Chapter One: Abrupt and Ungraceful

I hate what I've become / The nightmare's just begun

I must confess that I feel like a monster

(Skillet)

Axel sat in the transient, fading darkness of his dorm room, the only light cast by the slight glow in the window at his side. He stared down at his hand, in which he cupped a small cluster of rounded, white pills. He'd been contemplating them for hours on end, as he did almost every night now. He glanced out the window one more time and then looked back at his hand, closing it into a fist and lifting it toward his mouth.

At that moment, the door opened and light poured into the room, revealing a silhouette in the doorway. Axel drew his fist away from his mouth and shoved it down against the sheets next to him in an attempt to hide it from the gaze of his roommate.

"Axel, what are you doing?" a voice snapped.

The lights went on, and Axel squinted against the sudden brightness. "Damn, Saïx, you said you weren't gonna be back until eight." With the hand that wasn't full of pills, he rubbed his eyes.

"Hell if that matters," Saïx answered. "What have you been doing for the last twelve hours? How many of these have you swallowed?" He crossed the room to where Axel sat and grabbed his wrist, shaking out the handful of pills, scattering them over the floor. When Axel didn't answer, he continued. "How long has this been going on, Axel?"

"I didn't take any," Axel muttered, averting his eyes. "I was just thinking about it. I didn't take any."

"Lies," Saïx answered. "Are you even listening to yourself, Axel? You sound wasted."

"Whatever."

Abruptly, Saïx hauled Axel up from the edge of the bed where he sat and examined him. The redhead was dressed in all black as usual, black sweatpants and a black hoodie. Saïx immediately went to work undressing him, jacket first, searching his pockets for more medication.

"The hell are you doing?" Axel demanded as Saïx pulled his jacket off, exposing his whole upper body to the freezing temperatures of the room. "Give that back."

"Where are you hiding your damn pills?" Saïx demanded, tossing the jacket back at Axel. He turned to the desk next to the window and threw open the drawers, digging in them for the little amber bottles of prescription medication. He found only mountains of notebooks, paper, and pens. Annoyed, he stalked across the room and opened the bathroom door.

"Saïx!" Axel shouted and raced after him. Saïx slammed the door in his face.

With the door closed, Saïx began going through drawers again. At the back of the bottom drawer, he finally found what he was looking for: three of the yellow-orange bottles of pills, narcotics, painkillers—plus two containers of Tylenol. Most of them were half-empty, or emptier. He dug through the cabinet next to the drawer until he found a plastic bag and threw the five bottles into it, tying off the bag with two knots.

He opened the bathroom door again. It hit Axel in the face mid-arc, and he stumbled back against the wall, crying out in pain.

"Saïx! What the hell was that—"

Saïx grabbed his arm and dragged him toward the door of the dorm room. "Axel, you don't get to do this anymore. I'm taking you to the infirmary."

"No way," Axel said, wrenching his arm from Saïx's grip. "You're not taking me anywhere. I didn't take any of those goddamn pills." He reached for the bag that Saïx held in his hand, but Saïx jerked it away. "What if I have a headache, you bastard? What if I need that damn Tylenol? What're you gonna do then, huh?"

"I'll get you some myself." Saïx gripped Axel's arm again, this time not letting go. "Come on. Infirmary. Now."

He dragged Axel out the door and down the hall, and then down a couple of flights of stairs before they hit the lowest level of the building. There, he found the door to the dormitory's infirmary. It didn't stand out from any of the other doors on that floor, besides the fact that it had the word "Infirmary" stenciled across the wood in charcoal letters.

"Axel," Saïx began, expecting a protest from the redhead, but when he looked over, he realized that he had caught his roommate just in time to watch his eyes roll back in his head and his weight transfer abruptly and ungracefully to the ground. He threw the bag of pills to the ground in a rage. "Goddamn it, Axel! Get up!"

