Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

                Axel’s phone quietly proclaimed that it was 2:33 pm. 2:33 pm on a lazy Thursday, on a completely unremarkable week, just like last week and the one before. The clothes store was quiet, other than the cliché soundtrack that was so easy to tune out once you’d heard it about a million times. No one walking by the lifeless mannequins on display to the rest of the mall seemed interested in investigating further, so Axel was leaning on the counter behind the register, playing through what was probably his fiftieth game of Temple Run in a row.

                “You know they’ll fire you for that,” Larxene said flatly, poking her head out of the back room and evidently finding Axel exactly how she expected him to be.

                “It wouldn’t be the first time,” he said, not bothering to look up.

                She sighed, shaking her head and disappearing back to the one place in the store where there was a blind spot from the security cameras. It was probably the safest place to be when you were looking to slack off and still keep your job, but Axel was beyond the point of caring. That was probably part of the reason he could never stayed employed at the same place for long, but, well, he wouldn’t exactly miss this store if they threw him onto the street again.

                He slumped over the counter, resting his chin on one of his hands as his other swiped idly at his phone. He was actually managing to get somewhere in his game, and was seconds away from beating his high score when he received a text message that managed to lag his phone just enough that he missed a turn and fell into the swamp.

                “Fuck.” He switched to his messaging app thinking that, maybe, he should be mad about his game, but the thought quickly passed in favor of relief at someone actually contacting him and no longer having to rely on cheap apps for entertainment.

                The text wasn’t from one of his friends, though. It was from an unknown number. He wasn’t entirely sure whether that was more or less exciting. Moments after opening the thread, another message popped up—“Sorry, wrong number,” said the person whose name was currently a string of 15 characters. Axel frowned, and opened up the picture that was attached to the first message. It was a somewhat blurry shot of a math textbook, and the caption provided was, “hey how do you work this one again.”

                Axel stood up straight and looked over the problem. It was something about angles and triangles and finding x, which he remembered vaguely from some class he was sure he’d taken before, but had no idea how to even begin solving it. It’d been a while.

                Well…it wasn’t like he had anything else to do.

                “Hey, Larxene,” he called, walking into the back without taking his eyes off his phone. “Help me solve this math problem.”

                Larxene gave him an appropriately incredulous look, but took the phone when it was offered to her. She squinted at the picture for a moment, then made a few gestures on the screen, raising an eyebrow.

                “Why are you solving a math problem for an unknown number,” she said, managing to sound disinterested.

                “Uhh…because I have nothing else to do? And this person is obviously in dire need, it would be cruel to just ignore them.”

                Larxene shook her head, not amused with Axel’s theatrics as usual, and handed the phone back to its owner.

                “You have to set up a ratio to find a second side of the bigger triangle and then use the law of cosines to get the third,” she said.

                “Right, I know exactly what that means,” Axel said. He didn’t.

                “Just text back. If they don’t know what it means then they shouldn’t be in that class.”

                Axel rolled his eyes, but did as she said. “Use a ratio,” he echoed, while typing the words out, “for one side, then the…the?”

                “Law of cosines.”

                “The law…of…cosines…for the other one. There. Send.”

                The bar above the message slowly filled, indicating the message was on its way.

                Axel grinned at his screen.

                “…so, are you going to get back to work and not get fired, or do you need me to do homework for any more people you don’t know?”

                “Yeah, yeah…”

                Axel went back to the register, eyes glued to his phone. There wasn’t much of a reason for Mx. [number redacted] to reply, but there hadn’t really been any reason for Axel to either, so maybe the other person was as eager to talk to strangers as he was. Maybe something would happen. He just had a feeling. No one could possibly have anything better to do at 2:35 pm on a Tuesday than reply to a stranger’s texts.

                Sure enough, three dots appeared at the bottom of the message screen. Then they disappeared. Then stuttered in and out of existence for a few moments, before finally staying and then turning into the word, “thanks.”

                The next two messages were: “?,” “do you usually respond to math homework?”

                Axel grinned. He was right.

                Axel: “nothing better to do”

                [Number redacted]: “i could send a few more”

                Axel: “i mean, i guess, but i cant actually do math.”

                “i dropped out of high school”

                “i asked my coworker to solve it”

                Axel opened the contact information and added information to a few fields.

                Math Stranger: “oh”

                That seemed to be all the texter had to say. Not wanting to relinquish the most entertaining thing he had going for him, Axel used snapchat to take a selfie (looking slightly off-camera, a blank expression) and add the caption “retail, slightly better than hs,” screenshotted it, then sent it to this Math Stranger.

                Let’s see where that photo ended up.

~~~

                Roxas stared at the textbook open in front of him, reading through shapes and numbers over and over as if that would make them stick to his brain any better than they already weren’t. He might as well have been reading something in a different language for all the good this was doing him. Math basically was a different language to him.

                His phone buzzed, and it was Hayner’s head that turned towards the noise first.

                “Did Pence respond?” he asked.

                “Oh, uh…”

                Roxas checked his phone, and almost answered “yes,” seeing the math explanation displayed on his screen (what was the law of cosines again? Had he remembered to write that down in his notes?), but then spotted his “sorry wrong number” text.

                “…no,” he said. “It’s…I accidentally texted the wrong number at first and…I guess they responded…?”

                He read the text aloud, verbatim, and let Hayner figure out what all those words meant while he continued the conversation with whoever was on the other side of the phone. He quickly, however, ran out of replies, and set his phone down to continue trying to get the numbers to stop bouncing off his eyes.

                “Is this what you got?” Hayner asked him, scooting a paper of chicken scratch over for Roxas to examine. Though not entirely legible, the numbers written out on there were clearer than those in the book, and the problem started making sense as he looked over it—then his phone buzzed again, and broke his concentration.

                “I dunno, I haven’t worked it yet,” he said, picking up his phone again to check what it was that the buzzing was trying to tell him. Hayner said something after that, but Roxas didn’t quite catch the actual words, since he was too busy staring at the image on his screen and not noticing his face heating up.

                A person. A person with bright red hair—that couldn’t be a natural color, could it?—wearing a V-neck shirt that looked a little too big, with red eyeliner, and…facial tattoos? Small, purple, tear-drop-shaped tattoos under his eyes. A thought surfaced that those should be tacky, but it was drowned out by the louder thought that went something like, This is an incredibly attractive person.

                You, Roxas typed. Delete. Is that, delete, That’s, delete, Is that an actual picture of you? Send.

                [Number redacted]: “I think so.”

                “I mean, I’d hope so, or else I have a lot bigger problems than being a catfisher, considering I just took it.”

                Roxas grinned at the message, which seemed to get the attention of Hayner.

                “Hey,” he said, “What’re you grinning for? We’re supposed to be doing math. No smiling allowed.”

                “Yeah, sorry, sorry,” Roxas went, setting his phone screen-down and returning to his work. He wrote down a short explanation to what his mysterious texter had sent him, finally understanding the process required to get there. He planned on moving on to the next thing, but suddenly found himself with his phone in his hand again. It had vibrated, and that meant he had to pick it up, right?

                [Number redacted]: “So, what’s your name?”

                Roxas’s fingers hesitated over the keyboard. The ‘stranger danger’ lessons that had been hammered into his brain since elementary school told him this was a bad situation, but his instincts didn’t have much to say. Then again, they had never really been that sharp.

                Before he could start replying, against all reason and parental caution, Hayner snatched the phone out of his hands.

                “What’s with you and being on this phone all the time? I can’t help you study during study hour if you keep texting people,” Hayner said, before turning to the screen and skimming over the messages. Evidently, one caught his eye. “Woah,” he said, eyebrows going up, “you’re being creeped on.”

                “Am not,” Roxas felt the need to insist.

                “Some random person is asking for your personal information! That’s being creepy!”

                "They just want to know my name—give it back.”

                Roxas reached out for his phone, but Hayner leaned away, frowning.

                “No,” he said, “No, you don’t get it back until we’ve done at least five problems.”

                “What? Come on—“

                “You told me to help you study. This is me helping you. Now get crackin’.”

                Roxas huffed, but decided to comply. He did ask Hayner to help, after all…and asking Hayner to help was stooping pretty low already. He might as well try to actually follow through with his homework.

                With much effort, he turned back to his paper and began, again, the task of trying to figure out how this math stuff worked.

                He’d get through it eventually.

