Chapter One:
The red numbers on the alarm clock blinked brightly in the dark room. Roxas turned over and opened his eyes blearily. The numbers on his clock read 6:33 a.m. He shut his eyes again and tried to fall back asleep. Just as he did so though, he heard the doorknob turn and a figure bounded in, yelling.
"Oi! Roxas! Get up or we'll be late, and I'm not gonna be late again because of you!" Roxas moaned and turned over, pulling the covers tighter around him, trying to ignore the sing-song voice reverberating around his room. The figure leaped onto the bed, very much to Roxas's discomfort, and pulled the covers off of him, exposing his pajama clad body to the cold room.
"Ugh, Sora, you prat, lemme sleep five more minutes," Roxas mumbled into his pillow, attempting to pull back the sheets from Sora's grip.
"That's what you said yesterday and I was 15 minutes late," said Sora, still avoiding giving into to Roxas's attempts at taking back the covers.
Roxas finally sat up, frustrated, and said, "Oh, of course, you wouldn't want to be late, late to snogging a certain someone?" He smirked at the pink blush creeping up his brother's face.
"Shut up! You just wish you had someone like Riku to meet up with at school," said Sora, sticking his tongue out at Roxas and jumping off the bed. Roxas ignored his last remark and stuck his tongue childishly back at Sora, and then fell lightly back onto the mattress.
Roxas lay on his bed for another moment before finally getting up and trudging into the bathroom.
By the time he got downstairs, after taking a quick shower and a change of clothes, Sora was sitting at the kitchen table gulping down a bowl of cereal.
Roxas didn't feel much like eating; so instead, he sat down at the little round table next to Sora and pulled a page of the newspaper towards him, perusing it uninterestingly.
Sora finished his breakfast and glanced at the large clock above the stove. It told him they had about 20 minutes until school started. Good, just enough time to meet Riku.
They left the house and got into the little white car at 7:05. Roxas was still half-asleep, which unnerved Sora slightly since he was the one driving, but he trusted him enough not to run them off the road.
Once they got to school, Sora immediately jumped out of the car, his spikey brown hair blowing in the breeze as he ran up the steps of the high school. Roxas watched him, from still inside of the car, run up to a tall boy with shoulder length silvery hair and throw his arms around him.
Roxas watched them for a few moments before stepping out of the car himself and heading up to the school.
"Don't be late to first class," Roxas said, lightly tapping Sora on the back with his knuckles.
"You're not one to talk," Sora said, turning and grinning, his arms still locked around Riku's neck.
"Don't worry, I'll get him to class on time," Riku said winking, and looking down at Roxas, his arms wrapped tightly around Sora's waist. Roxas nodded and set off to his own first class, leaving them to each other.
His day went as usual, nothing out of the ordinary. Boring teachers teaching boring things in boring classes. He managed to get a couple minutes sleep in Geometry, but was abruptly awoken when his teacher had thrown a question at him.
Nothing unusual happened until science class, his last bell.
Roxas walked inside of the classroom labeled Physics, lined with multiple two-seated tables and a teacher's desk at the front. He didn't even bother looking at the chalkboard to see what they were doing that day. He set his bag down next to his chair, sat down, and laid his head on the cool black slate table, closing his eyes.
The rest of the class settled noisily into their seats and then fell silent as the teacher stepped in front.
"Before we begin today, I'd like to introduce a new student," said the teacher. Roxas looked up and, having had his head on the table, hadn't noticed a boy standing in the shadows next to the old fashioned T.V.
He was very tall and thin with fiery spikey red, wild, hair, and two upside-down black triangles that looked as if they were tattoos, inked onto his pale face right below two bright emerald eyes. He was wearing a pair of ripped blue jeans and a black sip-up jacket with the roman numerals XIII written on it in light gray.
Roxas wondered how someone so odd looking could wear something so normal, but that thought was quickly pushed to the back of his mind as the boy's eyes suddenly looked up and locked with his own. Blue met green, and Roxas felt like the boy could see right through him, and as they continued to look at each other, he thought that the boy was perhaps smiling behind his unemotional face.
Roxas blushed and quickly looked away, choosing to instead inspect the graffiti on the side of the desk. The other boy's gaze had been very intriguing, yet so that it was nearly impossible for him to hold it.
"Would you like to introduce yourself?" asked the teacher, looking slightly wary as she eyes his spikey hair.
"Yo, I'm Axel, A-X-E-L," he put his hand up to show recognition and then shoved it back into the pocket of his jacket, his eyes still wandering every so often back to Roxas's blonde head, which was still bend down so their eyes couldn't meet again.
The class murmured a hello then went quiet again, all of their eyes watching Axel.
"Alright then, Axel, you can sit next to," the teacher's eyes scanned the row of tables, most of which were full of students except, "Roxas," she said and pointed to the seat next to Roxas.
Roxas went pale as he heard her say his name. He looked up and his heart started to beat faster at the sight of the approaching boy. Axel sat down and set his bag down beside him, Roxas was very aware of the proximity of them but tried to ignore it.
The class was now over the apparent intriguing new student and was whispering to each other as the teacher started to write down notes onto the chalkboard, something to do with how much weight would need to be attached to pulley x to get weight y up incline z.
He didn't understand why he was getting so flustered at the appearance of this boy. He was just some weird kid with spikey hair and tattoos on his face, and creamy white skin Roxas had the urge to reach out and touch, wait…what? Roxas shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. They got new students coming all the time to his high school, why was this one so much different? But suddenly he heard a low husky voice next to him pull him out of his reverie.
"Hey, do you have a pencil I can borrow?" Roxas jumped and turned to see that it was Axel who had spoken.
"Oh, um, yeah hold on," he dug in his bag until he pulled out his pencil case. He was so nervous that he accidentally dropped the pencil as he tried to hand it to him.
"Oops," he said, embarrassed. He bent down to pick it up off the floor just at he same time as Axel did, and their heads banged together.
"Ow," Roxas said, rubbing his forehead, which throbbed painfully. He looked over at Axel who was doing the same.
"Sorry about that," said Roxas rather sheepishly, blushing again. And to his surprise Axel smiled and said, "No problem, thanks for the pencil."
Roxas couldn't concentrate the rest of the class, and was relieve when he heard the bell ring, signaling the end of the day.
"See you around, Roxas," said Axel, grinning back at Roxas as he walked out of the doorway and down the hall, now flooding with other students.
"Y-yeah," Roxas stuttered as he watched Axel's retreating back, wondering what in the world was happening to him.
