The day of the prom happened to be the best day in the world for some students; getting ready days in advance, throwing parties to get ready the day of, and more parties after the dance was over, and then getting drunk and sleeping-over at random people's houses just to wake up with a hangover half-naked with some kid you've never seen in your life. And for others it happened to be the worst day that they could've possibly imagined. People made fun of them for their outfits that they'd spent all their allowance that they'd been saving since 8th grade, or what vehicle they came to prom in, or being voted prom king and queen as a joke. It all happened just about every year. But prom night for one certain high school happened to be the most horribly wrong out of any of them that year.
The night of the prom at Oblivion High hadn't started bad. There wasn't any drinking, or drugs. Even the cigarettes that normally hung inbetween the lips of his boyfriend weren't present. He'd promised there wouldn't be. He'd promised that everything would be okay. Promised everyone would love how he'd dressed, love his new shoes, love his boyfriend's ride, everything would be perfect. But everyone hated it. Hated how the blood stained his light blue tux, and how one of his shoes was missing, how the motorcycle was almost bent in half, and how disastrous the night turned out. It rained.
In all technical senses, this was the best case that someone had turned out from a motorcycle wreck that had happened that year. His boyfriend only ended up with a broken arm and collarbone, two broken ribs, one splintered rib, shoulder displacement, and his foot messed up pretty good. But then again, he hadn't been thrown into the guard-rail. He wished it'd been him, the moment that he'd gained conciousness and seen the look on the doctor's faces, he'd wished it been him.
Roxas woke up on the bottom of the hill. What hill, he didn't really know, but it was a hill none-the-less. The sun beating down on his face didn't help the fact that his head felt like it was being ripped apart and his hazy eyes just added to the pain. He could hardly push himself up. It was like someone hit him in the head with a large rock. But he pushed through the headache until he could see again. The hill was hardly tall and he could easily see to the top where the guard rail was. Pushing himself to his feet, he stood, wobbling for a moment before he made his way up to the top.
Walking around at the edge of the road, he pondered to himself on where in the world he could be at. But nothing really came to mind. He didn't remember the daylight or how he'd gotten there. He didn't even remember where he'd been going. All he remembered was flaming red hair and green eyes. His boyfriend. In all the pictures in his head, he looked worried. The blonde boy stoppsed, looking back towards where he'd picked himself up. Where was Axel?
Even after most of his injuries were healed, Axel didn't leave the hospital. It'd become common practice that, after he would wake up, he would make his way slowly to Roxas' side in the opposite room and stay there almost all day. He would eat when the nurses told him to, or shower when he started looking too bad but other than the things that were a necessity, he didn't really do much. He was still on injury leave with his job and would be until his leg was healed and was done with physical therapy but he wasn't sure if he would go back.
The doctors and the police officers had asked about the incident, how it happened and such. But Axel didn't really remember all the details. He only remembered things like that semi coming onto their side of the road and him telling Roxas to hold on when he swerved to miss it. And then he remembered looking back at the smaller boy to check if he'd been okay, but he'd already lost control on the bike. After that his mind would shut down. They said it was from the trauma.
He wasn't getting much sleep. His dreams were sometimes good. But they were mostly him and Roxas going on and finishing school and going to prom and making a life together. It was nothing like the therapist said they should be like. But sometimes he would have those dreams. The bad ones. Where things had ended up worse or he relived it. Sometimes he would be in the wreck and he wouldn't see what had happened. But other times, his mind played tricks on him and he would watch Roxas flip off of the bike and watch all his injuries take place as he ended up under it. He'd wake up sweaty and scared and grip Roxas' hand to his chest.
Roxas didn't do anything. How could he? He was still sleeping.
Roxas couldn't keep up with how long he'd been walking. He'd eventually come to the edge of a town but he felt like it had been in the wrong direction. Like he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. No one noticed though. In this town, no one did. The people here were odd. They never smiled or said hello and all their faces were blurry. He'd think that he knew someone from far away but when he got close to them, they became a blurry mass like everyone else.
There were some other people too. In random places all doing something. And when he'd come back hours later, they would all be doing that exact same thing. Like a man who'd been standing in front of this gas station. Cars kept racing by them and the man would look at them longingly for a minute, almost take a step when the traffic would slow down, only to snap his leg back to his other. Roxas passed him quickly. These people weren't blurry but they made him feel nervous. Like he shouldn't go near them. So he didn't. It's not like any of them were talking anyway.
His memory hadn't come back yet. For days and nights he'd lay awake where ever he could find a place and think about what he was missing. So far, all that he could remember was that one person. That Axel. His Axel. But it didn't help. Nothing made sense. He lost track of time, and days, and hours, and eventually just went. His presence was not acknowledged anywhere that he went. He was never hungry or really tired but he would lay and pretend to sleep when it seemed he should. They only thing he felt that wasn't emotion was a pain in his head and sometimes a pressure on his hand. Was this how it was before?
The week that he'd been able to go to work, he didn't. Axel would still sit in the white washed rooms of the hospital. His body was better but he no longer had the same fire in his personality that he'd had before. That rain that night washed it away. Now it was just taking care of Roxas all the time. The nurses just said that he could watch the monitors but he would do things that Roxas used to like. Roxas liked having his head scratched and his hair played with so he did that often. The screen would move then. Like Roxas could feel it and he was relaxing.
His job called him after he didn't show up the second week either. He was fired. But that was okay. As long as he could be here when Roxas woke up, what did some stupid job matter. It didn't. Really.
