When Axel had picked out his science elective, his immediate choice had been chemistry, thinking maybe he'd get his hands on some potentially hazardous chemicals and let Riku figure out all of that equations bullshit. Fifteen minutes in, he discovered that most of the stuff in the beakers just smelled really bad and weren't likely to explode, the chem labs were designed to be flame retardant, and Riku expected Axel to do just as much work as he did. The fucker.

In a word, fifth period chemistry was boring. Sure, he'd memorized the fucking periodic table, knew what each set of letters represented, but ask him to apply them to anything, convert them or whatever, and Axel was screwed. He'd go in expecting to pass each test, thinking he finally understood what the hell was going on, and instead ended up failing miserably. And now, yeah, he was flunking out of chemistry. It didn't bother him all that much, but now he had to spend two hours writing down gibberish for the rest of the trimester until he could switch out into marine biology; at least that way he and Sora would be able to slice open a dogfish and maybe try to get people to kiss it, hold up its brain and call it the flux capacitor.

So while he waited for the remaining two months to crawl by, Axel trudged up to the work station he shared with Riku, both of them whipping out hair ties like a weapon of choice and pulling their hair back from the Bunsen burners, and then he found ways to amuse himself while Riku figured out what the hell they were supposed to do with the materials laid out and ready. He picked up one of the beakers filled with shit that always seemed to smell like sulfur, no matter what was in them, shook it a little and cocked his head toward his friend. "Is this flammable?" he asked, just loud enough to draw a few laughs from some other students, as well as the predictable nervous glance Mr. Wallace flashed at the nearby fire extinguisher.

Riku hardly even glanced up from where he was scribbling out some equation on his worksheet, dorky safety goggles pushed up and holding a few stray wisps of hair away from his eyes. "Dude." He reached out, still writing out something with the other hand, grabbed the beaker and set it back down as far away from the burner as possible. "Have you even come up with a hypothesis yet?"

Axel rolled his eyes and leaned against the counter, kicking his heel back against the cabinets under the sink they shared with station six. No, he hadn't written a damn thing down on his worksheet other than his name and the date, and when he finally did jot something down, he'd probably throw in lyrics from the Monkees's theme song every here and there to see if Mr. Wallace's teacher's assistant was really paying attention when he graded papers. I mean, yeah, he knew that whatever they were doing was going to make the flame burn green, and he knew why, but he didn't know how to put it down on paper. So instead of spending all of his time and energy writing boring responses that made him sound cave-mannish with redundancy and a simple-mindedness he hated feeling, he twirled his pencil over his thumb and cleared his throat, speaking out clearly over the murmurs and clankings of a working classroom to address the student occupying the space next to theirs. "Hey, Demyx, can I use your hair for our chemical reactions project next week?"

Demyx promptly looked up from his counter space, eyed Mr. Wallace carefully as he helped another pair of students on the other side of the room, then flipped Axel the bird when he was sure that the teacher's back would remain turned to them. Axel merely cocked an eyebrow and smirked at him as he cupped his crotch with his free hand, thrust into it once, just enough to tease Demyx's "daring" gesture and one-up him with one of his own. Demyx grinned and waved him off, mouthing "fucker" before going back to setting up his burner, tilting his fire-hazard of a hair-style closer for a second before he straightened again and started a flame.

Axel laughed at the tease and, temporarily placated with some snark, turned to face his worksheet, still crisp and bright with a lack of pencil smudges. He stared at the questions for a little while, started to feel that niggling sense of incompetence creeping its way back into his psyche, and then all of a sudden Riku's worksheet swished across the countertop, a hand pushing it so it settled just to the right of his own. Axel looked up at Riku, words on the tip of his tongue, settling for a grin at the sight his friend made with bulky goggles in place over his eyes and a wry, "What about carrying my own weight?" Tapped his fingers against his paper, teeth bared in something that was almost defensive, I could do this if I wanted to .

"You focus on not making that explode, I'll take care of the boring stuff," Riku offered, rolling up his sleeves. "You set anything of mine on fire, it won't just be Roxas you'll have to worry about freezing your underwear." He waved at the directions on the board before crossing his arms at his chest. "Burn, baby," he mocked, mimicking Axel's drawl.

All defensive posturing was washed away by the recollection that Riku was actually his friend, that reassurance enough to remind him that it didn't really matter to him if he failed chemistry. There was no "thanks, man" or any other flowery term of endearment, just a lazy, "You look damn sexy with those bug eyes," and a flick to Riku's goggles before he cranked up the gas on the burner just enough to get Mr. Wallace to try to pull off a surreptitious maneuver that got him closer to that beloved fire extinguisher. Okay, so he'd probably still switch out for marine bio next tri, but hey, watching Wallace's shifty dance certainly helped the time pass.