A/N: An AkuNami, requested by XSolXSkyX a long time ago *hangs head in shame.* It's AU. I'm so sorry for the long wait! This was supposed to be finished somewhere in August or so… -_-' I hope I made it up to you by making it longer than intended. The sudden good weather of 2 months ago (that unfortunately lasted only two days or so) gave me an inspiration boost for this piece. This is my first NaminéxAxel one-shot, so please be gentle. And I had to make Naminé a bit OOC, sorry for that. Anyways, enjoy! :)

Thanks: M. L. Ayala, for betaing this piece.

~ It was silent between them for a moment, but the man took it upon himself to break that silence, by stepping closer to her and asking, "So… do you have a name, or do you want me to keep calling you "Doll-face"?" ~

It was a nice, pleasantly warm day in the beautiful Radiant Garden. To be honest, the weather hadn't been this good for quite a while. It was strange, though, since it was October and, normally, it would only rain during this time of the year. Not that anyone was complaining about this sudden change; it was pretty nice, even though it probably wouldn't last that long.

A rather pale girl who wore plain white sandals and a matching white summer dress that swayed softly in the gentle wind, walked past the terraces that were, for a change, packed with happy people who enjoyed this rare sunny afternoon. Naminé, the girl in question, was heading to her best friend Kairi's house. She had called Naminé, suggesting that they do something fun outside and who was Naminé to say no to that? Besides, she hadn't seen Kairi for almost a week, because the blonde had been ill. She was positive that there was a lot to catch up on, because Kairi had sounded quite excited through the phone. The blonde dared to bet all her belongings that she had some fresh gossip to share with her. Things she didn't really care about, but Kairi always insisted for her to hear it. The joy.

When she walked past one of her favorite shops, she stopped walking and used the glass door as a mirror, inspecting herself. Gosh, it really looked as though she had lost at least six pounds after having to cope with the flu for almost a week. Not only that, but her pale blonde hair seemed to be duller than ever. She made a note to herself to use conditioner more often.

And as if things weren't looking bad enough already, she could see, even though the glass was pretty dark, that she looked like she hadn't seen the daylight for at least sixteen years… Which was almost funny in a weird way, considering that she was only fifteen years and eleven months old. Knowing Kairi, the blonde teen was sure that she would surely comment on all these things by only using three words. Just great.

Naminé sighed wearily. After tucking a stray strand of her silky smooth, light blonde hair behind her ear, she suddenly noticed that a bicyclist was coming her way with an immensely fast speed. He was so fast, that the image was rather blurred in the window. Naminé gasped, her cerulean eyes at once widening in shock. She turned around, right in time to see that the cyclist braked and made a sideslip right in front of her.

Naminé blinked, slowly looking up from the tire to the rude and careless bicyclist. For a moment, the female teen couldn't say anything, partly from the temporary shock and partly because the appearance of the stranger made her, strangely enough, very weak in the knees. It was something that had never happened to her before. The man in question was still in his early twenties, probably only 21, or something, but Naminé had truly never seen anyone like him before. His remarkable, fire red hair was styled in long, wild spikes that stood in all directions, but in contrast, he wore casual clothes; a rather tight, black T-shirt that showed his lean form, faded dark grey jeans and matching worn-out sneakers.

However, the most special thing about him were definitely his emerald green eyes that were examining her calmly, but with mild curiosity and, to her great surprise, interest. She gulped when she realized that last fact. Suddenly, her throat felt unusually dry.

"Hey there, doll-face," he greeted her with a lazy grin. "You okay?"

Doll-face?

Naminé blinked slowly, as if she just got out of a daze, before she remembered to nod. "Y-yeah," was her somewhat shaky reply.

Honestly, did she look like she was okay?

"Good. Sorry for that. It's a pretty old bike, you see. It doesn't react as fast as it used to," he explained.

As it should, you mean, Naminé thought, but she didn't say anything.

Not that she would've been able to if she'd wanted, anyway. Something told her that she should be extra careful around this rather tall man. Who knew who he was and what he wanted from her.

"So, you don't happen to know where the market place is, do you?" he then inquired.

That unexpected question made one point clear to her: he was not from here. No wonder she had never seen him before. It all made sense to her now. Radiant Garden was a very famous place and it attracted a lot of tourists and businessmen from all around the world. This person obviously belonged to the first category.

