a/n: Hello and welcome to chapter eleven of The Cool Guy! Before you start reading, I'd like to make an important announcement:

I am looking for someone to work on a collaboration with. I imagine most people would like to work within this fandom, and I am completely up for that, but I wouldn't mind working outside those parameters, either. Now, I do have a few requirements, and that's that I'd like someone somewhat dedicated, and willing to do maybe...a chapter a week? I'd also like someone who has a bit of experience in writing narratives. If you are interested, then by all means please note me or mention it in your review; I'll take a look at your work and get back to you quickly. Thanks for your time!

Anyway, as you all know, KH is the property of Disney and Square. I hope you enjoy the chapter. :)

Chapter Eleven

At least, Roxas reflected as he wandered aimlessly on the edge of the inter city park, there were no couches outside, and (more importantly) no phone, which meant there was no red blinking light on the phone that contained hell-bent messages.

There were, however, pigeons.

Everywhere.

And they were freaking him out.

He cursed his small stature---he had never liked being short, (and even though in all actuality Roxas was merely average, he had somehow managed to live his life surrounded by tall people, so it amounted to the same thing) and now his height seemed to induce the bloated gray beasts to follow him around, as if he was their kindred spirit.

Or an easy target. Roxas winced. There were six or seven, hopping alongside him. He'd offered up a quickly bought sandwich to them, hoping they would be satisfied and leave him alone. Instead they'd devoured the morsel and were now looking up at him with their hungry black eyes. Stupid pigeons.

He quickened his pace. The park he was shadowing was actually quite quaint; very open and harboring dozens of huge trees with broad, dark green leaves, obviously planted more than a generation before. There was more than one couple out walking through the foliage, and even more people were leading their dogs around. Roxas made a mental note of the location---it seemed like a good place to meditate on the universe and his questionable (oh, so questionable) place in it, providing he could avoid the clingy lovers. It wouldn't be so hard. He'd just have to frequent the areas that were out in plain view.

Avoiding people had always come naturally to him. It might have been a side effect of his lifelong desire to, for the most part, be let alone to do his own thing. No one had ever interested him enough to spend ample amounts of time with, Hayner being the main exception, but Hayner was eight hundred miles away in that god-forsaken backwater town.

And here he was.

All by himself in the god-forsaken city. Well, not quite all by himself. The pigeons were still there.

"Look. I'm sure you're not all that bad. But why won't you just stop following me? Please? All I want to do is be left alone. Surely you can understand that. Give up before I throw a stick at you," Roxas added sternly, staring at the birds. "If you knew my state of mind," he warned, "you'd fly away."

They flew away. Roxas gaped, half standing in consternation. Was he telekinetic? All these years, when he could have exercised the will of his mind upon other objects? He could have mentally delivered the messages, he mused, a smile creeping onto his face as he took the game further---he could have stopped that dog without risking bodily harm.

He could have kept that box from slipping out of his fingers.

"I know the sentiment."

Of course he hadn't been the one to scare away the pigeons, he didn't have the height, judging from the shadow he had just noticed, that this person did. With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, Roxas turned his head so slowly he was surprised it made no creaking noise, hoping beyond hope that somewhere in the city was a person other than Axel who commanded that cool, languid voice.

But Roxas had never possessed a shred of luck, and he was given none at that instant. Or maybe he was lucky. After all, he'd left the house as Sora. Of course, if he hadn't, then maybe he could have made a run for it. Jumped the fence around the park. Feigned a heart attack, or something logical like that. As it was he suppressed the blaze of flushed anger he felt for the man, and reached for what he hoped was a smile of pleasant surprise.

"When did you get here?" Roxas decided to ask. The question seemed safe enough. He was inwardly suspicious of that clear-green gaze, the one that was now memorizing him from upright head to loosely planted foot. What the intent of the look on Axel's face was, Roxas didn't know.

For a moment the tall (should be illegal to be that tall, Roxas thought with envy) red-haired man merely stood, with the smallest smile lifting the corners of his mouth. He was dressed casually today, Roxas noted, the straight-legged jeans were loose around his hips and frayed where the distressed ends met his faded sneakers.

He looked like he'd just thrown his clothes on, too; the green sweater that hung from his lithe frame was slightly askew off the shoulder, making the thin white shirt underneath visible.

Like this, his normally garish hair whipping his pale forehead with the force of the breeze which had just picked up, slightly disheveled and without the classy posse surrounding him, he almost seemed like a normal person.

Almost.

It was probably just because he hadn't yet opened his mouth to say something else that contradicted his previous degrading speech, just because, Roxas finally saw, those eyes weren't harsh on their own. In this light they seemed neither kind nor malicious, merely two reflective orbs that harbored only the desire to better see the smaller blonde in front of him.