~~~

                It was on his way home that Roxas remembered Mysterious Texter. Well, that was one use for his spotty memory—forgetting distractions and managing to power his way through unsavory homework.

                He pulled out his phone, and relinquished his personal information.

~~~

                Axel had given up on this particular form of entertainment. Math Stranger hadn’t replied for a few hours, and his shift wasn’t even near finished yet. This made him…surprisingly sad. The spark of excitement from forming a new friendship, snuffed out in its infancy. He satisfied himself with moping around in a sad imitation of trying to help the customers that slowly trickled in as schools began to let out for the day.

                “You look like a blue type of person,” he said to someone, nodding sagely. He didn’t know what a ‘blue type of person’ even meant. He really didn’t know anything about fashion, and relied more on improvisation than actual knowledge when it came to landing jobs like this.

                “I don’t know, don’t you think it kind of washes me out?” said the customer, holding a sweater between their hands and tugging on it. “My mom said that…”

                The rest of the sentence was lost to Axel’s ears, because his phone dinged in his pocket. He immediately pulled it out, and seeing who the message was from, abandoned the shopper to go deal with more important things.

                “Is random math person more important than your job?” the little Larxene on his shoulder jeered at him. He mouthed this sentence out loud, mocking this imaginary projection of his friend. If anyone saw, it probably looked a little odd, but he was beyond the point of caring.

                The text message from Math Stranger said one—what Axel thought was a—word. “Roxas.” It said “Roxas.” Axel stared at the screen, frowning at that collection of letters. He wasn’t sure what a “Roxas” was, but it looked a little too intentional—what with the capitalization and punctuation—to be a random keysmash that happened to end up in his inbox.

                Then he looked at the message before it, “So, what’s your name?” And things became a little bit more clear. Only a little bit, because Axel wasn’t sure that “Roxas” was an actual thing that real people were called.

                “Is that a name?” he texted back. “I don’t think that’s a name.”

                Math Stranger: “It’s my name.”

                Axel: “That’s a weird name. Does it mean something?”

                Math Stranger: “It means my parents are weird.”

                Axel pulled up the contact info again to make a small adjustment. He could feel, somewhere in his vicinity, an aura of anger coming from a Larxene-shaped person.

                Axel: “Well, my name’s Axel.”

                Roxas: “Your parents are less weird”

                Axel didn’t feel like replying to that particular comment.

                Besides, Larxene was coming to drag him back to work anyways.

~~~

                Roxas wasn’t entirely sure how it happened, but at some point, he had made a friend through a mistaken text. Or, well, he was pretty sure this “Axel” person was his friend…they texted back and forth at least once a week, which was way more than Roxas ever thought he would text a wrong number.

                Their conversations just felt…easy. Way more natural than any other conversations Roxas had over text. He didn’t realize how often he deleted and re-wrote messages to his friends in an effort to be understood until Axel repeatedly managed to decipher the oddest of wordings and reply in kind, and Roxas was able to type into the box exactly what was on his mind. It was…weird, kind of. But a good kind of weird.

                Axel: “So, how’s that math going/”

                “?*”

                Roxas: “It’s not. I don’t get math.”

                Axel: “Wish I could help you there.”

                “Your friends still helping you out?”

                Roxas: “They’re doing their best.”

                Axel: “Ah”

                “[an image of an overly complex ‘mathematical’ equation, featuring symbols that are probably not used in actual math, like drawings of ducks]”

                “Math.”

                Roxas: “Hahaha.”

                They, at some point, exchanged Snapchat usernames—more like, Roxas created a Snapchat, much to the surprise of his friends (Olette, especially), and pretended like he hadn’t done it solely for the purpose of receiving images of this (very nice looking) stranger. Roxas himself preferred the camera facing away from his face, more often sending photos of whatever his attention was currently focused on (pets, video games, annoying brothers), but Axel refrained from commenting on it.

                It worked. It…worked pretty well, actually.

~~~

                A short list of things about Axel, according to various text conversations over the span of a few short months, and Roxas’ selectively accurate memory:

                Axel was tall. Like, really tall, if the angle of his snapchats were anything to go by.

                Axel worked at some sort of clothes store. This one was pretty obvious. If it wasn’t in the background of almost everything, Roxas would still know, because Axel spent a good 30% of the time complaining about customers. But the stories he told were pretty amusing, so Roxas couldn’t begrudge him that.

                Oh, related: Axel had a very strange sense of humor. His stories were frequently peppered with peculiar details and very obvious exaggerations that weren’t really jokes, but you kind of had to laugh at them.

                Axel was a high school dropout. We’ve already covered this one. Roxas kept trying to figure out exactly when it was that Axel had dropped out, without asking outright, because that could provide a hint to his age. As far as he knew, Axel was probably…20? He couldn’t be much older than 20, could he?

                Axel lived alone. Or, at least, he didn’t seem to be living with any family—Roxas wasn’t entirely sure whether this Larxene person who kept popping up in conversations was some sort of girlfriend or fiancée or something. The idea kind of made Roxas’s head hurt, though, so he assumed Axel lived alone.

~~~

                Another thing about Axel, that Roxas came to realize, or…more like, came to realize was kind of a problem:

                Axel was really attractive.

                This was a weird feeling for Roxas. Usually the extent of his attractions was admitting someone had an appealing look to them, and moving on. Axel definitely had an appealing look to him, for sure—though it wasn’t a type you’d really see anywhere on a billboard. The lines of his face were a little too sharp and it never really looked like he’d gotten quite enough sleep the night before, but something about that divergence made Roxas like him even more.

                But Axel was also, just...attractive. He was funny and kind, in a certain way, though unkind in others. And above all was something Roxas just couldn’t quite find the word for.

                In short, they could talk. Well, text, at least. This wasn’t an unheard of occurrence—Roxas had other friends, of course, but the majority of the time it took so long for Roxas to warm up to someone that by the time he decided he liked them they had already pegged him as cold and stand-offish. Axel was just…there. And Roxas liked him being there. They fell into such a comfortable dialogue that it felt like they’d known each other for years.

                It was weird, wasn’t it.

                An accidental slip of the finger on a phone screen suddenly brought such a person into Roxas’s life.

                Sometimes, he almost thought he could believe in destiny.

~~~

                Roxas walked down the empty hallway at his school, staring at the bathroom pass in his hand, the voices of teachers lecturing behind shut doors seeming far away. Instead of the bathroom, he headed to a small classroom he knew would be empty at this hour. He felt a slight pang of anxiety at the thought of breaking the rules—he really should go back to class—but he needed a break. Just a short one, then he’d go back. Once his brain stopped feeling like it was suffocating.

                He sat in the back of the empty classroom, out of sight of the door, and laid his head down on a desk, closing his eyes and letting his thoughts settle.

                He took a deep breath.

                Then his phone buzzed.

                He flinched, startled, and quickly pulled it out of his pocket to see who it was—though he already had a pretty good idea. Considering most of his friends were in class right now—yeah, it was Axel. Roxas laid his head back down on the desk and opened his inbox.

                “ughhhhh work suuuuuuuucks,” said the message. Then, a few seconds later, “your day going any better?”

                “It’s alright,” Roxas tapped out, without thinking. But then he stared at the message for a moment, sighed, and backspaced. “no not really,” is what he sent instead.

                Axel: “boo”

                “Generally shitty day or did something happen?”

                Roxas: “I had to escape to an empty class”

                “I don’t know this one class is hard to think in”

                “which sucks considering the material is hard enough anyways”

                Axel: “oh yeah. That’s the worst”

                “Are you allowed to wear headphones?”

                Roxas frowned. That question seemed out of the blue.

                Roxas: “no, teachers confiscate them if they see them out”

                “Why?”

                Axel: “Sometimes listening to music helps”

                “Well I mean it helps me. I don’t know how your brain works”

                “it may just be a shitty class.”

                Roxas: “Yeah…”

                He sighed, and sat up. Even with that not-so-helpful conclusion, the conversation had Roxas feeling a little bit better. Enough to go back to class and try to power through the last twenty minutes, at least.

                “I guess I should go back to class. Text you later,” he sent, and stood up to walk back to class, though maybe a little slowly than was called for.

                His phone went off one last time while he was in the hallway, and he couldn’t help but check it.

                “I’ll miss you!” was the message, ending with a few winking-and-kissing smiley faces.

                Roxas felt his face flush, and a smile tugging at his cheeks.

                He really, really liked talking to Axel.

