A/N: I lied. The good stuff doesn't happen in this chapter. You'll have to wait.
I had actually planned this chapter to be a little bit more 'interesting', but the chapter became a little longer than expected, so I had to cut off here.

Also, I'm so sorry that this chapter took soo long. And if HellzLittleAngel hadn't reviewed a week ago, you probably would be waiting still, so go thank her.

Also also, this chapter is unbeta-ed, but I'll update as soon as it is. I didn't want you all to have to wait longer.

Thanks to Mirit, sai-is-my-lover, Dragonfly-Star, Ishida no Revolution and HellzLittleAngel for reviewing last chapter

Disclaimer: I don't own KH (duh) The song is Fire and Ice by Rasputina. I love the song because it desplays Rox's feelings very well.

Chapter VIII

Fire and Ice
Fire and ice you come on like a flame
And then you turn a cold shoulder
Fire and ice I wanna give you my love
But you'll just take a little piece of my heart
You'll just tear it apart
-Rasputina

Winter break did not start out good. I didn't even want to know how it all would end.

It was all Axel's fault. The markings didn't give me any peace of mind. Every time I looked at my hand, they reminded me of how sad his eyes had looked, how they shifted to joy, how a happy smile was born on his lips. I didn't want to think about it.

And then there was the problem of other people seeing it. My parents certainly didn't need to know of this.

I had tried washing my hands, but the only result I got after a good ten minutes of scrubbing were bright red, itchy hands, that only accentuated the black markings. I decided wearing gloves would do the trick. My mom only asked about my strange behavior once. I told her my hands were cold. She left it at that.

But there was another problem. I had skating practice in the evening, and I had a feeling Sophia would not be pleased at all with the markings. Luckily for me, gloves were required for figure skating.

"Oh, god, Rox. That was fuckin' hilarious!" Sophia cried while gasping for air. She would die of oxygen deficiency if she didn't stop laughing soon.

"It's not funny at all," I grumbled. "No need to laugh so hard."

"Hah, as if. Someone just skated you over and then mistook ya for a girl."

"You do know 'skated over' is not a word, do you?"

"Nah, that's two words." She rolled her eyes. "Don' be so grumpy." She shook her head and dropped down on the bench with our shoes. "If someone mistook me for a boy, you'd be laugin' your ass of too."

"No," I answered. "That wouldn't be all that funny. You practically are a boy." I couldn't help the chuckle at the mental image though.

She flipped me off while untying her skates, but she was still laughing.

Untying my skates, taking them off and then tying my shoes with my gloves on proved to be quite a shore, and Sophia soon noticed my difficulties.

"Why don't you just take your gloves off?" She was already putting her skates away.

I shrugged.

"It's cold."

She narrowed her eyes, but I didn't see, as I was concentrating on my task. "What are you hiding?"

"Nothing." I didn't sound very convincing.

She frowned. "Give me your hands."

"No."

"If you don't have anything to hide, then why don't you want to show them to me?"

"Fine." Angrily, I took off my gloves.

She audibly breathed out through her nose.

"I should've known it was that bastard. Such a mean trick."

I put my gloves back on again and continued tying my skates. Sophia sat beside me without saying a word, but I knew she wasn't really mad. Not at me.

The shrill ringing of my phone pierced the silence. I groaned.

"Sophia, could you please take that? If it's my mom, tell her that I'm currently throwing up or something and that I'll call her back. I'm not in the mood to talk to her right now."

She laughed and the strange atmosphere between us was broken.

"Sourpuss."

She answered the phone without looking at the caller ID.

"Hello, you are speaking with Sophia, Roxas' secretary. If you are Roxas's mom, I have to tell you that he is currently throwing up and that he will call you back later, thank you," she said with a fake sweet voice. So she actually could speak like a girl. What a surprise.

I rolled my eyes at her.

Luckily, it was not my mom on the others side of the phone, and I could hear the answer, even though I was sitting a meter away.

"Hi Sophia, Sora here! I need to talk to Roxas. Is he really throwing up?"

I mouthed a 'yes'. I didn't want to talk to Sora either, but she ignored me. I didn't really care if Sophia talked with Sora, even though they didn't really know each other personally, they knew of each other's existence, and I even think they talked once or twice through msn. They went along all right. However, recent events seemed to have brought a change in that.

"Hmm.. He ain't, but I gotta talk with you Sora."

I frowned and finally pulled off my first skate. I didn't hear Sora's answer.

