Axel's phone quietly proclaimed that it was 2:33 pm. 2:33 pm on a lazy Thursday, on a completely unremarkable week, just like last week and the one before. The clothes store was quiet, other than the cliché soundtrack that was so easy to tune out once you'd heard it about a million times. No one walking by the lifeless mannequins on display to the rest of the mall seemed interested in investigating further, so Axel was leaning on the counter behind the register, playing through what was probably his fiftieth game of Temple Run in a row.

"You know they'll fire you for that," Larxene said flatly, poking her head out of the back room and evidently finding Axel exactly how she expected him to be.

"It wouldn't be the first time," he said, not bothering to look up.

She sighed, shaking her head and disappearing back to the one place in the store where there was a blind spot from the security cameras. It was probably the safest place to be when you were looking to slack off and still keep your job, but Axel was beyond the point of caring. That was probably part of the reason he could never stayed employed at the same place for long, but, well, he wouldn't exactly miss this store if they threw him onto the street again.

He slumped over the counter, resting his chin on one of his hands as his other swiped idly at his phone. He was actually managing to get somewhere in his game, and was seconds away from beating his high score when he received a text message that managed to lag the game just enough that he missed a turn and fell into the swamp.

"Fuck." He switched to his messaging app thinking that, maybe, he should be mad about his game, but the thought quickly passed in favor of relief at someone actually contacting him and no longer having to rely on cheap apps for entertainment.

The text wasn't from one of his friends, though. It was from an unknown number. He wasn't entirely sure whether that was more or less exciting. Moments after opening the thread, another message popped up—"Sorry, wrong number," said the person whose name was currently a string of 11 numbers. Axel frowned, and opened up the picture that was attached to the first message. It was a somewhat blurry shot of a math textbook, and the caption provided was, "hey how do you work this one again."

Axel stood up straight and looked over the problem. It was something about angles and triangles and finding x, which he remembered vaguely from some class he was sure he'd taken before, but had no idea how to begin solving it anymore. It'd been a while.

Well…it wasn't like he had anything else to do.

"Hey, Larxene," he called, walking into the back without taking his eyes off his phone. "Could you help me solve this math problem?"

Larxene gave him an appropriately incredulous look, but took the phone when it was offered to her. She squinted at the picture for a moment, then made a few gestures on the screen, raising an eyebrow.

"Why are you solving a math problem for an unknown number," she said, managing to sound disinterested.

"Uhh…because I have nothing else to do? And this person is obviously in dire need, it would be cruel to just ignore them."

Larxene shook her head, not amused with Axel's theatrics as usual, and handed the phone back to its owner.

"You have to set up a ratio to find a second side of the bigger triangle and then use the law of cosines to get the third," she said.

"Right, I know exactly what that means," Axel said. He didn't.

"Just text back. If they don't know what it means then they shouldn't be in that class."

Axel rolled his eyes, but did as she said. "Use a ratio," he echoed, while typing the words out, "for one side, then the…the?"

"Law of cosines."

"The law…of…cosines…for the other one. There. Send."

The bar above the message slowly filled, indicating the message was on its way.

Axel grinned at his screen.

"…so, are you going to go back to the register and not get fired, or do you need me to do homework for any more people you don't know?"

"Yeah, yeah…"

Axel went back to the register, eyes glued to his phone. There wasn't much of a reason for Mx. [number redacted] to reply, but there hadn't really been any reason for Axel to either, so maybe the other person was as eager to talk to strangers as he was. Maybe something would happen. He just had a feeling. No one could possibly have anything better to do at 2:35 pm on a Tuesday than reply to a stranger's texts.

Sure enough, three dots appeared at the bottom of the message screen. Then they disappeared. Then stuttered in and out of existence for a few moments, before finally staying and then turning into the word, "thanks."

The next two messages were: "?," "do you usually respond to math homework?"

Axel grinned. He was right.

Axel: "nothing better to do"

[Number redacted]: "i could send a few more"

Axel: "i mean, i guess, but i cant actually do math."

