Still Standing
By: Midori Akita
Summary: When something's missing, all you can do is keep going on.
Pairing: AkuRoku
POV: Roxas
DISCLAIMER: I sadly don't own Kingdom Hearts. If I did, every singe one of them would be gay and Larxene would have died at birth. :D
Chapter 1
"Axel, you're such a pedo," Roxas Strife told the redhead that was following him after school.
"Am not!" Axel retorted and turned his nose up in the air. "Just because I enjoy the company of a girl that's one grade below me doesn't make me a pedo."
Roxas glared up at Axel, who stood at least two feet taller than him. "Axel, she's fifteen years old for crap's sake!"
"And?"
"You're twenty!"
"…"
Roxas decided that Axel's silence meant he won. They continued walking to their dorm.
That day was rather busy at Twilight Town University. Students were rushing around to their exams, running to meet with friends to study, or attending normal classes. Some people that already finished their exams for the day were sprawled out on picnic blankets in the courtyard, eating food with friends. Roxas immediately saw Seifer Almasy with his friends Rai and Fuu. As they walked by, Roxas could hear only part of their conversation.
"I definitely failed the physics exam, y'know," Rai said and bit into an apple.
"40%," Fuu confirmed and scooped some salad into her mouth.
"Tch! I completely aced chemistry!" Seifer exclaimed with a bowl of mac 'n cheese in his lap.
Roxas rolled his eyes. Seifer may have been telling his friends that he got a good grade on his chemistry exam, but Roxas knew better. Roxas was sitting in the very back of the room (surprisingly 'Strife' was close to last on the list of surnames enrolled in TTU), and he could see from his seat how much Seifer was struggling at the front of the room.
Shouldn't Seifer be with Hayner?
Roxas sniggered and continued walking with Axel to their dorm. They passed Demyx, Zexion, and Marluxia (yes, the one with what Axel was convinced was cotton candy hair. It looks the part) sitting on a bench with Advanced Geometry books in their laps.
"Dammit guys, we're fucked!" Marluxia exclaimed and threw the book down onto the sidewalk.
"What's this 'we' shit? I'm ready for the exam, I'm just helping you guys," Zexion said and picked Marluxia's book up off the ground.
Before they could keep arguing, Roxas dragged Axel away from them. Knowing Axel, he would go over and brag about how easy her exams were and make the others mad.
"Being touchy feely today, eh Roxas?" Axel teased and grinned very cat-like.
Roxas looked over at him. His green eyes were sparked with seductiveness and excitement.
"…..Axel, are you high?"
Axel rolled his eyes and looked away.
Dammit Roxas, you did it again.
Axel flirted with Roxas a lot. And Roxas...ignored Axel flirting with him a lot.
Yeah, they were both gay. But it happened more and more in Twilight Town and Destiny Islands more than people realized. No, more then parents realized.
The point was, Roxas did like Axel. Not like he once liked pizza and Tabasco together (his taste buds still suffered from too much of that particular food combination). But he had a…..crush on Axel.
Fuck you, brain, for making me be attracted to such a flaming idiot.
The reason Roxas kept ignoring Axel's flirting was….complicated, and not worth going over for now.
They took the elevator to the second floor of the dorm building. Each floor had a kitchen and a common room, filled with any food or video game a college kid could want.
"I have to get something from Sora," Roxas said and handed Axel the key to their dorm room. Roxas refused to let Axel have his own key, since he would more than likely lose it.
"Ok babe. I'll be here when you get back," Axel replied and gave Axel another cat grin.
Roxas went down the hall a couple of doors to where Sora shared a room with Riku Aivonej, a man that was the same age as he and Sora with silver hair and blue eyes.
Roxas walked in without knocking, and regretted it.
Riku had Sora pressed against the wall, their mouths locked together and their hands….groping.
Roxas covered his eyes with his hands and shouted, "For Christ's sake Riku, stop molesting my brother with the door unlocked!!" He darted into the room and grabbed his iPod Touch off of Sora's night stand.
"At least knock first!" Sora exclaimed.
"Well I didn't expect to see Riku mouth-raping you!"
After a couple of seconds, Riku chuckled. "Why do assume I'm the one doing the molesting and the mouth-raping?" Roxas could hear the smile in his voice.
"…Now that's something I didn't need to hear," Roxas replied and walked out of the room, locking and shutting the door behind him.
At least the next person to try and walk into their room wouldn't have to be blinded.
Roxas shuddered and walked back to his room. He could hear Axel's new Paramore CD playing from the crappy stereo TTU supplied their room.
"Would you turn that crap down?" Roxas snapped and flopped down on his bed to go over some Forensics notes.
"Paramore is not crap," Axel stated simply and turned it louder.
Roxas sighed and got up to unplug the stereo. Axel pouted, but was obviously too lazy to get back up. He gave up on it and resorted to using his iPod and pulling out his stash of sugary hard candy from under his bed.
I'd hate to imagine what else is under his bed.
"Hey, Roxie, do you know when my history exam is?" Axel asked and pulled one earbud out so he could hear Roxas.
Roxas pulled out the timetable that the school had given him, and looked for Axel's exam, which he probably wasn't ready for.
"Ehh….starts at two," Roxas clarified and put the timetable back into his folder.
"Oh fuck, that's a half hour away!" he exclaimed and grabbed his history book to start reading it.
Roxas sighed. Did Axel honestly think he could study just by reading the textbook? For one, he'd forget half of what he read, since Axel was like that and forgot anything that wasn't of any use to him. He'd miss a bunch of extra stuff that the teacher had made them write down as notes, which Axel probably had stored in Demyx or Seifer's dorm room.
