Down with Love

Description: Sequel to "Dance with Me". Roxas has arrived at college to find romance literally everywhere he turns, and somehow he always ends up playing matchmaker. Cupid has never been so unwilling or so downright grumpy. AU, Amazing Grace crossover.

Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts and all the Final Fantasy games belong to Square-Enix. Amazing Grace and its characters belong to me.

5. The Tracks of My Tears
The Miracles

Anyone who's had even a rudimentary amount of scientific schooling knows that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. What they may not know is that this extremely important law also frequently applies to other aspects of life. Case in point: Having the upperclassmen return to campus meant that Max was back. It also, however, meant that Naminé was back. Normally, this would be fine. Like I said, Naminé is a perfectly nice and sweet girl. Nevertheless, her return spelled my doom in the form of my chronologically older, yet maturity-wise so much younger, sibling.

I guess it's kind of sad that, even though I knew he was going to do it, Sora caught me sort of off-guard when he made his move. I was expecting him to be a bit more straight-forward with it initially, like forcing me to eat a meal with her or something. The fact that he started off sneaky right from the beginning took me by surprise. That's my only excuse, really, since I should have seen it coming.

I had just finished my first day of classes, and Sora had shown up at my building to walk with me back to the dorms. I assumed he was just being his normal self - protective, encouraging, overly helpful - but, no, he had ulterior motives, the sneaky jerk. He kept up a simple conversation with me as we walked back to the residential area of campus, asking how my classes had gone and if I thought I was going to like them, and I answered his questions as much as I felt I needed to. We stopped in Parish to check our mailboxes, then began to cross the beach towards Mertz. That's when I saw her. She was sitting on the grass just at the point where the hill takes a sharp dip down to the bottom, her sketchbook on her knees. I was so tempted to just stop, turn around, and go somewhere else for the remainder of the day, but I knew it was pointless. So I kept walking, although I made a point to drag my feet as much as possible.

My darling brother pretended not to see her until we were practically stepping on her, and then he cried out like she was his best friend in all the world, "Naminé! How have you been? How was your summer?"

Startled, Naminé jumped slightly at the sound of his voice and quickly closed her sketchbook, but when she turned to us, she seemed calm again. "Sora," she smiled. "My summer was good. How was yours?"

"Pretty good," he replied with a shrug. Then, as I knew it would, his arm shot out and pushed me forward a few steps, "You remember my brother Roxas, right?"

Blue eyes focused on me instead, and the fact that it took a moment for recognition to dawn in them was very encouraging to me. "Ah yes! It's nice to see you again, Roxas."

"Yeah. Nice to see you, too."

Not waiting for an invitation, Sora flopped down next to her and immediately began talking his head off. Naminé seemed surprised, but she quickly recovered, smiling and answering his questions when he left her enough breathing room to reply. During this time, I attempted to sneak by and escape to my room, but Sora grabbed onto my ankle before I could get away and kept tugging on it until I sat down, too. Since I had no intention of joining in the conversation - and really, I couldn't have elbowed my way into it if I had wanted - I just sat there and watched the Frisbee game that was going on down at the bottom of the hill. I knew that eventually my brother would find a way to go off and leave me there with Naminé, but there was no reason for me to acknowledge this blatantly obvious scheme or help it along in any way.

About ten minutes later, maybe a little less, someone called out my brother's name from a little ways off, and we all turned to find Riku waving at him from nearby the library. This was, of course, the second half of Sora's strategy, and of course he had used his boyfriend to implement it. Really, my brother has no imagination at all. I was so bored and unimpressed by the whole thing that I barely heard Sora apologizing to Naminé and taking his leave and when he suggested I stay and keep her company, I agreed without a fight. He would have just made life hell for me if I had. So I stayed. I didn't even watch him go.

