So, here I am with a new endeavor. This idea has been in my head for a little bit. Please, read and let me know if I should continue with the story. Thanks.
This is Namine/Axel. If you have a problem with that, please leave now. No flames.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot of this story.
Reviews are great, constructive criticism is better!
"Be careful in the park," was what her mom always told her. "You never know what shifty characters are hanging around there."
As far as Naminé was concerned, the people at the park seemed like a better crowd than the ones she went to school with. As she cast critical eyes around the area, she noted that most of the people there were happy, lovey-dovey couples, or mothers holding hands with hyper, skipping children. Compared to the drug dealers and hotheads at her high school, this was like Girl Scouts.
Her thoughts were interrupted as her pencil slipped from her grasp, falling onto the concrete. She sighed, leaned over, picked it up, and touched it to the sketchpad in her lap, prepared to draw.
"Draw something natural," her art teacher had instructed the class earlier that morning. "Don't give me fantasy, or modern. Go out, find something growing, and sketch it. It's a big grade, so do it well."
The rest of her Art II class had groaned, rolling their eyes and laughing derisively. They wouldn't attempt this project until the day before it was due. They'd hastily sketch a weed growing in their backyard, come to class, and turn it in, pleased with their half-assed work and their C grade.
Naminé, on the other hand, had clutched her sketchpad to her chest excitedly, disregarding the sniggers she received from others in the class. "Ignore them," her friend Roxas had once told her. "They're just a jealous bunch of wanna-be's who wish they had half your art talent."
Naminé wasn't a conceited girl, but she had to agree with that statement. The majority of her classmates were in art for what they thought would be an easy A. The few who actually liked the class received ridicule for it.
So, instead of going home and wasting hours online, Naminé had opted to do the right thing and start her sketch. But everything she drew seemed wrong. She'd been sitting on the park bench for the past two hours and had nothing to show for it but crumpled papers and a stubby eraser. Usually, the art flowed to her fingertips like blood running through her veins. Today, nothing.
Through the kangaroo pocket of her hoodie, she felt her cell phone vibrate against her stomach. Fishing it out, she flipped it open, where the screen read "One new message: Roxas". She jabbed the "inbox" button and read to herself, "hey, u up 4 hangin' 2nite?" His use of constant text-speak frequently annoyed her, but she was almost completely used to it now. She typed back a hasty "Yeah, sure. 6?" and waited until he replied before shoving her phone back into her pocket. Leaning her head back, she sighed.
Roxas. He was as thick as a brick wall and hadn't noticed that she'd had a crush on him since freshman year. Her friends knew, his friends knew, even Roxas's own parents knew. But not Roxas. Naminé didn't usually enjoy the "dumb blonde" stereotype, considering she herself was one, but in the case of her friend, "dumb blonde" was the perfect way to describe him.
Naminé shook her head and returned to her sketching. She stared pointedly at the tree in front of her, touched pencil to paper, and tried to capture the swoop of the trunk, how the half-bare branches looked in the autumn, and how the late afternoon sun shone through what leaves still remained. She cast a critical eye down at the paper and groaned. It looked all wrong, more like something a 5th grader would draw than something she should be capable of. She ripped the paper off the rings, crumpled it, and threw it to the ground beside her. Swooping her blonde bangs out of her face, she squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself to stay calm and regain her artistic ability.
"Hey, now, didn't your mommy ever tell you that littering is bad?"
The voice came out of nowhere, smooth and mildly condescending. Since she still had her head bowed and eyes shut, all she could tell was that the voice came from above, and belonged to a male.
'Great, now God's reprimanding me for throwing paper on the ground...'
She tilted her head back, her own eyes opening to lock with vivid green. She yelped a bit and sat up straight, turning herself around to get a better look at the owner of the green eyes.
As her eyes scanned over him, Naminé concluded this was exactly the kind of "shifty character" her mom had always warned her about.
Tall and lanky, the boy towered over her, looking down with a half-smirk on his face, narrow green eyes glinting in the late sun. He stepped over to her discarded drawing, picked it off the grass, unfolded it, and examined it, twisting it in multiple angles, before frowning, refolding it, and handing it to her. "Nice...uh...tree."
She frowned, which only caused the shifty boy to grin more. He ran his fingers through his wild, spiky, red hair, removing the cigarette he had tucked behind his ear.
"You mind?" He asked, the cigarette already clenched between his teeth. Naminé had half a mind to nod, speak up, and say "Yeah, actually, I do mind. Cigarettes remind me of my dead-beat father who left us a few years ago." but this was more information that this stranger needed...and she never shared that with anyone.
Instead, she simply shook her head, wondering why he was even asking. Before she could open her mouth and question, he plunked down next to her on the bench. "Thanks, doll face. Addiction's a bitch."
