Disclaimer: I own NOTHING. Except for the plot of which there isn't much of anyway.
Warnings: Extreme OOCness in Marluxia. Oh, he was gonna be a girl anyway!

SPLiTends

In short, Kairi was annoyed that her friends had even imagined that she'd enjoy a date with the campest man in school. Listening to his amazingly detailed accounts of the sort of fairytales she'd hear in a hairdressers ("so, I like stole my neighbour's bin, I mean, someone had stolen mine anyway, so I wasn't really stealing, was I?"), she slowly lost the will to live while chewing for prolonged periods of time on the fries, so covered in grease, she wouldn't have to worry about her life soon anyway. His pink, slightly curled hair almost glowed in the sunlight streaming in from the window. She murmured an, "Oh!" when she realised that must have been why he had created a large fuss about sitting there.

So his hair looked good.

Dear Lord, have mercy upon me, thought Kairi, over and over again. Even eating the grisly fries seemed better than listening to Marluxia yakka-yakka-yak for the rest of the afternoon. She stood up suddenly, an idea bursting through her skull and into her brain. "I know!" she said, interrupting Marluxia half-way through a delightful rendition of 'Bleeding Love'. "Why don't we go watch a movie?"

Marluxia squealed with delight. "Ooh! I know exactly what to watch! There's this new film out, it's called, um... Roses of Sorrow! It looks fabulous: the reviews are amazing – "a delicate love story at the time of world war-"

"That's lovely, Marl, but we need to get the tickets first – before you tell me all about it." Kairi dropped in, hoping to stop his gabble of endless speech stop there. She grabbed the coat on the back of her chair and shrugged it on, grabbing Marluxia's wrist and pulling him along with her. Quickly.

The plan was to tell Marluxia that she was going to the bathroom and then she'd ditch him and run away – far, far away. Probably to Sora or Riku from whence she would beat the two whoresons into the bloody pulps they deserved to be. She could see them right now, sitting there laughing at her. They had probably rigged her coat so that it had hidden cameras in it or something. She looked warily at her coat. But, if they had, then she could be sure that there would be asleep and/or dead by now, dreaming terrible Marluxia-filled dreams.

"All right, Marly, you go get the tickets and I'll get the popcorn, okay?" Marluxia nodded dutifully. As he turned, Kairi wondered how someone like Marluxia could be straight.

"I know, it's a mystery to us all, right?" came a nasally voice next to her. She turned round and saw a tall, skinny youth in the cinema's proudly worn uniform. "Can I help you, ma'am?" it said. Kairi vaguely wondered how he could read her thoughts – referring back to when he mentioned Marluxia's sexuality preference being a mystery. But she passed it off as the look on her face giving everything away. She shook her head, and looked at the boy properly, noticing that he had two purple(ish) triangles under his eyes. She also noticed that he wasn't actually looking too proud to be in the so-called proudly worn uniform. The third thing she oh-so observantly noticed was the most shocking. The red spikes emerging from under his cap.

She snorted, "Oh come on!" she said. "That cannot be your natural colour."

The boy mocked upset. "I'm hurt," he said, crossing his arms. "I guess I just won't serve you now." Kairi raised an eyebrow. "Nah, that'd be mean. What do you want, Miss I-straighten-my-hair-till-it-burns-every-morning-?" He leaned over the counter, smirking delightedly.

Kairi gasped, "I do not straighten my hair!" She scowled at his smirk, extremely distressed that he had even mentioned the thought. "You're just jealous because you don't have a natural hair colour!" She flounced off, flicking her hair over her shoulder, towards Marluxia. "At least he's better than some people," she muttered, snatching her ticket from him.

"Pleasure doing business with ya, ma'am!" called the nasally voice after her.

The movie was even worse than first expected. Kairi was almost asleep the moment she walked in. Through all the crapness of the movie, she had forgotten her plan until about ten minutes through. "Hey, Marluxia," she said, prodding him in the side. But he wasn't going to answer – his eyes were stuck vehemently to the large screen at the front. "Yeah, um, Marly, I'm going to the bathroom. 'Kay?" Marluxia made a few grunting noises which Kairi took to be a good sign as she left.

She tried not to look to suspicious as she skipped down the steps and bounded out of the door. But it wouldn't matter anyway because Marluxia wasn't going to be watching her – he was still deeply involved with Roses of Sorrow. She whooped with joy as soon as she got out of the screening room. She breathed in. Freedom, thought she, freedom.