"The market place? Oh, uh, that's this way," she replied, pointing to the place she meant. "You just follow this road. When it ends, you turn to the left and then go up the stairs that will appear on your right. At the end of the stairs, you'll find the market place." As an afterthought she added, "But it's not as grand as you're probably expecting."

"Hmm…" the man said, thoughtfully, looking at the direction to which Naminé had just pointed, as if he was trying to decide whether he should still visit the market place, or not, now that he knew he would be disappointed.

He ran a hand through his spectacularly wild spikes, messing them up even more. The funny thing was that he didn't seem to care much about his hair's current state.

However, to Naminé's great surprise, and before she could brace herself from it, the young man bent forward slightly and pressed his lips briefly on hers. Still, the lipcontact was enough to make Naminé's brain freeze completely for a short moment. She stiffened visibly, at a loss of words. But instead of feeling scared or angry at what he was doing, she felt this tantalizing sensation that she had never in her life felt before. Adrenalin was spreading through her body, faster than she could have ever imagined. In the end, it was as though she was loaded with electricity.

The stranger was the one who ended the kiss. Naminé slowly opened her eyes, feeling so disorientated that she had to hold onto a nearby wall in order not to fall over. That would be so embarrassing.

"Thanks," he said, after he had straightened again (he really was tall!). "I guess I'll see you around then."

With that, he turned his bike the other way and raced towards the market, leaving the utterly shocked Naminé all by herself. Her mouth dropped open at his sudden departure…

When she had recovered enough from what happened, she touched her lips with her fingertips. She could still feel the imprint of his lips. At that thought, her heartbeat automatically increased again.

"Wow…"

Was it normal to feel like that when someone kissed you, or was this because she was kissed by him? And what was she supposed to think of this?

Drat, and she didn't even know his name…

"Uh-huh. Suuure," Sora replied, sarcastically, his cerulean eyes twinkling brightly in the afternoon light.

"No, I swear it's true!" Kairi countered, solemnly, with a look that those words should leave no room for questioning her logic.

"Oh, please, Kairi! That's about the biggest bull I've ever heard in my whole life! Don't you agree, Naminé?" Riku asked, tilting his head slightly to the side to look at the thus far quiet blonde, who sat next to him. She had almost finished her drink, but she didn't seem to be in this world currently. "Nami?" he tried again, but there was no reaction from her side whatsoever, not even when he waved his hand in front of her face. "Wow. What's with her?"

Kairi, who saw – and she heard it in his voice, too - the offended (and possibly even hurt, because everyone knew that he 'secretly' had a crush on her) expression on his face, took it upon herself to quickly explain, "Oh, don't mind her, she's been gone for a walk in the clouds for almost a week, ever since that creepy pervert asked her for directions and then dared to kiss her, too."

Surprisingly enough, this actually got a reaction out of Naminé, "He's not a creepy pervert!"

"Oh, so now you're finally listening? Good to know you're still alive. And how would you know? You don't even know his name," Kairi noted with a raised eyebrow. "I'm surprised you didn't go to the police yet to complain about what he did to you. Perhaps I should do that for you, seeing that you obviously don't dare to do it yourself."

The blonde teen chose to ignore that. She didn't care what her friends thought about the stranger. They had no right to judge him like that just because of his appearance or age. And they made it sound like he had almost killed her, or something. Geez, it was just a kiss, he didn't rob her! And some kiss that was. She could swear that he'd made her see fireworks. As cliché as that sounded, it was the truth.

Truth be told, she wouldn't mind seeing him again, or…

"And he's pretty old, too! Like, twice her age. At the very least!" the redhead continued, heatedly. Now that she had started, it was hard for her to calm down again, for she was known for having quite a temper. "You have no idea how horrible Nami was looking when she arrived at my house. I felt so bad for her. It was as if she had seen a ghost! Heck, she was paler than a ghost herself!"

Naminé ignored that comment, too. Honestly, Kairi could be such a drama queen sometimes. It shouldn't be allowed for people to exaggerate this much all the time. It couldn't be healthy. She made a note to herself to have a nice little chat with her best friend, as soon as the boys were gone. If someone could stop her from acting like this, it was Naminé. Everyone knew that, so they had given her that task.

"Uhm, I don't want to be Johnny Raincloud here, but you do realize that you'll probably never see him ever again, right?" Sora started, shooting a worried look in Naminé's direction.