He got his own notepad, which had all his notes in it, and chucked it over at Axel. "My notes are somewhere in the middle."
"Thanks Roxie!" Axel began flipped through the pages. "Errr….why is there a flaming letter 'a' in your notebook?"
Oh fuck monkeys. Roxas forgot about that, the sketch that he'd drawn when he was randomly day dreaming. He could have sworn that he'd drawn it in his other notebook, but apparently not.
"O-oh, that thing? It's a rough sketch for my…art class. First letter I thought of," he said, blushing slightly and hoping that Axel didn't notice that he was lying.
"…You take art class?" he asked and arched one eyebrow.
"Yeah, it just started, Naminé made me take it with her," Roxas replied and shrugged.
"Drawing letters? Sounds damn easy, I should get into the class!" Axel exclaimed.
"Actually, I'm dropping the class, so don't bother," Roxas said and fiddled with the latch on his laptop. He had an English assignment due tomorrow, and wasn't about to let a crush make him fail.
"Hm, whatever."
Roxas finally managed to get the latch on his laptop opened and pressed the on button. The laptop whirred to life, and Roxas waited patiently for the welcome screen to show up. He typed in his password, something nobody but him could remember, and signed into his name. Microsoft Word was taking a bit too long to load, so he double-clicked on the Firefox icon and listened to one of his playlists on a music website. He needed music to work; it helped him get rid of everything else going on around him. Oh Oh Oh Sexy Vampire by Fright Ranger came on when he hit play, but he didn't take any notice of it, he had work to get done.
After a solid fifteen minutes of typing, Axel came back to Earth from the land of studying with earbuds in, and turned his iPod off.
"Psh, and you called Paramore crap," Axel said as he heard the opening lyrics to Goodbye My Lover by James Blunt.
"What?" Roxas said as he came back from the world of correcting his English essay. "Oh, this song? It's ok...I guess."
"Honestly, Roxie, this guy is obviously gay."
Roxas glared at him. "Yeah, and so are you, what's your point?"
Axel frowned. "I'm straight Roxie, I told you that already!"
Roxas had to hold back a laugh. Axel wasn't gay looking, but sometimes he sure acted like it.
"Yeah, then why do you constantly flirt with me?" Roxas asked and arched an eyebrow.
"I'm just messing around, Roxie! Friends tend to do that every once in a fucking while!" Axel exclaimed and balled his hands into fists at his sides.
Roxas snorted. "Straight as a flaming rainbow, if you ask me."
Axel got up angrily and started going through his closet, which had most of his shirts and jackets on hangers.
"You know, I'm so sick of this! You always judge me! There's always something I don't say right, or something I don't do right!"
"This isn't about you, Axel, it never was!" Roxas retorted and saved his work in case Axel did something rash, like hacking into his laptop at night and closing the document when it wasn't saved.
"Then who is it about?" Axel snapped as he began piling clothes into a box he'd pulled from the back of the tiny closet. Roxas stayed silent. It wasn't entirely Axel's fault that they were yelling at each other, but he was overreacting. "I thought so…" He paused and was probably wondering whether to put the pink shirt in his hands into the box. He noticed Roxas looking at it and scowled. "What, you gonna compare me to Marluxia and call me a fruit cup?"
"For fuck's sake, Axel, I'm not insulting you over if you're gay or not! In case you didn't notice, I'm gay!"
"When you call a straight guy gay, it's an insult!" Axel half yelled.
"That's just it, you are gay! If you were really straight, you would've had at least one girlfriend by now, and you'd be completely repulsed at the idea of flirting with another guy, even if you were just kidding," Roxas said as Axel threw some of his books on top of the pile of clothes.
"Okay, stop, just stop!" Axel yelled and pulled a jacket over his white tee shirt. "I'm about a second away from hitting you, Roxas." Roxas' ego took a hit when Axel called him by his real name.
"Axel, I-"
Axel picked up the box in his arms after putting most of his possessions in the box, and walked out the door. It took Roxas a couple of seconds to realize that he'd actually left the room. He got up from the bed and ran after Axel.
"Axel! Axel, wait!" Roxas called as he rounded a corner and promptly ran head first into a door that Axel had just slammed shut.
"I'll get Demyx to pick up all my other shit tomorrow," he heard Axel say from down the hallway. Roxas rubbed his nose as he continued after Axel.
He finally caught up with Axel just as he reached the doors of the elevator and pushed the button. Roxas grabbed his hand and whirled him around.
"Axel, don't leave. Please," Roxas said quiet voice, resting his head on Axel's chest with a thump.
"Why should I stay?" Axel murmured and took hold of Roxas' shoulders, lifting the blonde's head off of his chest and looking him in the eye.
"I......I wouldn't……I'd be…bored without you here," Roxas stuttered, not sure if he should confess his feelings for Axel here. They were yelling and screaming, practically ready to punch each other out, so a love confession might not be the brightest idea.
Axel blinked a couple of times, then shook his head and gave a little of disbelief. "…Seriously? That's your answer?"
The elevator dinged cheerily, and without another word, Axel stepped onto the elevator. He faced Roxas again, his face showing no emotion at all. The doors slowly closed, taking Axel away from Roxas.
Roxas slumped against the nearest wall and let himself slide harshly to the floor. He clutched at his hair with one hand, and hit the other against the hard, linoleum floor harshly.
"What the fuck did I just do?" he asked himself.
In the elevator, which was between the seventh and eighth floors, Axel was in the same position, wondering the same thing.