From my Balcony - Chapter Nine
Notes: You need to know two things for this chapter. One: Demyx is a marine biology major. Two: When Roxas mentions "rolling fat" he's referring to a joke about Ursula he and Axel made while watching The Little Mermaid. That's all.
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April
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It was raining. It had rained enough since the school year started for Roxas to know the drill well enough to skip the part where he stands on his balcony waiting for Axel, but he does it anyway. He tapped his foot impatiently, umbrella in hand, waiting for Axel to come outside.
The door next to his finally opened slightly and Axel's head came out, being desperately protected by the man's arms.
"Roxas! Come over, it's raining!" he whined, and Roxas sighed in response.
"Alright, I'll be right there." There was no response, simply a closed door. Axel had probably rushed to his front door to wait for Roxas. That's what the red head had done every other time, anyway. That was why Roxas always walked very slowly to his neighbor's place on rainy days. Axel needed to be punished for being such a baby when it rained.
The door to Axel's apartment flew open before Roxas could even knock.
"Roxas! You're here! What took you so long?" Axel cried happily. Roxas couldn't suppress a small smile; the man really was not cool at all.
The apartment was empty save for them, and dark. The weather must have been making Axel feel depressed. They sat on the couch for a while discussing what they could do. Axel thought there was nothing because it was raining, so Roxas started naming off things you could do indoors to prove him wrong. Axel had begun curling his body into a ball and pleaded for Roxas to stop with no avail.
"Alright, enough already, I get it!"
"Or you could have a pillow fight, or you could wash the dishes, or you could watch a movie or-"
"Oh, we should do that!" Axel said, starting to come out of his ball.
"What? Wash the dishes?"
"No, a movie! It'd almost be like what we do all the time anyway. We could just sit here watching something and have conversations as thoughts come to us."
Roxas thought for a moment. "That is what we do, isn't it?"
"So what do you want to watch?"
"Well... what do you have?"
"To the movieshelf!" Axel exclaimed as he jumped to his feet and quickly made his way to what he called the 'movieshelf.' It was actually a rather large bookshelf filled completely with movies; there was even some left over to put in piles next to the correctly named shelf. As the man inspected the shelves in the middle, Roxas looked at the bottom shelf, pulling out a movie that looked particularly out of place in Axel's apartment.
"The Little Mermaid?" he read skeptically. Axel looked down at him and laughed.
"Oh, that? It's Demyx's. He's obsessed with fish, remember?"
"Oh, that's right. I don't think I've ever seen this."
"You haven't? Man, you're lucky Demyx hasn't made a reference to it around you, he'd kill you if he knew you hadn't seen it." The man took the movie from Roxas' hands and walked back over to where the television was.
"We're going to watch it?"
"Might as well watch it now, or you'll be watching it with a crazed fish fan later."
"… That's true. We'd better watch it now."
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"That wasn't as bad as I had imagined" Roxas said when it was apparent that the movie had reached it's final few seconds.
"Yeah, most of the other princess movies are bad, but this one is okay."
"They should put more rolling fat in the other movies, that made the whole thing worth it." Axel laughed loudly.
"Yeah, something should have tried to eat Snow White or something so the strapping young prince!" Axel struck a pose, as if he were the prince in question, "could come save her!" he said dramatically.
"Yeah, save her from becoming fat herself!" Roxas replied, clasping his hands together in a princess like pose. "…Wait, why am I pretending to be the princess?"
"Because you're the small, defenseless high school freshman, and I am the burly, good looking college student!" Axel answered, in voices that matched each description. "Who else would you be?"
"What? I have more muscle than you do," Roxas retorted.
"But I'm taller."
"That doesn't have anything to do with this."
"Oh yeah? Why don't you prove it?"
"Maybe I will!"
"I'd like to see you try!"
"Fine!"
The fact that they had kissed did not hit Roxas until they had already done it. By no means had it been short or light. It had just barely still been chaste, and had lasted a good while. Now they both stared at each other, stunned confusion evident on both their faces. As the initial surprise wore off, their faces inched closer together again and Axel's hand began reaching for Roxas' face.
"I'm home!" Came a sing-song voice from the door way as Demyx bounded into the room. "Ah! The Little Mermaid! You guys watched it without me?" he cried as Axel snickered at him over the back of the couch.
"Yeah, we wanted to make it through the whole movie without having to listen to you yak on and on about every fish you saw!"
Demyx made his way around the couch to complain to Roxas who was staring intently at the credits rolling up the screen.
"You wouldn't have minded, right Roxas? It would have been educational!" he whined.
"Uh, I guess it wouldn't have been that bad," he said slowly.
"Don't let him fool you!" Axel cut in, "He would have babbled on incoherently and you wouldn't have understood a thing. Trust me, I've been through it plenty of times before," he said, making a shooing motion at Demyx.
"I'm not that bad!" Demyx insisted. They continued to argue and Roxas watched from his seat, occasionally chiming in in Demyx's defense.
They didn't speak of the kiss again.
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Roxas' mother thought it was nice that he had kept Axel company while he had been home alone. She wasn't suspicious at all when Roxas headed straight for his room to sleep at a relatively early hour for the weekend. The blonde leaned against his closed door, slowly sinking down to sit on the floor as his fingers touched his lips lightly. He wasn't sure what to make of it.