Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts. It belongs to Square Enix and Disney.
Angel in Disguise
5. Roxas: Promise
Don't get me wrong, I hated hiding things from Sora. I despised it, actually. But I was so confused then that I didn't want to get him involved. That and I could tell that he was hiding something from me.
Maybe I thought that both of us having a secret would balance things out. Needless to say, that later only made things much more complicated. I wish now that we had just told each other. It would have saved a lot of trouble.
Anyway, after Sora and I had our talk and I kicked his ass in video games, I went back to my room. When I saw Bond of Flames setting innocently on my desk, I knew what I had to do.
I had to call Axel.
I rushed over to my laundry basket and rifled through the clothes until I found the pants I was wearing two days before. I turned out the pockets until I found the scrap of paper with his phone number on it. Then I hunted down the phone and dialed the number. It took only one ring before someone picked up and at first all I heard was someone yelling. But then I heard, "Who are you and what do you want?"
I was a little startled and didn't say anything for a second, which prompted the girl on the other end to snap, "Speak up!"
"I'm Roxas." I said quickly, hoping she wouldn't hang up on me. "Is Axel there?"
"The pyro?" The girl sounded both confused and amused. Then she laughed. "Yeah, whatever. Hang on." She didn't bother to cover the mouthpiece as she yelled for Axel. "Hey Ax-- NO! Not you, Xaldin! Fuck you too! Hey- SHUT UP! Axel! Get your pyro ass down here now and pick up the damn phone!"
I gulped. 'What kind of family does he have?' I wondered. 'Maybe this was a bad idea…'
"Larxene, hang up the phone. I've got it." Axel said, much to my relief. He waited a minute and then sighed. "Larxene! Get off the damn phone!"
"Fine." The girl - Larxene - snapped. "Hey kid, a word of advice: hang up the phone."
She had no idea how tempting it was to do just that at that moment.
"Off, Larx." Axel growled.
"Yeah, yeah." Larxene said. "As if I want to listen to your lame conversation anyway."
I heard the click of the phone as she hung up and then Axel sighed again. "Sorry about that. So, can I ask who I'm talking to?"
"Roxas." I told him.
"Ah! I could hear the excitement in his voice. "Could it be? My angel has called me? I should write down this momentous event!"
I heard him shuffled around for something. Probably a piece of paper. He sure was weird.
"You asked me to call you?" I asked cautiously, wondering if that was the right thing to say. I wanted to see him and get to know him better, but at the same time I wanted to hang up and go play video games with Sora or cook something or go for a run somewhere.
"Yeah! Hey, meet me at the Moon Café at two, okay?" He asked me. "You know where it is, right?"
"Fate Lane." I told him. "It's right off of Destiny Main. I can get there."
"Great! See you at two!" He said before he hung up.
I slowly hung up the phone, wondering what I was getting myself in to. Was it really smart to go meet Axel, a guy I barely knew, at a Café? The only good thing was that it was in a public place where a lot of people were at.
I decided to give him a chance.
I got to the Moon Café early and slid into a booth. I tried to distract myself by reading the menu, but I couldn't focus on it. So I stared out the window and let my mind drift while I watched people walk by. It was relaxing and before I knew it, Axel was sliding into the seat across from me.
"I'm a little surprised you came." Axel admitted. "But I'm glad you did." He tugged the menu out of my hands and quickly flipped through it. "Have you been here before?" He asked.
I shook my head. "No." I had walked past it on several occasions and I knew that it was Naminé's favorite place to eat, but I had never been there before then.
"Great." Axel said cheerfully. "They have really good food here, but the best thing is the desserts. They have great lemon cream pie."
That did sound good, so I took his advice and ordered the lemon cream pie and a vanilla Pepsi. He got apple pie and a regular Pepsi.
For a while we sat there and held an awkward conversation. Actually, it was more of an awkward silence than it was a conversation. We didn't talk very much. It wasn't until halfway through our meal that we really started talking.
