EPICLY IMPORTANT MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE 0405 CHARACTERS THAT ARE NOT INCLUDED IN ANY OF THE STORIES ABOUT THEM MOSTLY DUE TO THE FACT THAT THESE EPICLY IMPORTANT MOMENTS HAPPENED IN THE STORY LINE BEFORE THE EVENTS IN THE 2004 STORY TOOK PLACE OR WERE NOT FULLY DEVELOPED DUE TO THE FACT THAT IN THE 04 STORY I DIDN’T GO INTO GREAT DETAIL OF HOW THE CHARACTERS WERE THINKING.

ALEC - YEAR SEVEN:

“Hey, Sofia…”

“Yeah, Alec?”

“If I ask you a question, will you tell me the truth?”

“Um… sure.” Sofia sat up from resting her head on Alec’s lap. She brushed some locks of her long black hair behind her ear.

“Do you love me?”

She took in a deep breath. She really had wanted to. She knew Alec’s record- that he’d had about ten other girlfriends before her. She really liked him, and hoped that she could be the one to keep him in a long term relationship. But she couldn’t. It wasn’t that he’d cheated on her… it was just that he wasn’t into it. He seemed to like her well enough, and treated her very well, but he just was not interested in the relationship.

“No,” she said finally.

“Do you think you ever could?”

This answer came much more quickly. “No.”

“Yeah,” Alec sighed. “I really thought we could work out.”

“No, you didn’t,” she sighed heavily. “You wanted us to. But you didn’t think we could.”

“That’s not--”

“No,” she interjected. “Let me say this. You’re not there. It’s almost like you don’t want it to work. Somewhere inside, you knew that we’d never work, so you never tried.”

“So…”

“So, you wanted to break up with me right?”

“I…”

“I should have known. It’s okay, Alec.” She stood up from the couch they’d been sitting on and turned to look and smile at him.

“You’re okay with this?”

“It’s for the best.” Alec didn’t know what to think. He was so used to ending relationships due to the fact that his girlfriend had found out he was cheating on her, that a relationship ending on a mutual, positive note was a foreign concept to him.

“I’ll see you in English class, okay?” she said with a slight note of cheer in her voice.

“Yeah… yeah, okay.”

She smiled one big last smile then turned to walk out of the Red common room.

“Shit,” Alec whispered to himself. He felt like crap. He had felt better when he broke up with girls who hated him. One who was completely understanding and kind confused him. He wanted her back already.

Well… no. Not her. He didn’t want her back. He just didn’t feel much chemistry with Sofia. She was a beautiful girl and had a lovely personality, but he just didn’t feel a ‘click’ with her. But no, he didn’t really want her back, he wanted someone who was that easy-going about things and wouldn’t freak out about the smallest problem.

He stood up and moped up the stairs to the bedroom where he fell back onto his bed. He wasn’t sure how much time passed, but eventually, he heard the door creak open. So annoying. One boy decides to stay out late and the rest wake up to that squeaking door.

“How did it go? Did you talk to Sofia?”

“Yeah,” Alec groaned in response.

“So… How did it go then?” Hideaki asked as he closed the door behind him with another squeak.

“It went perfectly.”

“Then why are you staring at the ceiling?”

“Dunno.”

“You only stare at the ceiling if something is wrong.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll close my eyes. Everything’s fine. Everything’s…” his voice faded away to silence.

“What is wrong, Alec?” Hideaki sounded more annoyed than he usually did.

“Nothing.”

“Do I have to get Chanda to beat it out of you?”

“Gotta get a girl to fight for you?”

“No. I just know you are scared of her.”

“She is quite terrifying.”

“So do I have to go get her?”

“No. Sofia just… she took it so well. It was damn near scary how well she took it.”

“Did you want her to be upset?”

“No. Yes! No… I want someone to be upset. Like, actually upset. Not because I… but because… damn it.”

Alec heard Hideaki laugh a little. “You will find her eventually.”

“Screw you. Always knowing exactly what I mean,” Alec grumbled and pulled the covers over his head.

