Author Notes: Well this is my (technically 2nd but I gave up the first -.-) fic. Not much to say here, except, yeah, I get it. Roxas is the social recluse misunderstood kid, goes into a new school, is INSTANTLY CHANGING FOR THE BETTER. Is this getting too predictable? I hate predictable stories. I promise i'll be doing my best to be putting in more twists in the story than in a pretzel :D - worst metaphor ever but you get my point.
Warnings: M for language... I wasn't too sure on this but remembering what comes out of my mouth when i'm mad, I decided to put it on M just to be safe. Also there WILL be AkuRoku. aka BL/shounen-ai/whatever you want to call it.
Anyway, Hope you enjoy .
Complete
"Somewhat of a Prologue"
"I hate this." Roxas kicked an empty coke can that had previously been littered on the sidewalk, and was now flying across the road, where it would be crushed into a scrap piece of aluminum by a car. He decided kicking the can wasn't enough, and proceeded to kick the nearest lamp post, deciding a second after his foot made contact with said post that it wasn't the best idea in the world, and that there were far less painful ways to express hatred.
He glanced behind him. He was a while away from his house and, he looked in front, very close to the school. He could easily make a break for it. It would take nothing to just run off somewhere. It didn't matter where. As long as it wasn't at the building in front of him.
Unfortunately, his mind flashed back to a scene earlier that very morning, in which his mother gave him her Death Glare before proceeding to tell him that if the teachers informed her he did not show up at his school, she would stamp on him with her stilettos and then turn his corpse into jelly and serve it to the dog, (his mother tended to not only be very precise and accurate, but very gruesome). He sighed and unwillingly, kept walking towards the formidable building.
The dull sign read "Twilight Town high", and next to it was a sign welcoming all new students and telling them to head to the main office to pick up their things. Far from feeling welcome, Roxas was really seriously contemplating getting extremely hurt by his mother, anything just so he could get the hell home, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Roxas was about to hit the person who had thought it was a good idea to put their stupid hand on his bloody shoulder, when they spoke.
"Hi! You must be new?" It was a girl, with dark red hair, an auburn shade almost. She was smaller than him, and wearing some sort of pink dress. Roxas blinked a few times before answering coldly.
"And what makes you think that?" He answered, giving her a menacing stare. It wasn't the fact that she was a girl that stopped him from hitting her for talking to him (Roxas was over, and above morals, thank you very much.) It was his promise to his mother that he would stop resorting to violence. And while he wasn't really one to keep promises, his mother had been very, very frank on what would happen if he did not toe the line at his new school.
However, she didn't seem at all put out by his rudeness and laughed instead.
"Perhaps the facts that not only have I never seen you before, but you're standing by the sign looking like you'd rather be anywhere other than here." She said lightly, before extending a hand. "Kairi."
"What?" He answered surly.
"My name! I'm Kairi. What's your name?" Her hand was still hovering in the air. Roxas stared at it like she'd just announced she had a deadly and very contagious disease and she'd love to give it to him, before slowly grasping her hand in a handshake.
"Roxas." He muttered.
"And I'll make a wild guess you have no idea where the office is, so I will take it as my duty to take you there, since we are now acquainted." She sang, before grabbing his hand by the wrist and dragging him off to another direction. Roxas was more in shock that someone was paying him so much (positive) attention, and let himself be dragged off.
To say the lady at the office had been unpleasant, would have been a very big understatement. Even Roxas felt out-crueled by her. As soon as he'd received his timetable and school map and stepped out the cool office back into the hot and humid air, Kairi had started laughing.
"She's terrible isn't she!" Roxas let a small laugh escape his lips before shutting them again. He turned to Kairi who was looking at him expectantly.
"Well?" She asked.
"Er… what?"
"Your timetable! What's your first class, silly!" She laughed. He realized he hadn't even glanced at his timetable and looked down.
"Math…" He answered. 'Aw shit, my worst subject. This day is getting suckier by the second.' Kairi grabbed his timetable out of his hand and scanned through it.
"I have a friend in your math class. He'll take you there."
After meeting Kairi's friend, Roxas felt like he'd rather have found the class himself. It's not that Hayner was a particularly bad person or anything – he was just so loud. And Roxas wasn't used to dealing with loud people. In fact, he wasn't used to dealing with people at all much.
Strangely, after the math lesson with Hayner, Roxas began to find him bearable. It was to say Hayner made things very interesting in the otherwise unbearably boring class. He'd not only managed to get the teacher into a hysterical fit twice, he'd overturned a table, ripped another student's exercise book, and also managed to nearly take someone's eye out after lobbing a compass right across the room, and at the same time, manage to keep up a steady stream of at first, one sided, conversation with Roxas.
To the end of the class, Roxas found himself talking back and actually enjoying the conversation.