~~~

                Axel didn’t really consider himself the texting type. He first got a phone out of necessity and then slowly found ways to use it to relieve his ever-encroaching boredom, which was kind of also a necessity at times. He’d take face-to-face interaction over digital messages any day. But after the fateful Wrong Number Incident of That One Thursday, his phone became his faithful companion (at least, when he actually remembered to bring it places).

                Maybe a little too much of a faithful companion, really. He already was in approximately last place for any type of employee of the month award they could have around his workplace, and now he was hardly waiting for the store to empty out before he replied to his messages.

                “Are you trying to lose your job?” Larxene snapped at him, trying and failing to swipe the phone out of his hand.

                “This job isn’t worth being bored out of my mind for nine hours straight,” he replied, not even looking up from his screen. He was having a very invigorating conversation about hair products, thank you very much.

                “You’re probably not going to be thinking that when you end up on the street again.”

                Axel shrugged. He’d worry about that when the time came.

                “Are you texting that guy again?”

                Axel looked up at her this time.

                A customer hovered around the two of them, trying to figure out the best way to interrupt this conversation and ask for assistance.

                “I have friends, you know,” Axel insisted.

                “Hardly. You are texting him, aren’t you.”

                “Yep,” he said, and spotted the floundering customer out of the corner of his eye. “Hey, Larxene, go do your job,” he said, looking back at his phone and making a move to find a more secluded section of the store.

                Larxene swiped at his phone, and managed to grab it this time. “No,” she said, pointing with the hand she had the phone in. “You haven’t done anything all shift. Go practice your people skills.”

                Axel rolled his eyes, at length, but nevertheless soon put on a façade of upmost politeness and walked over to the customer, who could no doubt see through this retail ruse of a face.

