Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts.
Author's Notes: …Meh. On with the story.
Head Over Heels
- Naminé and Roxas -
- My new adorably favorite couple –
By: Eme XD
It was the end of summer, and I had absolutely nothing to show for it.
I slipped passed the seniors making a human-road-block in the middle of the hallway, and let my feet carry me to my locker. It took me a few minutes to remember the combination, but eventually I just led my hand across the lock and let my fingers do the thinking.
Every one else had come back from Summer with a new relationship, or new check on the record of How-Far-You've-Gone, or even, at least, a brown coat of tan on their shoulders.
Me? No, not even a little bit of brown. I hadn't been to the beach, (My pale skin would fry,) and I definitely hadn't been on vacation. (My parents blew any extra money on paintings.)
I hadn't even had a sweet, blue raspberry snow cone that I saw everyone carrying around downtown. (I'm diabetic.)
In fact, the only significant thing that happened to me was the worst possible thing that could occur. I met Roxas.
My parents were at THE Summer Gala, and everything was going well. I had ignored the party and all the socialites in favor of kicking off my uncomfortable heels, sitting outside, and drawing in the balmy night. That is, it was going well until my parents called me in to meet "their absolute FABULOUS friends."
Ugh. And that's when I first realized that it was going to be a bad, bad year. Their "fabulous" friends had a even more "fabulous" son; A boy that would be attending my school. Adding insult to injury, the only reason he was going was because I was there.
"An instant friend, Roxas!" They had said warmly, the man putting a hand on his son's spiky blonde head. Roxas had given me a devious grin; It was almost like some one scraping their nails across a chalk board, with even worse effects.
Very soon after I realized I was right. He had run over (intentionally!) the drawings I had left on the floor outside with his skateboard.
I slammed the metal locker shut and traipsed off to my first, and favorite, class; Art.
Sure, it smelled a little bit too much like turpentine for my taste, and most of the kids were just there for the easy A, but it was a place where I could draw in class and not get in trouble.
Art was a sweet beginning to a bitter ending: The rest of the school day, minus lunch. However, I got a sour taste in my mouth as soon as I stepped into 3D modeling that foggy morning.
Roxas.
He was sitting behind my normal spot, right next to the mirror and the bright lamp.
I suddenly recognized the malicious taste in my mouth; Bile.
"Hey Nuhmeen." He said, purposely mispronouncing my name.
My mouth drew itself into a straight line, and I sighed the tiniest sigh and walked to my seat.
"How was your Summer, Nuhmeen? Try to kill yourself?" He had once walked in on me sliding a knife across my skin and had named me 'suicidal' ever since. It had been a one time thing, (Let's just say I hadn't been my best at that time) but he wouldn't let me live it down.
"A shame it didn't work out…" He said, poking my head.
"It's Naminé." I said curtly, the words breezing past my lips quietly.
"What? I can't hear you. You need to speak up Nuhmeen, or else people won't be able to understand you. Just because you look stupid doesn't mean you have to act like it." He talked to me like I was a child, who was dumb and deaf with no ankles. Okay, maybe not the ankles part.
I ignored him, grabbed a pencil and shuffled over to another desk.
However, out of the corner of my vision I could hear his intense blue eyes staring at me from underneath his blonde locks of hair.
Roxas stood in the hallway waiting for Naminé to come out of her next class. Okay, maybe he had skipped a little just to catch her.
Okay, maybe a lot.
He had done everything to try and get her attention. Everything.
And now he was resorting to this kindergarten-method. At least he got a glance, or a small sigh.
When he had first met her he had tried so hard just to get even a smile. He would grin at her whenever he saw her, but she'd give him the deer-in-the-head-lights-look and shuffle off with some lame-ass excuse. He tried to impress her by doing jumping over a bench on his skateboard but had ended up running over all the drawings she had left on the floor. He'd left her flowers that she ended up being allergic too, and chocolates, before he knew she was diabetic.
And she thought he had PLANNED those things, just to taunt her!
Pssh. Yeah right.
The bell rang, and he waited for her to appear out of Algebra. With a cue, she cautiously came from the door, but didn't notice him in the crowd. He jumped behind her, ripped off her backpack and one by one pulled the books out and threw them on the floor. She watched him almost serenely, as though this was completely natural.
What are you gonna say to me? He waited for her to speak.
She simply picked up her books, dusted them off, and continued her journey down the hallways as if he had never even done anything.
With a defeated moan, he banged his first on the wall.
"Another day, and she still doesn't know… Why God? Why can't I tell her?"
It seems that even God didn't know the answer.