"You like the pie?" Axel asked me. He was almost finished with his, but I had been picking at mine.
I nodded. "Yeah, it's good." I told him. "Hey Axel, who was that girl that picked up the phone when I called you?"
"You mean Larxene?" He asked. "She's one of my house mates. Actually, she's the most recent; number twelve." He grinned. "We're assigned numbers by order of arrival. The owner of the place is number one."
That was interesting. My curiosity began to get the best of me as I asked Axel more about himself. I found out that he was number eight in the house and that of everyone in the house he hung out with Larxene and a guy named Marluxia the most. I found out that he graduated from my high school when I was a freshman and that he went to the closest community college for three semesters before he stopped going. I asked him why, but he wouldn't tell me.
"So you're a Junior at Destiny, huh?" Axel asked me. "Is old Ansem still teaching that biased history class?"
"You noticed too?" I asked, surprised. "The only other person I know who thinks that is my best friend Naminé. Well, Riku thinks he's a loony old man, so I guess that counts for something."
Axel leaned forward. He was actually interested in what I had to say, which surprised me. Naminé, Kairi, and Sora listened to me but they never really understood. Strangely, Riku never listened but he always understood.
"Tell me about your friends?" Axel asked, giving me the option of telling him or not.
I smiled and told him about my friends, not even worrying about how I barely knew him. By that time I was starting to trust him. I felt comfortable around him, even with him being twenty and me being only seventeen. Once we got talking I didn't feel at all awkward around him.
It's weird. You can start off not liking someone at all. And then you give them a chance and they prove to be the exact opposite of what you thought. Like with Axel, at first I thought he was an obnoxious flirt who would only annoy me. I was wrong about that.
In the two and half hours that we just sat and talked, I learned that most of the flirting that Axel did was all for fun. He meant what he said, but at the same time he was just kidding around. It's complicated to explain.
And as for annoying me, well, he did a little, but it wasn't as bad as I had originally thought.
It was hard to believe how much we had in common. We both went to Destiny High. He went to Twilight University, which is in the closest town on the mainland, and that was the college I wanted to go to. We both had old man Ansem as our history teacher and Mr. Merlin was our favorite science teacher. We both loved pie and Pepsi products. We both liked listening to Rock music.
So when he asked me to meet him there again the next day at ten-thirty, I eagerly agreed. Axel laughed and ruffled my hair before he quickly paid the bill and left before I even had a chance to argue.
I vowed to pay him back somehow. I figured then that I'd just have to do it the next day for lunch or do it in a way that he wouldn't realize I was paying him back.
In my excitement to meet up with Axel the next morning, I barely got any sleep that night and then I skipped breakfast that morning. I think Sora may have noticed how restless I was, but he didn't say anything about it.
At ten I practically ran out the door to get my bike and ride into town, and I nearly ran into Kairi and Namine on their way in. Unfortunately, my bike had a flat and I had no time to repair it right then. So I quickly grabbed my skateboard and rode it into town. I did a few tricks sliding off rails and jumping benches and got a few people to clap and whistle.
When I got to the Moon Café, Axel was already there at the same table we sat at the day before. I picked up my skateboard and went inside and joined him. We ate a nice brunch and talked about different things. To my disappointment, when we finished eating, Axel paid the bill and got up to leave.
"Well, are you coming?" He asked, and I must have had a confused look on my face because he laughed and held out his hand. "You didn't think we were just going to sit around today, did you?" He asked teasingly.
I took his hand and he pulled me out of my seat and tugged me out of the café. I barely had time to grab my skateboard. He was surprisingly strong.
"Where are we going?" I asked.
"One of my house mates is celebrating his birthday tomorrow." Axel told me. "I figure I need to get him a gift so that he doesn't whine and sulk and ignore me for days until I apologize and go and get a present anyway." He glanced over at me. "You don't mind, do you?"
I shook my head. "Can I help?" I asked.
