When Roxas awoke that morning, his vision was immediately acquainted with the sight of a million tiny little carpet fibers and a world tipped on its side. With the proximity, Roxas thought hazily that they looked like a field of fluffy off-colored blades of grass. Kind of like the grass in his dream the other day—right before he woke up with his face in his cereal bowl. Roxas groaned groggily, making a pathetic attempt to swipe the hair out of his face. He sat up quickly, the blood rushing to his head so quickly that it made him dizzy. Oh, so it was going to be one of those mornings. Chipper. He felt the distinct feeling of a long strand of saliva breaking from his mouth as he moved. Well, that wasn't gross at all. He wiped at his chin, his eyes immediately moving to the side, noticing his bed at eye level. And people complain about waking up on the wrong side of the bed. At least those people actually wake up in their beds. He heaved himself off the floor with considerable effort and a languid groan.

The rest of the morning followed in suit—a slew of groggy images passing through his mind, narrated by a continuous inner monologue of sleep brain thoughts. When Roxas finally managed to—rather miraculously—dress himself and locate the kitchen, he wandered in to find the table already set. He narrowed his eyes, approaching the table slowly, his vision focusing to find a plate in the center of the table stacked with waffles. Roxas eyed it skeptically. It was a pretty mountainous platter of waffles, topped with whipped cream and strawberries. Of course Sora would make him apology breakfast—A.K.A. guilt on a plate. He glared at the display. His stomach betrayed him with an audible growl.

Well, he couldn't really let good waffles go to waste. With this change of heart—or, rather, change of stomach—Roxas sat down resignedly to the plate, beginning to numbly stuff his face. He tried to wipe the image of Sora's last crestfallen look at him from his mind, but it kept manifesting itself onto the plate, glinting off the valleys of syrup, appearing along the grid marks of the waffle mountains, showing up in the snowy whipped cream sliding down the landscape. He tried to make over-exaggerated chewing noises to drown out the sound of Sora's piteous voice ringing in his ears, but Sora's voice in Roxas's head was just about as persistent as regular Sora. Well, guilt on a plate, mission accomplished yet again.

Instead of feeling forgiveness, Roxas merely felt riddled with guilt and resentment. He glared at the table, his vision glinting blurrily off the syrup that pooled on the plate. It was like Sora was trying to manipulate him. It was as if he thought he could make one good meal and they would be buddy-buddy again and would go skipping off into the sunset. Roxas sat back in his chair, working his jaw back and forth as he ruminated. Of course Sora would think that—he wasn't used to having real human problems. Well, it wasn't going to work this time. Roxas wasn't going to let one little breakfast change how he felt. He was tired of the pity looks and sympathy breakfasts. If anything was pitiful, it was Sora's attempts to resolve problems with food. Even if the waffles were a glorious piece of architecture. Roxas pushed the plate away and was about to walk out the door when he noticed a sealed white envelope that had been wedged underneath the plate, addressed to Roxas with a little heart. How thoughtful. He deposited the unopened envelope in the trash as he walked out the door.


Roxas sat in third period, dully rolling his pencil around on his desk. A video about the stock market was droning on in the background, but Roxas only registered it as a dull buzzing in the back of his mind. He let out a strangled sigh. It was Friday, he really should've felt more energized about the weekend, but somewhere between the guilt trip for breakfast and realizing that he'd have to go home and face Sora and his stupid sympathetic glances after school, he'd felt a profound sense of detachment cloud his frame of mind and a foreboding weight settle in his chest. In the midst of his idleness, he noticed a sort of glow in his peripherals, coming from his backpack. He leaned down, digging around in his backpack until he located his phone—which was always inevitably sandwiched down at the very bottom. In the midst of his noisy shuffling, a few people turned in their seats to glare at him. Roxas gave a strained look of apology at them, sliding further down in his seat to avoid any more speculation. He clicked his phone on, quickly lowering the brightness to avoid further scornful looks from any of his apparently very studious peers. I mean, was it even really possible to pay attention to these videos? He looked up at the video, detaching himself briefly from his thoughts.

