A/N: OH HAI GAIZ, I HAZ UPDAETD!
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A loud burst of techno hit Roxas over the head (in a metaphorical sense) as the digital numbers changed from 5:59 to 6:00, and the blonde let out a muffled groan. Said groan was muffled due to the pillow he shoved his face into in an effort to avoid the music currently attacking him with a hammer. Of the sledge variety. All of a sudden he really regretted not following Cloud's advice—the older blonde had suggested that he start getting up earlier in the last few weeks of summer. Roxas had quite effectively managed to ignore this advice and continue to sleep in until ten at the very earliest.
Yup, he was regretting that right about now. His radio was still blasting, and as he fumbled around on his nightstand his door opened with an ominous squeak (assuming that an ominous squeak is even within the realm of possibility, of course).
"You're not going to find your clock there, you know." Cloud said quietly before flipping the switch that turned on Roxas' overhead light; he then walked off silently.
Roxas pulled another pillow over his head in a vain attempt to block out all visual & aural stimuli, his hand still roving frantically over the wooden surface. When its owner finally realized that the source of noise was, indeed, somewhere other than the table, the hand slumped dejectedly onto the table with an odd thumping noise. It took some pretty mad skills for a hand to do anything dejectedly—but then, Roxas was just one of those teenage boys who did indeed possess such mad skills.
Despite the mad skills of our dear main character, he was completely unable to muster the willpower to rouse himself. In this situation, there are many possible outcomes. Some guardians (generally the 'gentle' and 'caring' type) would let Roxas sleep in, then wait for him to wake up on his own and greet him with a plate of warm waffles as he stumbled out to the kitchen in his pajamas. Some guardians (the 'don't care' type) would leave well enough alone, go to work, and let Roxas do whatever the hell he wanted for the day. Still another type of guardian (the 'this is what's best for you' type) would most likely rip the sheets off the bed and stick a bowl of cold cereal in front of the blonde, then throw him into the car and take him to school.
Cloud took a bottle of ice water from the fridge and poured it on the small of Roxas' back.
The resulting girlish scream was heard throughout the entire apartment complex; it woke many of the neighbours and resulted in several angry phone calls from those who enjoyed their morning tea in their mugs and not in their laps.
- -
Roxas practically fell into his Chem class as the bell rang, really wishing he had tea, coffee, Coke—anything with that glorious substance known as caffeine in it, for Chrissakes.
Just as he had the day before, Roxas stumbled and stuttered his way through most of the class; he wasn't able to understand the questions being asked, much less present an acceptable answer. Of course, this situation was exacerbated by his lack of consciousness, but he couldn't really do anything about that. He didn't even have his crazy redhead of a tablemate—admittedly, Axel knew his shit (and was happy to surreptitiously get Roxas the answer when he needed it). Roxas almost found himself missing the redhead, in an absurd sort of way.
Until Axel himself swaggered into the classroom with a smug grin and a can of Mountain Dew. Then Roxas settled back in his seat with a dark look on his face.
"Axel." Leonhart turned from the board, his expression boding no good fortune for the student who arrived neither late nor groveling.
"Leonhart." Axel said, mimicking Leonhart's tone.
Leonhart merely started silently, then picked up a set of papers. "Late as you are, can you tell me the number of half-filled orbitals in an atom of chromium?"
Axel merely sipped his Mountain Dew in a most impertinent manner.
"I thought not." Leonhart's voice betrayed the slightest triumph as he turned back to his chalkboard. "Take a seat."
Axel began to walk back to his seat, trading glances with a few choice classmates as he did so. "Six," the redhead proclaimed casually as he slid into his seat "Hello, Roxas. Buttsex?"
Roxas, jolted out of his exhaustion-induced reverie, uttered a rather insanely high-pitched noise. "WHAT?!"
"Just checking to see if you were actually awake or not. Mountain Dew, my sleeping beauty?"
Roxas grumbled something inaudibly as he accepted the can Axel pulled from his messenger bag; both boys were completely ignoring Leonhart's ban of food and drink in the lab (Roxas had forgotten, while Axel simply didn't care).
"Y'know, you owe me for that now." Axel commented just as Roxas took his first sip of soda.
Roxas sputtered angrily, managing to spew said first sip all over the table. "What the hell do you mean by that?"
"Can't say that I know." Axel said innocently, a rather devilish smile playing over his lips.
Roxas ignored him, simply taking another sip. He checked the clock, then began to pack up his things. Axel gave him a rather strange glance, but Roxas kept ignoring the junior.
"Uh, Roxas?" Axel said, a quizzical expression appearing on his face. "What are you doing?"
"Packing up. Clearly."
The redhead laughed, then shook his head. "God, you're cute. It's Wednesday, blondie."
"So?"