In the absence of words, Roxas couldn't stop himself from tilting his head to follow the green gaze up, up, and up into the tree branches. The menace's eyes were the exact shade of the light that was filtering through above.

"You've never been here before, have you?" Axel asked, voice soft, even softer than when he'd been whispering in the art gallery. His eyes flecked back to stare straight into Roxas's, and the shorter young man fought to keep from flinching at the scrutiny---Axel had seen Roxas last, not Sora, after all. He covered the instinct by focusing on Axel's eyelashes. Did all red-heads have lashes that peculiar autumn-drenched color? Was he really seeing a smattering of subtle freckles dashed across that ivory skin, or was that merely an extension of the dappled light?

Axel raised an eyebrow, and Roxas remembered to shake his head.

"I didn't think so."

Roxas stood dumbfounded, and crossed his arms. It was a little cold in the shade.

"Aren't you going to ask where I went?" He pondered aloud, mouth suddenly dry.

And when he spoke something seemed to break. The softness of the enchanted scene receded in a wave that Roxas was pretty sure only he found audible.

"Aren't you going to tell me?" Axel returned, his voice back to normal. Roxas found himself relaxing in his renewed resolve. When had his knees locked, anyway?

No, Roxas was about to say, until he realized that Sora wouldn't answer that way.

What would Sora do?

Well, that depended on why Sora would have disappeared. And Sora wouldn't have disappeared for the same reason Roxas did, obviously.

"I don't mean to pressure you or anything, it's fine. Things come up, I know. I'm glad to see you now, anyway."

And he was. The half-smile----well, not quite a half-smile; Roxas decided the term was altogether lacking clarity in this instance. Axel was not half smiling, his naturally pale rose lips instead made the tiniest upward curve on the left side, more of a gentle, teasing twist, really---- was a constant presence rather than a reaction to Roxas's flustered question, as if a huger delight was lurking just under it, ready to come out as soon as Roxas assured him it was safe, that it wouldn't be chased away like last time.

Why the wary smile? It didn't suit him at all…or maybe it did, Roxas thought with renewed distaste. Maybe that was how he lured people in, a charming smile to trick them so he could use them for his own questionable purposes…

"So what were you doing, anyway?" Axel lowered himself onto the bench, wrapping his arms around the back and crossing his long legs.

Roxas was helpless. He didn't want to sit down and talk to Axel here, under the trees. He wanted to mentally prepare himself for the counterattack, arm himself, and lie in wait for the enemy in its own territory, one of those horrible chic clubs where the lighting was sufficient camouflage for most. That was where the war was, after all. He could have handled a light skirmish in a restaurant, even, but here?

Out in the open, in the middle of the morning, when his only intention had been to get out and away from contemplating exactly this situation?

Axel seemed to pick up on his preoccupation. "If you have the time. For all I know, I could have been intruding upon your…uh…daily talk with the birds."

He sat down next to him abruptly---it didn't really matter where the confrontation was, there was no need to deliberate until the sun set; he was Sora now. It was time to start acting like it.

"Hey…" Roxas leaned towards the taller man just a bit, keeping his voice clear and measured, "It's fine. I was out walking to escape boredom; so why don't we walk together?"

Larxene had said he was a performance artist, or at least his tastes ran towards it. So he'd prefer walking to sitting still any day.

Roxas kept himself detached as he had Sora smile at Axel's immediate affirmative response.

This was going to be too easy.

"And so the next time she gave us such a worthless assignment, I refused to do it."

"You flat-out refused? You just said, 'I'm not going to do it?'"

"Yeah. Yeah. There I was, and everyone's looking at the punk with the spiked hair like, of course he's going to pull some shit like this, and instead of giving her the finger and stalking out of the room, I sit down and start reading the textbook; start composing an essay."

"What did she do?"

"Well, see, that's where it gets funny. Because for the entire first half hour, she doesn't do anything. Zip, nada, nothing. And everyone's real quiet, until this kid raises his hand to ask if he can go to the bathroom---and she flies off her handle. She screamed at me, and I quoted Walden back to her."

"You were suspended."

"Nah, just given detention. Everyone knew she was mental. Plus, I won a five-hundred dollar contest with that essay."

The conversation stopped momentarily as Axel leaned forward to catch the rest of the floating, now nearly disintegrated puddle of whip cream in the middle of his cold hazelnut coffee.

Then his eyes jumped to Roxas's face. They'd been sitting outside at the sidewalk table watching people walk by, hurrying past dressed up like dolls in crisp black suits and toting sleek brief cases with all the tenderness one musters when holding up a newborn.

It had been…what? Forty five minutes, or so. Axel had launched into conversation as soon as they sat down on the dolled-up lawn furniture, urging Roxas to order whatever he liked.

"You can't pay for me---" He'd protested, almost letting his natural scowl shine through his indignant (shocked, even, what the hell did Axel think he was doing, paying for another guy's drink?) speech.