                “How can I help you today?”

~~~

                Roxas did not have a job. He had a hard enough time getting through his homework as it was, he didn’t need to be trying to balance work on top of that. Besides, he was only 16 and hadn’t found the time to learn how to drive yet, so it would have been a hassle anyways. If any of his older brothers would just take a little bit of time to take him out on the road every once and a while…

                Well, it wasn’t that big of a deal. Driving meant more responsibility and less time to sit around on the couch playing video games and trying to pretend he didn’t have math homework. And, more recently, text.

                He was always kind of reliant on texting, and had even gotten his phone taken away a few times in class because of it, before he figured out how to not get caught. But recently he’d been on his phone all the time, because of…well…

                He’d rather not anyone know. Hayner’s reaction when Axel had just asked his name had been enough of an indication of how people would probably react to his newfound friend, he wasn’t about to go around telling people about his new stranger buddy who probably knew more about his life than his parents did at this point, barring legal records and embarrassing childhood stories.

                And, well, Axel still didn’t know what he actually looked like. He hadn’t quite worked up the courage to reveal that.

                He paused his game as multiple notifications piled up on his phone screen. “Alright, alright,” he told it, picking it up. It looked like Axel had sent him about five snapchats in a row, and they were still coming.

                Roxas sat back and opened the app to play through what was bound to be a thrilling chronicle.

                The first snap was a picture of some sort of unidentifiable article of clothing hanging on a rack, in what Roxas felt safe assuming was Axel’s place of employment. The caption was, “What is this???” Roxas squinted at the snap until it went away, train of thought no doubt similar to what prompted Axel to send the picture in the first place.

                The next was a picture of the rack from a different angle. “It’s hung up with a bunch of shirts.”

                The article of clothing again. “Is it a shirt?”

                The clothing, except with Axel’s hand slightly in the frame, holding up one corner of the thing in question to see more of the fabric. “I can’t find any arm holes.”

                Then it was a picture of Axel, holding his phone up to a mirror to take a picture of himself wearing the article of clothing wrapped around his neck.  “Maybe it’s a scarf.” The hangar was still on it. He, in short, looked ridiculous, and Roxas couldn’t help but laugh.

                The next image, similar to the previous but Axel sporting a mysterious-article-of-clothing belt instead, didn’t help matters.

                The conclusion of the story was Axel figuring out that, “Oh fuck it’s a shawl,” and returning it to its proper place, which was not the shirt section.

                Roxas went to take a picture to reply with—but was interrupted by a voice way too close to his ear saying, “Who’s thaaaat?” in an excellent imitation of a gossipy elementary schooler.

                Roxas yelped, and fumbled his phone, catching it again just before it fell to the ground.

                “Sora!” he complained, turning his phone over to check the screen. It indicated that he’d sent something. Oh, god.

                “Oops,” went his brother, sounding completely unapologetic as he crawled over the back of the sofa to sit next to Roxas. “But really, who is it? Did you make a friend? Are they from school? The internet? Are you daaaating them?”

                Roxas blinked at the onset of questions, and flushed at the last one. “I—no! They’re—uh, he’s just…” the circumstances of their meeting played through Roxas’s head, and he tried to think of the best way to explain it.

                There really wasn’t a way to say “I accidentally texted him and now we’re friends” that didn’t seem…odd.

                Sora was waiting patiently for Roxas’s answer, though, so he supposed he’d have to figure something out.

                “It’s kind of stupid,” he began. “I mean…you know how Pence got that new phone a few months ago? Well I tried to text him about something but I accidentally switched two of the numbers so…I ended up texting this guy. And I guess we’re friends now…or…something…”

                “Or something?” Sora repeated, raising an eyebrow. “So you are dating.”

                “Uh,” went Roxas, trying to seem casual about it, though he definitely didn’t feel that way, “No. I think he has a girlfriend, actually. Maybe. I’m pretty sure…” he wasn’t actually sure at all. But somehow it was easier to tell himself that.

                “Oh,” said Sora. Then he frowned, and stared at Roxas for a moment.

                Roxas frowned back. “What?” he said, half defensively and half out of genuine confusion.

                “…nothing,” Sora said, though not without some consideration. Then he smiled, demeanor changing a little too fast for Roxas’s comfort. “So!” he said, “What’s his name?”

                “Axel…?” Roxas said, slowly. He was still a little suspicious of his brother’s intentions, but the opportunity to talk about Axel overruled his hesitance. “He works at a clothing store in a mall somewhere. He’s super tall and does his hair like a porcupine—er, I guess you probably saw that. I thought he was kind of weird at first but…well, he is kind of weird. But not scary weird, so. I don’t know. I like talking to him.”

                “Hmm,” went Sora.

                “…hm?”

                “Hmmmmmmmmm.”

                Roxas stared blankly as his brother crossed his arms and nodded very slowly.

                “Well!” Sora said. “I think you should ask if he has a girlfriend. You know, just to make sure.”

                “Uh,” went Roxas, but Sora was already getting up.

                He patted Roxas unnecessarily hard on the shoulder, said, “Good luck,” made a big show of winking at him, and then left.

                Roxas stared at the empty space where his brother used to be.

                That was…weird.

                He picked up his game controller again, but then suddenly remembered that accidental snapchat he’d sent. He forsook the controller in favor of his phone.

                One snap from Axel. It was a picture of him, making a very confused face, with the caption “???”

                Roxas went back to the messaging app.

                “Yeah sorry about that snap I was about to reply when my brother scared the shit out of me and made me drop my phone. I guess it sent something,” he explained.

                “oooooh okay,” was the response. Then, “You have a brother? Younger or older?”

                Roxas: “he’s older but only by 2 minutes”

                Axel: “??? Are you a twin?”

                Roxas:  “yeah”

                Axel: “hot”

                Roxas wrinkled his nose.

                “ok, gross,” he sent.

                Axel: “hahaha sorry. No more sexy twin jokes.”

                “so do you look the same? (no more jokes I promise)”

                Roxas: “yeah.”

                “people used to not be able to tell us apart so I bleached my hair.”

                Axel: “Are you still blonde?”

                Roxas: “Yeah”

                Axel: “Am I allowed to say THAT’s hot?”

                Roxas blushed. “you don’t even know what I look like,” he began to type. But, no. He didn’t really want to bring that up.

                “I guess,” he sent instead.

                “Nice.”

Chapter Text

                Axel was, for once, actually doing work while he was at work. This was in no way related to the fact that Roxas wasn’t texting him currently, of course. He just…happened to…you know…the mood struck him. Whatever. He had a passion for folding jeans.

                Well, actually, they did look pretty nice when they were finally all folded and stacked on top of each other in just the right manner, but the knowledge that customers were going to come through any minute and mess them all up, and then Axel would be here doing this all over again, kind of ruined any sort of enjoyment he may have gotten out of it.

                So he folded them very slowly, in an effort to maintain order for as long as possible. It’s not like he had any incentive to hurry. He was paid by the hour. By all logic he should take as long as humanely possible.

                Then his phone buzzed, and his productivity came to a halt.

                He glanced around—oh, there were actually some people in the store. Oh, well—and pulled out his phone. “Could you do me a weird favor?” was the message from Roxas.

                “I would love to,” Axel responded.

                “Look up at the ceiling,” was apparently the favor that Roxas needed done.

                Axel frowned at his phone. Well, whatever. “ok?” he texted, and then looked up at the ceiling.

                Yep, that sure was a ceiling. He hadn’t actually looked at the ceiling much before. It’s not like there was anything to see.

                He pondered it for a moment, before turning back to his phone to report his progress. But there was already a message from Roxas, which said, “Holy shit.” Then, in quick succession, two more. “Uh,” and, “I’m in your store.”

                Axel stared at his phone. Roxas was…there? Here?

                He looked up, and did his best to look around the store casually. Hmm. No one to his left, so—

                Oh.

                Well.

                It was probably the guy with a phone in his hand staring at him from halfway behind a clothes rack.

                Axel stared back.

                Axel blinked.

                “Roxas?” he mouthed.

                The guy nodded.

                Holy shit.

                Axel shoved his phone back in his pocket, abandoning his jean-folding task and striding over to Roxas, hardly noticing the grin on his own face.

                “Roxas!” he said, barely refraining himself from doing something drastic like…hugging him, or something. “I…you…you live around here? Why didn’t you tell me! Do you live around here?”

                “Uh,” went Roxas. Then he frowned and looked away. Then his face turned red, and he covered it with his hand that wasn’t holding a cell phone, furrowed eyebrows still visible through his fingers.

                “Hey, don’t worry, take your time,” Axel said, still grinning. Holy shit! Roxas! The real Roxas! Live and in person!

                “We have the same area code,” Roxas said into his hand. Axel blinked.

                “Yeah?”

                “I mean…we have the same area code, so of course we live close. Right?” he said, moving his hand and making eye contact again. His face was still a little pink.

                Axel’s gaze drifted up towards the ceiling. “Riiiight,” he said in realization. “Well, now I know, I guess.”

                “Yeah,” Roxas said.

                Their conversation lapsed into silence for a moment, but it didn’t seem awkward. It was kind of a lot to take in, especially for Axel. He didn’t know what he imagined Roxas like, but this was definitely not it. Not that it was bad, really, just…well, a lot to take in. This Roxas was…

                Was…

                Really, really short. Axel was tall, sure, but most of his friends were, too, this was like…Zexion-level short, and that wasn’t standard for a 20-year-old. But, then again, Axel didn’t really know how old Roxas was, so…

                Wait.

                “Uh, how old are you?”

                Roxas blinked.

                “Sixteen?” he said, as if he wasn’t entirely sure of it himself.

                Axel stared at him.

                “Sixteen?” he asked. “As in, ten plus six. Sixteen.”

                “Yeah,” went Roxas, frowning. “Sixteen. Is that…okay?”

                “Ohhh, god,” Axel went, putting his hands over his face. Sixteen. Sure, past Axel, sure teenagers wouldn’t be dealing with that kind of high-level math, of course you would know that, you, the man who didn’t finish high school.

                He dropped his hands, and assumed a calm expression, while his brain internally screamed at him.

                “Yes,” he said, flatly, ignoring the heat rising to his face. “Sixteen is fine.”

                Roxas furrowed his eyebrows, in something of a “what you said definitely did not match what you did but I can’t really figure out what the incongruity means” expression, and Axel put on a smile.

                “So!” Axel said, assuming his polite-store-assistant affect. “What brings you to this corner of the mall anyways?”

                “Well,” said Roxas, “shopping.”

                Axel nodded. “That is generally what people come here for. Do you need clothes? I can help you find stuff. I mean, that is technically what I’m paid to do.”

                “Technically,” Roxas repeated. “Actually, um…I’m here with a friend, but. She wanted to go to the…” he gestured vaguely behind him. “The bath stuff store, and that place gives me a headache, so I came over here…which worked out.” He laughed. “I can’t believe you were this close the entire time!”

                “Well, I mean, we do have the same area code,” Axel said, grinning.

                “Oh, shut up!” Roxas said, shoving his arm and laughing. Oh, so he was a touchy type. Axel would have to keep that in mind.

                “So, who’s this friend of yours?” he asked.

                “Oh, um…do you want to meet her?”

                “If she’d be okay with that.”

                “Sure, I’ll go ask her,” Roxas said, and ran off to go, presumably, fetch his friend.

                Axel watched him go, and sighed. Roxas was even more adorable than he’d imagined, wasn’t he.

                …adorable in a completely platonic, non-creepy way, of course. Axel rubbed his eyes, scowling. Sixteen years old. Roxas is still a kid.

                When he opened his eyes again, and the stars faded, Larxene was right in front of him.

                “FU—uuahhhh, augh,” went Axel, approximately, in an aborted curse when he realized there were customers around who probably wouldn’t appreciate his language. “Jesus, Larxene,” he said, quietly. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

                “Yeah, yeah,” she went. “Who was that?”

                “Who was what?” Axel said, playing dumb for the mere purpose of being irritating.

                “The kid.”

                “There are a lot of kids.”

                “The blonde one,” Larxene said, scowling.

                “How very descriptive of you.”

                “God dammit, Axel, you know who I’m talking about.”

                He laughed. “Do I?”

                Larxene punched him in the shoulder.

                “Ow!” he went. “Okay, okay. That was Roxas,” he relinquished.

                “…wait, you mean that guy you’ve been texting non-stop recently?”

                “Yeah!” went Axel, not quite noticing how his expression was slowly starting to glow with excitement. “Apparently he lives around here! Isn’t that great? He just went to get his friend, he’s going to come back and introduce us—“

                “Is he, like, twelve?” interrupted Larxene.

                Axel’s face fell.

                “…he’s,” he started, expression obviously pained, “Yeah. He’s…sixteen.”

                Larxene stared at him.

                Axel nodded somberly.

                Then, Larxene started laughing. Howling, really, full bent-over-wiping-tears-from-eyes cackling.

                “Yep. Yeah. Yeah, I know,” Axel said, until Larxene finally stood up and caught her breath. A few customers were looking on wondering what in the world all the commotion was about, but that wasn’t really anything new.

                “Oh my god,” said Larxene. “He’s jailbait! He’s fucking jailbait! God, Axel, you have the worst luck.”

                Axel just continued nodding. He didn’t really have anything to say at this point. Larxene was covering basically all of it.

                “Hey,” she said, suddenly serious.

                “Hm?”

                “You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?”

                “Stupid is my middle name.”

                “Axel.”

                Axel sighed.

                “You have full permission,” he said, “to report anything shady I do directly to this kid’s parents, okay? And by that I mean, no, I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

                “You’ve done some pretty stupid shit in the past,” Larxene warned.

                “It’s been, like…at least two years now, though, come on. I’m a better man now.”

                Larxene raised an eyebrow at him.

                Axel sighed. Again.

                “Okay,” he said, raising his left hand and putting the other on his heart. Then he paused, and switched them. “Okay,” he said, again, “I solemnly swear I will not do anything shady to this kid until he turns eighteen, even if he gets on his knees and begs me.”

                Even if that was quite the mental image. Wait—no, Axel. Down, boy.

                “I’m going to hold you to that,” Larxene said.

                “I’m counting on it.”

                “Good. Now, get your ass back to work.”

                “Yeah, yeah,” went Axel, slinking back over to his half-folded pile of jeans. He couldn’t really bring himself to be too upset about it, though. He’d made a friend! A real, walking-talking friend that he could hang out with and everything. It was great enough when him and Roxas had been texting buddies, of course, but…this was just the icing on the friendship cake.

                Besides, soon enough, Roxas had returned to the store, with another person in tow. They looked weirdly similar, actually…or maybe it was just the fact that they were both the same height and had the same color hair. The similarities sort of ended there.

                “Axel, this is, uh, Namine,” Roxas said, gesturing between them. “Namine, Axel.”

                “It’s nice to meet you,” said this Namine, smiling sweetly and extending a hand. Axel hurriedly took it once he realized what was going on.

                “I’m sure it is,” he said. “I bet Roxas hasn’t shut up about me.”

                “Well,” Namine said, turning towards Roxas and laughing. “He kind of hasn’t, actually.”

                “Namine!” Roxas complained, face turning red. It tended to do that a lot, didn’t it?

                His friend just laughed, covering her mouth with her hand.

                Axel just looked between them, taking note of the interaction bemusedly.

                “Oh!” went Namine, suddenly.

                “Oh?” questioned Roxas. Namine thought for a moment, and then leaned over to whisper in Roxas’s ear.

                Axel blinked. They probably weren’t talking about him, right?

                “Hmm,” went Roxas, out loud. “Do you think that’d be okay?”

                “I’m sure it would,” Namine answered.

                Roxas turned back to Axel.

                “Hey,” he said, “One of my friends’…friends’…friends’, and so on, is sort of throwing this party thing over the weekend, so…um, do you…maybe want to come? I mean, if you’re not working, or…there will probably be a lot of high schoolers there…”

                “I’m there,” Axel said.

                “Uh, really?”

                “Yeah. I haven’t had enough chances to get out recently. It’ll be fun, right?”

                “I…well, that’s the idea, I guess,” Roxas said.

                “Right. Well, text me the details, alright?”

                “Uh, sure. Um. See you then?”

                “That’s the plan.”

                Axel waved, and Namine directed Roxas out of the store, evidently moving on to the next shop on her agenda.

                Axel just barely caught Roxas grabbing Namine’s sleeve and all but jumping excitedly, grinning and talking about Axel-could-guess-what, before they went out of view.

                Well. Shit.