"You should leave Roxas alone."

Again, I could only hear a faint murmur as Sora spoke, but it wasn't all that long, and soon, Sophia was speaking again.

"You know what I mean Sora. Don't play dumb."

Murmuring again, a bit longer this time.

"What? Notnin' can go wrong? Do you even know what it feels like if someone cheats on you?"

Her voice had gotten louder, and I was getting afraid of the outcome of their conversation.

"How do you know if he will? You don't even know him."

Sora's voice had gotten louder too, and I could easily understand him now.

"And you do?" Sophia hissed through the receiver. "You see him four hours a week. You've seen his good side, so what? Maybe if you had really listened to Roxas when he told you 'bout his problems, you wouldda know he really isn't a knight in shining armor. But it looks like you are too fuckin' lost in your perfect little world, that your perfect little friend created for you to even realize that."

This was definitely not going to end well.

"So what if he's had girlfriends before? This could be different!"

Sora choose to ignore her accusation and instead offer a new tactic.

"Oh yeah?" Sophia lifted one eyebrow.

"He could've been hiding he was gay or something. A lot of players do that."

Sophia wasn't impressed. "Yeah, and that's why he was suddenly all over Roxas. 'Cause true love makes you forget all about homophobes." The sarcasm was evident in her voice.

"Maybe he just realized he was gay when he met Roxas."

I could imagine Sora frowning on the other side of the line.

"I highly doubt that Sora. As I said earlier, this ain't one of your stupid fairy tales."

With that, she turned off the phone.

I didn't know what Sora had intentionally called for until Wednesday, when I was forced to attend a small Christmas party at his home the next Saturday.

On Friday, we all got the results of our exams, and to my relief, I didn't flunk Latin. Physics was on the top of the list with a bright 93/100. Something to be proud of indeed.

Olette went home with me, because our Latin teacher decided to be a bitch and give us a group assignment due to the first week after the holydays. She clearly did not get the meaning of 'vacation'.

After three hours, the project was finished – mostly because of Olette's super fast translation skills – and we were sitting on my bed, waiting for her dad to pick her up (He didn't want her to go by bike. Snow had begun to fall and the roads were far too slippery for his 'little girl'). We had tried to do a snowball fight to drive our boredom away, but after throwing the door open and getting chilled to the bone in a matter of seconds, it was mutually decided that it was way too cold to be outside.

"Hey Roxas?" Olette said, a bit reluctant. She continued when she saw she had my full attention.

"In the past, I always thought you were a boring, asocial guy, who didn't want to make any friends." She looked as if she was searching for words. "But then, when I got to know you, you completely opened up. And when I hear you talk about your drawing academy or your skating club, I get the impression you're not like that at all. It bothered me, and when I thought about it, I remembered you came to our school in the middle of your second year. Did something happen at your previous school?" She fidgeted a bit, unsure of how to continue now there was only silence between us. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. It's none of my business," She added.

Actually, I didn't feel like telling her. I didn't feel like telling anyone. It was one of those things you think your friends should know, but you just don't know how to tell them. But Olette deserved to know. I could see she was worried and now she was one of my friends, it was her business.

I started biting my cheek in search of words. This was not going to be easy.

"Before I went to our school, I went to a catholic one that was closer to home." I bit my lip and looked at my hands. "I was quite popular, and had a big group of 'friends.'" I made air quotes. "Of course I knew most of them were just attracted to the popularity, but I had one best friend. His name was Thomas. We were hand in glove. The only problem was the girls. Somewhere around the end of the first year, he got himself a girlfriend and the time we spend together decreased drastically. He tried his best to spend as much time with me as he could, and even though it still wasn't the same, I could understand that. But after a while, I got jealous. Not of the girl, mind you, no – of him. Whenever he was with her, he looked so… incredibly happy. I wanted that happiness too." I laughed softly, bitterly.

That was so stupid of me. I knew I could never get that happiness.

I ignored Olette's questioning look and started talking again: "So I found myself a girlfriend. She was a cute little girl, long, black hair, fair skin and rosy cheeks, with a soft personality. Thomas was happy for me, but somehow, I wasn't. She didn't give me what I wanted" - she couldn't – "but I stayed with her, thinking: 'It'll come. It just takes some time.'"

I sighed.