"i dropped out of high school"

"i asked my coworker to solve it"

Axel opened the contact information and added information to a few fields.

Math Stranger: "oh"

That seemed to be all the texter had to say. Not wanting to relinquish the most entertaining thing he had going for him, Axel used snapchat to take a selfie (looking slightly off-camera, a blank expression) and add the caption "retail, slightly better than hs," screenshotted it, then sent it to this Math Stranger.

Let's see where that photo ended up.

Roxas stared at the textbook open in front of him, reading through shapes and numbers over and over as if that would make them stick to his brain any better than they already weren't. He might as well have been reading something in a different language for all the good this was doing him. Math basically was a different language to him.

His phone buzzed, and it was Hayner's head that turned towards the noise first.

"Did Pence respond?" he asked.

"Oh, uh…"

Roxas checked his phone, and almost answered "yes," seeing the math explanation displayed on his screen (what was the law of cosines again? Had he remembered to write that down in his notes?), but then spotted his "sorry wrong number" text.

"…no," he said. "It's…I accidentally texted the wrong number at first and…I guess they responded…?"

He read the text aloud, verbatim, and let Hayner figure out what all those words meant while he continued the conversation. He quickly, however, ran out of replies, and set his phone down to continue trying to get the numbers to stop bouncing off his eyes.

"Is this what you got?" Hayner asked him, scooting a paper of chicken scratch over for Roxas to examine. Though not entirely legible, the numbers written out on there were clearer than those in the book, and the problem started making sense as he looked over it—then his phone buzzed again, and broke his concentration.

"I dunno, I haven't worked it yet," he said, picking up his phone again to check what it was that the buzzing was trying to tell him. Hayner said something after that, but Roxas didn't quite catch the actual words, since he was too busy staring at the image on his screen and not noticing his face heating up.

A person. A person with bright red hair—that couldn't be a natural color, could it?—wearing a V-neck shirt that looked a little too big, with red eyeliner, and…facial tattoos? Small, purple, tear-drop-shaped tattoos under his eyes. A thought surfaced that those should be tacky, but it was drowned out by the louder thought that went something like, This is an incredibly attractive person.

You, Roxas typed. Delete. Is that, delete, That's, delete, Is that an actual picture of you? Send.

[Number redacted]: "I think so."

"I mean, I'd hope so, or else I have a lot bigger problems than being a catfisher, considering I just took it."

Roxas grinned at the message, which seemed to get the attention of Hayner.

"Hey," he said, "What're you grinning for? We're supposed to be doing math. No smiling allowed."

"Yeah, sorry, sorry," Roxas went, setting his phone screen-down and returning to his work. He wrote down a short explanation to what his mysterious texter had sent him, finally understanding the process required to get there. He planned on moving on to the next thing, but suddenly found himself with his phone in his hand again. It had vibrated, and that meant he had to pick it up, right?

[Number redacted]: "So, what's your name?"

Roxas's fingers hesitated over the keyboard. The 'stranger danger' lessons that had been hammered into his brain since elementary school told him this was a bad situation, but his instincts didn't have much to say. Then again, they had never really been that sharp.

Before he could start replying, against all reason and parental caution, Hayner snatched the phone out of his hands.

"What's with you and being on this phone all the time? I can't help you study during study hour if you keep texting people," Hayner said, before turning to the screen and skimming over the messages. Evidently, one caught his eye. "Woah," he said, eyebrows going up, "you're being creeped on."

"Am not," Roxas felt the need to insist.

"Some random person is asking for your personal information! That's being creepy!"

"He just wants to know my name—give it back."

Roxas reached out for his phone, but Hayner leaned away, frowning.

"No," he said, "No, you don't get it back until we've done at least five problems."

"What? Come on—"

"You told me to help you study. This is me helping you. Now get crackin'."

Roxas huffed, but decided to comply. He did ask Hayner to help, after all…and asking Hayner to help was stooping pretty low already. He might as well try to actually follow through with his homework.

