A/N: When I was a kid, we called juice boxes – 'Poppers'. It was a common brand in Australia, back in the day.
Eight.
Roxas was sixteen years old, and the world was ending. Someone had just thrown a frozen juice box at his head and the world was flipping ending.
Well, not really, but he was halfway through his melodramatic, angsty, teenage years and he literally knew no other way to be, and the juice box now lying innocently on the concrete next to him had really, really hurt!
Just peachy. Now he'd have another suspicious bruise on his face and his mum wasn't likely to let it go so easy this time around.
Groaning lightly from the pain now radiating from the rapidly growing bump on his right temple, Roxas looked to the side and already knew who he'd see standing there. Larxene and her two halfwit lackeys. Even as he glared her down, she made no qualms about letting him know she had been the one to 'peg the popper', so to speak; standing there with a malicious grin twisting her features. She made the shape of a gun with her hand and mimed shooting him, then blowing the smoke off the barrel.
The two dipshits flanking her – Marluxia and Axel, both started laughing, obviously enjoying his reaction. Roxas rolled his eyes and once again buried his face in his book. He was so sick of this bullshit. He had no idea what he'd ever done to the tall, blonde bitch, but Larxene was relentless in bullying him. Marluxia was pretty much the same as her – just a spineless, ass-kissing prick, and Axel…how could Roxas forget him?
Axel was probably the worst.
It hadn't always been like this – they'd all been good friends at the start of the year, especially him and Axel, but kids are cruel, and Roxas messed up big time.
He'd made sure he'd been alone when he'd hesitantly convinced himself to try on the sleek, black pair of heels that were used as a costume prop in the drama room. He'd always been curious, and that's all it had been really. But stupidly for him, Larxene and Marluxia had been wagging their science class and were looking for somewhere to hide. He hadn't thought to lock the door and they'd walked in and seen everything, their eyes immediately drawn to the patent pair of pumps currently adorning his feet. If that hadn't been mortifying enough in its own right, they'd even been on time to witness Roxas execute a neat little turn in front of the floor length mirror.
He didn't know if what he'd done meant that he was gay, and he found he really didn't care all that much. All that he did know was that the heels had made his knobbly, skinny legs look slim and defined. All he'd thought at the time was that they really looked good on him, and Axel, his best friend, who had burst in looking for him seconds before Larxene and Marluxia followed, had stared at him with a strange gleam in his eyes, his face flushing a red so dramatic it fairly nearly rivalled the colour of his hair.
Roxas had thought Axel rather liked him in heels, too.
It didn't matter why he'd done it in the end. To save face, Axel no longer wanted anything to do with him, and Larxene and Marluxia had tormented him ever since. It didn't matter if he'd liked how he'd looked and felt, because from that day on he was only ever known as a –
"Oi, faggot. You're in the wrong uniform again today," Larxene called, loud enough for a couple of girls sitting close by to go quiet and stare.
"Yeah, where's your heels today, you fucken' poofter?" Marluxia added his ten cents.
Roxas waited, but like usual, his former best friend never contributed to the name calling. Sure, he laughed along with the rest of them, but he never quite seemed to have his heart in it. Roxas would be pushing it to say Axel's behaviour looked like an act, but some of it had to be genuine… otherwise he wouldn't be on their side…
Sighing, Roxas turned back to his book and studiously ignored the three of them. When he'd first started coming home with bruises – a dead, resigned look in his eyes, his mum had immediately tried moving him to a new school. His dad though, would have none of it.
"The boy's too soft – he needs to learn to defend himself eventually. Who knows? A little roughing up might get his head out of those books and out of the house a bit more…"
His dad hadn't known that Roxas had heard him, and his words had cut deep. He'd never said anything about it to them again, and the bullying just got worse and worse.
He had his back up against the wall of the library block with his knees drawn up to his chest. Larxene swaggered over and gave him a ruthless kick to the ribs, sending him sprawling across the concrete.
The two girls, who had been watching with wide eyes, now hurriedly gathered their things and scampered off.
"Look at me when I speak to you, you little shit." Larxene wreathed the book out from under his fingers and flung it into a nearby rubbish bin.
Well, shit. Now he was pissed and things were only going to head downhill from here. Man, of all days for Hayner to be sick as well – the one day he decides he wants to start fighting back…
"I don't have to listen to anything you say, you stupid slut!"
Larxene actually took a step back, her face clearly showing her surprise. For a second she floundered to speak. He'd never retaliated before, but now that he was unleashed, there was no stopping the flood gates from bursting wide open.
"So what if people call me a homo?" He said, his expression turning smug. "At least I'm not the school bicycle."
Larxene's face went impossibly red.
"Hold his arms."
Ominously, Marluxia and Axel started making a beeline towards him, Roxas rapidly shuffling backwards, still seated on the ground. The side of his head still throbbed, and Larxene's brutal kick had winded him. Now he was a little bit afraid, and more than a little frustrated. Why was this shit always happening to him?
He tried to find some sense from the only person he had a chance with. "Come on, Ax, don't you ever get tired of hanging around these two assholes?"
Axel's face didn't change in the slightest, his voice hard. "Better than hanging around a faggot."
Instantly, Roxas' anger spiked again. Fuck this.
"At least I'm not in denial!"
Axel and Marluxia both froze, the pink haired boy turning to look at his friend's horrified face.
"What's he talking about, Axel?"
Axel spluttered. "Nothing! He's talking shit, that's what!"
Roxas scoffed and rolled his eyes. Hell, he'd come this far, why not go the extra mile?
"If you're not a fag yourself, then I'm a monkey's uncle."
The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Larxene and Marluxia had both turned on their friend, their faces' mirror images of disgust. Axel just stood there seething, his green eyes dark and dangerous as he glared over at Roxas. His fists were shaking down by his sides.
Feeling smug, Roxas gingerly picked himself up off the ground without adding a single word. He turned on the spot and began walking away. He'd have to come back for his book later… Hopefully they wouldn't empty the bins between now and the end of the day's classes.
He got as far as the top of the stairs leading down into the soccer field when he learned firsthand that he should never have turned his back on Axel.
The breath was slammed out of his lungs as a large foot booted him square between his shoulder blades.
There was no time to catch himself, no time to even shout. The next thing he knew, his arms were windmilling uselessly, and his body was suddenly tumbling down two flights of concrete stairs like a broken, china doll.
-0-
There was no hiding the bruises this time.
A broken arm, a fractured collarbone, three cracked ribs and a dislocated shoulder. One of his eyes wouldn't even open. The bruises and scrapes were the least of his worries. He moved away then, transferred to a new school. His mum had finally had enough, and his dad had kept strangely silent through the entire debacle.
Years later, when he wasn't so angry anymore, Roxas liked to think back on it and picture Axel's face. Not so much the boy's embarrassed fury before he'd promptly kicked him down the stairs, but more the colour of his brilliant, green eyes when they had met his own in the floor length mirror the day that it all started.
He found himself wondering – what could have been, if things hadn't turned out the way that they did?