Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts
A/N: Request for I'mNotInLoveYet. Sorry it took me so long to get to.
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Periphery
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It was the month of fresh notebooks, crisp trees and the cracked spines of dusty old textbooks. Coffee dusted with flakes of cinnamon, warm and milky mocha swirls. Porcelain glass tipped to his lips, steam rising from the cup to condensate over his lightly freckled nose. Summer was out, autumn was here to stay.
Roxas returned his mug to the counter and nodded politely to the barista before making his way out of the small café. It was the fourth week of classes and the slow increase of caffeine was starting to creep up on the small blonde. The weather was getting slightly colder and he welcomed the change in temperature. He never was a fan of the sweltering heat of summer—(beyond the excuse to increase his consumption of sea salt ice cream at least).
As he neared campus he wandered through the throng of people, nodding and waving to familiar faces as they crossed his path. He wasn't much for socializing, but he had made a few acquaintances here and there. Something to prove to the general population that he wasn't as much of a loner as people thought.
There wasn't much to the morning. Nothing out of the ordinary with his usual routine that alerted him that things were going to change after today.
-x-
Enigma to most, privy to only a few.
Axel sat in the back row of his Organic Chemistry class. He only knew of him through his old roommate, Demyx, who had transferred out at the end of last year. They had had two conversations at best and both of them had ended with Roxas fuming and Axel nonchalantly dismissing the blonde's frustration and disappearing to God only knows where.
Roxas had paid him little to no attention when he found the red head sauntering into the lecture hall of seventy, thirty minutes after the first class of the semester had begun. He faded into the sea of nameless faces and from all of Roxas' conscious thoughts.
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On the fourth week and third day of the fall semester, obnoxious malachite eyes enter his periphery and Roxas finds himself slightly unnerved and unable to concentrate.
-x-
The first time Axel tries to make contact with Roxas is in the library.
He drops a seven hundred page, old and dusty encyclopedia on Roxas's work space, subsequently spilling the steaming hot mug of green tea that Roxas brought with him, all over the floor. Roxas immediately gets up before the tea can scald him through his black jeans and pushes himself away from the sopping mess that is his musical theory notes.
He glares up at Axel with livid blue eyes. Deep sea blue, the kind that swallows you hold and traps you beneath frozen and cracked glaciers. Pushing and scrapping against the cold frigidity of ice as you try and find your way back to the surface. It should scare Axel, but of course it doesn't.
He doesn't say anything to Roxas and wordlessly sets up work opposite the blond.
Roxas picks up his sopping lecture notes and lobs the empty mug in the direction of Axel's head. The mug meets Axel's forehead with a soft thunk, before dropping to the floor and rolling in the direction of Roxas's depature.
-x-
Roxas demands that he pays him back for the incident in the library when he sees the red headed menace in lecture the next week. Axel has the audacity to laugh and promptly receives a black eye for his folly.
Two days later, Axel comes into class with a patch over his eye and sits behind Roxas.
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Axel starts slipping notes to him in the sixth week of the semester.
He flicks small pieces of jagged loose leaf in the shape of tiny footballs over Roxas's shoulder and onto the boy's notebook. Roxas promptly shoves the offending mess off of his lecture notes and kicks them haphazardly along the floor. Somehow, one note always manages to slip through. He always finds it zippered up in the inside pocket of his messenger bag. How it manages to get in there, Roxas can never figure out.
By the end of the week, his interest is piqued and he opens one of the notes when he returns home one night. It's something written in Latin.
dum spiro, spero.
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Axel continues to stare at him.
Roxas continues to ignore his notes.
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Axel meets him in the library late one Sunday afternoon.
He comes baring an offering of peace: a frothy green tea latte for Roxas. A coffee with two sugars for himself. Roxas is wary of the offering but chooses to accept it nonetheless. Roxas allows Axel to slip into the opposite side of the table and they work together in silence.
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Roxas realizes the anonymity he has cultivated on campus for the past few years has been destroyed in a few weeks of contact with Axel. He's doing things with him now—studying together in the library, getting meals in the commons. Roxas has come to appreciate the little Latin notes Axel slips into every nook and cranny of his being. Axel has even started joining him at the little café a few blocks away from campus to get his daily caffeine fix in the morning.
Perhaps he misjudged him, perhaps they were more alike than he realized.
Perhaps, perhaps.
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A few weeks before the semester ends and everyone goes home for the holidays, Axel kisses him.