With much effort, he turned back to his paper and began, again, the task of trying to figure out how this math stuff worked.

He'd get through it eventually.

It was on his way home that Roxas remembered Mysterious Texter. Well, that was one use for his spotty memory—forgetting distractions and managing to power his way through unsavory homework.

He pulled out his phone, and relinquished his personal information.

Axel had given up on this particular form of entertainment. Math Stranger hadn't replied for a few hours, and his shift wasn't even near finished yet. This made him…surprisingly sad. The spark of excitement from forming a new friendship, snuffed out in its infancy. He satisfied himself with moping around in a sad imitation of trying to help the customers that slowly trickled in as schools began to let out for the day.

"You look like a blue type of person," he said to someone, nodding sagely. He didn't know what a 'blue type of person' even meant. He really didn't know anything about fashion, and relied more on improvisation than actual knowledge when it came to landing jobs like this.

"I don't know, don't you think it kind of washes me out?" said the customer, holding a sweater between their hands and tugging on it. "My mom said that…"

The rest of the sentence was lost to Axel's ears, because his phone dinged in his pocket. He immediately pulled it out, and seeing who the message was from, abandoned the shopper to go deal with more important things.

"Is random math person more important than your job?" the little Larxene on his shoulder jeered at him. He mouthed this sentence out loud, mocking this imaginary projection of his friend. If anyone saw, it probably looked a little odd, but he was beyond the point of caring.

The text message, from Math Stranger, said one—what Axel thought was a—word. "Roxas." It said "Roxas." Axel stared at the screen, frowning at that collection of letters. He wasn't sure what a "Roxas" was, but it looked a little too intentional—what with the capitalization and punctuation—to be a random keysmash that happened to end up in his inbox.

Then he looked at the message before it, "So, what's your name?" And things became a little bit more clear. Only a little bit, because Axel wasn't sure that "Roxas" was an actual thing that real people were called.

"Is that a name?" he texted back. "I don't think that's a name."

Math Stranger: "It's my name."

Axel: "That's a weird name. Does it mean something?"

Math Stranger: "It means my parents are weird."

Axel pulled up the contact info again to make a small adjustment. He could feel, somewhere in his vicinity, an aura of anger coming from a Larxene-shaped person.

Axel: "Well, my name's Axel."

Roxas: "Your parents are less weird"

Axel didn't feel like replying to that particular comment.

Besides, Larxene was coming to drag him back to work anyways.

Roxas wasn't entirely sure how it happened, but at some point, he had made a friend through a mistaken text. Or, well, he was pretty sure this "Axel" person was his friend…they texted back and forth at least once a week, which was way more than Roxas ever thought he would text a wrong number.

Their conversations just felt…easy. Way more natural than any other conversations Roxas had over text. He didn't realize how often he deleted and re-wrote messages to his friends in an effort to be understood until Axel repeatedly managed to decipher the oddest of wordings and reply in kind, and Roxas was able to type into the box exactly what was on his mind. It was…weird, kind of. But a good kind of weird.

Axel: "So, how's that math going/"

"?*"

Roxas: "It's not. I don't get math."

Axel: "Wish I could help you there."

"Your friends still helping you out?"

Roxas: "They're doing their best."

Axel: "Ah"

"[an image of an overly complex 'mathematical' equation, featuring symbols that are probably not used in actual math, like drawings of ducks]"

"Math."

Roxas: "Hahaha."

They, at some point, exchanged Snapchat usernames—more like, Roxas created a Snapchat, much to the surprise of his friends (Olette, especially), and pretended like he hadn't done it solely for the purpose of receiving images of this (very nice looking) stranger. Roxas himself preferred the camera facing away from his face, more often sending photos of whatever his attention was currently focused on (pets, video games, annoying brothers), but Axel refrained from commenting on it.

It worked. It…worked pretty well, actually.

A short list of things about Axel, according to various text conversations over the span of a few short months, and Roxas' selectively accurate memory:

Axel was tall. Like, really tall, if the angle of his snapchats were anything to go by.