Sora was a good guy, honestly. He was sweet, caring, funny, all in all, the perfect one for Kairi. But he was also very gullible. That was the only bad thing about him, but luckily, Riku was always around to solve Sora's problems and keep him from getting into trouble... by landing into trouble himself. But that was what Riku was like. Calm, collected and always playing it cool. The three C's he always went by. Girls wanted him to be their boyfriend and guys just wanted to be like him. He even had a fanclub at school, which, needless to say, was consisting of fangirls. Everyone except from Naminé seemed to know that Riku had a crush on her and everyone wondered what in the world he saw in her.

"Which is a good thing, if you ask me! You don't know half of the things that guys do to girls these days. They're heartless beasts, I'll tell you!" Riku said, darkly, interrupting his best friend abruptly, as he slammed with his fist on the table they were sitting around, almost as if he would personally kill the guy if he ever dared to show his face around this place.

Knowing him, he probably would attack him when he saw him. And the fact that he had just heard how the guy had dared to kiss her, too, only made his blood boil more. After all, it was something he had never managed, only on the cheek, which was more of an accident.

His long silver hair came in front of his aquamarine eyes, but he let the bangs just stay there, which made him look even more pissed off.

"Whoa, easy there, Riku! If we spill our drinks on the table again, that owner's going to kill us for sure!" Sora said warningly, looking behind him to see if said owner had noticed anything, or not.

Unfortunately, the man in question was looking back with a rather dangerous expression on his chiselled face. It made Sora automatically look away from him, as a shiver ran down his spine. He decided to gulp down his own drink, just to be sure he wouldn't spill it all over the place. Sora didn't fear much in life, but this man made him feel very small and helpless with his glaring alone. Surely, this place was owned by Cid, a cursing ex-pilot. This Leon - his real name was Squall, but the last person who dared to call him that went disappearing during that same period and hadn't be seen since - was a coworker at the moment, but he was unnervingly scary. When his stormy blue eyes were glaring daggers, then you knew it was better to sleep with one eye open that night.

Naminé almost rolled her eyes at Riku's current state, but instead she said, "I'm gonna get a refill of this. Does anyone else need something?"

She didn't want to fight with her friends because of that interesting stranger that made her feel… different. That would only aggravate the situation. Things were bad enough for her already now that they were paying closer attention to her. She just needed to get away from the table, even if it was for only a minute.

Riku didn't react, but Kairi silently shook her head as a sign of 'no.' Sora was the only one who handed her his plastic cup. What a surprise. Naminé took it from him and walked away from them. This way, she was giving them more time to talk behind her back and she knew that they would. She could feel their eyes on her back, but she tried to ignore it the best she could. It was better to concentrate on her short trip, because if she fell over now, she would only make more of an idiot out of herself. That was the last thing she needed at the moment.

In the mean time, she couldn't help but think about the handsome stranger that she had encountered not too long ago. There were so many questions that were left unanswered. The most important one was, why had he kissed her in the first place? Was it to mess with her head (he surely had succeeded in that one), or had it been his way to say 'Thank you' for giving him directions to the market? But that made no sense at all... or did it?

She sighed, wearily, as she ran her hand through her straight blonde hair. It was almost three days ago now, and she still couldn't get him out of her head. Perhaps it wasn't that strange. After all, he sure had impressed her…

But what if she would never see him again? That would be absolutely terrible!

She was about to refill her own cup, when someone startled her by whispering in her ear, "Hey there, doll-face. How's it going?"

Her heart skipped a beat at hearing that familiar voice and she jumped from the ticklish sensation near her ear. In a reflex, she swiftly turned around on her heels, almost dropping the plastic cup that she was squeezing a little too hard. Right in front of her stood that mysterious red-haired guy, who had kissed her the other day! What was he doing here?

"Relax, it's just me," he said, while raising his hands in mock defense. "Don't need to be so jumpy all the time."

From this close, he was even more handsome, with his slightly pale face and piercing green eyes. This time, he also had two tiny, triangle tattoos under his eyes… Or had they been there the previous time, too? She couldn't exactly remember.

There was something… something that she couldn't quite describe about that grin that made Naminé blush crimson red. And judging by the way he was looking at her now, he knew very well what he was doing to her.

"H-hello," was all she managed to say.

