Roxas awoke with his mind blank but his body in a sweat. A groggy slew of curses, some in English and others questionable, fell from his mouth as his ears were assaulted by the jarring noise behind him. He moved to wrap the pillow around his ears and grimaced when he felt the sweaty dampness of the pillow meet his face. Rolling to the side of the bed, he extended his arm to begin the haphazard blind search for his screaming alarm. What he got was the short-lived breeze of a downward descent, followed by his face greeting the floor. And his friends wondered why he wasn't a morning person. The alarm clock continued to blare, though Roxas now perceived it as the cruel, mocking sound of automated laughter. He smacked the alarm clock with harder force than usual.

As Roxas continued his blind trek through his morning routine, he found strange solace in the realization that he'd awoken with a clear mind. Considering his dreamtrack record over the past few days, he had no complaints about not having dreamt at all. With this newfound contentedness washing over him, he began to blearily slather toothpaste on his toothbrush. Already well-acquainted with the motions, he consented absently to letting his eyes slide shut.

His eyes traced the room, seeing flames licking the white walls around him, consuming the furniture, seeming to melt and crumple everything within its searing grasp.

Roxas's eyes bolted open. He looked back at his reflection, eyeing the heaving of his chest and the stream of mint-colored foaming saliva that had run down his chin. Great, Roxas thought, he'd traded in strangely sensual night dreams for nightmarish day dreams. (Daymares?) He wiped his chin with indignation.

Roxas continued his routine, hoping not to experience a repeat of whatever that had been. He began to drowsily undress before moving into the shower. With his hair full of sudsy shampoo, he let his eyes fall closed again.

He stared helplessly at the growing flames, his vision becoming clouded with the haze of the thick black smoke. His lungs began to seize and sputter as he crawled fearfully backwards. He turned to where he was sure the door would be. His gaze was met with nothing but bare wall.

His eyes flared open, nearly causing him to slather shampoo into his eye. More than a little perturbed, he turned the water to as cold as it would go.

Now that he was more than a little awake—thanks to daymare-fueled adrenaline and a very cold shower—he felt confident that the disturbing visions would stop. He started the ritual process of tearing through his entire room to find something to wear, pulling clothes from drawers and piling them on the floor. He checked under the bed, finding more crumpled clothing. He sighed. He settled on the shirt he'd seen a few minutes ago (which was now, of course, lying at the bottom of the mountainous pile of clothes that lay at the center of his room). When he'd finally unearthed it, he pulled it over his head. For a brief moment he was shrouded in the darkness of the inside of the shirt.

He began to struggle for air, his breaths shallow amongst the coughs that were wracking his lungs. Terrified, he turned and began searching the wall with fervent panic, pressing his palms desperately against the surface to find some kind of opening, some kind of escape. The heat burned against his back.

Roxas's head emerged from the shirt like he was surfacing from a dive that had gone on too long, his breaths short and uneven. What the hell was going on with him?

He wandered through the kitchen into the pantry, consciously keeping his eyes open and blinking as little as possible. He was afraid for a repeat of the strange visions he was having. He mulled over the options in front of him— frosted cereal, gross bran cereal, oatmeal, Pop-Tarts—but his stomach blatantly refused to voice an opinion. What's new, he thought. His body had basically performed acoup d'etat last night, so he shouldn't have expected much. Despite having no appetite whatsoever, he opted for frosted cereal. The thought of having a hot breakfast this morning made his stomach turn. He sat at the table, checking the time on his phone. 7:38 AM. He had about twenty minutes to get to school. No big deal, he thought. He only needed fifteen. Ten if he hit all the green lights. He absently spooned another bite of cereal into his mouth. That's when he noticed that he had a new text message. He figured it was going to be Hayner asking him if he could copy his notes again before 1st period. Typical. He swiped at the screen. Instead, however, he was met, not with Hayner's name followed by a string of miscellaneous emojis, but with some number he didn't recognize. 458-0813…hadn't he seen that number somewhere before?