Naminé raised her eyebrows a fraction of an inch, scooting further from the stranger, wracking her brain to think of a way she could just politely excuse herself. 'Hell, why be polite? Some guy I don't know just totally invaded my personal space. I could get up and leave and think nothing of it'.
"You mute, or somethin'?" She glanced nervously out the corner of her eye and found that he was watching her as his hands were busy searching in the pockets of his jeans.
Her pulse quickened as she considered all the horrible things he could be holding in his pockets. She, for a moment, entertained the horrible notion that he was going to kill her, right here, right now, in the park, and steal her belongings. It wouldn't be much. All she had on her was a sketchbook, pencil, eraser, cell phone, house key, and loose change to catch the bus home. Maybe he'd kill her, steal the house key, and go rob her home.
She winced as the stranger suddenly pulled something out of his pocket, sighing in relief when she realized it was just a lighter. She cast a critical glance at him and noted that there wasn't even room for a knife in those jeans, black and skinny and so tight that they had to be girl pants.
He grinned around his now lit cigarette. "Or maybe I just scare you?" He laced his fingers behind his head, leaning back and regarding her out the corner of his eye.
She glanced away, flushing a little, fingers gripping the edge of her sketchpad.
"C'mon, doll, you've gotta give me something to work with here. I'm trying to be nice and polite and-"
"Polite?" she squeaked, in spite of all her efforts to remain quiet. "I don't even know you. You just came over, insulted my drawing, invaded my space, and now you're sitting here, smoking your death sticks and, frankly, making me very uncomfortable!"
Naminé glared briefly at the man before blushing and clapping her hands over her mouth. She realized with growing horror that she had just basically told off a total stranger, a man who was most likely capable of murdering her and dumping her body off on the side of the road.
Contrary to her fears, the man just leaned forward, scooting closer, bumping his foot into the side of her sneaker. "I'm making you uncomfortable?" Naminé tried to edge away, keeping her eyes on the advancing stranger all the while. "Careful, you move any farther and you're gonna wind up falling on your butt while I sit on this bench, laughing at you."
Being this awkwardly close to him, Naminé noted that underneath his eyes were matching teardrop tattoos. She found herself mesmerized for a moment, before her sketchbook clattered onto the ground, snapping her back to self-awareness.
She frowned and the guy backed off, chuckling lightly to himself. "You need to lighten up, sweetheart." He glanced over while she righted herself, grabbing her book and pencil off the floor. "I mean, you can't be more than...what, 13? 14?"
Naminé's frown only deepened and she debated with herself. Her mother's voice entered her mind with another oft repeated admonishment. "Don't give out your name or age to strangers, honey. Never ever."
"No." Naminé, truthfully, had no idea exactly what she was saying no to. No to his guess of her age. Or no to this whole strange meeting. The guy took it as the former and raised his eyebrows.
"Hmm..." The stranger laughed to himself. "Girls don't usually tell me no..." He snubbed out his cigarette on the back of the bench, despite the fact that he had hardly smoked it. He turned his body toward her, one arm resting on the stone back of the bench.
"I like you, kid. You're interesting. One second, you burst out talking. Then, all you say is 'no'. Interesting." His eyes glinted somewhat mischievously. "You have a name, or am I just gonna have to keep calling you doll face?"
Naminé opened her mouth to say something, anything, even though her mind was blank. She jumped about a mile in the air as her cell phone buzzed in her pocket. Tearing her eyes away from the man, grabbed the ringing phone, and flipped it open. "Hello?" It was Roxas on the other line, asking where she was, because hadn't they agreed to grab a burger or something tonight? Naminé glanced at her watch and noted with a groan that it was half past six. "I'm sorry," she mumbled, warily watching out of the corner of her eye as the man fished another cigarette from his back pocket, lit it, and stuck it in his mouth. "I got caught up drawing. I'll be there soon." No sooner had she hung up and stuffed the phone in her pocket, the red-head cast a languid glance over to her.
"Ooh, sorry, didn't mean to keep you away from your boyfriend."
Naminé bristled, collecting her things and rising from the bench. If only. "I don't have a boyfriend."
The boy smirked at this. "Ooh, nice. Girlfriend, then? Unexpected in someone like you. But still pretty hot."
Naminé tried to fight the smile tugging at the corner of her lips. Whoever this guy was, he was weird and kind of rude. But he had a way of being nonchalantly funny.
"Not even. Sorry to crush your hopes." She really needed to get going and meet Roxas.
He shrugged and chuckled, more to himself than to anyone. "Hey, a guy can dream, right? I tried."
Naminé rolled her eyes and started to make her way across the park. Part way across the grassy expanse, she heard him calling, "Hey, doll! What's your name?"
She turned back and shouted "Maybe another time!" before resuming her walk to the bus stop.