Axel would have none of it. "It's a return," he'd said cryptically, motioning for the cutely bewildered waitress to ignore Roxas's flushed objection.

"For what?" It was hard to make it a question and not a demand. For all that Roxas was confident in his acting abilities, it was tenfold more exhausting when dealing with Axel. He motioned for the waitress to disregard Axel's indication, and was disappointed to notice that his own wave wasn't nearly as effective.

Bitch, he thought jaggedly, when she directed her gaze only towards him in order to giggle. She found it all very amusing, no doubt, beaming from the ends of her bleached hair to the pink laces of her black work shoes.

"You ran away last time we were talking; that was somewhat awkward. This is payback, that's all."

Roxas managed to refrain from twitching, but it was a close call.

And although it was difficult for him to not immediately excuse himself to the café's restroom and fade away, he knew it wasn't prudent to return as himself so soon. If he did, then Axel would no doubt become suspicious of Sora, maybe not even desire his company again.

No, what he needed to do right now was grin and bear it. Axel needed to feel relaxed around Sora, so that in the coming days when Roxas would show up against natural rhyme and reason, he'd still trust Sora.

Well, there was that reason, and also the fact that Roxas hadn't been prepared for the meeting. He didn't have his own clothes with him. It was best to just ignore phase two of his plan for the moment. He was better at subterfuge than action, anyway.

As Roxas reigned himself in and Axel's smile grew less cautionary by the most miniscule of degrees, conversation had turned to their school days.

"But what about you?"

Axel's voice broke through Roxas's reflection.

"What about me?" He asked, as if he didn't grasp the implication of the question.

"Sora, I've been ranting about my days as the most backward student who ever walked the halls of Destiny High for half an hour. What were you like at school?"

Roxas blinked. He had been rehearsing a story during Axel's anecdotes.

"Oh, you know---model student, I was on the track team, had a lot of friends…completely normal, I suppose. Not like you."

Not like him at all. Roxas's rebellion had been silent, other than a few isolated incidents, the most heinous of which was what had ended up drawing the radical, sometimes scary Hayner to pursue his company. Roxas smiled in remembrance---Hayner had been so determined to break through his carefully constructed shell, constantly pelting him with rocks when Roxas was caught off guard, asking things like, "But what do you really think?", until the day he'd lost his cool and shouted vehemently at the class miscreant.

At the top of his lungs.

During a state-issued timed exam.

Roxas had had more than one reason for not going to college.

"…I saw that, you know."

Roxas shook himself from the slight reverie, wary at the sudden emergence of a sly tone. He tended to be wary of sudden emergences in general, and he was getting the feeling that Axel was the epitome of the unexpected. Who knew, after all, that the cool guy would have dove into a laid-back conversation about school? Not that it was laid back anymore.

"What?"

"You are a liar."

Shit.

The redhead's eyes were burning into his, and for a moment Roxas lingered on the fact that it was almost like he was trying to pierce through the layers of deception.

Roxas let his gaze take on a pondering aspect, but his thoughts were racing furiously.

It was a very dangerous thing to have Axel say to him; it indicated that Roxas's performance was lacking. He was letting other things drift through; he'd allowed himself to twitch and scowl and react in decidedly strange ways…

Then again, he'd never thought that Sora had to be a two-dimensional persona, had he? Perhaps this was the best thing, for Axel to perceive Sora as having a shifting personality, yes, as Axel himself was so spontaneous….not too shifting, of course…but a few layers of character could only help.

So Roxas didn't let it get to him, this bomb-shell of a statement that, if not for his (self-proclaimed and self-evaluated) top-notch skills of rationalization, would have caused him to panic.

He decided to answer as he himself would answer, if he didn't hate Axel and decided to forgo merely turning on his heel or shouting in favor of an answer that was civil, and, most importantly, most telling---real. The answer he would give Hayner.

"Everybody is."

"So I'm a liar?"

"You're a liar," Roxas confirmed. The worst there ever was, he added, thinking back on the messages he'd delivered and had yet to deliver.

"You know Sora, I meant what I said the other day."

Roxas waited for the redhead to continue, but he didn't speak again until after catching the waitress and paying for the two drinks. She seemed sorry to see them go, as if she were condemned to the renewal of ennui.

"Hey, let's go," Axel said suddenly, and grabbed Roxas's hand, tugging him out of the chair. Roxas found how very easily Axel handled his weight disturbing. It wasn't even a contest.

"Ex-excuse me?" Roxas stuttered. Axel's grip wasn't tight, per se, but it might as well have been a shackle. If he pulled away, if he made a scene---there was no if, though.

Roxas found himself in the frightening position of having put himself in a situation where to maintain control, he had to give up control.

