This is my first attempt to write a Kingdom Hearts story, and my first attempt at writing after months of inspiration abandoning me. I don't have any idea where it came from, but I enjoyed writing it. Not perfectly happy with it, but when is any writer?
AU. Rated F for friendship.
Disclaimer- I don't own Kingdom Hearts. If I did, I wouldn't be a starving college student.
If there was one thing in the world that Roxas hated, it was his name. Roxas. Roxas. Roxas.
It was all his parent's fault, really . Specifically his mom's. She just had to demand that she not have an ultrasound. She didn't want to see her child until it was out of her womb, and she steadfastly held on to that thought process throughout her pregnancy. His father, ever the calm one, agreed with her decision. They came up with the absolute perfect name, regardless of whether the baby was male or female- Sora. The room was painted in a gender-neutral color of light purple, with a purple cradle and toys compromising the spectrum of the rainbow.
What they hadn't been expecting were twins. 'Or, more adequately, they weren't expecting me'.
Sora came first, as Roxas had heard the story retold exuberantly by his mom, her blue eyes glinting in a mysterious way. With her blond hair and their father's black hair, it was no surprise that Sora came out with brown hair and eyes bluer than the sky. But she wasn't nearly done with labor yet.
Roxas had came out an hour or so afterwards. He was mom's 'little surprise'. He popped out of the womb with black hair and soft brown eyes. He might have even appeared Japanese if he had just managed to have black eyes. But any hopes to blend in with their father's people disappeared when she finally decided on a name for him. Roxas.
Oh sure, when he was a young kid, he thought it was the coolest name in the world. Only his mom, dad and brother could actually pronounce his name correctly. Roxas. Rock-sas. His name.
The problem really started when he went into elementary school and started learning his letters. Sora's name used only two letters, and they used the easy hiragana letters. So. Ra. It was so easy, Roxas could write it in his sleep. But his own name? Four letters, and they used katakana. Katakana wasn't nearly as pretty or as fluid as hiragana was, and they distorted the way his name was supposed to sound. Ro-ku-sa-su. He hated the way that none of the Japanese could ever pronounce his name. And it never got easier, not even through middle school.
He could remember the exact date that he decided that he didn't even want to try to fit in with society. He didn't want to be one of the Japanese salarymen or factory workers; he didn't want to belong to some after school club, he didn't want to join in with the fake society they lived in. It was two days before high school entrance exams.
Roxas had gone into his room with a bleaching kit, a pair of scissors, hair gel and colored contacts. He left his room with most of his clothes shredded, his hair spiky blonde and icy blue eyes. And nobody batted an eyelash.
A few months later, he and Sora arrived to the first day at their new high school. Roxas had originally planned to just skip straight to the work force, but enough of Sora's puppy dog eyes that really should not still be able to affect him at age 15 convinced him otherwise.
Sunset High School was an intermediate school- if you worked your ass off, you could manage to make your way into college or a good job, but it didn't automatically guarantee you a job. There was a rather lax dress code, and Roxas took advantage of it to the fullest. He added red laces to the nondescript black sneakers, he had (small) rips strategically placed on the black pants, and he left his light blue shirt untucked with the sleeves rolled up to show off his white and black checkered wristbands.
The first half of the day passed in relative peace. While he and Sora got the same weird stares they had since childhood, Roxas shrugged them off and made no move to socialize while Sora went out into the group of students and made friends. It always amazed Roxas how quickly Sora was able to integrate with the rest of the non-compromising Japanese students, but maybe it was because he fit in. His name wasn't freaky.
Around the billionth weird look he'd gotten from his fellow students, it was finally lunchtime and Sora had managed to meet up with Kairi and Riku. As much as Roxas didn't want to wander a foreign place alone, he didn't want to crash his brother's reunion, and so with a heavy sigh, Roxas set out on a quest to find a good place to eat.
His quest, after bringing him to two half-empty classrooms, a broom closet with interesting sounds coming out of it, and the flooded men's bathroom, brought him to the roof. His initial glance showed him nobody was up here, but the smell of cigarette smoke and cologne proved him wrong.
Roxas looked around on the roof until he saw a flaming red dot on the horizon. A boy with hair the color of a fire truck sat right on the edge of the building, his legs hanging over the sides. He, like Roxas, had his sleeves rolled up and had completely undone his tie, leaving it hanging unkempt around his neck. The boy had yet to turn around to face Roxas, and he let out a big poof of smoke from his cigarette.
Roxas walked slowly forward until he was just a few feet away from the strange boy. "Is this seat taken?"
The other boy didn't say a word, just gestured his cigarette-free hand for Roxas to sit down next to him. Roxas took the seat gratefully, admiring the view from the top of the building. The entirety of the school's athletic fields were visible, and Roxas could see all the way into downtown Makuhari. He could even see the route that he and Sora would be taking to get to Makuhari train station every afternoon. He let out an appreciative whistle, before bringing his attention back to the stranger next to him.
From the side, the stranger looked even weirder. His spiked hair stretched up at least 15 centimeters above his head and spread out like a porcupine, and the other boy had vivid green eyes. But the most surprising thing to Roxas was the upside-down purple tear-drop tattoos on both of the boy's upper cheeks. Even sitting down, Roxas could tell that the other boy was easily taller than Roxas. His family highly looked down on tattoos (so did most of Japan, now that he thought about it), but this boy was brave enough to show off his tattoos on his face.
Roxas wasn't sure if this was the kind of person he should associate with. He knew Sora would probably freak the hell out with just one look at the older teen, not to mention his father would have a hernia, but what would his mom say? 'Appearances are deceiving', or some shit like that. Oh what the hell, it wouldn't hurt to at least talk to the other boy.
"My name's Roxas. Me and my brother just transferred here. Who are you?"
"Roxas, huh?" The way the other boy pronounced his name was flawless. No limiting Japanese pronunciations. Just his name as it was meant to be. Roxas briefly wondered whether the other boy was American or British. "The name's Axel. Got it memorized?"
Roxas smirked. "Nope."
Axel grinned widely at Roxas, and Roxas was able to tell the other boy was just as contact-wearing and hair-dye using as Roxas. Even with just this one snippet of conversation, he was pretty sure they would get along just fine.