"Roxie, don't forget about our date!
Same time and place as when I first saw your cute face"

No mystery there. He knew exactly who the number was. And it definitely wasn't Hayner wanting to copy his notes. He sighed, dropping the spoon unceremoniously back into his cereal bowl. He'd tried to put the "date" at the very back of his mind all morning, burying it like he'd buried the shirt he was wearing under a mountain of other clothes. He lowered his head and massaged his temples. This wasn't going to be any different than any time he'd hung out alone with Hayner. It would be fine. He was in control. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply.

He crawled a little further, trapped in an inescapable furnace. He continued to blindly reach for the wall in front of him. The world around him seemed to be moving painfully slow, spiraling before his eyes. Then there was black. Abyssal.

He felt a tickle on his chin. Then another on his cheek. By the fourth feathery touch, he raised his head from the ground, his vision filling with the sight of hundreds of tiny blades of grass. He looked down at himself, inspected his hands, his torso, his legs. He was fine. He breathed deeply, no longer feeling the burning in his lungs. He lay back down onto the bed of green that cradled him, his face meeting the dampness of the dewdrops.

Roxas jolted awake, his face half submerged in his cereal bowl. Oh so now that Axel texts him, he stops having day-nightmares? Daymares? Seriously, why don't they have a word for that? He felt strangely like he was becoming a slave to some cheesy romance novel. He checked the time. 7:53. Well, shit.


Roxas sat in 3rd period, feeling incredibly antsy. He'd gotten over the denial of the whole I have a date with Axel situation, but now that he'd accepted it, his imagination was running absolutely wild with it. Maybe if everything in his body hadn't unanimously decided to rebel, he wouldn't be in this situation. Well, stomach, heart, and brain, are you happy now? He thrummed his pencil against the table, wondering what Axel's idea of a first date was. Images of tattoo and piercing shops, sketchy drug dealers, and strip clubs filled his mind. His head sunk onto the desk with a thud.

"Roxas. My classroom is not the place for your naptime. If you want to nap, I can surely let you do it in detention."

"Sorry Mr. Strife," he mumbled. He wanted to blame the anarchy that was going on within him, but he figured that wouldn't exactly bode well with Mr. Strife. Or any teacher for that matter. He sighed.

He tried to take notes for the rest of the lecture, but half the time he was accidentally writing down his own thoughts instead. Things like "getting arrested for indecent exposure" and "pranking elderly people" and "making a homemade bomb" littered the page. He really hoped Axel wouldn't rope him into delinquency on the first date. God, he needed to stop calling it a first date. It was going to be the only date. It would barely even be a date. ...Right?


"Hey Roxas, grab me a napkin, would ya?"

Roxas narrowed his eyes. "Hayner, they're closer to you than they are to me."

"Geez, Rox. You're so mean now that you have a girlfriend. You'd think it'd be the other way around. Trouble in paradise?" Hayner teased.

"Give him a break," Olette replied.

Roxas brightened a little as Olette stuck up for him.

"—he's always been sulky like that," she finished.

Roxas glowered again. "Thanks."

"See? But we love him anyway," she added, smiling.

"I think I'd love him more if he would quit bumping the table," Pence mumbled, picking his bowl of soup off the table to keep it from sloshing around further.

Olette glanced down at Roxas's leg. It was bouncing up and down a mile a minute, knocking haphazardly against the table. "Roxas, what's up with you? You're being super fidgety." She placed her hand gently on his leg to get him to stay still. As soon as she did this, Roxas's fingers began rapidly tapping against the table instead. She rolled her eyes and pulled her hand back.

"Dunno. Nervous for the calc test 7th period, I guess?" he replied, wishing he could convince himself of the same. He picked up the piece of pizza in front of him and stared at it blankly before putting it down again. His stomach was in knots enough as it was.

Olette eyed him skeptically. Suddenly her eyes brightened and she was leaning excitedly across the table."Hey, wait a minute, how did that phone call go, Roxas? Did you talk to Naminé?"

"I never said it was Naminé. It was just hypothetical, 'Lette, seriously," Roxas replied flatly. Mental note: never tell Olette anything.