Axel worked at some sort of clothes store. This one was pretty obvious. If it wasn't in the background of almost everything, Roxas would still know, because Axel spent a good 30% of the time complaining about customers. But the stories he told were pretty amusing, so Roxas couldn't begrudge him that.

Oh, related: Axel had a very strange sense of humor. His stories were frequently peppered with peculiar details and very obvious exaggerations that weren't really jokes, but you kind of had to laugh at them.

Axel was a high school dropout. We've already covered this one. Roxas kept trying to figure out exactly when it was that Axel had dropped out, without asking outright, because that could provide a hint to his age. As far as he knew, Axel was probably…20? He couldn't be much older than 20, could he?

Axel lived alone. Or, at least, he didn't seem to be living with any family—Roxas wasn't entirely sure whether this Larxene person who kept popping up in conversations was some sort of girlfriend or fiancée or something. The idea kind of made Roxas's head hurt, though, so he assumed Axel lived alone.

Another thing about Axel, that Roxas came to realize, or…more like, came to realize was kind of a problem:

Axel was really attractive.

This was a weird feeling for Roxas. Usually the extent of his attractions was admitting someone had an appealing look to them, and moving on. Axel definitely had an appealing look to him, for sure—though it wasn't a type you'd really see anywhere on a billboard. The lines of his face were a little too sharp and it never really looked like he'd gotten quite enough sleep the night before, but something about that divergence made Roxas like him even more.

But Axel was also, just, attractive. He was funny and kind, in a certain way, though unkind in others. And above all was something Roxas just couldn't quite find the word for.

In short, they could talk. Well, text, at least. This wasn't an unheard of occurrence—Roxas had other friends, of course, but the majority of the time it took so long for Roxas to warm up to someone that by the time he decided he liked them they had already pegged him as cold and stand-offish. Axel was just…there. And Roxas liked him being there. They fell into such a comfortable dialogue that it felt like they'd known each other for years.

It was weird, wasn't it.

An accidental slip of the finger on a phone screen suddenly brought such a person into Roxas's life.

Sometimes, he almost thought he could believe in destiny.

Roxas walked down the empty hallway at his school, staring at the bathroom pass in his hand, the voices of teachers lecturing behind shut doors seeming far away, or in a different place. Instead of the bathroom, he headed to a small classroom he knew would be empty at this hour. He felt a slight pang of anxiety at the thought of breaking the rules—he really should go back to class—but he needed a break. Just a short one, then he'd go back. Once his brain stopped feeling like it was suffocating.

He sat in the back of the empty classroom, out of sight of the door, and laid his head down on a desk, closing his eyes and letting his thoughts settle.

He took a deep breath.

Then his phone buzzed.

He flinched, startled, and quickly pulled it out of his pocket to see who it was—though he already had a pretty good idea. Considering most of his friends were in class right now—yeah, it was Axel. Roxas laid his head back down on the desk and opened his inbox.

"ughhhhh work suuuuuuuucks," said the message. Then, a few seconds later, "your day going any better?"

"It's alright," Roxas tapped out, without thinking. But then he stared at the message for a moment, sighed, and backspaced. "no not really," is what he sent instead.

Axel: "boo"

"Generally shitty day or did something happen?"

Roxas: "I had to escape to an empty class"

"I don't know this one class is hard to think in"

"which sucks considering the material is hard enough anyways"

Axel: "oh yeah. That's the worst"

"Are you allowed to wear headphones?"

Roxas frowned. That question seemed out of the blue.

Roxas: "no, teachers confiscate them if they see them out"

"Why?"

Axel: "Sometimes listening to music helps"

"Well I mean it helps me. I don't know how your brain works"

"it may just be a shitty class."

Roxas: "Yeah…"

He sighed, and sat up. Even with that not-so-helpful conclusion, the conversation had Roxas feeling a little bit better. Enough to go back to class and try to power through the last twenty minutes, at least.

"I guess I should go back to class. Text you later," he sent, and stood up to walk back to class, though maybe a little slowly than was called for.

