and Cloud laughed, and put his hands under Zack's shirt, and they completely missed the sun setting but Cloud figured it was okay.
This school year was going to be awesome.