Kingdom Hearts fic: Starstruck

[mistressofmuses]

Work on much of anything creative has ground to a halt due to work stress, but I still hope to slowly get these fics out as I can!

This one is for prompt #22: "Celebrity AU."

It's a sequel to "The Contest," a fic I wrote for 2020's AUgust. It likely does make more sense to read that one first. (And I still had the same issue I had when I wrote that first one: I kept thinking of things that could happen later on in the story, but I don't know that I'm knowledgeable enough to convincingly write this as a longer fic!)

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Having won a fashion design contest, Sora and his partner Kairi face the next hurdle: meeting famed model Riku Miyano in person.

Somehow Sora made it through the phone call without fainting. He also didn’t hyperventilate. Later on, Kairi even assured him that he’d sounded amazingly calm and coherent.

He felt neither calm nor coherent, but evidently he’d managed to have a relatively normal phone conversation with Riku Miyano. Which… really wasn’t normal at all.

Despite the general feeling that this had to be a hallucination of some kind, some daydream gotten out of hand, apparently it had really happened: ninety minutes later, a limousine pulled up in front of Sora’s apartment building, just like Sora had been told it would.

As unreal as it felt, Sora did remember that over the course of the phone call, he’d gotten permission to bring Kairi along with him. That only seemed fair, for multiple reasons. She’d always been involved in his design work, as cheerleader if not full-blown collaborator. Plus, if it weren’t for her entering his designs into the contest, after he’d chickened out…

He held his portfolio in one hand, and her hand in his other as they went out to the waiting car. For an instant he was sure it really was just a coincidence that the limo was out there, since clearly this was all still a mistake.

“Sora Irino?” the driver asked, stepping out of the vehicle.

When he shyly nodded, the man stepped around to open the door for them. “I’m taking you to meet Riku, correct?”

Sora nodded again.

Kairi rescued him saying, “Yes, I believe so. Sora won a design contest, and Riku is here to meet him about that.”

The driver smiled at them. “Excellent. Make yourselves comfortable, and we’ll be there soon.”

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As tempting as it would ordinarily be to raid the built-in fridge or dig for other amenities hidden in the limo, Sora was too nervous to take advantage. Kairi reached over and squeezed his hand. They could have sat across from each other, and they would have barely been able to touch without leaning, but instead she’d stayed right next to him. He squeezed her hand back gratefully.

Simultaneously the ride felt impossibly long and impossibly short. On the one hand, it was an agonizing amount of time to sit with his thoughts and his nerves. On the other, he wished he’d had another half hour or so to postpone the inevitable meeting.

The hotel that Riku was staying in, where they were supposed to meet, was considered the fancy hotel in what passed for Destiny Island’s downtown area. It wasn’t much of a downtown.

The driver pulled right up to the doors to the hotel, and opened the car door for them. Everything still felt like a blur as Sora and Kairi were ushered into the hotel lobby, and a concierge showed them to a conference room.

Sora was weirdly relieved at the conference room. He’d initially been imagining a meeting in Riku’s hotel room, which seemed… strange. Intimate, maybe.

Riku was already in the room they were shown to, seated at a table. There were some papers and folders spread out on the table in front of him. He got to his feet as soon as they entered the room.

Sora was instantly starstruck. He and Kairi had always found Riku captivating, though that was certainly a common enough reaction to the man. The ethereal, too-pretty-to-be-real quality that he brought to his entire modeling career was legendary. It turned out he was just as breathtaking in real life.

“Sora Irino,” Riku said.

His voice was warm and inviting, but that was also no surprise. Sora had listened to what was probably an embarrassing number of interviews and other videos of Riku, and had been well acquainted with that voice even before the introduction over the phone. That seemed like the sort of thing he needed to never ever admit.

Riku was offering his hand. Sora took it. The handshake was just as warm and inviting.

“And you must be Kairi Uchida. It’s wonderful to meet both of you.”

Riku stepped back to the table and swept his hand toward a pair of empty seats. “Please, make yourselves comfortable. This should be a pretty low-pressure meeting, just an opportunity to ensure we’re all on the same page with everything.”

Sora sat down, still feeling a bit as if this was all a movie. Kairi reached over and took his hand in another brief squeeze. That helped.

“So, obviously, congratulations! I know I already said it, and it deserves repeating. Congratulations on winning Ultima’s Designer Discovery!”

“Thank you,” Sora said. “I think I might still be in shock, a little.”

Riku laughed, but not meanly. “I’m sure that it will sink in eventually.”

Finally, Sora looked at the papers that Riku had been examining before they came in. A few were covered in text, but many of them… they were Sora’s designs. The ones Kairi had submitted. That somehow made all of this feel a bit more real.

Riku shuffled through the pages, and pulled out one of the ones covered in dense text. “This is the extremely un-sexy ‘sign a contract’ part. Please, both of you, read through the whole thing. I will say, it’s a fair contract. Ultima is granted right of first refusal for any of the designs you produce as part of this partnership, but cannot utilize any of them without your agreement. You retain full rights to the designs you initially submitted, as well as anything you create outside of this partnership. If you and Ultima mutually decide to continue working together beyond this initial contest partnership, that will be under a new contract yet to be determined.”

Sora skimmed the page, as did Kairi. It was fairly straightforward and true to Riku’s summary. They both signed at the bottom, and Riku filed it away.

“Now the part that’s more fun, at least in my opinion, is what I’m here for. Part of the contest prize is that I will ultimately be part of the modeling campaign once your designs are produced. But if you’ll agree to it, I hope to be involved leading up to then as well. The designs will be yours, of course, but I’d like to be a resource to consult on them, if you’d like. Ultima will also be doing a full ad campaign for you, but I’d like to help with some early publicity. Some local interest stories, maybe a handful of interviews, that sort of thing. It’s almost always a good idea to build up some early enthusiasm for an upcoming line.”

Sora was speechless for a moment. Having Riku Miyano modeling his designs had sounded like an impossible dream come true, and was certainly one of the most alluring things about the contest. Even so, that had sounded like it would be a very brief time spent working directly with him. Sora had even been mildly surprised Riku was the one to come here about his win, rather than some lesser-known company spokesperson.

Now it sounded like Riku actually wanted to be involved from the start, not just once everything else had been finalized. Working with him directly, for the course of probable months at the very least?

“That sounds… absolutely amazing,” Sora finally managed to say.

“Incredible!” Kairi agreed. “Thank you for showing so much interest in Sora’s work.”

“I assure you, it’s completely earned. I’m beyond excited to get started.”