~~~

                Axel pulled his bike up to the street curb—right in between two cars, which would probably have a hell of a time pulling out now, but whatever—and checked his phone to verify the address. Not that he really had too. The amount of cars lined up along the street was a pretty good indication that there was a party going on around here somewhere.

                He kicked the kickstand down into kick-standing position and put his keys in the pocket of his jacket, looking around at the houses in the fading light. Shit, this was a high-class neighborhood. Axel felt like he was going to get arrested for, like, existing there.

                Oh, well. He’d have to grin and bear it for now.

                He sent off a quick message to Roxas—“Think I found the house. You here too?” and got a “Yeah, I’ll go wait at the front door,” back. Well, how chivalrous of him.

                Axel dismounted his bike and headed towards the house in question. There wasn’t any loud party music emanating onto the street, which he took as a good sign. Somehow he didn’t feel like Roxas would be into that kind of scene, anyways.

                Sure enough, a few moments later he saw the door open and a little spikey-headed figure pop out and look around. Axel increased his pace a little to meet him.

                “Hey,” he said, walking up to the porch. “What’s up?”

                “Party stuff? Come on, we’re about to start Mario Kart,” Roxas said, and then disappeared back into the house. Axel followed him, eyes squinting for a moment at the change in light.

                “There’s pizza and stuff if you want some,” Roxas said, pointing at what Axel presumed was a kitchen. Axel sniffed the air a little bit.

                “And ‘stuff,’ “ he said. “Right.”

                “Oh,” went Roxas, frowning. “Yeah, they said they would keep that outside, but…” he shook his head, and made his way to another room. There weren’t too many people here, compared to the size of the house, which Axel could appreciate.

                That still didn’t mean there was room on the couch, though.

                Roxas sat in between two people on the floor, picking up a vacated controller. Axel leaned against a wall, for lack of a better place. Well, he was sure he could shove his way in somewhere, but…people. Parties. You know.

                It turned out that Roxas was surprisingly good at Mario Kart. Which, Axel tried not to be surprised about people that he’d just met—who knows what they were good at, really—but Roxas ended up winning so badly that two of the four people trying to play against him simply professed defeat.

                “You come play, Axel,” Roxas said, grinning and holding an abandoned remote out to him. Axel shrugged, and went to sit on the floor next to him, taking the controller

                “How does this work?” he asked, looking at the thing in his hands. It wasn’t like he’d never played video games before, but this thing was…shaped oddly.

                “You steer like this,” Roxas said, making a sort of steering-wheel motion with the controller. Axel imitated him, frowning. Well, whatever. Roxas then proceeded to explain, in full detail, what each of the buttons would do during gameplay, and half of it went in one of Axel’s ear and out the other, but he figured he got enough of it to get through a round. Probably.

                Then the race started, and Axel came in dead last place, even with the constant tips from Roxas, which most often consisted of, “No, look, that means you’re going the wrong direction.”

                “No, no, I’m getting the hang of it,” Axel insisted after the first race, grinning.

                Though after a few more races, eventually it became obvious that if he was getting the hang of it, he was doing it very slowly, and soon ended up giving up the controller to a more worthy contestant.

                “I tried my best,” he said, shrugging at Roxas’s look of incredulity. “Have fun continuing to destroy these casuals, I’m going to get something to eat.” He pat Roxas on the back, and ended his humiliation by escaping to the kitchen.

                Considering the time, the party can’t have been going on for very long, but the pizza pickings were already very meager. Well, Axel didn’t each much, anyways. He picked up a sad-looking slice of pizza and looked around for a good place to sit.

                Instead, he found someone who was staring at him with a very suspicious look on his face. But more important than that, this person was wearing camo-patterened cargo shorts, which, listen, Axel did not need to be employed at a clothes store to realize how tacky that was. He might have to place a few choice words of advice here.

                “Who are you?” said Mr. Cargo, accusingly. Axel raised his eyebrows. Had he done something wrong already? He hadn’t insulted this guy’s pants out loud, had he?

                “Axel,” said Axel, though he was pretty sure that wasn’t the question that was being asked. “Why, who are you?”

                Mr. Cargo decided to ignore that question.

                “Aren’t you that weird guy who responded to Roxas’s math text? What are you doing here? Are you stalking him?”

                Axel stared at him. Stalking? He wasn’t stalking Roxas, was he? He thought over their previous interactions. He was the one, he supposed, who initiated their relationship, but he never asked for any particularly personal details (had he?) and Roxas was the one who showed up in his store one day, and Roxas was definitely the one who invited him to this party.

                He was pretty sure he wasn’t stalking Roxas, and not even in a no-I’m-just-keeping-an-eye-on-them way this time.

                “No,” he said. “Roxas invited me here.”

                Mr. Cargo continued glaring at him for a moment. Axel took a bite of pizza.