His phone went off one last time while he was in the hallway, and he couldn't help but check it.

"I'll miss you!" was the message, ending with a few winking-and-kissing smiley faces.

Roxas felt his face flush, and a smile tugging at his cheeks.

He really, really liked talking to Axel.

Axel didn't really consider himself the texting type. He first got a phone out of necessity and then slowly found ways to use it to relieve his ever-encroaching boredom, which was kind of also a necessity at times. He'd take face-to-face interaction over digital messages any day. But after the fateful Wrong Number Incident of That One Thursday, his phone became his faithful companion (at least, when he actually remembered to bring it places).

Maybe a little too much of a faithful companion, really. He already was in approximately last place for any type of employee of the month award they could have around his workplace, and now he was hardly waiting for the store to empty out before he replied to his messages.

"Are you trying to lose your job?" Larxene snapped at him, trying and failing to swipe the phone out of his hand.

"This job isn't worth being bored out of my mind for nine hours straight," he replied, not even looking up from his screen. He was having a very invigorating conversation about hair products, thank you very much.

"You're probably not going to be thinking that when you end up on the street again."

Axel shrugged. He'd worry about that when the time came.

"Are you texting that guy again?"

Axel looked up at her this time.

A customer hovered around the two of them, trying to figure out the best way to interrupt this conversation and ask for assistance.

"I have friends, you know," Axel insisted.

"Hardly. You are texting him, aren't you."

"Yep," he said, and spotted the floundering customer out of the corner of his eye. "Hey, Larxene, go do your job," he said, looking back at his phone and making a move to find a more secluded section of the store.

Larxene swiped at his phone, and managed to grab it this time. "No," she said, pointing with the hand she had the phone in. "You haven't done anything all shift. Go practice your people skills."

Axel rolled his eyes, at length, but nevertheless soon put on a façade of upmost politeness and walked over to the customer, who could no doubt see through this retail ruse of a face.

"How can I help you today?"

Roxas did not have a job. He had a hard enough time getting through his homework as it was, he didn't need to be trying to balance work on top of that. Besides, he was only 16 and hadn't found the time to learn how to drive yet, so it would have been a hassle anyways. If any of his older brothers would just take a little bit of time to take him out on the road every once and a while…

Well, it wasn't that big of a deal. Driving meant more responsibility and less time to sit around on the couch playing video games and trying to pretend he didn't have math homework. And, more recently, text.

He was always kind of reliant on texting, and had even gotten his phone taken away a few times in class because of it, before he figured out how to not get caught. But recently he'd been on his phone all the time, because of…well…

He'd rather not anyone know. Hayner's reaction when Axel had just asked his name had been enough of an indication of how people would probably react to his newfound friend, he wasn't about to go around telling people about his new stranger buddy who probably knew more about his life than his parents did at this point, barring legal records and stuff like that.

And, well, Axel still didn't know what he actually looked like. He hadn't quite worked up the courage to reveal that.

He paused his game as multiple notifications piled up on his phone screen. "Alright, alright," he told it, picking it up. It looked like Axel had sent him about five snapchats in a row, and they were still coming.

Roxas sat back and opened the app to play through what was bound to be a thrilling chronicle.

The first snap was a picture of some sort of unidentifiable article of clothing hanging on a rack, in what Roxas felt safe assuming was Axel's place of employment. The caption was, "What is this?" Roxas squinted at the snap until it went away, train of thought no doubt similar to what prompted Axel to send the picture in the first place.

The next was a picture of the rack from a different angle. "It's hung up with a bunch of shirts."

The article of clothing again. "Is it a shirt?"

The clothing, except with Axel's hand slightly in the frame, holding up one corner of the thing in question to see more of the fabric. "I can't find any arm holes."

Then it was a picture of Axel, holding his phone up to a mirror to take a picture of himself wearing the article of clothing wrapped around his neck. "Maybe it's a scarf." The hangar was still on it. He, in short, looked ridiculous, and Roxas couldn't help but laugh.