"Sure." Axel said with a shrug. "But I think I already know what I'm going to get him. I figure I'll get a joke gift for him and his boyfriend. Zexion will undoubtedly kill me for it and Demyx will turn bright red, and then I'll give him his actual gift." He said with a grin. "One of the others is getting him a banjo, so I'm going to get him a few books on how to play."
I frowned. "Isn't the banjo one of the harder string instruments to learn?"
Axel snorted. "Compared to the sitar he's mastered playing, learning banjo will be a piece of cake for him." He let go of my hand and pointed to the music store that was just down the road. "We'll start there."
When we walked into the store I felt out of place right away. All around us were different instruments, amplifiers, and other expensive things. I felt as if I were to just touch one thing that everything would go crashing down and be ruined.
Thankfully, Axel knew his way around and we were able to get out of there quickly. It was a good thing, because the guy working there kept giving me these weird looks.
We hit the streets in search of some kind of joke shop that would have something like what Axel was looking for. It was too bad that closest Spencer's was on the mainland, otherwise we could have gone there. Although, we did have all day and the mainland was only a half hour away by boat or car. Usually taking the boat was faster though, since the bridge usually got jammed up by the cars because of the toll booths.
Somehow, Axel managed to find the one store in town that was similar to Spencer's. It was simply called 'Fate Land Oddities' and, like Spencer's, it had the funny, unique things up front and the more perverted stuff toward the back. I stayed up front and looked at t-shirts and jewelry while Axel went in the back.
I didn't even try to look at what Axel got when he came back up front. I didn't want to know. But maybe I should have looked, because then I could have yelled something like, "Axel! You can't get something like that for your friend!" Then maybe I could have avoided the lecherous grin from the guy at the register as I hurried after Axel as he left the store.
"Any place you want to stop at?" Axel asked me. "Skateboard store?" He suggested, eying the skateboard that I had tucked under my arm.
For some reason thought of the store that Naminé and Kairi had dragged me to the day that Sora broke his arm. "There is one place." I said to Axel. "It's down this way." I led him down to the store and just before we went inside he gave me a curious look. It was probably because of the little statues and stuffed toys in the window. I brushed off the look and led him back to the station that did all of the custom made stuff. This time there was someone there at the table managing the cash register.
I was drawn to the wooden pool balls that had the numbers embossed into the sides of them already. I ran my fingers over the one with the number thirteen carved in the ball and, without looking away, asked, "Hey Axel, what number is Demyx?"
"Number nine." Axel said. He must have caught sight of the price of stuff right around then because he cursed under his breath. "Roxas, this stuff is expensive."
I glanced at the price. 1000 munny wasn't that bad, was it? Maybe it was for other people. I never really thought of that. Sora and I grew up with our parents telling us that money wasn't an issue and it was always the same way for the rest of our friends. "It's not that bad." I dismissively told Axel. I picked up the wooden ball with the number nine on the side and ran my fingers over it to make sure it wasn't splintered. It felt smooth under my fingers so I took it over to the guy at the table. "How much to get it painted?" I asked.
"Depends." The guy told me. "If you just want the ball painted one color and the number another then it's 800 munny. If you want designs on it then it's 100 extra munny for each design."
A design idea popped into my head and I knew right away that Demyx would like it, never mind that I didn't even know him. I explained how I wanted it in as much detail as I could to the guy at the table and paid him the 1000 munny for the ball itself. I promised to pay for the paint job once I got back and could see it. He told me he could have it done in two hours.
"You shouldn't have spent that much." Axel grumbled. "You could have just gotten it plain or not at all. Do you even know Demyx?"
I shook my head. "No… but somehow I feel like I do. I mean, when you were telling me about him I got this feeling that I knew him once. And when you told me his number back at the store I thought of water and the words 'melodious nocturne' popped into my head."
Axel froze in place and I took a few steps before I realized that he wasn't beside me anymore. I stopped and turned around. I was about to ask him what was wrong when I caught sight of the look on Axel's face.