Alec couldn’t be sure, but he thought he had seen Kyrie making out with some year eight against the back corner of the greenhouse. Oh well. Fuck her. He never thought she was that great anyway. She couldn’t be that great if she agreed to go out with Alec. He started to look around though the crowd for Chelle. She was always at these things. His eyelids felt heavy. He had always been a sleepy drunk. Never angry or friendly, just usually ready to pass out. He knew someone who was quite a cheery drunk though, and he spotted him through the crowds. His usually pale, freckled face was flushed red with warmth from excitement and people and drink. He smiled and laughed at something one of the girls talking to him said. Alec stared. He didn’t know why and he couldn’t look away. He felt dizzy and hot and ready to sleep. He was all ready to lay down on the floor, when someone stopped him. “No, no, Alec. You can’t sleep here,” she said, propping him up on her shoulders.

“Hi, Chelle,” he tried to say.

“Hi yourself,” she responded, walking with him towards the door.

“Remember that time I fucked you in the greenhouse?”

Chelle sighed and rolled her eyes. “Yeah.”

Alec closed his eyes and tried to sleep. It was hard to do with Chelle holding him up like she was. “Put me down.”

“I’m taking you up to your wing, so you can get some sleep.”

“I like sleep,” he said. They were now out of the greenhouse and on their way to the great hall. “I like Hideaki too. He’s got nice… everything.”

Only Chelle didn’t understand anything he said after “sleep” because he was mumbling too much.

Hideaki wandered into the bathroom around three AM. He needed to take a shower. He smelled like alcohol and he hated that. He stumbled into the shower area. He could have known that there was a party in the greenhouse that night just by looking at the showers. Half of the curtains were torn down and no one put the towels in the chute to the laundry room, and someone had fallen asleep half-naked on the floor curled up with a pile of towels. Wait a second… he was quite tipsy, but even with that impairing him, he realized that he knew the person asleep there. “Alec,” Hideaki tried to say. He tried to kick Alec awake and nearly fell backwards. Alec didn’t wake up, but instead he just rolled over onto his back, stretching his arms out on either side of his body. Hideaki watched him breathe. He watched his bare stomach rise and fall. He always looked really scrawny, but years of football training had really kept him trim and muscular- and this suddenly became apparent to Hideaki now that he could really have a good look at Alec without a shirt on. He wondered if the rest of Alec was that tightly muscular. He wanted to see it all at once. He felt his face flood with warmth.

“Shit.” He mumbled to himself. “Alec, get up. You cannot sleep here.” Hideaki kicked Alec in the side again. “Go sleep in your own bed or you will get in trouble.”

“Grrmmm…” Alec mumbled.

“Alec…” Hideaki kicked him again.

“Fuck off.”

“Fuck you. I am trying to help.”

“Oy…” Alec slowly opened his eyes. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Oh no, not me,” was the only thing Hideaki thought to say.

“Go to bed, Hide.”

“I need to take a shower. You are the one who needs to go to bed.”

“Help me up.”

“You can help yourself up, drunky.”

“Look who’s talking… you’re only in here because you don’t wanna smell like the booze you’ve been drinking.”

“Yeah… well… go to bed.”

Alec laughed and tried to pull himself up to his feet. Hideaki offered his hand to help him up.

“Kyrie is cheating on me,” Alec complained.

“So how long did that last then? Three, four days?”

“Three.” Alec stumbled into the wall a little. “I think...” He stopped walking and leaned against the wall. “I suck. Even when I do things right they go wrong.”

“That is not true.”

“Mrrf…” He slumped down to the floor.

“You are very good at football and--”

“Like that shit counts. Don’t you know anything about me?”

“I am just trying to help.”

“Don’t. Just leave me alone.”

“No,” Hideaki snapped. “You are my best friend. I am not going to just leave you alone.”

Alec stood up and looked at him as best he could with his heavy eyelids.

“You are smart and strong but you are so fucking ignorant of that.” Hideaki was yelling very quickly now. “You will not acknowledge anything positive about yourself and whenever anyone tries to do it for you, you push that person away. That is why whenever some girl gets close enough to you that she might actually find something in you to love, you have to break up with her or find some other girl to fuck instead.” And then he puked on the bathroom floor.