The girl Kairi had instructed to take him to his next class (Science), had been a sweet and thoughtful girl named Naminé. Although she was very shy, Roxas (against his protesting will), found he liked her a lot. During the long lesson, they managed to find out they had a lot in common. Both of them, had selfish parents who had shipped them over to the other side of the world to attend a new school, (Roxas did not mention it was because of his expulsion from his previous school that caused this move), and that they both weren't the most sociable of people.
"Well, I've only been at the school for a term." Naminé said in her soft voice. "But Kairi and Hayner and Sora are all wonderful people. It's cheesy to say, but I feel at home." She stopped to smile at him kindly. "And I'm sure you will too, Roxas." Roxas did not voice what he was thinking, which was 'Hah, yeah right.' He instead gave a smile and murmur, finding himself wishing that perhaps, he could feel at home, for once.
Lunch went surprisingly well. Kairi had taken it upon herself to help Roxas in every way possible settle in at his new school, and had ushered him over to her normal lunch table before he could open his mouth to argue (out of habit), and introduced him to her rather large group of friends.
In fact, he could barely remember their names. In his life, the only slight bit of attachment Roxas had ever felt was for his half-brother, Tidus, who was currently at college somewhere else in the world. Roxas just identified all the confusing faces on his table by their traits. Kairi, Hayner, and Naminé, he knew already, but the others were just a confusing blur.
There was 'Loud Dork' (Otherwise known as Sora), 'Silent' (Kairi called him 'Riku'), 'Scar' (Roxas couldn't tell if his name was Squall or Leon, and the others weren't making this easier as they kept calling him different things), 'Emo Spikes' (more commonly known as Cloud. ) 'Pink Ribbon' (Aerith) and 'Annoying' (Yuffie.) In fact, Roxas began to struggle to not call the people listed by their 'nicknames.'
"Do you want a desert or something Roxas?! You SURE?!"
"Oh no thanks anno- YUFFIE."
But yes. Other than that, Roxas lived through the first day of his new school. And the strange thing? He didn't hate it. He found it strange. He'd never felt so at peace. Never met people who he hadn't wanted to connect his fists to their noses. Maybe he really was turning over a new leaf.
Sure enough, when he'd arrived home, feeling – dare he say it – quite happy, his mother seemed very surprised that he'd not only turned up at school, he'd finished his first day without getting into a single fight. And, he seemed happy. Obviously not grinning-as-wide-as-his-ears-and-singing-showtunes happy (Roxas couldn't do that) But content enough, an emotion she hadn't seen on him for a very, very, long time.
"Roxas!" She yelled up the stairs. She heard the sound of Roxas's thumps die and he yelled back.
"What?"
"How was your day?"
"It was … good."
"Roxas! Morning!" Loud Dork – SORA. Roxas thought to himself. His name is SORA. – greeted him the minute he stepped in the home room. Roxas gave a wary smile back.
"Hi." He said. He noticed the other group either waved or gave him a nod, or some form of acknowledgement and he smiled. It was only his second day…Tidus wouldn't believe this.
"Let's see what you have today." Kairi, taking over as usual, headed over and plucked his timetable out of his hands again, before smoothing it out on the table. "You're in my English class!" She said delightedly. Roxas flushed, it was nice knowing you were so… wanted and liked. He'd never felt like that before. Not since –
The bell trilled loudly, knocking him out of his daydreams and back into reality.
"Come on!" Kairi grinned. "Let's go!" And she proceeded to drag him up five flights of stairs into their English classroom.
Later, Roxas found out Kairi did not (very painfully) rush to class in order to actually work (god forbid they do work at school!), but because she wanted some alone time to gossip to her new best buddy.
"Well I met Sora first. And he became my best friend after we realized we live next door to each other. And then once we moved up and stuff, we both kind of branched out and made new friends, but we all kept close. Like he introduced me to Hayner and Cloud and stuff, and I introduced him to Naminé and Olette and... yeah. That's basically it." She stopped to laugh quietly. "How about you? Why'd you move here?"
Roxas swallowed. He hoped he'd be able to avoid this question for a while now. Looks like he was out of luck. He opened his mouth to speak.
"Kairi! Roxas! Would you kindly not gossip in my class!" Their teacher spat at them crossly. Roxas flinched, but was also relieved that he didn't have to answer. Kairi rolled her eyes and mimed spitting on the students. Roxas sniggered and pretended to be working. They had avoided that deadly question. But only just.
Author Note: Yes, short I know :3 Well this was just meant to start the story ("SO JUST START WITH CHAPTER ONE THEN?") but chapter one starts in a bit of a timeskip and there wasn't enough stuff to put in a chapter between Roxas's first day and the...events that take place following. If none of that made sense to you, yes, you're still sane.