It was the fourth month of school, and things hadn't gotten any better. Roxas had tripped me, yanked my hair, poked my stomach, and given me more noogies than I could count.
The more I ignored him the more he pursued me. I felt like the canary that was about to be eaten by the evil, blonde, cat.
The final bell was ringing, and the thunderous sounds of people anxiously pulling out of their desks, slinging their backpacks over their shoulders and stomping like elephants out of the room echoed past my lone figure. I was always the last one in the class because it took me a while to cram all of my pencils and old sketches that I had reconstituted into my backpack.
I felt some one moving behind me and jumped, startled. Looking around, I saw it was only Roxas.
"Jumpy today, huh?" He reclined in his chair, stretching out his arms and using them to rest his head. "You kind of look like a rabbit when you do that sorta thing. You have the teeth to match, too!"
I felt my lip curl even more over my teeth. The dentist had always said my overbite was unnoticeable… I guess not even the slightest thing could get past the great Roxas.
I decided to go with the normal tactic to deal with him. Ignore him, Run Away. I chanted the mantra in my head as I tried to slip out of the room. Ignore him, Run Away, Ignore him, Run Away, Ignore him, Run Away..
"Hey! Wait up!" He shouted after me, suddenly lunging from his chair to block the door. For a second, I simply gaped at his tall figure.
He leaned his face down to reach my level and said lowly, "Whatcha gonna do, slap me? You're too dull and weak."
Our noses were a few centimeters apart. His breath smelled like sweet spearmint. I gripped the sketchbook in my hands, feeling the lined edges crackle up against my palms.
At that moment, my quiet resolve cracked, and I shot him the worst, poisonous death glare I could muster before trying to sidestep him and pass under his arm.
His reflexes were just too fast, and he caught me as I made my escape, pulling his arms around me. I squirmed out of his grasp and tried to progress through the now empty hallway. He yanked on my sketchbook, but I protested, and gripped it even harder. With a flutter, about 40 sketches floated to the ground all around us. I stared at the now destroyed sketch-book in my hands in a sort of stupor. It was unbelievable. He was unbelievable.
Hot tears filled with frustration gathered themselves in my eyes, and dripped down my cheeks and chin and landing on the papers with a gentle tap, tap, tap. I could see the wrinkling effects on the drawings I had spent so much time on.
"You, Roxas Sekushi," I said, the venom in my voice pooling in my words, "are the biggest ASS-HOLE I've ever had the displeasure of meeting!"
I raised my hand and struck his cheek with all the pent-up anger I had held in ever since the moment I had met him.
He looked so shocked, at that very moment, his left cheek red. He raised a hand to the place where I had hit him and gave me a look of disbelief… and hurt?
"I'm not as weak as you think I am." I said strongly. I tried to believe myself. "But I guess in a way, I am. I sunk to your level."
"Na-Naminé…" He started softly, reaching a hand towards me. It was as though he was trying to piece together the words, bit by bit. I didn't let him, and slapped his hand away.
"Save it for some who cares." With that, I flung myself around and broke into a run, running and running until I found myself at my house, sobbing on the door step, my entire body exhausted.
Little did I know that the very same boy who had taunted and teased me for what seemed like too long, was still standing in the hallway where I left him, staring with disbelief and bliss at the pictures that I had abandoned. There was one theme that they revolved around:
Him.
A small smile quirked his lips. It almost made him want to cry. Almost.
The next day, I didn't go to school, and face the humiliation that I knew was waiting for me. Roxas was probably waving around the pictures I had drawn of him at a lunch table, loudly broadcasting "what a stalkerish-freak" I was.
But it really, really, wasn't like that. Really. My body always worked on its own, without me thinking. My fingers had itched for a pencil, and had drawn out his hair, and then his face, then grin and nose and blue, blue, eyes.
Oh no. Maybe I AM a stalker.
I pushed these thoughts out of my mind. Another wave of embarrassment ran through me, and I curled up in the window seat of my bedroom, looking out at the grey sky looming over my cul-de-sac.
I'm not sure how long I sat there. My butt got sore and my forehead got cold from resting on the window, but I didn't want to rise from that spot. I closed my eyes, and drifted away, half-asleep. The vibrations and sounds of rain slipping down from the heavens slowly got louder and louder. Opening my eyes to a foggy window, my eyes slowly focusing to the changing light outside, something became apparent that hadn't been there 30 minutes earlier.
A boy, tall, blonde, and completely soaked was standing in my drive way, looking up at me. He had a raincoat, but it was in his hands, for some weird reason.
My mind registered his presence. Roxas.