He couldn't say he was surprised that Roxas' parents hadn't shown up. his mom was a drunk and his father disappeared years before the blonde had even met Axel. Eventually the hospital just stopped trying to get a hold of the bitch. They found that Axel knew almost everything they had needed to know anyway. But it was okay that no one came to check on them. Everything would be the same again as soon as Roxas woke up. He wouldn't be that long. But time's always passing.
After a long time, Roxas began walking in other places. Away from that smaller city and then into a large one. A very large one. A very familiar one. Now he recognized buildings and small flashes of memory would come back to him every so often. But it was dependant on what he saw. Like he passed by a park once and a memory came to him of swinging. And then of when he kissed a girl for the first time and wasn't sure if he liked it. Eventually he could remember how to get places and where to get things. But there still wasn't anyone that could see him.
Except once. He'd found him while he was walking past what he was sure had been his school. His face wasn't blurry like most everyone else's and his sandy hair made Roxas positive of who he was. The boy he'd ended up standing in front of died two years ago. Demyx had been an upperclassmen who'd been shot in a club that he wasn't supposed to be at, trying to jump start his music career. But he didn't have an explaination for Roxas. He wouldn't tell him what was going on. All he did was repeat lines from the song he'd been singing that night. Singing to an audience that didn't pay attention and Roxas had the feeling that they never would.
He ended up leaving Demyx and wondering away to another part of the town. Where there was hardly any buildings and it was quieter.
Axel didn't even blink on the day they told him that the life support program they'd had Roxas in didn't extend farther than nine months. That it would expire in less than a month. He just walked back in the room and stared at Roxas for a few more hours. He hardly thought and didn't eat the dinner that the nurses had brought him. When he'd come out of his trance, he was running his fingers through Roxas' hair again. He sat for days, until his fingers became somewhere near raw from rubbing Roxas' head.
He didn't hardly sleep anymore. The dreams were becoming unbearable. The therapist didn't know what to do so Axel stopped seeing him. He stopped answering calls from his phone. He stopped eating except when the nurses forced him. He just stopped. All that he could fill his time with was Roxas. Every thought, every glance, every moment. It all had to be Roxas.
Roxas thought about things now; freely, constantly. Thoughts and memories ran through his head like a novel. His headache was now a normal thing. It never went away and prevented him from pretending to sleep at night. He remembered things like his parents basically disowning him and one second he would be depressed and then he would remember loving Axel and feel like he was on top of the world. He was always confused and always trying to find more places to think of. He wanted to remember everything.
He felt disgusting. He was covered in a nasty, thin layer sweat and his hair was practically stuck to his head in an oily mess of spikes. But he couldn't feel things physically all that well. It was only sometimes that his headache would leave, replacing with a sense of comfort but now it was constant. And then he gained a rash feeling. Like his head burned all the time. He found himself crying on more than one occasion but he wasn't sure if it was because of the pain or if it was because he was lost and confused. He tried not to walk much any more. He was afraid of falling down and disappearing. He was afraid of a lot of things now.
He felt stressed. He felt afraid. He felt cold.
Everything was set. No one knew. It was good. Tomorrow they wanted to turn off Roxas' life support. They wanted to kill him. But they wouldn't. Axel knew they wouldn't. It was just after the nurse left for the last time that night. All the other people in ICU would be gone. All the visitors gone. Just doctors. And they didn't suspect a thing. Axel locked the door, blocked the latch-shaped knob with a crobar that he'd snuck in his pants leg that morning. They couldn't see it if he pulled that curtain.
There was knocking as he stood over the plug, bottle of pills that he hadn't taken from the last month in his hand. He looked at Roxas. Where would they go he wasn't exactly sure. But at least he wouldn't be without Roxas and at least he wouldn't have to face not having him. It would be okay.
The nurse was banging on the door now, screaming at the doctor to come here, screaming at Axel to un-bar the door. It wasn't going to happen. He opened the pills, shoved them in his mouth, swallowed. Next was the machine plugged into the wall. He ripped the cord out and heard the alarm go off. He staggered, already losing himself. The noise from the alarms screamed in his ear, throwing his balance off severly. He barely made his way to the bed, gripping hard on the sheets to keep his mind clear for a little longer. He layed beside his boyfriend as they both breathed, one already stopping. Axel only had a little more. He stared at that face. Wanting to remember it. He reached for the smaller hand with his own trembling fingers. Gripping tightly just as his breathing stopped.
It hurt. Just a little. But lack of oxygen stopped him from feeling. The noise was awful. He had a headache. It was gone.
It was black.
Roxas sat up. Noise rattling the place where he was laying outside the school. Demyx was still singing but he could hardly hear him from the loud screeching from some building over. He heard sirens and people and a name. He remembered. The same noises and sirens, a flipped motorcycle, a broken body. His broken body. Axel.
Roxas ran in the direction of the noise, finding himself at the hospital only in a matter of minutes. He went inside where everything was chaos and people were screaming. He followed where most of the people were going. He found himself in the ICU, the room labeled 813. He walked through the shattered glass from a door, he walked through the group of blurry people, to where they were beginning to clear out space beside the bed. There was a mess of two blurry, familiar bodies and a person standing. No one was looking at him. No one could see him. There was that flash of red hair. There was Axel. He turned to meet Roxas' gaze.
The taller turned opening his arms out to him, the other running into those arms. They hugged, and kissed, and pulled on eachother's hair and clothing, trying to wrap themselves in eachother. By the time they stopped almost all of the people were gone. It was over. Blue eyes looked up into emerald. Axel was rubbing his thumb along Roxas' cheek.
"I was so scared, Axel. I thought I lost you. I thought I had died." Axel's smile faded slowly, confused.
"Roxas," He paused, shaking his head. "You did."