The guy at the counter gave her a raised eyebrow to which she replied with, "Have you tried dating him?"

"Possibly," he replied. "What would you know anyway? You're just some dumb kid who straightens her hair all the damn time." He smirked again, obviously enjoying pulling at her strings. Kairi held her temper, counting to ten. "Why are you even bothered?"

"Because I don't straighten my hair! It's naturally like this! Unlike yours-"

"My hair is red," snapped the worker, narrowing his eyes slightly. "Why do you say that it isn't?" Kairi made a popping noise with her mouth.

"Well, isn't it obvious? I mean," she said, "who has hair that red?" She made a pitying smile before shrugging and walking away.

"Ooh, bad move, split-ends," the nickname made her eye twitch. "It's my break."

Kairi sighed, exasperated. Is it that hard to get away from freaks? she couldn't help but moan in her head. The worker was standing behind her, his apron and cap off. With his cap off, his hair stuck out more than ever – it was almost as all-over-the-place as Sora's (ah, yes, that sonuvabitch scheming Sora, sidekick to even more sonuvabitch scheming Riku) was. Except it was bigger, and longer. He had crossed his arms and shifted his weight to his right side. Kairi vaguely remembered that her singing coach had told her that you shouldn't lean on one leg – that was before Kairi got fed up with singing and her ratty teacher. "You know," he said. "You will get split ends if you keep straightening your hair, split-ends."

Kairi ground her teeth. "Well, you'll get split-ends from dying your hair."

"Oh, you and I both know that's not true," he replied – quick as lightening.

"Well, it will damage your hair!" Kairi snapped back.

"Not," he replied, forcefully, "that it matters. Considering I don't even dye my hair." Kairi stuck her tongue out.

"Well, I don't straighten my hair!"

"Sure you don't, split-ends." He smirked again and Kairi felt like screaming.

"Check the ends, dumbass!" She took a lock of her hair between two fingers and showed it to him. "See! I don't straighten my hair – straightened hair looks different at the bottom."

"Well, check the tips... dumbass!" The cool headed worker tacked the last, mimicked word on to spite Kairi. He bent his head over and Kairi saw that, yes, his tips were red.

"Well..." she paused. "You could've used that tip dye thing."

"The what?" He shook his head. "Whatever, you could've left out the ends to prove to random strangers that you don't straighten your hair." Kairi rolled her eyes.

"Oh, yeah, really?"

There was a long pause.

"Yeah, really."

Kairi threw her arms up in the air and shouted, "Bye bye!" The boy laughed and caught up with her.

"Look, sorry." He held his hand out to her, "I'm Axel. I don't dye my hair. You don't straighten yours. It's just I found it amazing that I was able to catch your weakness first off. Truce?"

Kairi contemplated what was about to happen: she could call truce and leave the place, Marluxia-less and pre-Sora-and-Riku-ass-kicked, maybe with a new friend. Who, when she looked him up and down, was actually... kinda damn hot. Or she could just leave, and never be able to go to that cinema again in fear of seeing 'Axel' (if that even was his name) – he might even run back in and tell Marluxia that she was doing a legger.

"Kairi," she muttered. "Truce." She took his hand and shook it. Well, tried to.

But Axel had already grabbed it and they were walking along like that. Hand in hand. "Want to get some fries?"

Kairi paused a moment. "God no."

- - -

From somewhere inside the dark depths of Riku's bedroom, a tv blared and fizzed with a blurry image of some red-headed guy. "What the hell?" said Riku as Sora woke up from a nightmare of Marluxia singing 'Bleeding Love'.

"Wha-?" he said, dumbly.

"Kairi's gone off with someone else!" Riku cried as he flopped on the back of his bed. "Now we'll never know if Marluxia really is gay!" Sora rubbed his eyes.

He looked at Riku. "Riku," he said. "We all know whether Marluxia is gay."

- - -

an: well, isn't it, my friends. howhazzit? i like the bit about fries 'cause there are some really bad fries out there. 'cept i don't call them fries now, do i? i call them chips. like fish'n'chips. which is oookay. woah, imagine fish'n'crisps xD now THAT would be weird. hmn. i quite liked this, if you disagree, i totally understand but what the hell? everyone knows i put crap up here so i look like i'm trying. & also, from what i've heard marluxia WAS going to be a girl. but they changed it 'cause they thought that xemnas was sexist & he wouldn't put a girl in charge of oblivion castle. lul it explains the roses, though, doesn't it? anyhoo, review, my pretties. feed me :3