I've been working on this one for awhile, and it's almost finished, but I've been itching to post it to get some feedback, so I figured I'd put up one chapter a week and see what people think. The promise of timely updates? Madness! I know, but that's the goal.

Anyway, a few notes on this one. First off, this is the first story that I've written that doesn't take place in what is exactly the "game world", so I guess it's AU. I'm nervous about it, because I don't like to lose the characters in some crazy world that they don't belong. Hopefully it doesn't come across that way.

Second, and *spoiler alert*, Axel has a stutter. Being someone that knows a bit about stuttering, I tried to write so that his speech isn't too annoying or difficult to read. It's part of the story, I hope you don't hate it.

Thirdly, there is quite a bit of cursing, hence the rating. There are some mature themes in this and later chapters, such as drugs, alcohol, and potentially boy love (but nothing explicit or graphic).

If any of the above do not appeal to you, then by all means don't read this.

Still here? Awesome. Please review and I hope you enjoy.

Also, guess what? I don't own Kingdom Hearts or Square Enix.

So.

There's that awkward moment when a person comes to the realization that they've found the love of their life...but they've totally messed everything up. That gut wrenching awful that clamps somewhere around the upper intestine, making the pancreas overflow, on the verge of exploding and releasing enzymatic juices throughout the abdominal cavity. That point, where no matter how healthy and great life has been until that very second, there's an intense desire to suffer a fatal cardiac arrhythmia.

Yeah.

That's about where Axel found himself.

But let's rewind a bit.

It was a Tuesday. This is very important because the burrito place down on fifth street had half off veggie burritos on Tuesdays.

Axel was late. He didn't mean to be late, but there were many things that happened in life that he didn't really mean.

It's just that he'd had to brush his teeth twice (because it still sort of felt like there was something there), and he'd needed to redo his tie (eventually picking a different one entirely, because the other one was not cooperating), and Zexion had moved the silverware out of order again (soupspoons were incredibly different from teaspoons), and there was a smudge on the window, and one shoelace was longer than the other, and the coffee pot was crooked, and his hair was weird...

Anyway. Axel was running late.

On any other Tuesday, this may not have mattered so much, given that one needed a life in order to have places to go, and Axel didn't. Have a life that is. Except for that day, in which he was supposed to be going to a job interview.

Mission to obtain a respectable lifestyle.

Step one. Get a job that paid over minimum wage.

He was running down the hallway, towards the lobby, his long legs stretched to full capacity, his clumsy feet making a slapping noise on the tile that made him want to wince. His fire bright hair was pulled back into a somewhat professional looking ponytail, and was wearing dark rimmed glasses, that were almost thick enough to hide the scars on his cheeks, and covered his panicked green eyes. He barreled through the front doors of his apartment complex, just in time to see the bus leaving without him.

The more dramatic part of his brain wanted to crumble to the sidewalk and wallow in misery. The other part of his brain couldn't stop thinking of the bacteria on that sidewalk that would probably give him cancer, or AIDS, or scurvy, or something.

"Hey! Dumb ass! Let's go!" Axel looked up to see Demyx, that angel, waiting at the curb in a very beat up old van, the bumpers beyond rusted and the original paint color unidentifiable.

The redhead heaved a sigh of relief and sprinted over to the passenger side door, hesitating for a second, really just one second, before he heard an annoyed grumble from inside the vehicle, and finally yanked the door open, plopping himself down on the seat, buckling in.

"Thanks, Dem." Axel smiled unsteadily.

"No problemo, hombre." Demyx grinned lazily (Axel wondered briefly if he was high, but surely it was still too early for that, right?) "Where to today?"

"Uh, Oblivion Designs. It's on, um, Thirty-Second between Twilight and Traverse."

"You got it!" Demyx sped off from the curb, with no glance backwards or to his mirrors to check that he was clear. Axel's blonde mullet-hawked friend leaned forward to turn down the reggae streaming from his outdated radio, "So, you ready?"