"H-how? How do you know that?" He sounded shaken.
I shrugged. "I don't. That's just the words that popped into my head." I said with a frown. "Why? Is that bad?"
Axel shook his head. "No, it's just that…. that's Demyx's nickname. We call him the Melodious Nocturne because he likes music and water so much." He gently took my arm and his voice took on a more curious tone. "What about me?"
I closed my eyes and let my mind drift a little before I focused on Axel and the number eight. Flames appeared in my minds eye. They flicked and danced in a flurry of red and golden heat. And then I knew. "Dancing flames." I murmured opening my eyes halfway. "Flurry of Dancing Flames."
I barely remember Axel hugging me and kissing my temple before I blacked out momentarily. Oddly, I wasn't at all afraid.
When I came to I was sitting on a park bench with Axel. It was a little discomforting to know that he carried me there and that I woke up with my head on his lap. (Actually, it was more like on his leg.) That didn't last for long as he helped me up and asked me if I was okay.
"I'm fine." I murmured. "I'm a little tired, but I'm okay. What happened?"
Axel shrugged. "You guessed my nickname and then you passed out." He peered closely at me. "Are you sure you're alright? You look pale. Maybe I should walk you home."
I nodded, unable to do much more than that, and then he helped me up and walked me home. We had to pause now and then so I could get my bearings, but it didn't take longer than an hour for me to get home.
"Damn, this is your house?" Axel asked, staring up at it in awe.
I nodded. "Yeah."
"Damn." Axel repeated, shaking his head. "Hey, if you're feeling better tomorrow you can drop by my place. It's Demyx's birthday." He told me. "I mentioned you to him and ever since then he's wanted to meet you." He tugged a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to me. "Here's the directions."
I took the paper and promised to try and make it. He grinned and then hurried off down the road while I went in my house.
The next day I got up early, ate breakfast, showered, and then I left the house to go down to the shop where Demyx's present was waiting to be picked up. I apologized to the guy at the table for not picking it up the day before. I paid him a little extra for holding onto it for me and then got it wrapped before I left to hunt down Axel's house.
I remember feeling nervous. Very nervous. I couldn't place why, though. I mean, I was just going to keep Axel company and to meet that Demyx guy, right? Sure I somehow knew Demyx and Axel's nicknames, but was it really all that weird?
Even then I knew the answer to that was yes. It was weird and bizarre and just not normal and that's why I was so nervous. Well, that and I was about to meet all of Axel's house mates, which equaled to about eleven people plus anyone else that they invited. I had every reason to be nervous.
I rode my skateboard through town, carefully following the directions that Axel gave me. I ended up on the outskirts of town in a more run down area. I shuddered and kept a wary eye out for trouble. Who knew what sort of people lived around there.
I soon learned that Axel was one of those people.
The house that Axel lived in was an old, two-story building with fading gray paint over crumbling brick. Or maybe it was blue paint. I guess it doesn't really matter what color it was.
I hopped off of my skateboard and cautiously approached the door. I stared at the crumbling paint for a moment and my ears picked up on the beat of music coming from inside. I took a deep breath and then rang the doorbell. I only had to wait a minute or two before a girl with blonde hair answered the door. The moment I saw her I knew who she was and what her nickname was.
'Larxene, the Savage Nymph.' I thought as my vision blurred. Fortunately, it wasn't as bad as when I guessed Axel's nickname. I quickly recovered and gave Larxene an unsure smile.
"I'm Roxas, is--"
"Come in." Larxene said, opening the door wider. "Axel said you might be coming."
I hid my confusion and walked into the house, ignoring her odd taste in clothes. She
reminded me of a bumble bee in her goldenrod yellow and black clothes.
Walking into the loud house, I was hit by a thought- no, a distant memory of a quiet castle suspended high above a city of the night. A city of Nothing.
I saw beings in black cloaks. I saw strange creatures in white. There were other creatures that weren't white at all, but many different colors. I felt afraid of the colorful creatures. They were the enemy. But the white ones, they felt almost… friendly?