"Oh! Right, riiight. So. Hypothetically, how did it go with Naminé?" she corrected, winking.

Roxas stared at her. Girls were way too persistent. Well, girls and Axel. Screw Axel, he thought. Okay wait, bad wording. Don't screw Axel. Ugh. Nevermind. He thought about how Axel had somehow managed to manipulate him into giving him a ride, calling him, and then going on a date with him. Didn't Roxas have any sense? The guy was a total stranger. A hitchhiker. Didn't Roxas remember anything they'd taught him in school? Like, hellooo? Stranger danger? He wanted to smack himself over his lack of street smarts. He shouldn't have stopped the car. He should've just kept on going and either run him over or let him jump out of the way. Would've served him right, honestly.

"Come on, Roxas. We're dying over here! Tell us!"

In the midst of his frustration, Roxas forgot briefly about his mental note and the new don't tell Olette things policy. "It went fine. Although not Naminé asked not Roxas on a date and now he's totally scr—"

"WHAT?" Olette squawked. "You have a date?! When?"

Did he just say that out loud?

"Atta boy," Hayner said, elbowing Roxas with a sly grin on his face. "I knew you had it in you."

"Why didn't you or Naminé ever tell me you guys dated before in the first place?" Olette whined.

"It's not Nam—" he stopped. Something crossed his mind. If he told them it really wasn't Naminé, then they'd just keep pestering him and he'd have to come up with some other person. And he definitely wasn't telling them about Axel. He'd rather them think that he was dating Naminé than dating a guy, much less Axel. He sighed, rubbing his temples slowly. "Listen, could you just keep this…on the down low for a while? Please."

"Yeah, for sure. I'm just happy you told me—er, I mean us," Olette nodded enthusiastically to punctuate her point.

Pence laughed. "Olette? Keep a secret? Since when?"

"Shut up, I can keep a secret. You remember when I kept your secret about that time you were stuck in the book store café bathroom for five hours before I came and brought you some of my dad's pants to—oh."

Hayner and Roxas burst out laughing.

"Olette! Er—I—come on guys, that didn't happen. She made that up," Pence muttered, turning his face back towards his soup with embarrassment.

"Sorry, Pence," she said, with a sheepish smile. "But Roxas, I will keep your secret. I promise. Now tell me everything. I need details. Like…when is your date? Where are you taking her? What are you going to wear? And please tell me it's not that— Oooh..." She lowered her voice to an intense whisper. "Roxas, are you planning on kissing her?"

"Um…tonight. The date is tonight," he answered belatedly, feeling a little dazed by all the questions. He'd had a lot of questions already, but he hadn't thought of half of those. He wanted to smack himself in the face again. But mostly he wanted to smack Axel in the face.

"Tonight?! Sheesh, that gives me no time to prepare you. Okay, let me think." She leaned back, her eyes rolling up slightly as she contemplated what she wanted to say.

"Okay," she said finally, counting on her fingers as she spoke. "Manners. Use yours. Open the door for her. Chew with your mouth closed." She narrowed her eyes pointedly at Hayner for emphasis, who responded with a cheesy grin, literally, as chewed pizza nearly fell out of his mouth. She shook her head, rolling her eyes. "—Pay for her, preferably. Oh—and comb your hair, for heaven's sake!" She reached over in an attempt to smooth Roxas's hair down.

Roxas batted her hand away. "You're doing the mom thing again."

"Sorry," she sighed. "This is what having younger siblings does to you."

"Alright, alright, thanks Olette," Roxas said finally, ruffling his hair back into his preferred state of disarray.

"Wait, one last thing," Olette added, lowering her voice back to the intense whisper. "Now, no pressure or anything, but if you're considering trying to kiss her, hang back first and observe a little. If you find her staring at your lips, go for it."

"What?" Hayner asked incredulously.

"What do you mean 'what'? It's just a girl thing," Olette shrugged. "You guys should really start reading Cosmo or Seventeen."