"Y-yeah. I guess." Axel swallowed nervously, starting to wish he could have caught the bus.

"C'mon man! You have to like, pump yourself up for this shit, ya know?" Demyx quirked a pierced eyebrow at him and adopted a falsely serious voice. "So tell me, why do you deserve the job?"

Axel really wished that he didn't have to play along. "I graduated from Radiant Garden. Four point zero average." Lot of good that did me. "I interned at Kingdom Architecture for six months after my senior year." But I never gotten a job there. "I have a list of good references." Including my boss at the cinema. Gods, kill me now.

"See, dude? You've totally got this." Demyx threw him a reassuring grin as the van bounced up onto the curb outside of a tall sleek building.

"Y-yeah. Sure." Axel tried to will his feet or his hands or any part of his body to move, but nothing seemed to want to listen.

"Go, man! Your interview is in like, ten." Demyx reached across him to fling the door open and bodily shove him out, after this many years used to Axel's weird anxiety.

"OK." Axel hit the ground solidly, bounced directly back up, and started running towards the doors.

Inside, he collected himself, as best he could, and strode up to the secretary's desk, hopefully looking confident.

"Hello, my n-names Axel Lea. I'm, uh, here to see Mr. Ansem?" Damn his stutter.

The secretary glanced up at him shortly, her fingers never ceasing their clacking on the keyboard. "You can have a seat over there. Mr. Ansem is in a meeting."

"Oh. OK." Axel walked stiffly over to the offered seats, cradling his portfolio in his lap.

I won't stutter.

I won't drop anything.

I won't fall over.

I won't try to reorganize his desk.

Axel went over and over in his head all the things that he wouldn't do, that he totally hadn't done before (not).

"Mr. Lea? You can go in now." Axel started at the sound of the secretary's voice and glanced down at his watch to find that he'd been berating himself for almost five minutes. He heaved a sigh, and moved to follow the woman, hoping that maybe this time...

Loud techno pumped through his ear buds that were snaked up through the inside of his awful maroon polo that was two sizes too big for him. The black and gold baseball cap squished his hair down, and if felt like there was a sheen of grease over his entire being from when he'd had to restock concessions earlier. Axel focused on sweeping the floors of the abandoned theater, attempting to ignore the terrible feeling of failure that welled up in his chest whenever he thought of the interview.

Mr. Ansem had been nice enough, but he wouldn't be calling to offer Axel a job. The redhead could tell. He'd graduated almost two years ago now and had been to enough interviews and job fairs to know that he wasn't getting called back. Ever.

Suddenly, something grabbed Axel by the hem of his oversized uniform shirt, and he almost jumped out of his skin, all color draining from his face as he whipped around to confront his attacker.

"Whoa! It's just me Ax." Roxas. The sunshine blonde was patting his hands in the air calmingly, but his expressive blue eyes were full of humor. "Closing time. Time to go."

"Oh. R-right." Axel picked up his broom/dustpan...thingy and followed his shorter friend out of the theater into the hallway.

"So, how was you day?" Roxas smiled up at him lightly.

"Um..." I mean aside from the fact that I'm a whopping failure that's going nowhere in life and I'll never really amount to anything or get a real job, "It was OK."

"Nice." Roxas said blandly.

There was silence as they walked to the staff room, and then Axel started mentally kicking himself, realizing that usually people had two way fucking conversations. "Uh, what-what about you?"

"Me?" Roxas looked genuinely surprised that Axel had spoken up, "Huh. Nothing really, usual shit. Class, work, you know."

Axel nodded, hoping the blonde would continue, but he didn't. The thing was, Axel liked Roxas. A lot. Roxas was a senior at HBU, majoring in psychology. The younger man had always been kind to him, and Axel vaguely hoped that wasn't because the blonde thought of him as a patient or something like that.

Generally, though, great people like Roxas didn't go for neurotic-stuttering-mildly OCD-failure architect-idiots like Axel, but he still wished they could maybe be better friends, or something.