As she boarded the old, creaky bus and deposited her change, she made a mental note to sketch in a different area of the park next time.
//Line Break//
"So, how'd the sketching go?" Roxas was trying, and failing, to talk around a mouthful of cheeseburger. Naminé wrinkled her brow in confusion. All she had heard was some indistinct mumbling. He swallowed, wiped his mouth with a napkin, and tried again.
"I said, how'd the sketching go?" Picking his half-eaten burger up, he nodded toward the sketchbook resting on the table.
"Ah," Naminé sighed, grabbing the book and flipping it open to show Roxas the mostly blank, failed drawings. "It didn't go so well, I suppose..."
Roxas shrugged, chomping off another section of his burger. "Can't win 'em all, I guess. Tough luck, Nams."
Once more, she inwardly asked herself why she liked Roxas. He was literally as dense as a brick wall. Even now, as she sat, picking at her fries and watching him, he was off in another world, twisting around, taking in the black and white linoleum, the red booths, the greasy smell of burgers hanging in the air, all as if he hadn't been going to this restaurant with her weekly.
"Roxas." At his name, his eyes snapped back to her, blue staring into blue. He cocked his head at her inquiringly, with the lost puppy dog face that always seemed to make her heart skip. "Uh...um..." She swallowed hard, gathering herself. "So...what're you going to draw for your project?"
He chuckled at this, taking a long draw of his milkshake. "No clue," he replied, shrugging his shoulders dismissively. "I'm putting it off as long as I can."
"But, why? It sounds so fun."
He grinned sheepishly. "Eh, well, yeah, if I had half your art talent, I'd probably be a little more thrilled to go spend my time outside drawing trees." He dipped a fry into his shake and shoved it in his mouth. "As it is, I'd sooner go home and play video games."
She cringed as he dunked another fry into his chocolate shake. To Naminé, food should be eaten separately. Fries with ketchup and salt, not milkshakes. Roxas saw her reaction, grinned, and held the chocolate-dunked fry out to her.
"Here."
She shook her head insistently. "No, no, that's okay."
Roxas just rolled his eyes. "Open." She opened her mouth tentatively, almost gagging as he shoved the offending chocolate fry between her lips. "Now chew. And if I see you spit it into your napkin, I'll make you try another."
She crammed her eyes shut, chewing the soggy, salty, chocolate flavored fry. And she decided at that moment that, though shake-dipped fries were popular among people her age, she'd sooner eat those nasty veggie burgers that her mom always kept in the freezer.
She chased the fry down with a quick sip of her water, sighing in relief. When she looked up, Roxas was looking at her, head tilted, half-smile on his face. "See, you're still alive. It wasn't that bad." She smiled back, dabbing her mouth on the white paper napkin she'd had on her lap.
"So..." Roxas spoke hesitantly, his fingers tracing the designs on the table top. "Um..." He glanced at Naminé and then looked away almost immediately. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest. Here it was, he was going to confess that he'd been always madly in love with her, he'd kiss her, they'd walk out holding hands, and they'd ride off into the sunset...
His soft laugh brought her back to earth. "You okay, Naminé? You were, like, spacing out on me there for a second." She just nodded, feeling her cheeks coloring. Roxas raised his eyebrows a fraction, seemingly forgetting what he was going to say.
"Um...yeah...so...good day today?"
"Roxas, you saw me all day at school."
The blonde boy simply shrugged again, folding his napkin into tiny squares. "Yeah, but you took off so fast after school...I just wondered."
Naminé chewed her lip for a second, considering. Would it be worth it to tell him about the weird boy in the park? It wasn't really much of a story, when it came down to it. Some guy had just sat down, bothered her, and then she'd left. She surmised that if she told Roxas about him, he'd just laugh and call her a dork and tell her to be more careful the next time. If she ever told her mom about it, she'd have the young girl on house lockdown until she graduated high school.
No, Naminé realized. There was no story to really be told. So, she shrugged. "Nah, nothing really happened. I went to the park, sketched, and now here we are." She pressed the tips of her fingers together, gazing uninterestedly at her short, stubby fingernails. "You?"
And with that invitation, Roxas launched into a description of his day, class by class, hour by hour. Who he'd talked to, what he had said, what he ate, and what he did after school. He finished his long story with an account of the zombie-slaying video game marathon he had planned over the weekend with his friend Hayner. As always, he invited Naminé to join. And, as always, she said, "I'll think about it". She never accepted. She never saw anything interesting in sitting in the dark, disco ball-lit basement of Hayner's house, squished in a beanbag chair, being offered bowls of chips by the boy named Pence.
As they paid the tab and left the diner, Naminé considered.
Maybe she'd spend her weekend sketching.
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So, like I said above, let me know if this story has potential. I'd love to keep writing it. I enjoy Axel and Namine.
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