Roxas reddened slightly. All the kissing talk was making him feel…weird. He had no plans to kiss Axel. He'd sooner run him over with his car—he'd already pictured doing that in his head once or twice. Besides, what Olette failed to realize was that girl things didn't exactly apply to his situation anyway.


Roxas sweatily gripped the steering wheel, driving well below the speed limit as a way to buy him some time—to preserve his sanity. The scent of cigarettes in his car had dissipated, leaving only the scent of stale air and plastic. He took a couple deep breaths, meanwhile changing the radio station any time an even remotely romantic song came on. He needed to get into one of his sardonic, austere moods now more than ever.

He spotted red spikes in the distance before anything else. Axel was sitting on the grass of the median next to the crosswalk. As Roxas pulled his car up, Axel perked up, hopping to his feet. His same, slightly dilapidated bag was slung across his shoulder. He sported a sly grin as he strolled up to Roxas's driver-side window. Roxas sighed and reluctantly rolled his window down.

"Hey Roxie," he said brightly, reaching in to ruffle Roxas's hair. "I was beginning to think you'd stood me up." He leaned in to steady his arms against the window frame, looking at Roxas with a soft smile.

Roxas promptly reached up and smoothed his blonde locks back down a little, feeling Axel's gaze the whole time, as though it were searing into him. It made him squirm a little and he averted his eyes.

"So, you gonna get in the car or are you just going to stand there like an idiot?" he replied, pointing to the passenger side seat.

"Actually, Rox, I was thinking that I could drive. That way it'll be a surprise."

Roxas's eyes widened a little. A surprise? Images of tattoo parlors, LSD, strip clubs, public indecency, and homemade fireworks were filling his mind. His stomach was suddenly in his throat. He gripped the steering wheel a little harder, feeling his knuckles turn white.

"Are you sure your license isn't suspended for multiple D.U.I.s or something? Do you even have a license?"

Axel clasped a hand over his chest, wincing with feigned offense. "Ouch. I'm really hurt, Rox. What kind of a person do you think I am?"

"I mean, you had to get a ride from me once. I kind of just assumed…" He trailed off as Axel's grin began to take on a slightly more devious, plotting look.

Axel leaned in dangerously close, sliding a hand into Roxas's hair.

Roxas was looking at him like a deer in the headlights. Pinned under Axel's gaze, he felt like he couldn't move at all. He sucked in an unsteady breath. This…was a dream, right? Just one of his stupid Axel dreams? Okay, Rox, this would be a really good time to wake up now!

Fortunately, Axel pulled away, but with something in his hand. Roxas stared at him blankly, reeling a little from their previous close proximity. Axel waved the retrieved item in front of Roxas's face.

"See? Fully licensed. I told you that you could trust me."

Roxas reached out and steadied Axel's hand, peering at the card. Sure enough, it was a driver's license with Axel's face plastered on it. He sighed with resignation, unlocking his seat belt and moving to open the door, half hoping to smack Axel with it as he opened it. Of course, Axel moved out of the way before he could manage it. Roxas walked around to the other side of the car, getting in with a huff. So much for being in control.

Axel was gazing at him again with a look that Roxas couldn't quite read. He quickly seemed to snap out of his thoughts, moving fluidly into the driver seat. He turned to Roxas.

"So, you're cool with me driving?"

Roxas figured Axel must've noticed the slightly perturbed look on his face. He was having his delayed "stranger danger" reaction. He still honestly had no idea who Axel was and even less of an idea of where Axel was planning on taking him. He mentally pushed away his inhibitions and took a steadying breath.

"You promise you're not going to, like, kidnap me or anything?"

"Geez, all these accusations, Roxas. You wound me so." He stuck his lip out in a momentary pout before continuing. "Alright. I pinky promise I won't 'kidnap you...or anything'." He winked as he added the last part, holding his pinky out expectantly.

Roxas stared at him. "Seriously?"

"I mean, we could kiss on it?" He pursed his lips.

Roxas glowered, offering his pinky to finish the juvenile ritual. Lord, what a piece of work.

"Great," he said, turning the key in the ignition. "Let's hit it."