"…and this graphic is demonstrative of the three major secular market cycles of the last 100 years…"

Roxas shook his head. Yeah, nope. Fuzzy blades of grass were more interesting. He returned his attention to his phone, noticing 2 new messages, piquing his interest. He clicked on the first one.

"crosswalk, same time & place?
there's something I want to show you"

Something stirred in Roxas's chest, building into a steady thrumming. Axel. He suddenly felt a wave of nausea overcome him, images from last night assaulting him all at once. He could feel Axel's hand in his hair, cupping his cheek. He could feel his own hand pressed up against Axel's chest, could feel the fabric bunching in his hand as he pulled Axel back down to him. No, no, nonono. Last night was a mistake. Clearly Axel had drugged him with his chocolate coffee soup concoction. He'd derailed Roxas's already depleted brain cells (thanks, again, to Axel and his cancer stick carcinogens) with high amounts of sugar and caffeine. He groaned, sliding down further in his seat. Why did he feel like he was no longer in control of any portion of his life? The pencil in his hand suddenly let out a sharp snapping noise, yanking Roxas from his thoughts. He didn't bother looking up, knowing the angry glares would probably be waiting there for him if he did. He slowly opened his hand, letting the two pieces of pencil fall back down to the desk.

What did Axel want to show him anyway? Another image briefly hijacked his mind, which he quickly batted away, his face taking on a shade of pink despite himself. He glanced around the room momentarily, in a new wave of self-consciousness. He suddenly felt very grateful for the mind-numbingly dull stock market video. With half the class nearly asleep and the others focused intently on the video, they all failed to notice Roxas having a sort of personal existential crisis. He slid his head down onto the desk, exhaling exasperatedly. There was no way he was going to show his face in front of Axel again. What happened last night wasn't exactly something he could explain away. What was he supposed to say? Sorry, Axel, I forgot that I was straight. My bad, won't happen again. We cool?

He made a slight keening noise at himself, resolving to put the topic to rest. He wasn't going to see Axel again, and that was the end of it. It wasn't like Axel would care. Roxas was just a tiny blond-haired blip on his timeline, one out of many. The image of Demyx's face flashed briefly in his mind. Yeah, he'd be just fine. Determined to get his mind off of the red-haired terror, he returned his attention to his inbox. He opened the second message.

"Hey, can we talk when you get home?
P.S. have a good day at school today! :]"

If Roxas's head hadn't already thudded against the desk a couple of minutes ago, it surely would have then. He instinctively hit the delete button. Couldn't Sora take the hint that maybe Roxas didn't want to sit through one of his one-sided sympathy lectures? Going home to the sympathy committee was definitely at the very bottom of Roxas's to-do list. God, Roxas hated himself for what he was about to do. He thumbed a message quickly, before he could talk himself out of it again.

"yeah, okay"

He clicked send. It was like choosing between a rock and a hard place. Either way, Roxas wasn't getting out without being crushed in between. He held the phone in his hands, a little in disbelief as he stared at the phone thread, his eyes running over the message he just sent over and over. The feeling of regret began worming up inside of him. Or was that just more nausea? Either way, Roxas found himself frantically scanning the text options. Wasn't there some kind of delete button? Cancel, cancel, please cancel.

The phone lit up again. Roxas's heart felt like it was contorting in his chest. He mechanically opened the message waiting for him on the screen.

"I knew you couldn't resist me"

He rolled his eyes, thumbing out a message in reply.

"don't make me change my mind"

Roxas knew he was in trouble, but something told him having to deal with Axel and his stupid grins was going to be at least a little bit more tolerable than Sora and his ridiculous sad smiles. Still, the image of him getting crushed between a rock and a hard place was not far from his mind.