The next image, similar to the previous but Axel sporting a mysterious-article-of-clothing belt instead, didn't help matters.

The conclusion of the story was Axel figuring out that, "Oh fuck it's a shawl," and returning it to its proper place, which was not the shirt section.

Roxas went to take a picture to reply with—but was interrupted by a voice way too close to his ear saying, "Who's thaaaat?" in an excellent imitation of a gossipy elementary schooler.

Roxas yelped, and fumbled his phone, catching it again just before it fell to the ground.

"Sora!" he complained, turning his phone over to check the screen. It indicated that he'd sent something. Oh, god.

"Oops," went his brother, sounding completely unapologetic as he crawled over the back of the sofa to sit next to Roxas. "But really, who is it? Did you make a friend? Are they from school? The internet? Are you daaaating them?"

Roxas blinked at the onset of questions, and flushed at the last one. "I—no! They're—uh, he's just…" the circumstances of their meeting played through Roxas's head, and he tried to think of the best way to explain them.

There really wasn't a way to say "I accidentally texted him and now we're friends" that didn't seem…odd.

Sora was waiting patiently for Roxas's answer, though, so he supposed he'd have to figure out something to say.

"It's kind of stupid," he began. "I mean…you know how Pence got that new phone a few months ago? Well I tried to text him about something but I accidentally switched two of the numbers so…I ended up texting this guy. And I guess we're friends now…or…something…"

"Or something?" Sora repeated, raising an eyebrow. "So you are dating."

"Uh," went Roxas, trying to seem casual about it, though he definitely didn't feel that way, "No. I think he has a girlfriend, actually. Maybe. I'm pretty sure…" he wasn't actually sure at all. But somehow it was easier to tell himself that.

"Oh," said Sora. Then he frowned, and stared at Roxas for a moment.

Roxas frowned back. "What?" he said, half defensively and half out of genuine confusion.

"…nothing," Sora said, though not without some consideration. Then he smiled, demeanor changing a little too fast for Roxas's comfort. "So!" he said, "What's his name?"

"Axel…?" Roxas said, slowly. He was still a little suspicious of his brother's intentions, but the opportunity to talk about Axel overruled his hesitance. "He works at a clothing store in a mall somewhere. He's super tall and does his hair like a porcupine—er, I guess you probably saw that. I thought he was kind of weird at first but…well, he is kind of weird. But not scary weird, so. I don't know. I like talking to him."

"Hmm," went Sora.

"…hm?"

"Hmmmmmmmmm."

Roxas stared blankly as Sora crossed his arms and nodded very slowly.

"Well!" Sora said. "I think you should ask if he has a girlfriend. You know, just to make sure."

"Uh," went Roxas, but Sora was already getting up.

He patted Roxas unnecessarily hard on the shoulder, said, "Good luck," made a big show of winking at him, and then left.

Roxas stared at the empty space where his brother used to be.

That was…weird.

He picked up his game controller again, but then suddenly remembered that accidental snapchat he'd sent. He forsook the controller in favor of his phone.

One snap from Axel. It was a picture of him, making a very confused face, with the caption "?"

Roxas went back to the messaging app.

"Yeah sorry about that snap I was about to reply when my brother scared the shit out of me and made me drop my phone. I guess it sent something," he explained.

"oooooh okay," was the response. Then, "You have a brother? Younger or older?"

Roxas: "he's older but only by 2 minutes"

Axel: "? Are you a twin?"

Roxas: "yeah"

Axel: "hot"

Roxas wrinkled his nose.

"ok, gross," he sent.

Axel: "hahaha sorry. No more sexy twin jokes."

"so do you look the same? (no more jokes I promise)"

Roxas: "yeah."

"people used to not be able to tell us apart so I bleached my hair."

Axel: "Are you still blonde?"

Roxas: "Yeah"

Axel: "Am I allowed to say THAT's hot?"

Roxas blushed. "you don't even know what I look like," he began to type. But, no. He didn't really want to bring that up.

"I guess," he sent instead.

"Nice."