Bathrooms

Warnings: Brief mentions of rape, swearing, and boys liking each other. And homophobia, which I think is far worse than any kind of yaoi, but I'm not in charge of these things (sadly.)

Disclaimer: Yes, I totally own KH. (Actually, I do like to believe that Nomura is the author of all the good AkuRoku fanfics.) I'm being ironic, I'm a unicorn, I can't even hold a pen to sign contracts.

xxx

I never pee at school.

This, you may be thinking, is an utterly irrelevant fact about someone you haven't even been introduced to. Well, here's the introduction: My name is Roxas. I'm a fifteen-year-old gay guy who has learned from experience that school bathrooms are not safe. I had hoped that in starting a new school I could also start to pee whenever I felt like peeing, but no. No, things don't work like that.

I knew from the first fifteen minutes that things wouldn't be any better here. I didn't say a word to anybody – didn't even mention my name, let alone my sexual orientation – and I was already getting the comments. Name-calling, "Get away from me, fag" and "Ew, it's a queer!" accompanied by shoving, laughing and attempts at tripping me over, all adding up to one fast conclusion: There would be no peeing at school in Twilight Town either.

I did okay for the first two days. Kept my head down, wore as little make-up as I could (any girl will tell you that after a while, you become dependant on make-up to prop up your crumbling self-esteem) and didn't pee. You might ask how someone can go that long without peeing, or you might know from experience exactly how you avoid the bathroom for that long. It's simple: go right before school, don't drink while you're at school, and go again the second the last bell has rung and you're safely outside of the school gates. Perfectly reasonable to expect that much compliance from your own loyal bladder, right?

Well, apparently not. On day three of being gay and friendless, I found myself desperate. I hadn't had the chance to go that morning, if I recall correctly, and I was just dying. So I decided that I would just grit my teeth, and go.

Standing outside the bathrooms, though, I could barely breathe. I was having the most horrible flashbacks – getting beaten up and almost raped in the boys' room, getting screamed at, slapped and having things thrown at me in the girls' – and I lost all my optimism. What was I thinking, having the nerve to pee? Peeing was for nice, normal, straight people. There was no way I could even set foot in either of those places, those cultivating grounds for homophobic jerks and self-absorbed bitches who really believed I was in there to creep on them.

So now, I was in Twilight, but I could have been back in Hollow Bastion or in a restaurant or on the fucking moon for all the difference it would have made; my reaction was still the same. My bladder was screaming at me and I slid down the wall, tucked my feet in so that I wouldn't trip anybody, and wept. Wept like a fucking baby because that's what I was. Just a sheltered, pretty little homo baby who had been scarred too deep to even use a public bathroom.

"Hey. Hey, blondie." I didn't react, assuming that it was going to be another jerk, keeping my head down and trying not to cry too loud. "Yo, new kid. Crying, on the floor. What's your problem?"

It was actually quite a sexy voice, but I know by now that thoughts like that are what make me so disgusting, and I need to keep a lid on them lest the homophobes hear.

"Are you sick? Are they giving you a hard time? C'mon, talk to me." I still didn't speak, firmly believing that it was just a trick, just another way of fucking with my head, of hurting me. "I'm not leaving until you tell me what's wrong." I felt him sit down on the floor next to me but still didn't even look at me. "Hey, you're cute. Come on, I bet you have a cute voice too. Tell me what's wrong."

I shook my head. He was definitely messing with me now. Nobody would dream of calling me cute otherwise, especially not when I'm snotty and red from crying.

"If it helps," he said, and his voice was cruelly seductive, trying to force me to look up, "I'm gay too."

I looked up then, still not speaking, just wondering whether he would look gay.

He did.

Red hair, spiky red hair that I just wanted to reach out and touch (bad thoughts, bad thoughts get you kicked, get you hurt real bad) and eyeliner and tattoos on his cheeks, and a wicked grin, like he'd just told me he was the Joket, rather than just plain old gay. And damn, those eyes... those were not straight eyes. Those were the beautiful, venom-green eyes of a proud homosexual, and I found myself lost in them.

"Come on, cutie, at least tell me your name."

"R-Roxas."

"Aha! It speaks!" I blushed and his gaze softened, which naturally made me blush even more. "And I was right, you do have a cute voice. So what's wrong, Roxas?"

I shook my head. "Nothing. What's your name?"

"They call me Axel, when they're brave enough to talk about me at all, and don't give me that "nothing" bullshit. People who have no problems don't sit on the floor and cry." Axel reached out and took my hand, and I smiled a little in spite of all the rules, in spite of knowing that this could get me hurt, could get me killed... "Now, spill. I told you, I'm not leaving til you do."

"You're gonna think this is the stupidest problem ever..." I muttered, pulling my hand away from his just to be safe. Undeterred, he rested his now-empty hand on my knee, looking at me all concerned.

"You think you've got the stupidest problem ever? You haven't met my friend Demyx yet. He called me in tears yesterday because his cat stepped on an ant." I laughed. "He's gay too, now that I think about it. You aren't the only queer in all of Twilight Town, you know. So anyway, what's wrong?"