Sometime during my brother's onslaught, Naminé had opened her sketchbook to a blank page and begun to draw something in it. When Sora left, I did the polite thing at first and asked her to show it to me, which she did. It was a simple landscape sketch of the tree-lined path down the beach and the train station at the end. It was pretty good, so I told her I liked it. She thanked me and went back to coloring it in with the pencils she had brought with her. The awkward silence descended pretty much immediately after that. There wasn't much we could do about it though, since she would rather draw than talk and, as much as I didn't mind the company, I didn't particularly want to be there at the moment. Add to that the fact that our ears were still ringing a bit from Sora's nattering, and it was pretty much inevitable.

The silence lasted a while, I'm not sure how long, but eventually, Naminé broke it by saying, "You know, Roxas, while it's nice of you to offer to keep me company, you don't need to stay. I can tell you want to go."

Sighing, I hung my head and plucked a piece of grass to rip to pieces while I considered my options. I could leave, but if I did, Sora would just find another way to throw us together. And then he'd find another and then another until I lost it and killed him. Staying, however, wasn't doing anything except making a nice girl progressively uncomfortable. I could make an effort to get to know her better like my brother wanted, but I didn't really feel like it. So, I did the best thing I could think of to solve all my problems at once in the most efficient matter: I decided to be completely straightforward with her.

Tossing, my mutilated grass aside, I flopped backwards, stared at the sky, and let it all come out. "Actually, Naminé, I do need to stay because I need to ask you something. See, Sora has decided that we would make a perfect couple and has made it his mission to get us together. So, I need to know if you have any interest in me at all. If you do, well, I don't have any interest in you at the moment, but I like you enough to get to know you better and see if something develops on its own, without Sora's help. I can't promise that it will, but I'm also not going to rule out that it might. On the other hand, if you don't have any interest in me, please tell Sora immediately because otherwise he's not going to give up and you're going to find yourself set up with me over and over again until you do. And the longer it goes on, the crazier the set-ups will be. Believe me, I know my brother. He had all summer to plan and he has Riku's help. There won't be any escape for either of us. So …" I paused and shifted my eyes to her. "Do you? Have any interest in me?"

Unsurprisingly, Naminé was staring at me, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. After a moment of stunned silence, she asked haltingly, "How could I? I barely know you."

I laughed at that. "I know, right?" I replied with a grin. "But Sora seems to think that since he fell in love at first sight, everyone should."

Naminé shook her head and, slowly, the smile returned to her face. "Your brother is sweet," she said as she returned her attention to her sketch. "Unrealistic, but sweet."

"Hmph," I returned, crossing my arms behind my head and shutting my eyes. "Sweet to you, maybe. To me, he's a pain in the neck." I was much happier now that I knew I had been rejected. Oddly, it made me much more comfortable with her, and I finally felt like staying a while. "You should tell him," I advised, "the sooner the better. And be firm about it, too. If he thinks I have even the slightest chance with you, he'll keep on bugging us."

The blonde girl beside me laughed gently and asked, "Should I be insulted at how eager you seem to be about not having a chance with me?"

Opening my eyes, I hurried to assure her, "It's not because of you, I swear. It's because I want Sora to get off of my back. I had to deal with him all summer!" I heaved a huge sigh as the memories came back unwanted. "God, Naminé, you should have heard him. If he wasn't gushing about Riku, it was about us and how perfect we were and how happy we were going to be and how someday we'd have such beautiful blond babies and Jesus Christ, I wanted to strangle him just to get him to shut up!"

Naminé was laughing again, her hand covering her mouth and her eyes crinkling at the corners in a very pretty way. "Well," she said merrily, "I'll be sure to tell him as soon as possible that he's going to have to find a different way to get his little nieces and nephews. You have absolutely no chance with me." Something sad flickered in her eyes then, and she turned away slightly as she added in a lower voice, "My heart is already taken."

Okay, I'll admit that as much as I wanted to hear that she didn't want to date me, hearing those exact words sent a little stab through my male ego, but her second statement eased it immediately and replaced it with a small wave of worry. Her smile had vanished, and the light in her eyes had dimmed. Concerned for her now instead of for myself, I sat back up and moved a bit closer to her. "Hey," I murmured. "You okay? You suddenly got sad."

"Yes," she responded with a mere shadow of her previous smile. "I'm fine."

