a manner of speaking [for contest]

[Ventus]

I'm offended you guys started this without me. Thanks.

Part one of several, also first submission of several. This is written out of my own personal experience ( funny stories about homecoming, I ALMOST caught a punt from the other side, & left my trombone out in the sleet for half the game, but anyway ) so there might be a few little things that are unique to my school.
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a manner of speaking
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So here he was, back for a second helping. And here they were, one year later ( not exactly; homecoming rarely fell on the same day two years in a row ), doing it all again.

Fayt, like everyone else, was running around the music wing half-dressed. His marching pants were on, but the jacket hung unzipped and unbuttoned over his white tanktop as he sidestepped between Scara and Kadaj chatting amiably as they walked down the hallway, cases in hand. The bluenette was very nearly blindsided by the taller male's French horn, another quick bit of maneuvering getting him out of that bruise.

He could hear Mr. Hanekoma calling over the crowd to "hurry up kids, you're gonna be late for the bus, and careful to keep those uniforms clean!", but nobody paid him any heed - except for Fang, the senior drum major, wading through the cloud of underclassmen as she took up his call to arms.

"Move it along, kiddies! 'E's not gonna wait fer us forever!"

Well, yeah. Everybody knew that. But they were on time, regardless of the pestering of Hanekoma and Oerba Yun, and Fayt took the proffered instant to duck lightly under her outstretched arm.

Albel was on her other side, smirking.

"What are you doing here?" Fayt asked in passing, dragging him along with using only his expression - no contact was necessary to keep his boyfriend on a leash - considering he was in the color guard, it was unusual to see him in the thoroughfare to the instrument locker rooms.

"Watching the worm migration," he offered as a response, as per usual. Fayt snorted, rolling his eyes, and ditched Nox to stand there with his pansy-ass flag.

So he made it into the locker rooms, and into the real crush of people - lucky his instrument required no space at all, and with a sigh of sympathy directed farther down to the trombone-tuba section, Fayt tugged open his unlocked ( it was never locked, who would steal a fucking flute anyway ) door to pull out the offending woodwind and his wrist lyre.

And then he did it again, all the way back to the spot he had chosen to dump his crap, through the crowd of half-dressed people ( Albel and his rinky-dink fucking half-Spandex uniform notwithstanding, even if he did look sexy in it ) that always seemed to be standing directly in his way.

The rest of it was a blur, as he set up and cleaned his instrument, organized his music, finished getting dressed, met up with Albel again ( the both of them always sat on whatever bus the six-strong Color Guard picked, ultimately Albel's decision of which seeing as he was the captain ), got to the stadium that was actually at the middle school, disembarked, and went to their bleachers.

The night was strangely warm, though last year, as a freshman, it had been sleeting as they played. The first part, before the game, was as it usually was on pep band nights - albeit wearing his uniform and not the blue polo that usually went with the band. So he stood with the flutes, on the lowest bleacher available, and played through a lineup of six songs. Nothing major.

So then that was done, and they waited, and they waited. Fayt spent the time watching the game, standing alongside Scara and Kadaj once more, the former with her clarinet and the latter... without his French horn, having left it on a bleacher someplace. Nobody would care, not Fang or Lightning or Hanekoma.

Their team kicked ass, the bluenette thought to himself, listening to an upperclassman cheer loudly when one of their wide receivers caught the ball and drove it forty yards towards the endzone.

"Yeah! Go Lions!" another one yelled, behind him and to his right.

Fayt stared at the scoreboard for a good ten seconds until a call shattered his lack of attention. "Kadaj! The wandering soul knows no rest - stop walking away on me!"

"Genesis," the silverette sighed, and with that took off to appease the junior with his presence, leaving Fayt with Scara.

They stood there in silence from 2:36 to 2:02, Fayt watching the clock for nothing better to do - the opposing team had them at a stalemate at the Brigadier's 20 yard line, but as it was the Lions were fourteen points up anyway - until Scara spoke up shyly. "So how's Albel?"

"Good. The usual," he said, smiling. She knew what the usual was.

At 0:30, Fang took it upon herself to gather the young'uns - or, what she declared. The junior drum major, Lightning, gave a snort in response.

Two notable freshmen in particular were Florence ( last name not known to him ), and Larsa Solidor, a piccolo and a clarinet respectively, both bumped up a grand total of three grades apiece. And to boot, both with IQs well over two hundred - even their manner of speech was intellectual, post-Elizabethan. Nevertheless, they stumbled over each other as Fang ordered them to their places, the rest of the band falling in easily - or sort of easily, a few other freshmen were at a loss as to what they were supposed to do, and three or so juniors thought to be smart asses and yell at them to 'cover down, stupid freshmen' - and Fayt was pushed into his spot by Lightning, having noticed his "dawdling" as he took a moment to observe the shifting band members before him.

Four people up, another flutist that he recognized as Ventus was using his instrument as a sword, and the person in front of him - Ven's best friend, Terra - easily deflected with the bell of his trombone. They kept at that for another ten seconds, Ven holding it backhand by the mouthpiece, until Fang eventually snapped at them to "shape up and look professional, kiddies, yer on the field!"

Well. They weren't really - it was the very far end of the field, where the track met Astroturf, the very front of the line just touching the outer boundary of the endzone - but it was close enough that they both quickly snapped to, and another one of their friends - Aqua, whom he had been told he must be a twin of ( he could sort of see it, but not really ) - snickered at them as she played with the valves of her trumpet.

Behind him stood a taller blonde, the breadth of his shoulders easily matching the baritone saxophone strung around his neck. It was a well-known fact that Cloud only stuck with the marching band in order to watch his boyfriend play football, but that aside, the blonde possessed talent, no matter how his stoic silence belied the quickness of fingers on keys. He stood there, sheet music in an untidy pile, sorting it carefully as a trombone player behind him - Tidus, he thought - spoke a paragraph without a breath directly into his ear - he merely nodded in response.

It was also an unspoken fact that did an unwary freshman attempt to taunt him for either being in band or having a boyfriend, that same freshman would find their locker spraypainted with girly hearts and their footsteps tagged by annoying girls. The incident last year had Cloud's popularity with the fanclub-ish women assured, as if they were his own private army. But that was a story for another time.

The whistle for halftime sounded.

Here we go.

Making triply sure his wrist-lyre was opened to Build Me Up, Buttercup, Fayt flipped his flute to be held vertically, the mouthpiece six inches from his nose. As a last minute mark, Lightning hissed at them all to cover down.

They stepped forward.