What control he was throwing away by letting----and he was definitely letting, Roxas could have gotten away, whether by jerking his hand back or sharply informing Axel that he had no intention of following him to wherever the hell he was going---himself be pulled away, and what control he was exerting at the same time----seemed suddenly all too dizzying.

He has me now, Roxas thought, frustrated. Even if he got him later---he has me now.

Roxas shook his head. This was nonsense, all of it. Nobody "had" anybody. He was just shocked by Axel's enthusiasm. That was it. He should be pleased.

"Sora? Are you okay?"

"I'm perfectly all right. But where are we going?"

He had barely noticed that as a pair, they'd been flying down the street, leaving a path of disgruntled pedestrians and honking cars in their wake. The street café was no longer in sight. Roxas felt as if he was swallowed by the city, penned in by the huge, towering buildings with their hundreds upon hundreds of windows.

"I don't really know."

And his life-line was a candid idiot, Roxas realized.

"Do you do this often?"

"Remain ignorant? You've no idea. Who doesn't prefer bliss?"

They moved slower now. At some point Axel had let go of Roxas, and they walked side by side at a brisk pace. Axel's face was flushed, but he seemed thoroughly pleased with himself.

It pissed Roxas off.

"That's not what I meant," he said finally, deciding to hell with diplomacy and pursuing the question.

The area they were in now was going out of downtown. The sidewalk wasn't as new, and neither were the storefronts, but it all still stank of the city.

Axel's green sweater rose quicker than normal; he was probably tired, Roxas reflected. Of course the cool guy wouldn't actually break a sweat.

"You're left-handed," Axel said. There was absolutely nothing, much like in Saix's voice when Roxas had first introduced himself as Sora, to suggest that there was anything out of the ordinary about this question.

Roxas wasn't left-handed. He knew Axel was; it was one of the things he'd first asked Larxene, back when he'd assumed that he'd have to be extremely clever to get to know Axel, instead of running into him at an art show.

And so Roxas found nothing wrong with answering simply,

"I'm not left-handed."

Axel's foot paused in the air for an instant. Roxas wasn't watching Axel's feet, and didn't notice. When the man started to speak again, it was with an entirely different tone. This one was somehow both closer to the cool guy he'd encountered for the first time in a dark club and to the cool guy who'd stood under the trees and mutely stared.

"So, Sora…you wanted to know if I do this often. I don't really take a liking to people so easily, even if most people seem to like me without any persuasion. So no. I don't often do the calling; I don't even often do the talking. But you were so aloof to me! I mean, it was amazing! Complete strangers, and you were more interested in the painting. And you…I mean, you acted radically different when we ran into each other, from how you talked in the gallery. So I guess my question is…do you do this often? Do you often just go along with some person you've only known for a day, following them when they stand up and start running? I think that's more interesting than my answer."

Roxas frowned, cataloguing the parts that were merely Axel's ego and shoving them away, focusing on what he said about Roxas himself. "So your interest in me stemmed from my disinterest in you?"

"It sounds bad when you say it like that," Axel laughed lightly. "And…like I said that night…there's something inherently interesting about you."

"No," Roxas said quietly. He found himself actively, rather than passively, despising the man.

"No what?"

"No, I don't often follow people like this. I don't go along with others. Not ever. Me? I act on my own."

Roxas did realize that this was pushing his act as Sora very near to the edge of a cliff. Axel had, after all, heard him speak as himself in that vehement tone that used to rule his world, instead of this calm, naïve crap he was trying to pull of late. He realized that after what he'd said about himself---being completely normal in school---this was a contradiction.

Axel blinked. Then he grinned. "Like I said…interesting. Come on, we're almost there."

What?

"I thought you said you didn't know where we were going," Roxas accused.

"I don't. But I know where we're walking to."

That was it. Fuck phase one. Roxas was itching to give Axel what he deserved. Confusion begot confusion, didn't it? Whatever he did now was fair.

"Come on, she won't bite. Not too hard, anyway. But I want you to meet her."

Roxas looked up.

And desperately wished he hadn't. He should have been paying more attention to where they were walking.

They were standing outside the bookstore, and Larxene was peering out, looking cheerfully at Axel, and very, very, confusedly at Roxas.

There was no doubt in his mind---she knew exactly who he was.

God dammit.

a/n: Wow, Axel and Roxas together for the whole chapter, what the heck? Well, they really needed more time together. Umm...let's see...dialogue was extremely important in this chapter, there were a lot of metaphors, most of which I think were clear. Also, at the end of this chapter, we return to the first two words of the entire story---suggesting that Roxas has just dropped another box on his foot. Anyway,as I informed my editor, we are getting close to the second part of the summary---the "and being stalked" part. Anyway, as I'm sure you guys know, I'd love to hear from you, and the next chapter should, I hope, be up quicker than this one was.( I had college apps to take care of...) Oh! Btw, I noticed we're awfully close to 100 reviews...it'd be really cool if we got there now...