That was a clear lie, but I didn't call her on it. Instead, I took a moment to think. I knew she was single - Sora was an idiot, but he wasn't about to try to set me up with someone who had a boyfriend already - but her admission meant that she liked someone. Like any other normal human being with an ounce of curiosity in him, I wanted to ask who it was, but I knew I didn't have the right. I barely knew her, and even if she told me, I doubt I'd know him. So I held my tongue and dropped my eyes.

That's when my gaze fell on the sketchbook in her lap and I remembered. She had been drawing something as Sora and I approached. Something other than the landscape. Something she didn't want us to see. A shout rang out from the game down the hill, and it all clicked in my head at once.

"He's over there playing Frisbee, isn't he?" I asked her, offering as friendly a smile as I could manage. "And you're doing the classic tactic of sitting within his line of sight, hoping that he'll notice you and maybe even come over to talk to you." Naminé didn't answer, but I could see from the slight blush on her cheeks that I was right.

Now, like I've said before, I don't consider love to be particularly important to a person's happiness. Certainly not important enough to worry about it or go out looking for it just for its own sake. But the thing is, once you're in it, you're in it, and unless you have a pretty good reason not to, you might as well work to make sure both you and the one you love are happy, right? Besides, I might be logically minded and all, but I'm not emotionally stunted. I know that once you fall in love, it's hard to fall back out.

That's why, even though I had no interest in trying to create some sort of romantic relationship between me and Naminé, once I knew she had romantic feelings for someone else and hadn't acted on them, I felt that annoying urge to help again. It's genetic, I swear. I don't even want to help people out like this, but for some reason, I always find myself saying things without thinking. And when that happens, I always end up getting in over my head.

"Why don't you go talk to him?" my mouth asked without my brain's input. "I mean, I don't know you that well and I don't even know which of those guys he is, but I know you're sweet and nice and pretty and talented. I don't see why you don't have as much of a chance if not more of one than someone else."

"I can't," she whispered, and the words stopped my idiot mouth cold. There were actual tears forming in her eyes as she admitted, "He already has someone else."

"Oh." I felt horrible. Stupid. A total moron. Like I should just duct tape my stupid mouth shut and go throw myself off a cliff somewhere.

But then Naminé smiled at me again, and this time it was real even though her eyes were still threatening to spill over. "But thank you, Roxas," she said. "You're really sweet, too."

I swallowed. "Um, thanks," I murmured in reply. And then, because it really is genetic and I can't help myself, I added, "I know you probably have girlfriends and stuff to help, but if you ever need someone to talk to, I'll be happy to listen."

"Thanks," she said again and, putting aside her sketchbook for the moment, leaned over to hug me. I hugged her back without hesitation. We sat like that for a few seconds, giving and receiving comfort, and when she sat back again, her eyes were dry. "I think I'm going to go now," she told me, "if that's all right."

"Of course it is," I assured her, getting to my feet. I waited for her to gather up her art supplies and then offered her my hand to help her up. "I'll see you around, Naminé."

"Yes," she smiled at me, and I could see in her eyes that I had made myself a good friend. "See you, Roxas." She turned and walked away.

Feeling pretty good about how the situation had turned out, I shrugged on my backpack and started off once more for my dorm. Not surprisingly, I had homework already, so I planned to work on that a bit, then take a nap until dinner. When I arrived at my room and opened the door, however, I found that such ordinary things simply were not to be. Not for me at least. Not today.

The room was a mess, like a freak tornado had blown through. Books and clothes were everywhere, all over the floor, and even the sheets had been ripped from my roommate's bed and scattered. The delicate things, like the computers and picture frames, had been untouched, but pretty much everything unbreakable that my roommate owned was now on the floor. Completely shocked, all I could do was stand in the doorway and stare for what seemed like a full minute. I couldn't even get enough of my brain to function so that I could start to wonder what had happened. Then my eyes fell on the two figures huddled together on the floor in a corner, and my rapidly-beating heart instantly froze in my chest.