                “…well, okay,” relinquished his accuser. “You better be telling the truth.” Axel was at least ninety-two percent certain he was telling the truth. “I’m Roxas’s real-life friend, Hayner, and if you lay a hand on him I’m going to kick your ass, okay?”

                Axel put his hands up in surrender, not being able to verbally reply mostly due to his mouth being full, but at least partially due to the sheer absurdity of the situation, which Axel really wasn’t entirely sure how to reply to.

                This Hayner “Mr. Cargo” Lastname stormed off into another room, leaving Axel supremely confused in his wake.

                He was pretty sure that his mere physical presence at this party had changed his status to “real-life” friend by any definition.

                But, well, even if it hadn’t, at least he was still categorized as some kind of friend, even by…hostile outsiders to this particular relationship.

                …

                He wasn’t actually stalking Roxas, was he?

~~~

                It turned out that really, the only reason Roxas was at this party was to play video games. He didn’t seem to be doing anything else, at least, so Axel had to assume that was what he was there for. It was kind of a spectacle in itself, really, but eventually everyone got tired of trying to win and Roxas was left to socialize with the few friends he had there. Though his “socialization” at that point seemed to consist of standing kind of near them and drinking soda.

                Axel edged up to him. “I think I’m all partied out,” he said, though not entirely truthfully. It was fun hanging with Roxas and all, but his scene tended to be a bit more…well, let’s just say he wouldn’t be inviting Roxas to any of those anytime soon.

                “Oh,” went Roxas. “Yeah, I think I am, too.”

                “Want a ride home?” Axel offered, holding up his keys.

                Roxas stared at them.

                “Those don’t look like car keys,” he said.

                “Well, no,” said Axel. “I have a bike.”

                “Do you have an extra helmet?”

                “Well,” said Axel, slowly, “No…”

                “Then that’s probably a bad idea.”

                Axel huffed, and put his keys back into his pocket. Even if Roxas was right, that didn’t mean he had to be happy about it.

                “I could walk you home, then,” Axel said.

                Roxas gave him a look, and Axel wasn’t entirely sure what it meant. He suddenly felt a surge of anxiety. Was he being pushy about this?

                “Though I understand if you don’t want me knowing where you live,” he said.

                “Oh, no,” went Roxas, “It’s fine…it’s just…I mean, are you sure?”

                “I’m very sure.”

                “Well…”

                Roxas looked around at the rest of those present, trying to figure out what it was he next needed to do.

                “I’ll meet you outside in a little bit, okay? I should probably say goodbye to everyone,” Roxas said. Axel nodded, and headed to the porch.

                He sat on the steps and tried to look for stars in the sky. Either it wasn’t dark enough, or not clear enough. Either way, there wasn’t much to look at.

                Axel’s heart pounded in his chest.

                He tried not to let the doubts get to him, but…well, it was good that he was doubting himself, wasn’t it? Or was it? Should he call Larxene? No—walking someone home was an okay thing. That wasn’t creepy.

                Was it?

                Axel put his face in his hands, then ran them up to his hair to ruffle it in frustration. Deep breaths. You’re doing okay so far. Just…

                He’d ask Roxas. Yeah.

                Though how do you phrase “am I being creepy?” without seeming like you’re fishing for a particular answer?

                Before this train of thought finished, the door opened behind Axel, startling him enough to flinch. He looked back, and Roxas was halfway between a smile and an expression of worry.

                “You okay?” he asked.

                “Yeah,” said Axel, standing up and smiling. “Just a little jumpy, I guess. It happens. People, you know.” He shook his hands a little bit, releasing energy.

                “Oh,” went Roxas. “Uh—it’s this way,” he said, walking towards what Axel presumed was his house. Then, “Do you get nervous around people?”

                “Only sometimes,” Axel said, falling into step beside him. He had to walk a little slower than usual. God, Roxas was short. Only sometimes, like when they started asking questions that were a little more pointed than they had probably intended. “Hey, can I ask you kind of a weird question?”

                Roxas looked up at him, expression unreadable in the low light. “Sure, I guess,” he said.

                “Do you feel like I’m stalking you?”

                Roxas was silent for a moment. “Uh,” he went. “No? Why? Should I?”

                “Well, no,” Axel said, maybe a little bit too fast. Deep breaths. “I mean, I’m not stalking you. I think. It’s…well, I just wanted to make sure that’s how you felt, as well.”

                Roxas went back to looking at the road.

                “That was definitely kind of a weird question,” he said.

                “Yeah,” said Axel. “Sorry.”

                “Well, it’s okay, it’s just…do you feel like you’re stalking me? Or…?”

                “No, but I’ve been wrong before.”

                Shit. That probably wasn’t the best piece of information to share.

                “What?” went Roxas. Then, “About stalking? Like…you’ve stalked someone before?”

                Axel sighed. It was way too early in their relationship for this conversation. Or, well, they had known each other for months now, hadn’t they? Somehow it seemed like it hadn’t been that long…then again, it also seemed like they’d been talking forever. Maybe Axel just wasn’t the best at conceptualizing time.

                “It’s…kind of a long story,” he said. That wasn’t entirely true, but he wanted to give Roxas an out to this while there still was one.

                “It’s kind of a long walk…”

                Roxas didn’t sound entirely sure of himself, but Axel supposed it was invitation enough.

                “Well,” he said. Then he paused. How should he even say this? “I…I sort of used to…well, I still do…or…augh. Give me a second.”

                “Alright,” Roxas said.

                Somehow, that reply took a little bit of the pressure off. Axel spent a few moments sorting out what he wanted to say in his head.

                “I have a hard time with relationships,” he started. “I used to have a lot harder time with them, but I’ve gotten better recently.” Have I? Yes. I have. “At some point I…well, I started stalking someone, and I managed to convince myself that that wasn’t what I was doing. All of my friends started warning me about it, but I didn’t believe them until...let’s just say things didn’t work out. I didn’t really get that I was doing something wrong until, like, months after the person broke up with me, so…”

                He sighed. It had been a while since he’d shared this with anyone.

                “Anyways, one of your friends in there asked if I was stalking you, and I think he was joking but…I felt like I needed to make sure, you know. For complete peace of mind.”

                The words hung in the air for a moment as Roxas didn’t respond, and Axel tried to focus on his footsteps and not the thoughts rising up to his head. He’s creeped out now—Stop. He’s not going to want to be friends—No. Stop. Stop.

                “Oh,” is what Roxas said. That didn’t really help things. Axel wanted to ask for a clearer response, but he had a feeling Roxas was working on one. “Uh. Who said that?”

                Well, that at least gave Axel something else to think about it. He was pretty sure the guy had said his name, but all he could think of was—

                “Camo pants.”

                “Ooooh.”

                Axel laughed, despite himself. Was that really a good enough identifier? Well, it wasn’t like anyone else would be caught dead wearing those things.

                “Yeah,” said Roxas, “He’s been…he’s kind of over protective of me. He doesn’t really like me talking to you, but all my other friends seem to think you’re pretty cool, so I dunno, I think it’s pretty safe to ignore him.”

                Roxas laughed, and Axel felt a little bit better. Good, so he wasn’t in the minority opinion here.

                “And, um,” Roxas said again. “I really don’t feel like you’re stalking me at all. I get nervous around people too a lot but not around you so much so, you’re the opposite of creepy right now. I hope we get to hang out more, actually.”

                Axel sighed in relief.

                “Yeah,” he said. “Me, too. Can you let me know if you ever feel like I’m coming on too strong, though? Think you can do that?”

                “Sure,” said Roxas. “Definitely.”

                “Thanks. It means a lot.”

~~~

                Roxas had them part ways at his street corner, because, “Oh, wait, now that I think about it my family is going to start asking weird questions if they see you so…uh…goodnight.”

                Axel had a very enjoyable ride home. Even if the walk back to his bike was a little lonely.