I sighed. "It's stupid... but..." He nodded encouragingly, and I felt almost secure for a change. "I'm scared to use the bathroom."

"You're..."

"I told you it was stupid." I couldn't look into his gorgeous green eyes any more, however much I wanted to. They were too full of emotion. I didn't like other people's emotions; most of them were negative, and directed towards me in the most ugly of ways. "I just... at my old school, if I even went near the guys' room, I'd get punched, sometimes worse, and if I dared go in the girls', it'd be hairspray in my face, tampons and lipstick lips and whatever they could find thrown at me, and now I really have to go, but I'm scared, and I haven't exactly received a very warm welcome so far, and I just don't know what to do..."

"Hey," Axel said softly, moving the hand on my knee to smooth hair off my face. "Calm down, cutie – uh, Roxas. It's not stupid. It makes a lot of sense. If they weren't all so scared of me, I wouldn't be able to use the bathroom either. Do you want me to escort you in there?"

I shook my head violently. The way some heteros think... Two gay guys entering a bathroom together? They're clearly here to have passionate gay sex right in front of us, spray their fluids all over our Converse, and then sing Justin Bieber songs! "No, I can't... just looking at the doors, I get all these awful flashbacks..." Particularly being dangled upside while someone tugged on my dick, "Trying to make it straight". That one still made me wince, even after months, and looking at the same signs that had been on the doors behind which that incident had occurred... I wanted to puke. "I'll be okay."

"Look, cutie, if you gotta go, you gotta go." I noticed that he didn't even correct himself to "Roxas" this time. Was that a good sign?

No. No, bad thoughts. Bad thoughts get you hurt. And you couldn't have a boyfriend here, anyway.

"But –" I began weakly, but Axel stood up, and then held out his hand.

"Come with me, little blonde sex thing." Did he just call me – "We're going to cash in a favour. It won't take long, I promise."

I just took his hand blindly, convinced that I was in some kind of not-wet-yet dream, and followed him down corridors until we reached the door of the only teacher I didn't hate yet. Axel raised a fist and hammered, the sound almost shaking the school, his other hand still clutching mine. "Xigbar! Open the fucking door!"

Xigbar opened the door, his eyepatch catching the light for a second and seeming more white than black on its slightly waxy surface. "You're so pleasant, Axel. Really, an absolute delight to teach. Your parents must be real proud."

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Look, toss us the key to the staff bathroom, would you?" He still hadn't let go of my hand and I tried to (and succeeded, actually, being rather small) hide behind him.

"And why would I do that?" Xigbar asked, cocking the eyebrow that rested above his working eye.

Axel sighed impatiently, all of his softness and caring and flirting gone now that he wasn't talking to me. "How about because I helped you get laid about three times?"

"Did you?" I asked quietly, and Axel jumped, like he had forgotten I was there. I didn't blame him, to be honest. I'd like to be able to forget my own existence sometimes.

"Ahaha, haha, no, he didn't." Xigbar leaned forwards and started hissing at Axel about the age of consent and Demyx was homeschooled for a reason, dammit, and keep his fat mouth shut next time, and eventually here are the fucking keys you blackmailing little fuck, just don't do anything stupid.

Axel then lead me to the staff bathroom, and I noticed the fear in people's eyes as he stormed past them, his fingers still all caught up in mine, and just knew that they would have said something if they weren't so damned afraid of Axel.

"Here... hang on, shit, which key – okay, here it is." He kicked open the door and held it open with his foot, both kickass and gentlemanly at the same time, and I smiled shyly at him before darting into a stall and peeing, utterly relieved and ecstatic about all the queer nonsense that seemed to be happening between Axel and I. I came out to wash my hands and didn't see Axel, so I kind of assumed he'd left once he'd done his little good deed. It was a little insulting, to say the least, but at least now I knew where I stood. I wasn't anything special. Just a cute charity case that was probably at least partially driven by Axel's own problems with homophobia.

I dried my hands slowly, just in case –

"Roxas!" I looked over my shoulder to see Axel washing his hands with steaming hot water. "Shit, don't just leave, after all I've done for you..."

"I thought... I thought you'd gone already," I mumbled, staying next to the hand dryer and shuffling a little to one side as Axel approached it. "Um..."

"Aw, you really think I'd do that?" He stood directly behind me, and with almost no physical contact involved at all, he reached around my skinny frame and dried his own hands, encasing me in his long, skinny arms and indescribable scent, something like used matches but not quite. "Nah, I like you, cutie. Stick around with me, and I'll protect you. You wanna see a movie sometime?"

I nodded. "Yeah, I'd like that, Axel."

So in conclusion, peeing in school is sometimes a good idea. But only sometimes.

xxx

So... this is a oneshot, but I suppose I could actually continue it a little bit, if you guys really really loved it and could feed me some ideas for it. I just had this idea because it occurred to me that some people actually do face the issue of which bathroom to use and whether it's worth the hassle, and I wanted to address it in a fun, AkuRoku-centred way. So... there you are. I love you all, and review, especially if you want this to grow into more than just a oneshot.