"Soli! Vindi!" I gasped and rushed to them, dropping down beside them.

K'nsolear did not move, but Vindeflei opened her green eyes and focused on my worried face. She had her arms tightly around her cousin's body, holding him against her own with his head on her shoulder. His eyes were closed and he appeared to be asleep, but his face was stained with light blue streaks, telling me that he had been crying recently and hard at that.

"Roxas," Vindeflei greeted me with a small smile. I started to ask her what had happened, but she cut me off with a gentle, "Shhh …" and indicated the sleeping form in her arms with a small tip of her head. Mildly annoyed, I lowered my voice and asked again, receiving the answer, "Nothing."

"Bull," I retorted, but I sat back on my heels and gave them both a little space. Now that I wasn't panicking, I looked around the room again and tried to think. It really was a mess, like someone had ransacked the place looking for something. As I looked more closely, though, I noticed that nothing on the floor belonged to me, and further inspection of my side of the room proved it. My bookcases were still full, my bed was still made, and my drawers and closet were still closed. Whoever had done this had completely respected my side of the room. Inhaling sharply, I snapped my gaze back to K'nsolear, those tear tracks, and the way he was completely out of it like he had drained himself dry.

"Did he do this?" I asked. "Was this some sort of temper tantrum?" Vindeflei just looked at me, her expression never changing, yet somehow I knew I was right. "Why? What happened?"

"I'm sorry, Roxas," she replied, her voice barely loud enough to hear. "It's personal."

I frowned heavily but didn't press it. Instead, I got to my feet and started cleaning up. I'm not sure why I did it. I should have just gone over to my side of the room and done my homework like I had planned and let my little-kid roommate clean up his own mess when he woke up. But for some reason, instead of abandoning them both to deal with their own problems and the ensuing consequences, I started picking up the sheets, looking for the fitted one so it could go on first.

"Roxas," Vindeflei murmured, "you don't need to do that."

"Yeah, I know," I told her, but I didn't stop. After I made the bed, I started sorting through the rest of the mess for the books. As I picked them up and replaced them on the shelf - in any old order; K'nsolear could sort them himself later if he wanted, assuming he didn't chuck them all off again - I eventually realized that none of the volumes had been damaged in any way. None of the spines were broken; none of the pages were torn or folded. Somehow he had managed to hurl them all over in such a way that they landed flat on their covers and only flipped open, not over. The precision of it surprised me.

Vindeflei's calm green eyes had watched me the entire time I was cleaning, so when I stopped and stared at a book in my hand for half a minute, she asked, "What's wrong, Roxas?"

"I was just thinking …" I answered slowly. My eyes lifted to the computer again, then shifted to the glass picture frames and the other handful of breakable objects that remained on his dresser, untouched. "The debris is impressive and indicates a major tantrum, but nothing was actually damaged."

The dark-haired girl smiled at me, a soft sadness in her eyes. "He's had practice," she explained.

"Practice?" I echoed, horrified. "You mean he does this often?"

"The V'dnairs are rather famous for their tempers."

I groaned and clunked my head softly against the wall.

"My mother says his father was much worse, if that makes you feel better."

"It doesn't." Sighing, I shelved the book I was currently holding and went back to picking up others. This time when the words came, I didn't bother fighting them. There didn't seem to be a point, really. I always ended up saying them anyway. "So, is there anything I can do to, you know, help?"

"Help?" Vindeflei repeated, confused.

"With this," I elaborated, indicating the mess with a short wave. "Or, I don't know …" I shrugged and let my gaze fall on my roommate again. He looked so tense and guarded, even while sleeping. "… with anything else."

Seeming to understand, Vindeflei rested her cheek against her cousin's head and smiled softly. "I think," she answered, finding my eyes with her own, "that all you need to do to help is keep being yourself, Roxas."

Something in the way she said that eased the uncomfortable worry I had been feeling. Smiling myself, I went back to cleaning up the books. When I was finished, I left the clothes as they were - some things are too personal to bother with - and retreated to my bed to take that nap I had wanted so badly. After the day I had had, I figured I had earned it.