Chapter Text

                Quite contrary to Axel’s first worry that he might be stalking Roxas, the guy—kid, ugh—showed up at his place of employment again not a week later. He tried to be sneaky about it, too, and it was adorable. Adorable in a completely platonic way, naturally. The way dogs are adorable. The way people you’re absolutely not allowed in any shape or form to be romantically attracted to for at least a few years are adorable.

                Axel immediately noticed him when he walked in, of course, but decided he was going to pretend he didn’t. For one, he was supposed to be staying at the register, so it wasn’t like he could go over and talk to him anyways—and for two, it was amusing to watch Roxas shuffle around looking at clothes and pretending he wasn’t there to talk to Axel.

                Like, he would be willing to give the kid the benefit of the doubt if he didn’t keep glancing over to where Axel was before staring unconvincingly at an article of clothing. He kind of doubted Roxas would ever be caught dead in that color.

                Eventually, Axel just stared directly at Roxas, waiting for another surreptitious glance. When it came, Axel smiled, and fluttered his eyelashes. Please stop. This is embarrassing for all of us.

                Roxas shuffled over to the counter, looking around to make sure there wasn’t anyone in line before bypassing the little barriers.

                “Fancy seeing you here,” Axel said, smirking.

                “Shut up,” Roxas huffed, face turning red. “Um. Do you get off work soon?”

                “Yep. In approximately,” Axel checked his wrist, as if there was actually any sort of timepiece there—you know, as if he wasn’t constantly aware of exactly how many minutes there were left of his shift at all times. “Forty-seven minutes. Do you want to hang out after?”

                “If you don’t have anything to do…”

                “I was planning on going home and sleeping, but I can definitely postpone that a few hours.”

                Roxas smiled. Yeah, Axel could definitely put off sleeping for a little bit for this.

                “Okay!” he said. “I guess I should probably leave you alone until then, though?”

                “Yeah, go look at something more interesting than the shit we have here,” Axel said, waving a hand. Then he glanced over his shoulder. Good, no management was there to hear him shit-talking the stock.

                The shit stock.

                “I’ll text you when I’m all done here.”

                Roxas nodded a few times.

                “Uh…see you then, I guess,” he said, and then hurried out of the store.

                Axel checked his phone.

                Forty six minutes.

~~~

                A few minutes before his shift ended, because it wasn’t like the chump change he would have earned amounted to much anyways, Axel made his way out of the store and pulled his phone out. “So, where should I meet you?” he texted, wandering vaguely towards the center of the complex. He’d be closest to everything there, so it seemed like the best place to go.

                “I’m in the food court,” is what Roxas texted back. Axel looked around at the steady flow of people crowding the stores. He could almost see the hive of customers that had to be currently buzzing around the food court. Like Axel could find anyone in that mess.

                “You’re going to have to be more specific,” he requested. Eventually, he got the message “I’ll go stand in front of Taco Bell,” which was a pretty specific area, so it would suffice.

                Axel kept his phone out to avoid eye contact with anyone he passed, and made it to the food court (which was, by the way, in the middle of the complex, so he had been heading in the right direction in the first place. Ha! Planning). He looked around, trying to find anything short with a spikey head. There were way too many people for this.

                He placed himself in front of the previously named restaurant and looked around. Ah—there. Roxas was leaning against a column, headphones over his ears, eyes glued to some sort of handheld console.

                Axel walked over and stood in front of him.

                Roxas glanced up at him, briefly, and then looked back to his game. “Give me,” he said, slowly, attention obviously fully occupied, “Just a second…”

                Axel grinned and stood back, arms folded. Roxas was pressing way more buttons on that thing than could possibly be required for gameplay. Right?

                Not too long after, Roxas practically deflated, a disappointed look on his face. “Lost,” he said mournfully, flipping a switch on the console and slipping it into his jacket pocket. “I can’t beat this guy, you can’t even attack him, you just have to dodge a million times and hope…” he shook his head, and then looked up at Axel. “Ah, you probably don’t care.”

                Axel shrugged. “I mean, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, but if you’re interested in it then I’ll happily listen.”

                Roxas blushed, and looked away as he started winding up his earbuds to put in his pocket. “Um…okay. Well…so, I was wondering if, uh…”

                Axel raised an eyebrow. “Yes?” he prompted.

                “Well, you work in a clothes store, so…I don’t know, you probably don’t want to hang around this place anymore now that your shift’s over…” Roxas said, shrugging slowly.

                “At least give me a chance to actually answer your question instead of answering it for me,” Axel said, laughing slightly. “If I don’t want to then I’ll say so.”

                Roxas huffed.

                “I need new clothes. And I always have a hard time picking stuff out when my parents take me, so they finally just let me have one of their cards and told me to go shopping with my friends if it would help.” Roxas pulled the card out of his pocket to illustrate his point. “So…I was wondering if you’d mind…helping me? I can always ask someone else if you don’t want to, though, I just thought…you might know about…this stuff.”

               Axel grinned. “Well, I definitely do know about this stuff, but it’s not from working at some shit mall store. Come on, walk with me.” He started heading to what he imagined would be the first stop on their journey, unless Roxas had any objections.

                Roxas followed him, walking slightly behind. Axel tried to slow down for him a little, but that didn’t seem to help, the kid resolutely staying a step behind him. Oh, well.

                “What kind of clothes are you looking for?” he asked.

                Roxas stared blankly ahead. Then, at length, he shrugged, with something of a guilty expression on his face.

                “Well, alright,” went Axel. A different strategy, then. “I think we can at least narrow it down a little bit. Why do you need to go clothes shopping so badly right now? Do you need seasonally appropriate clothes? Event-appropriate clothes? Something else?”

                Roxas thought about his question for a moment. “A lot of my clothes have holes in them,” he said. He looked over his arms for a moment, and then lifted up the one closest to Axel, pointing out the hole in the armpit. Yeah, that was definitely worn out. “And my parents don’t like me wearing clothes like this when we go out in public, but if they didn’t let me wear this then I kind of wouldn’t have anything to wear. So…yeah. That’s why…desperate measures.”

                Axel laughed. Right. Well, at least his family apparently had the means to replace all of it.

                “Alright. So you really do need a lot of different things then,” said Axel.

                “Yeah…”

                “Do you have any particular stores you like?”

                “Not really.”

                Axel barely kept himself from sighing dramatically, deciding that that might be a little discouraging. It wasn’t like this was some huge burden Roxas was asking him to shoulder or anything. Axel was actually probably going to enjoy this.

                “Well, I vote this is our first stop,” Axel said, pointing to the department store in front of them. “That work?”

                “Oh. Yeah.”

                Axel gestured for Roxas to lead the way, and he did, looking around like a small child in a hardware store. That is, like he had no idea what he was supposed to be looking for, or why he was there, and was slightly worried that something there might seriously maim him. Axel stepped up and placed what he hoped was a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Okay,” he said. “Here’s the plan of action. You go around picking up absolutely everything that remotely interests you, and then we sort through the actual reasonable options and sizing variations once you get to the dressing room. Sound good?”

                “Yeah,” said Roxas, sounding a little bit more hopeful. “I think I can do that.”

                “Alright. Be free, then. And remember, the more things we have the better.”

                Roxas nodded dutifully, and then ventured into the forest of clothes racks.

                Axel followed behind, staying silent since Roxas didn’t seem to be willing to initiate any sort of conversation. He was very focused on the task of picking out clothes, which, well, that was what they were there for.

                Once they had combed through almost every “men’s” section that had clothes that would fit Roxas, Axel had been tasked with carrying a mere six articles of clothing, while Roxas had a few more in his hands. Jeez, no wonder he had trouble buying things. They’d gone through almost half the store and this is all he was interested in?

                “Do you want to check the other half?” Axel suggested. Roxas looked around, apparently wondering what this ‘other half’ was.

                “…you mean the women’s section?” he asked, incredulously.

                “Well, yeah, I guess,” said Axel, frowning. “The ‘women’s’ section,” he repeated, using his free hand to put half a set of air quotes around the word “women’s.” “Contrary to popular belief, clothes don’t actually have genders. They’re just separated by style and fit and size and things like that, and some of them have pictures of girls above them and some have pictures of boys. I mean, I usually have to shop in this so-called ‘women’s section,’ but…well…” Axel flushed. His tirade had gone a little farther than he’d intended it to. “You know. I’m shaped a little funny. But…anyways, it’s your choice.”

                Roxas nodded, slowly. “I think,” he said, “I’ll stay over here for now.”

                “Alright,” said Axel. “Well, you should probably try these things on, then,” he said, handing over the layers of fabric he had slung over his arm. “Should I hang around the dressing room or no?”

                “Ah, no,” said Roxas. “I think I’ll be okay.”

                “Text me when you’re finished, then,” said Axel, and then twiddled his fingers and went off to hang out in the section of the store that had stuff that might actually fit him.