It was silent between them for a moment, but the man took it upon himself to break that silence, by stepping closer to her and asking, "So… do you have a name, or do you want me to keep calling you "Doll-face"?"

The blonde young woman blinked, rather dazed. "My name is Naminé, actually."

"Naminé. Sounds Chinese, if you ask me."

The blonde made a face, almost disgusted. "It's Latin for… never mind, actually… What's your name?"

"Axel. That's A-X-E-L. Got it memorized?"

"Uhm…" Duh. How else was she supposed to spell that name? "I think so?"

He really was a tad bit bizarre, so that name was rather fitting. But at least his parents hadn't named him after a Latin word that meant "Nobody." How nice was that?

Meanwhile, Riku, who had been watching Naminé's every move, had noticed the stranger, too. "Hey, who the hell is that weirdo?" he asked, frowning.

He nodded with his head towards the red-haired male. Both Sora and Kairi turned around and followed his stare.

"Wow," Kairi said, her eyebrows practically disappearing into her hairline. "Judging by those wild spikes, it has to be the creep that kissed Nami the other day."

"What?" the two males called, exactly at the same time.

"And it looks like he's hitting on her right now. I can't believe this!" she continued, shaking her head in disbelief. "But I have to admit, he is quite handsome..."

"Hey!" Sora called.

"Not as handsome as you, of course," she quickly said when she saw his shocked face.

Riku didn't even notice their bickering. His knuckles had become white from his strong grip on the table. He got up to teach the man not to mess with Naminé, when Sora pulled him back.

"Let me go!" he growled.

"No. Knowing you, you'll punch the living daylights out of him. We can't have that."

Riku gave him a murderous glare, but Sora didn't seem to be fazed by it.

"Good," Axel continued, his poisonous green eyes once again fixated on her. He was not in the slightest aware that three people were watching his every move from a safe distance, or perhaps he simply didn't care enough. "You know, I still feel a little guilty about scaring you half to death the other day…"

The blonde teen tilted her head to the side, quietly wondering if he meant the almost-collision here, or rather the sudden unexpected kiss. Perhaps both?

She didn't have more time to think about it, because the next thing he said was, "And, since I'm a fine gentleman, I feel obliged to offer you something to drink. It's my way of making it up to you. How does seven o'clock sharp sound?"

Naminé's mouth dropped open. She knew that she had to be looking like a brainless idiot, but she didn't care at the moment. She should definitely see this as a date, right?

"Uh… th-that sounds great."

"As far as I can tell, we could be friends, or…" He stopped for a moment, his grin widening slightly. "We could be more than friends, if you know what I mean…"

No, it wasn't that hard to guess what he meant with that. Especially now that they were only inches away from each other. She knew that he could count the freckles on her face if he wanted now.

"Like… best friends?" she opted, making him chuckle at the naivety of it all.

"No…" With a wink he continued, "More…"

"Oh… You mean mega best friends."

At this, he face palmed. "Ugh…"

"Just kidding!" Naminé swiftly said, at seeing the expression that crossed his face. "Well, let's meet at the market place, then, since you already know that place."

Axel shrugged. "That's fine with me… I was half expecting that you would give me new directions to a nice pub."

Naminé's eyes widened slightly, because she knew what he was implying.

"Just kidding, Naminé. Can't take a joke?" he asked, teasingly, before becoming more serious. "Well, see you then."

"…Y-yeah. Till then."

The blonde female watched his retreating back, her head spinning from the prospect of being with him for another two hours. She couldn't wait until it was seven o'clock already...

But by the looks of it, she first had to convince her friends that she wasn't in danger. Yippie...

A/N: I read somewhere that 'Axel' means the Father of Peace somewhere. How fitting is that name? XD

Anyways, this story is actually based on a true story. Last summer, there was a bicyclist here that would ask women for directions (which he probably already knew) and when they would help him out, he would kiss them, as his way of saying "Thank you" I guess. Pretty bizarre, isn't it? I don't know the exact details, but I thought that Axel kinda fitted that picture. XD

Thanks for reading! Hope you liked it, too. :) If anyone else has a request for a het pairing, or something that's rated T at the max, then feel welcome to let me know.

By the way, I would REALLY appreciate it if you could vote for the poll on my profile. I'm planning to write a new challenge (a long one this time with 50 chapters), and I guessed it would be awesome if it contained all the pairings you love. I won't use all of them, I'm just curious what you all like. Thanks in advance!