They're studying in the back of the library where no one goes except for a quickie or a quiet nap in-between the hectic pace of college life. Roxas is falling asleep in his textbook on contemporary urban writers and Axel is slowly perusing page after page of the various Latin textbooks stacked before them.
Axel sees Roxas falling asleep and quickly calls the boys name to wake him up. Roxas wakes up just as Axel places a hand on Roxas's head and tells him he'll go get the two of them some coffee and some chips from the vending machine.
It's almost one in the morning and the library is open for twenty four hours.
Axel returns with green tea for Roxas, his customary coffee with two sugars and two bags of plain potato chips. Just as he slips the container into Roxas's hands and Roxas grasps onto the cardboard covering that protects his hands from being burnt, Axel leans in to kiss him.
Roxas chalks it up to delirium on both their parts and thinks he's dreaming.
Two days later after they take their exams and have had time to reset their fogged up brains, Roxas kisses Axel in the back of their lecture room.
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Two weeks later Roxas finds himself in Axel's bed.
He comes over for dinner and for a study party. Axel made his favorite, spaghetti with homemade garlic bread. It doesn't take long for them to forget their organic chemistry notes in the middle of dinner and they choose to spend the evening doing something a little more interesting.
He doesn't mention that he's a virgin and this is the first time he's done something like this. Maybe Axel knows. He's always been good at reading people and Roxas is no different. It's not what he imagined, but Axel smells nice. And he's warm and it doesn't hurt all that much once they get the hang of things. He feels a little weird and it's ... different. But it's okay ... as long as it's Axel.
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He finds Axel growing distant a few days later.
And then a note pinned to his door: urbes constituit aetas, hora dissolvit.
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They cross paths late one night on campus.
Roxas stops for a minute, believing he is seeing a fading apparition of the night and curses his lack of luck when he realizes that what he sees before him is real. He's with a group of people. Loud, drunken and rambling fools. Axel's with a lanky, drunk blonde wrapped snugly around his waist. She's laughing and Axel's hands keep sliding lower and lower. Roxas passes by, just out of his periphery. There is something unreadable on Axel's face that Roxas doesn't care to decipher.
Neither them mentions what happened and Axel moves back three rows from Roxas the following week. There are no notes in Roxas's book bag at the end of class or for the rest of the semester.
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Demyx comes to visit for a weekend before the semester ends.
He and Roxas go out one night to some obscure bar that Demyx seems to be fond of. Axel appears an hour later. Their interaction appears to be amicable, mainly for Demyx's sake.
The night all goes downhill for Roxas—(after downing three beers, two shots of bacardi and some mixed fruity drink)—and has to be swept out of the bar by Axel before he starts a fight with some burly looking guy with dreads at the bar. Demyx isn't too upset when they have to leave the bar, but Roxas is a drunken and hiccupping mess. After the third time Roxas has to be pulled out of a bush, Axel picks him up, pulls Roxas's arms around his neck and piggy backs him all the way back to his apartment with Demyx.
The moment they get back to Axel's place, Roxas turns into a puking mess all over Axel's living room floor. Axel hauls Roxas up and Demyx begrudgingly takes to the task of cleaning up the vomit. Roxas is a groaning and sobbing ball on the floor of Axel's bathroom and all Axel can tell him is that he's sorry and prays that the boy doesn't remember any of this in the morning.
The fall asleep in Axel's bathtub, pressed back to back.
Roxas stumbles his way out of Axel's apartment in the early morning and doesn't look back.
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The next morning over in lecture, Axel finds a note slipped in-between the pages of his notebook.
forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.
It isn't his handwriting.
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Roxas asks to meet in the dead of night before he goes home for the holidays.
It is the time when the late autumn night is beginning to fade further than dusk. Descending into a deep nothingness that swallows the sky whole and prevents any light from escaping. Winter it almost upon them. The leaves no longer fall from the trees and the night is bitter cold. It nips at Roxas's cheeks, turning them red and chapping his lips until they burn from being licked too much.
Axel appears just as Roxas needs him to. His jacket is open as if he is impervious to the cold while Roxas is clearly freezing. He looks like he hasn't slept in days. The stress of finals and the end of the semester has turned his usual bright eyes dim and cold. Roxas doesn't know what to say. It doesn't take long before he realizes he hasn't got anything to say. He just wants to see him once last time before they go on like nothing happened.
Axel reaches into his pocket and presents him with a note.
candor dat viribus alas.
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One month later in late January, Roxas catches something in his periphery.
Various shades of red and green and a Latin phrase pressed into his waiting hand.
amare et sapere vix deo conceditur.
He was willing to try this again.