Alec sighed and steered Hideaki out of the bathroom and back up to the hallway where they would split up to go to the boys’ bedrooms of the two different wings. “Go to bed now, pukey.”

“Are you mad at me?”

“God, no.”

“Okay.”

“Learn to hold your alcohol.”

“Okay.”

“Goodnight.”

“Okay.”

Alec woke up the next day with a really weird feeling. He was hung over, of course. He expected this. But something about him felt… bright. It wasn’t the drink. It definitely wasn’t the drink. It wasn’t that classes were over, finals were over, and that they’d be getting their certification for moving on to the next level that day… really, he dreaded this day. He hated to go home to his parents. But he felt amazing. He just felt like smiling. Smiling hurt his head, but he wanted to smile. And then, at breakfast, he remembered.

Hideaki looked like hell. His hair was a mess, and he looked like he was almost asleep with his head down on the table next to his plate of eggs and potatoes. “I cannot remember last night,” he mumbled when Alec sat down next to him. “Whoever made that put too much drinky in my drink.”

“It was pretty strong,” Alec agreed. “And since when do you say ‘drinky’?”

Hideaki groaned in response.

“What do you remember?”

“I dunno. …Nana. That girl. She said I have a fan club.”

“What?”

“Some younger girls… formed my fan club.”

“How stupidly flattering.”

“I do not know what to think of it.”

“I wouldn’t know either… if it was for me, I mean. When it’s you, I can just call it stupid.”

“I really do not remember much more than that.”

“So you don’t remember puking on the bathroom floor?”

“Oh, god,” he groaned. “Please tell me you are just joking.”

“Nope.”

“Was that the worst?”

“That I saw anyway. That I remember anyway.” Alec didn’t forget anything though.

He remembered every tiny detail. To the pink shade that Hideaki’s cheeks were, the way his refusal to say any contractions sounded even stranger than usual with the slight slurring of his voice, the warmth of his skin against his own as he helped him out of the bathroom, the way he’d called him smart and strong, and most importantly, he remembered his own revelation: He was in love with his best friend. He remembered how the second the two of them split up and went to their own separate wings, he cursed himself and felt like tearing his own hair out and tried to convince himself that it wasn’t possible and that if he just tried he could get over it or that it would eventually pass. But by around 7 in the morning, he’d gotten close to accepting it. He’d have a month at home, away from Hideaki- a month that he could use to sort things out, and he’d worry about it when they got back to school in September. Or even better, he’d be over it by then. He’d be back to normal and they’d just be friends like they’d always been.

This convincing let him fall asleep for a couple hours, and when he woke from his sleep, he was totally blissful. And despite his vicious want not to feel this way, he couldn’t help but have a wonderfully happy feeling just by thinking that he’d be able to see Hideaki when he went down to breakfast.

“I’m surprised you made it to breakfast.”

“They were too noisy in my room. It is quieter down here.”

“So, now that it’s all over, how was your first year as one of the big kids?”

“Honestly… a lot less eventful than I thought it would be.”

“I know what you mean. …I think I’m gonna give up football next year.”

“What? Why?!” Hideaki lifted his head up for the first time since Alec sat down.

“If I do decide to play, I can’t be captain anymore. It takes way too much time. And with taking these freaking advanced math classes, I don’t think I can keep it up.”

“But… you are really good at football.”

“Yeah, and I’m pretty good at math and science too, and I’m probably more likely to get a job knowing that kind of stuff, rather than being good at football.”

“That is… uncharacteristically mature of you, Alec. Are you still drunk? Your judgment is not impaired now, is it?”

“No. I need to go get my breakfast now.” Alec stood up and walked towards the food line on the other side of the great hall. The line was still somewhat short enough that he wouldn’t get frustrated with waiting in it. He was pretty proud of himself. He managed not to completely freak out. ‘Alright,’ he thought to himself. ‘I think I can get through this.’