"Hey kid." Larxene tapped my shoulder and I swore I felt as if a jolt of electricity jumped from her fingers and down my entire arm. "Are you okay?"
I looked up at her, confused for a moment. Then I realized that I had been just standing there and that some of the others were staring at me. I spotted Axel's bright red hair on the other side of the room. I told Larxene that I was fine and then I hurried over to him, pausing along the way to drop off my present for Demyx at the table loaded down with gifts.
When I got over to him I found him talking to a guy with a mullet and a birthday hat on his head.
Axel spotted me right away and grinned before he pulled me over before I could even try to escape.
"Roxas, glad you could make it!" He said happily. "Rox, this is Demyx." He gestured to the guy that he had been talking to. "Dem, this is Roxas."
"So this is the sexy blonde angel you've been going on about?" Demyx asked. I could tell that he was kidding, but that didn't stop me from blushing and wondering if Axel really did say that.
"Aww, he's so cute!" Demyx said, ruffling my hair.
'Cute?' I nearly twitched in annoyance. I hated being called cute. I scowled and muttered, "I am not cute." That only served to make the two laugh.
"I'll introduce Roxas to everyone." Demyx said. "Will you go drag Zexion down from his room again for me? Pretty please?"
Axel scowled. "He's your boyfriend."
Demyx grabbed my arm and pouted. "But I wanna show Roxas around! You can have all to yourself later. Pleeeeeeease?"
Axel sighed and grumbled something under his breath before he stomped off in search of the elusive Zexion, leaving me at the mercy of a hyper Demyx. And so, for the next half hour I got dragged around the room by Demyx and introduced to everyone who was in the house. Somehow, I knew everyone's name and nickname before Demyx had a chance to tell me. Although, I didn't know that everyone called Xemnas man sex.
That was a little weird. And funny too.
"Hey Roxas, you need a nickname too." Demyx said enthusiastically. "You can be… um… the light… uh, the key of light?"
I raised an eyebrow. He had to have been kidding, right?
"No, the Key of Destiny." Axel said as he walked over to us with a gray-haired male.
'Zexion, the Cloaked Schemer.' My mind supplied.
"The 'Key of Destiny'?" Demyx repeated. "How is that any better than 'Key of Light'?"
Axel possessively pulled me toward him and I let out an accidental squeak of surprise. Thankfully, none of them noticed it.
"He's my friend, so I get to choose his nickname." He said. "Unless Rox doesn't like it or has a better one." He looked down at me. "Do you like it?"
I nodded. 'The Key of Destiny.' I repeated in my head. That sounded right. It was a little weird, but the name just kind of clicked.
"Present time!" Xigbar announced from the middle of the room. "Dudes and dudette, crowd around while our little water buddy unwraps his presents!"
Demyx beamed and bounded forward, somehow managing to remember to drag Zexion along with him before he could go hide again. Axel steered me over to the living room and we stood beside Larxene while Demyx dove in the pile of presents and gleefully began to unwrap them. He was like a little kid. He marveled over each gift and thanked whoever got it for him before he moved on to the next.
When he got to Axel's perverted gift he turned bright red and pushed it as far away from himself as he possibly could. Zexion glared at Axel in a way that could have only meant death, but Axel just grinned.
And then he got to my gift. He gave me a slightly confused look and then began to open it. First went off the wrapping paper and then the lid of the box I had it put in. Demyx tipped the box upside down and let the ball fall into his hands. He looked at in surprise for a minute, taking in the painted water and the music notes that blended in with it and then he gave me his most blinding smile. I reminded me of Sora.
The next thing I knew, Demyx was across the room and was hugging me. I never did understand what the big deal about it was.
End Chapter
Hurry for long chapters that bring up my word count nearly 5000 words!
I'll be updating even faster now. It'll probably be one chapter every day. Maybe two a day. Look for a chapter tomorrow!