I sat up quickly, the oh-gawd-my-life-sucks-mantra slowly evaporating from my mind. A dark cloud of doubt soon settled in it's place. I stared down at him suspiciously. He stared right back. It went on for a while, until finally he motioned me to come down. When I didn't move an inch, he mouthed the words "please?". I could almost feel his eyebrows and mouth crinkling into a frown, his eyes pensively looking up at me.
This was weird, unknown. I wasn't good with those sorts of adjectives. In fact, I was never good with words at all.
Against my better judgment I slowly slid from my spot in the window and went for the door. As I padded down the stairs I couldn't help but think this might be the biggest mistake I had ever made. But at this point, I thought, it was a little bit too late to turn back.
I stepped out on the front porch, my bare feet slowly making their way across the cold, wet planks. I glanced tentatively at Roxas, waiting for him to move towards the porch. It seemed he had no intention. I sighed and stepped out into the rain. Because that's what Roxas did. He pulled me out of my comfort zone. I'm not sure if I loved him or hated him for it.
The icy pellets that shot down as though aimed at me made me highly aware of the fact that I was wearing simply a skimpy cotton sleep-dress that went barely below my butt. Roxas seemed to have noticed this too. He had looked down at his feet the minute he'd seen what I was garbed in.
"You weren't at school today." He said. His voice was serious, a bit deeper than usual. It caught me off guard.
"Look, about yesterday-" I started off. I didn't want him to think I was a stalker. I wanted to explain to him what I thought. Why, Why, Why?
Why?
I wanted… him to understand… I wanted him to understand me.
He cut me off before I could explain.
"Thank you."
This, of all the things he could have said, left me dumfounded. Two little words, and I was a complete… drool monkey.
Had I heard him right? Was this the Roxas that I knew? Is he pulling my leg? Who? Where? When? How? What?
So many questions that were all summed up into one word.
"…Why?"
He stared at me, as though this was obvious.
"The drawings… they were all of me…"
I scrambled around in my head trying to think up an excuse for my superior lame-ness. I spurted out the first thought that came to my brain.
"Those… those drawings… they were of Sora…" I trailed off. I couldn't even believe myself.
He looked like a fish out of water. He gaped at me, words forming on his lips but never actually becoming sounds. Suddenly, his eyes glazed over, and he looked down at his black converse, trying to recollect his thoughts. They DID look alike… but I never thought that that would have such an impact on him.
"Oh…"
Even the amazing Roxas couldn't formulate a more complicated answer. He kicked a rock underneath his feet. Suddenly, I wanted to hide under that exact stone. The one I actually lied to cover my ass actually sounded convincing. And of course, it was everything I shouldn't have said.
"I guess… I'll go now…" He sounded like his girlfriend had dumped him, his dog died, and Hilary Duff announced that she was making a second installment in the Lizzie McGuire movie.
He shoved the rain-coat at me, "I came to return them to you, but it started to rain so I… just... never mind."
I looked down at his coat, and stuffed inside were my drawings, safe and dry. A lump formed in my throat, and I looked up to thank him, he was moving in the opposite direction.
A sopping-wet figure in the distance, the boy tilted his head down, slouching even more than usual, became the absolute opposite of the Roxas I had grown accustomed to. And he was walking away. I wasn't even stopping him.
I looked at the boy that I saw so much and yet had never taken the time to understand. I watched his retreating figure, trying to see past the exterior. I watched him trip and fall in the mud. Even from the beginning I had shoved him aside as a nuisance. I didn't even give him a chance.
Sweet, gullible, unguarded, immature, and completely and utterly… head over heels.
And finally, I saw. I saw the boy that was stumbling down my street. It's a confusing neighborhood. I thought. He'd probably get lost. He'll need directions if he ever wants to make it home. I pondered this for a moment. I saw him turn into a dead end. Yeah… probably.
I let the drawings drop to the ground, soaking into the wet pavement and become mush in the concrete.
I was long gone, by then, running with all of my might towards the figure that was looking confused in the middle of the road.
The rain was clearing, the sun parting the darkness like a single arrow of fire, and yet, I felt a dark cloud still hovering over me, filled to the brim with the question that I had always shrugged aside.
Why are you always running away?
I felt my bare soles pounding against the pavement. I felt my heart beat faster as I thought of the consequences of what I was about to do. I felt the stitch in my side. I felt my voice call out his name, and him turn around to look at me with surprise.
However, all my senses went blank when I pressed my lips to his.
With him, maybe I could find the answer to my question.
In fact, I had a hunch that he was it all along.
Author's Note: Badabing Badabam, it's done! This was longer than I intended.. it was just gonna be a little drabble.. maybe 2 or 3 pages.. but it kinda bloated and took up an hour of my life. Bleh. Review please! XD
