Roxas awoke with his phone still cradled in his hand and a dreamy smile stretched across his face. He sighed quietly, knowing it was probably afternoon, considering what time his head had hit the pillow. But honestly? He didn't care. He wasn't sure what exactly had changed last night, but Roxas felt—he didn't quite know how to put it—different. He was starting to think that maybe his mutinying body had actually known better than he did all along, which he admitted not without difficulty. The heat that burned in his cheeks, the warmth that pooled in his stomach, the way his heartbeat would race, the violent thud against his chest. He was finally feeling things and his knee-jerk reaction was to push it all away and return to the mind-numbing monotony of his day in and day out? He was an idiot.
Roxas turned to stare up at the ceiling, his thoughts stretching above him like a film reel. Not too long ago, his head plastered against the steering wheel, Roxas spurned his hollow existence. His life had been like a TV running on fast forward—a blur of lackluster events that all ran together, like watery paint dripping down a canvas into a muddled gray mess. He'd been sitting passenger side to his life, watching everything slip by with zombie-like indifference. He looked forward to the barrenness of sleep, to the tendrils of oblivion pulling him slowly into unconsciousness. At least sleep was a justifiable nothingness—unlike his own life. He had no excuse for that. It just was.
Streaks of fiery red and emerald green. The russet color of chocolate and coffee and cinnamon. The crisp white lines marking the crosswalk. The charcoal hue of the smoke that rose from the end of his cigarette. The brilliant artificial blue of sea salt ice cream. The pale blue hue of Roxas's lips moments before they were being covered with Axel's. Roxas had been too busy looking at the muddled gray mess pooling at his feet to look up at the colors running down the canvas. The murky gray mess was merely a byproduct of the masterpiece forming before him. And excuse him if that was the cheesiest string of thoughts ever to be thought by a teenage boy, but, fuck, he was having a revelation here.
He'd spent such a terribly long time feeling numb. And then he met Axel and had begun to feel all sorts of things. And he'd hated it. He'd hated the way Axel's smirk made his legs turn to gelatin and his mind go blank. He'd violently spurned the way that his voice made Roxas's heart thump so hard against his chest that he could swear it was going to wrench itself from his chest and serve itself to Axel on a silver platter. It was the confusion, the head rush, the way that Roxas's name took comfortable, familiar residence on Axel's lips. It was the feeling of heat in his cheeks, pooling in his stomach, fleeting and flush against his lips. It was the taste of cinnamon and smoke and sea salt ice cream. And, yeah, maybe he'd cursed Axel for the sleepless nights. But, God, he was tired of sleeping.
Roxas turned on his side, chewing on his lip pensively, knowing that none of these words in his head would ever make themselves known to Axel. Not like that, anyway. He didn't know how to put these things into words that made sense, especially not after he'd spent so long denying every single stray thought that might implicate him of being anything but the straight, sheltered boy he'd thought that he was. He sighed. He wasn't even completely sold on the idea that he was gay. I mean, he'd never looked at Hayner or Pence or any other guy in that way—thank God. He wasn't even sure that he liked guys. But if the smile still stretched across his face was telling of anything, it was that he could be sure of one thing. He liked Axel. And he hoped that was enough.
With a foot still in the door between wakefulness and dreamy meditations, Roxas nearly had a heart attack when the phone cradled in his hand began blaring some godawful generic ringtone. He was not proud of the fact that he still hadn't managed to change the default ringtone to something that he actually liked hearing at max volumes, but his annoyance with it was rivaled only by his laziness. He was also not proud of the terribly un-masculine yelp that sprang from his lips, but he quickly recovered by pulling the phone to his ear and answering as coolly as he could.
"Hey."
Olette's voice came through on the other end, laced with a clear sense of urgency. "Roxas, where are you? Didn't you get my text?"
"Text?" Roxas squinted confusedly, his vision unfocusing. He scrambled through his memories of the previous night. Axel. Axel. Axel. Axel. Umm. Sneaking in. Fighting with Sora—oh. He could see it pretty clearly now, as was the case with most of his royal screw-ups. Memory could be a cruel mistress. He replayed the moment carefully in his mind. The whole deleting-his-entire-inbox thing. Yeah. At the time, it had been a great exercise in self-empowerment. Maybe he should've checked to see the senders of the texts and voicemails before he deleted them, but hey, it was 6 AM and he was maybe sort of love drunk off of Axel. So sue him.
Something not entirely resembling human speech screeched across the line before Roxas realized it was Olette's noise of inherent disapproval.
"No, no, yeah I got your text. I—uh, what was it that you wanted again?"
"I told you that the gang and I wanted to go for coffee today. And I apparently mistook your signature radio silence for confirmation. Are you even out of bed?"
"Hmm? Oh, yeah, totally. Sorry I just—had to, um—" think of something, think of something, God please think of something—"tend to Sora! He's sick. Yeah. Woke up vomiting all over the place. I just need to take a quick shower and—"
"Come to my place first and we'll all carpool, alright? Hey, I think that's Pence at the door. You alright to get yourself over here in the next twenty minutes or do I need to come drag you out of there by your feet?"
He laughed, relaxing a little now that Olette's voice had resumed its normal tone.
"Probably not. I don't sleep with pants on."
"Toooo much information. Eugh. Just—get your butt in gear. Oh and Roxas? One more thing."
"Hm?"
"Naminé's coming too. Anyway, gotta go. See you soon!"
The sound of the phone clicking off was barely audible over the way his stomach leapt into his throat. He stared blankly at the ceiling. Naminé. Fuck. Take note kiddies, lying to your friends will always come back to bite you in the ass. He sighed loudly and over-dramatically, hoping to take the edge off the anxiety brewing in his nerves. It was futile. How was he possibly going to pull this off? Maybe he should just tell them about Axel and—oh. Oh no. Axel. No, this was not happening to him. Roxas fumbled for his phone, pulling up the message thread from last night with jumpy fingers. Maybe he'd just dreamed the whole making plans with Axel thing? He had been known to have rather vivid dreams of romanticism involving a certain redhead.
Can I see you tomorrow?
You bet. You know where I'll be.
Nope, not a dream. Perfect. Right when he had finally come to his senses that he liked the tall redheaded terror with that stupid, goofy, really heart melting grin, he was going to bail on him—to keep up the charade that he was dating someone else. A girl, at that. He was a terrible person. But, seriously, what else could he do? He couldn't just admit to his friends that one—he had blatantly lied to their faces, multiple times—and two—he was sort of entirely smitten with a dude. They'd never talk to him again.
He sighed miserably. He would really rather not try to debut his mediocre acting career by pretending to date a girl he barely knew. He'd much rather drive by familiar white streaks, fist his hands in familiar red streaks, and kiss the life out of someone without a trace of acting at all. But obviously he wasn't going to have his way. Roxas groaned the distressed sound of a thousand tortured teenage souls into his pillow. His fingers were itching uncomfortably to just thumb out a simple message to Axel that, hey, his brother was vomiting all over the place, so he was going to have to cancel. That would work right? He guessed. It was better than hey Axel, I gotta go pretend to date some girl. Some other time? He shook his head in spite of himself, thumbing out his signature excuse—which also happened to involve Sora being in distress, which was sort of a plus.
"Hey Axe, turns out my brother caught some kind of bug and I have to stay home and take care of him.
Raincheck?"
Roxas let out another pained groan, this time not muffling it with the pillow. He had the very distinct feeling that he was being suffocated by his own growing web of lies. He had the even worse sinking feeling that he was about to make one of the top ten worst mistakes of his life. And memory could be a really cruel mistress. Better get a good picture, because it's probably going to last awhile.