Greater emphasis on or something.

The pair were exiting the cinema together into the crisp air of early spring. Axel desperately wished he could say something intelligent and witty, but that wish never seemed to come true for him.

"Well," The blonde turned to him, a half smile still present, "See you tomorrow then?"

Axel was about to answer with one of his usual dumb, stupid things that he had trained himself to say all the time, when his eyes caught the neon 'open' sign that flashed across the street. "D-did you, uh, eat?"

"What?" Roxas looked confused, and Axel hated that his tongue couldn't even form that simple sentence.

"Uh, well, um," No, no, no,"I w-was thinking about how, um, I hadn't eaten d-dinner-dinner, and it's half off at Jungle and if you needed to eat too, you could come with me."

The last part of that sentence came out in a rush, but the redhead was proud of the fact he was able to string together a coherent thought.

"Oh..." Roxas looked slightly uncomfortable, and Axel's heart sank another few inches. He knew that,'oh'. That was the 'oh, the weirdo redhead actually wants to be friends, but I've just been talking to him to be polite and now this is super awkward' kind of oh's.

"See, the thing is..." Axel wanted to tell him it was all right, to forget it, just so he didn't have to hear some lame excuse, but was too afraid of how it would come out of his mouth if he tried. "I'm a vegetarian."

Roxas looked somewhat embarrassed, his gaze off to the side. Axel's mouth hung open in mild shock. "Yeah, I know. Guy vegetarian, real manly, right? But something about meat is just so gross and..."

"Me too." Axel blurted out, blue eyes meeting his green ones. "Th-there's veggie burritos."

"Really? Sweet." Roxas smiled again. "Lead on then, good sir. My stomach is probably going to digest itself pretty soon."

Axel grinned for the first time that day.

The redhead had practically skipped the whole way back to his apartment from his late dinner with Roxas, and if he was any more of a fruitcake, he probably would have fucking danced. It had been such a long time since he'd hung out with anyone outside of his small circle of friends and the evening had been refreshing. The best was that, to him, it almost felt like a date.

Which, of course, he knew it wasn't. Firstly, because they were still in their work uniforms. Secondly, they both paid for their own food (although Axel had thought about offering, but couldn't muster up the courage). Finally, thirdly, there was no way in hell Roxas thought of him like that.

That, however, didn't matter. What mattered was that they'd gone someplace outside of work together and Roxas had laughed, more than once, and Axel was almost certain that it was with him, not at him.

Fuck yeah!

His umpteenth failed interview was practically forgotten as he unlocked the door to his apartment that he shared with his two flat mates. As the door opened, a cloud of smoke smacked him in the face, enough to get a mild contact high, and Axel's senses were assaulted with that overly familiar smell.

Demyx and Zexion. Your friendly neighborhood potheads.

There was some blitzball on the TV, and obviously Demyx was high enough to think of himself as a sports analyst.

"Oh, hey! Ax!" The sandy blonde turned bloodshot eyes on him. "Your sister called earlier."

"Wh-what did she, uh, want?" Axel struggled with that sentence. His sister always put him a bit on edge.

"I don't know, man. Zex answered the phone." Demyx turned to his dark haired companion, who was currently staring off into space. "Yo, Zex! What did Kairi want earlier?"

"Shhh! Dude. I'm having an epiphany." Zexion waved him off, still absurdly focused on the opposite wall. "I need a fucking sandwich."

Axel chuckled to himself and decided he'd just call her in the morning to find out what she needed. Why she always decided to phone him when she knew he would be at work, was a mystery.

The redhead briefly went about his nightly rituals, before changing into some sweats and climbing onto the lumpy futon bed, the only thing big enough to accommodate his lanky frame. He listened to his friends arguing out in the living room and rolled over, tugging the covers over his head.

He smiled into his pillow thinking about Roxas and promptly fell asleep.

Boom! Chapter finished. Hope you liked it.