As he screamed at the redhead, shaking his shoulders in an attempt to revive him, the door opened, and another figure stepped out into the hall. Saïx recognized him immediately, with his black clothing and slightly silver hair swept over one of his eyes. It was Zexion, the stand-in medic for the dormitory. Though he was still a student, he worked in place of Vexen, their school's other medic, because Vexen couldn't be everywhere at once.

"Trouble?" Zexion asked, looking down at Saïx and Axel, tangled on the floor in front of the infirmary.

"Yes," Saïx growled. "It's Axel."

"Did he OD again?" Zexion continued. His voice stayed steady despite the desperate nature of the situation in front of him.

"Probably." Saïx rubbed his face with his hands. "These are all the pills I found in his drawer. I've been gone all night, and I don't know what he's taken." He threw the plastic bag at Zexion.

Zexion caught it. He stared at the knots that Saïx had tied in the handles for a minute before finally deciding to resort to tearing the bag open. He ignored the sight of the Tylenol and instead removed the smaller bottles from the bag, examining their contents.

"These are… painkillers?" he asked.

Saïx nodded.

"Help me get him up. We can interrogate him once we get him in there." Zexion curled the bag of medications under his arm and walked over to where Axel lay on the floor. Together, the two of them lifted him from the floor and brought him into the infirmary, where they could lay him down on one of the beds.

At first they stood around him and watched him, but when he didn't stir at all, Zexion and Saïx moved away from Axel, and Zexion pulled one of the curtains around the bed so that any random passersby wouldn't immediately see him if they walked in.

"Are you sure this isn't a job for Vexen?" Saïx asked warily.

"I don't know yet," Zexion admitted.

He leaned against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest, while Saïx crossed the room and sat in a chair a few feet away from Axel. Minutes passed in silence. No one stirred, and no one entered the infirmary. After a while, Zexion turned to a desk in the corner and opened one of the drawers, sifting through its contents.

"Saïx," he finally called across the room.

"Yes?"

"Go across the hall and get me some water—please."

Saïx left the room without a word. The only sound in the room was that of the door closing.

Zexion pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose. Just as he had closed his eyes, he heard the sound of someone stirring against sheets just across the room, accompanied by a few acute curses. He pushed his desk chair aside and moved through the room in only a couple of strides.

He pulled the curtain back and found Axel sitting up straight, his hair sticking out at even worse angles than usual, his face drained of color and coated in a sheen of sweat. He had clenched his hands into fists, around the pristine white sheets draped over him.

"You're alive," Zexion observed.

"Tell Saïx thanks," Axel spat.

"Damn straight I will. If he hadn't brought you here, you would be dying in your dorm room right now."

"Dammit," Axel moaned, leaning back against the bed frame, "why does this dorm even have an infirmary?"

"Clearly it's because of people like you," Saïx's voice said. Zexion looked up and saw him entering through the infirmary's door, a glass of water in his hand. He set it down on the table beside Axel hard enough that water sloshed over the edge. "If you could just keep those goddamned pills out of your mouth, you wouldn't be here."

"You interrupted me," Axel returned. "That's the problem. If you hadn't come in until eight, I could have gotten the last dose over with, and then I wouldn't be all anxious and shaking like I just got electrocuted."

"Right," Saïx answered. "Instead you would be completely unconscious, on the floor of your dorm room, as if you had gone into a coma."

"Comas are much more fun," Axel informed him.

Saïx shook his head. "If it's that bad, you might as well just dig yourself a grave and sleep there every night."

Axel raised a hand and casually flipped him off.

A/N: So I'm aware that what I'm writing about is an actual issue, but in putting it into a fanfiction... I feel like I changed the dynamics of its seriousness. It didn't happen on purpose... but there it is.

If you, therefore, have anything to comment about what I write, whether that's positive or negative, I would not be opposed to hearing it. This isn't my normal genre, and so any feedback is appreciated, even if you just want to tell me that I'm way off track. TRUST ME, I WANNA KNOW.

Okay, so with that said, this is it. I'm warning you now, this story will contain continuous references to substance abuse, language, Akushi, and Zemyx (I've never written them before, so that's another warning in itself).

That's all for now. See you in the next chapter...