"So we don't get out until 9. Double period blocks. Third period goes until 10:35, and fifth until… I want to say twelve something. Probably 12:10. Then we have lunch, then 7th period goes until 2.30. It's Wednesday."
Leonhart barely glanced to the back of the room as Roxas' head collided violently with his desk—Axel's tablemates generally ended up that way.
For once, it had less to do with Axel than he thought. Roxas had just realized that he had Leonhart, Norrington, Sparrow, and Setzer. All in the same damn day.
Roxas was really thinking it couldn't get any worse when Xigbar skipped into the room with a basket of daisies and began strewing them around… while beatboxing.
- -
Roxas stumbled out of Chemistry sneezing and with tears streaming from his eyes—he really, really hated his allergies, and daisies definitely aggravated them. Surprisingly enough, he managed to make it to Norrington's classroom without dying.
Sort of.
A mad blur of blonde attacked him in the hall, nearly knocking him over with an enthusiastic embrace. Roxas still couldn't see anything, but from the insane squeal that accompanied the hug Roxas deduced that it might possibly be Demyx.
"Roxas!" The blonde exclaimed, hugging him again. "Thank god I found you! Norrington's giving a pop quiz today and I wasn't paying any attention to what we did yesterday. How do you do geometric proofs?"
Roxas stuttered a bit at the idea of a pop quiz on the second day of the year, but was getting out his notes as the bell rang.
"Never mind, I'll fail it as always!" Demyx said happily, then darted into the classroom and took a seat. Roxas stepped in gingerly, then realized that Norrington wasn't in there and hastily took a seat.
"It's not a real quiz." Larxene proclaimed to the room. Roxas turned around in his seat and looked confusedly at her. "I've taken it twice already, blondie."
"You're blonder than I am!" Roxas retorted indignantly. "What do you mean, it isn't a real quiz?"
"You'll see." Larxene said, a smirk rapidly appearing on her face. "And I just picked it up from Axel; blame him."
Norrington strode into the room, a sheaf of papers in his hands. "Class, a pop quiz. Put everything on your desks away other than a pen."
"What about pencils?" inquired a student from the back of the class.
The professor merely glared in response, then turned. "Mistakes are unacceptable and will not be permitted within my class. All work is to be done in pen; if any mistakes are made, you must start over at the beginning and re-copy your answer."
Roxas blanched. He did his best when he could work and re-work through a problem—this usually resulted in eraser shavings all over his desk and those of his neighbours. Clearly this wasn't going to work in Norrington's class.
Norrington raised a hand for silence, and the few students who had dared whisper to a friend ceased immediately. "You have until the end of class. Begin."
Question One, Roxas read to himself. How do you put a giraffe in a refrigerator?
- -
It was all very strange, Roxas realized as he walked to French: he felt rather as if he'd fallen down the rabbit hole and ended up in Wonderland. Roxas in Wonderland. He smiled in spite of himself, then opened the door to room 904.
It was complete chaos. Nearly every book was turned on its side, upside down, or dropped on its spine; pages seemed to be randomly torn from textbooks and strewn about the room. The teacher was sitting in the midst of the chaos mumbling to himself as he flipped through the last intact book.
"Mr. Sparrow?" Roxas said, cautiously stepping into the room. "Are you…"
"Out!" the dreadlocked man said, then turned back to his book. "No one can find it unless they know where it is… and if they've forgotten…"
"Is everything…"
"BARBOSSA!" Sparrow screamed. "That bastard stole my rum!"
« Excusez-moi, professeur ? » Riku asked, standing in the open door behind Roxas.
"Don't talk that pansy language at me, boy! Fetch me some rum!"
Riku stood stupidly in the door, then ventured a glance at Roxas. "Do you…"
Roxas just smiled meanly. He wasn't about to give Riku any help after the way the silver-haired boy had acted yesterday. It might have been just a little bit mean-spirited, but Roxas didn't feel too bad.
"Here's your rum, Captain," Yuffie said as she slipped between the two boys. "And I'd like to suggest that we have a quick field trip to the courtyard for today's class."
"Not without my personal effects," Sparrow got to his feet and grabbed a crumpled hat off the desk, then looked around confusedly for his sword.
"Right here." Yuffie said, brandishing what looked like a fairly ancient sword. "And your pistol is underneath the third stack of books from the right."
"Very well then." Sparrow stumbled drunkenly to the door. "A wedding! I love weddings!"
"No one's getting married, Captain." Yuffie said as she propped him up on the doorframe. "Unless Roxas and Riku have kissed and made up…"
"No!" Both boys half-yelled the denial, and Yuffie smirked at them. "Thought not."
"Very well then. Drinks all 'round!"