"That's when I met Axel. 'Met' is a big word actually. He was waiting at the school entrance (I later heard he was waiting for his girlfriend) and I was too, because my girlfriend had a make-up test and we'd planned to cycle home together. I couldn't tear my eyes off him. I eventually learned that his name was Axel, that he was 16 and that he had a girlfriend who was in the year above mine. I don't really know how it went from there. It's… hard to describe how my crush began." I was searching for words now. Really searching and not really knowing what to say. I licked my lips idly. "I guess I started to realize something was wrong when I first saw him smile. Like, really laugh to someone. I got jealous at that. I wanted him to smile at me. But I didn't approach him, not even once. I broke up with my girlfriend, because I finally realized I would never get what I wanted from her. Other than that, I went on with my life like before. In the beginning of second year though, Thomas tried to hook me up with other girls, and it bothered me, but I didn't have the courage to tell him my 'secret'.

"I needed it to get off my chest though. Sophia was the first one I told. I had been afraid at first, but I don't really know why. I knew she was very open, but it still took a few weeks before I had the guts to speak with her. She just smiled at me after I told her. She didn't give a damn."

Olette shook her head at my language use, but I was too engrossed in my memories to notice.

"At Sophia's advice, I came out to my friends at the drawing Academy. The news spread fast and the others in our group knew about it in less than an hour, but no-one seemed to really care.

"I hadn't told Thomas though. Coming out to him proved to be al lot harder. With my drawing academy and Sophia, I knew what to expect more or less. I knew they were all open-minded, but I had no idea about Thomas' view on the subject.

"I told him on a whim one day. We were cycling home and he told me about some girl that was clearly interested in me or something. He asked me why I didn't go out with her, so I told him the truth. He was shocked. He didn't know what to say, so he just said 'oh'. I asked him not to tell anyone, and he nodded and then I had to turn left and he had to turn right and we went home without another word.

"The next day, everyone knew. Thomas acted as if he didn't know me; everybody else treated me like filth. I guess our friendship didn't mean anything in the end."

"Didn't your school do anything about it?"

I sighed again. I hadn't really talked with anyone about this. Others had asked about it off course, but I had always avoided the subject.

"They couldn't really do anything. They were smart enough to do everything behind the backs of the teachers. I doubt they even knew what was happening. They could see I didn't belong with the group anymore, but what can you do about that…"

"So you changed schools to forget about everything?"

I shrugged. "Actually, my mom made my change. But I did want to forget about everything. So I changed schools in the middle of the year. My mom wanted me to go to a school a bit further away, where nobody had heard any rumors, and I was all for it. If it was farther away, I had less chance of seeing Axel, because he caused all that stupid shit." A light smile played around my lips when I thought about my naïveté.

Olette tilted her head a bit. "But Axel goes to our school."

"It was a shock seeing him here, really. Before I went here, I thought that if there was no Axel in my life, maybe I could go back to how I was before. On my first day in our school, I was waiting for the secretary to give me my schedule, which somehow, she had lost. Then suddenly, Axel barged in with a big smile on his face. The secretary just rolled her eyes and asked his reason for being late. Again." I laughed a bit. "I have to say I was quite confused. After the secretary wrote something down for him and saying something about detention, he turned and saw me. At first, he looked a bit confused too, but then he winked at me and was out of the door again."

I was bored out of my mind and I desperately needed something to get my mind off… a certain man. The movie I was watching wasn't interesting enough to keep my eyes from traveling to my hand, which was still gloved, but I knew the words 'Axel's Possession' were still there.

I absentmindedly picked up my phone and scrolled to the 'A' in my contact list (which didn't need that much scrolling), but I threw it away when I noticed I was looking for the one I really didn't want to call, only to jump one meter in the air and run for it when it went off. I wanted to bang my head on something when I realized that I was disappointed it was only Sora.

I should really get some rest, but I'd been putting off going to bed because I knew I would only dream of him.

I picked up the phone with a sigh.

"Hey Sora."

"Oh, hey Roxas. Just calling to make sure you'll come tomorrow. Be at my place at 4. See you."

He had hung up before I could answer.

Axel dreams or not, I should really be going to bed. I knew I would not survive Sora's little Christmas party if I wasn't at least half awake.

But dreaming of Axel, I did.

That was it guys. Do look forward to the next chapter. For real this time.

(And you know, reviewing alsways helps to keep me inspirated. I'd like to know what you guys think will happen.)

And to educate you all a bit on Belgium (Were this story takes place) the facts of this and next chapters will be about Belgium.

Random Fact of the Day:
Belgium has more comic makers per square kilometer than any other country in the world (even Japan).