- -
As Yuffie had planned, the rest of the class was spent in the courtyard under the trees or on the benches; no actual French was in any way learned, spoken, or even thought about during the class. Except for Riku, and, really, Roxas tried not to think about him too much.
Roxas had mainly kept to himself as they were outside, though Yuffie had come over and talked with him for part of it. She spent most of the class mollifying their crazy teacher: he seemed to have an endless capacity for drinking rum in copious quantities, though somehow Yuffie had managed to get him to branch out into vodka. How Yuffie (an underage minor whose license had been revoked) had been getting all of the liquor on school grounds no one knew—but then, no one really wanted to know either. She was taking bribes to bring more in for lunch, but Roxas didn't bother. He knew Axel and Larxene would probably already have had plenty by lunch; they didn't need any more.
On the subject of lunch, he was starting to get hungry. He would have asked someone when lunch started, but… he was curled up in the sun using his backpack as a pillow, and he really didn't feel like moving. He'd forgotten how much he loved being in the sunshine. Cloud had signed him up for volunteer hours and a job all of the last summer, and almost everything he'd done had been inside.
A shadow fell over his face. "Bit late to be working on your tan, blondie. Summer's come and gone." There was no mistaking Axel's voice, nor the shadow he cast as Roxas opened his eyes.
"I woke up at six this morning. Piss off." Roxas groaned, batting a hand at Axel's leg and then closing his eyes again. He was duly rewarded when his sunny spot returned, though his happiness at that was quickly mitigated by Axel lying down next to him.
"Scoot over a little, would ya?"
Roxas rolled his eyes, but since they were still closed, no one noticed. "Use your own backpack."
"I left it in my locker. C'mon, just scoot over a little bit."
Roxas moved a scant inch.
"Fine then. Lift up your head for a second, would ya?" This time Roxas complied, then tensed up as Axel's arm snaked underneath his neck. "Much better."
The blonde would have protested normally, but he was too damn tired to argue and just settled back onto Axel's shoulder. It was nice, sort of. In a kind of weird, cuddly way. Axel's shoulder was pretty bony, but it didn't really matter. Roxas closed his eyes again and did something that was very close to snuggling up to the older boy, though he would never admit it.
It was then, of course, that he heard Yuffie whispering ferociously at someone, saying something about putting the damn camera away. Roxas sat bolt upright with a look of shock on his face; said look was of course captured by no one other than Riku.
The bastard.
- -
Roxas ate lunch in the courtyard with Axel, Demyx, and Larxene—the only members of the Organization who had second lunch on Wednesdays—and spent more time laughing than he cared to admit, considering how much he hated them when he thought about it. Demyx was surprisingly easy to talk to, especially if you could get him to shut up for more than a minute. Larxene was her usual condescending self, but she was actually very interesting if you ignored all of the subtle digs. And Axel was… pretty cool. Apparently he was really into art, and Roxas found out that most of the time Axel's arms were covered in notes on what would become his next piece.
As lunch was coming to an end, Roxas realized that he should probably duck. Unfortunately for him, he realized this just a tad too late, and was tackled by a squealing blonde for the second—or was it the third?—time that day. It didn't matter that Demyx had spent the whole period eating lunch with Roxas; he was still just as exuberant as always.
"PE, PE, PE! We're going to PEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" Demyx sang at the top of his lungs.
Roxas followed after the crazy blonde, casting a desperate glance at Larxene and Axel, both of whom were following behind. He'd realized yesterday that if you were getting towed around by Demyx, everyone either gave you odd looks or jealous looks. Most of the jealous looks came from girls, though there were definitely a few guys eyeing Roxas' place enviously.
"Why do you like PE so much, anyway?" Roxas yelled over the chaos of the hall. Demyx didn't seem to hear him, so he gave up until they reached the locker room. They were actually on time, which Roxas thought was rather nice.
Until the bell rang. Then Roxas realized that the locker room echoed. Badly. Demyx had already plugged his ears, but Roxas hadn't even thought of that until after they stopped. His ears were still ringing as the rest of the class got there, and he didn't even hear Axel at first.
"…said, are you used to him yet?"
"No, not at all."
Roxas changed in silence while Axel and Demyx continued a talk from the lunch period—he wasn't even paying attention to what was going on around him. This day had been fully exhausting.
Once they got out to the gym, the majority of the Organization was skipping, so it was just Zexion (who had never missed a class in his life, nor participated in PE), Demyx , Axel, Larxene, Marluxia, and Roxas. Marluxia spent the majority of the period attempting to lighten his hair colour in the girls' bathroom (because apparently hot hot pink was just too hot), Axel, Demyx, and Larxene had a lovely conversation about… well, something. Roxas didn't know, because Roxas was fully exhausted by his fully exhausting day.
And fell asleep until the last bell of the day.
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A/N: Epic tired. Epic fail. Epic gragh.
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