~~~

                Roxas ended up getting one (one!) thing from that entire store, but their system at least seemed to be working out. If he bought one (one) thing from every clothes store in the mall, then he’d have a semi-decent selection, wouldn’t he?

                Well, theoretically. They hopped around to about half the clothing stores in the mall (Roxas, unfortunately, still taking the labels “men” and “women’s” to heart, which made things a little bit more difficult considering most clothing stores’ target audience) and Axel ended up appreciating more things than Roxas did, even putting on a spectacular show of pretending he actually had money to spend on these sorts of things (“Roxas, could you hold my stuff while I try this on?” “Uh, sure, yeah…”), though not quite to the point of actually spending money he didn’t have. He’d learned his lesson by now.

                By the end of their little escapade, Roxas was eight articles of clothing richer, and Axel had splurged on a shirt that was on sale for $15, so overall, not a bad haul. In Axel’s opinion, at least.

                “Think we did okay?” he asked, sitting next to Roxas on a mall bench as Roxas texted his parents to pick him up—god, Axel was hanging out with a child.

                “Better than I usually do, I guess,” he answered, looking through a few of the bags at his feet and shrugging. “I probably don’t have enough clothes to avoid wearing my holey stuff altogether, but…well. There are other days.”

                “That’s the spirit,” Axel said, leaning back and looking up at the ceiling.

                “Um,” went Roxas. “Thanks. For helping me out.”

                “Yeah, anytime,” said Axel. “Really. I had fun.”

                Roxas smiled at his shoes.

                “Yeah,” he said. “Me, too.”

~~~

                A few hours later, Roxas was laying in his bed, phone laying next to his pillow as he tried to get to sleep at a reasonable time—which, inevitably, meant he would be staying up for at least two more hours, tossing around and trying to get his brain to calm down for long enough to let him sleep.

                His phone buzzed, and he recognized it as the specific pattern he’d set for Axel.

                (Not that Axel, was, in this case at least, anyone particularly special. Roxas only frequently texted about six people, and they all had different vibration patterns. Really, they did. Honestly.)

                But, he tried to ignore it. He felt sleep coming on, he swore.

                His phone buzzed again. Then, three more times, fairly close to each other. Roxas felt a slight twinge of annoyance. Fine, he thought to himself. He rolled over and picked up his phone, squinting at the screen as he tried to read the notifications.

                “Roxas, do you have my wallet?” was the first text.

                Then, “Please answer this if you’re awake it’s important.”

                “One more try.”

                “Ok well please answer this ASAP.”

                Roxas’s annoyance was quickly replaced with confusion and not a small amount of worry as he read through them.

                “I don’t know, I’ll check,” he texted back, and got out of bed to switch on his light and search for it, squinting for a moment as his eyes adjusted. If he had it, it would either be in the pants he was wearing or the jacket, so…

                He looked around, trying to locate them in the mess on his floor. Ah, there are the pants.

                His phone buzzed.

                “DO NOT LOOK INSIDE OF IT”

                Roxas blinked at the urgency of that.

                “Ok” he texted back, and checked his pants pockets. No, not there.

                Ah, his phone again.

                “I’m not saying that you’re lying but I’m really serious about this please promise me you won’t check inside of it.”

                Roxas was beginning to get worried about the contents of this wallet. But, if it was that important…

                “Cross my heart,” he texted. “I promise I won’t look inside.”

                He picked up his jacket, and—ah, yeah, there was definitely something in the pocket. He stuck his hand inside, and took care to pull the item out shut. Yep, that sure was a wallet he’d only seen once before.

                He looked at his phone to see the message “Thank you. I appreciate it.”

                Roxas replied: “I found it. Do you want to come get it?”

                Axel: “Ok good. No, it can wait.”

                “Thank you. Goodnight.”

                “Sweet dreams!”

                Roxas felt like he would be touched by these messages if he weren’t so confused. All he could do was text “Goodnight” back and get back in bed.

                What could possibly be in a wallet that was so bad?

~~~

                Axel didn’t text him for a few days. Roxas started to get worried. Had he done something wrong? Was this wallet thing really that big of a deal?

                He’d tried to text Axel a few times, but kept second-guessing himself and ending up enabling another dozen or so hours of wondering whether Axel was upset at him or not. He supposed the easiest thing to do would be to just ask him, but for some reason that didn’t seem like a distinct possibility.

                Fuck. Why was this so hard?

                But an opportunity soon presented itself, and he managed to take it before chickening out.

                “hey Axel. My family’s out on a thing so if you want to stop by and get your wallet…”

                He sent his message with a feeling akin to jumping off a cliff and hoping someone will catch you. A very small cliff, admittedly, but he wished he wasn’t so freaked out about this.

                The reply was, “Oh yeah haha, I should probably get that huh”

                …had he just forgotten? Is that why he hadn’t mentioned it at all?

                Had he been driving around without his license???

                Roxas sighed, rubbing his forehead. He couldn’t believe he’d been worrying about this for the past, like, week or something.

                “we could also hang out or something if you want,” he added.

                Axel: “sure sounds good.”

                “I can be there in about half an hour. That work?”

                Roxas: “yeah I’m not going anywhere”

                “don’t get pulled over”

                Axel: “don’t worry about it”

                “im a master at outrunning cops”

                Roxas: “????”

                Axel: “jk jk”

                Roxas frowned at his phone. Even if it was a joke, Roxas had a feeling that it wasn’t entirely untrue. Axel seemed like that kind of guy. That haircut…

                Oh, well. He should probably stop worrying. Axel could take care of himself.

                A few minutes later, Axel texted him, “wait I probably need your address if I want to get to your house,” but other than that, Roxas had time to waste while Axel made his way—hopefully, at a reasonable speed—over to his house.

                He looked around his room.

                He probably wouldn’t be letting Axel in there, but…

                Well, it was always good to make sure.

~~~

                Twenty minutes later, Roxas had finished his most intense cleaning spree ever, which wasn’t really that impressive considering his frequency of intense cleaning sprees was very, very low. But in just a third of an hour, he had managed to rid his entire floor of clothes and clean off almost every surface in his room, which admittedly did require a lot of stuffing things ungracefully into his dresser and some creative stacking of things under his bed and closet, but once he pulled his comforter over a little and wedged his doors and drawers shut, his methods were nearly unnoticeable.

                He had even moved on to picking up some stray things in the living room when the doorbell rung like, seven times in very quick succession.  He ran over and opened it before anymore buttons could be pushed.

                “Hey,” said Axel.

                “Hi,” said Roxas.

                “I assume this is the right house, then.”

                “Well…I sure hope so.”

                Axel laughed, and stepped inside, looking around. Roxas shut the door and watched him warily. The house wasn’t exactly clean, even after Roxas’s efforts—it was pretty impossible when you have a bunch of teenage boys living there.

                Well, two, Roxas supposed. But that was enough.

                “This is a pretty nice place,” Axel said. Roxas looked up at him, surprised.

                “Really?” he said. “I mean, I guess.” Maybe it was nice. Roxas had a hard time thinking that when he had a very detailed memory of every single stain on the couch, hole in the wall, and crack where bugs liked to crawl in when it got too cold outside for them to live comfortably.

                But other than that. Well, it certainly wasn’t a bad house. It had all the house things, like central heating and running water. So it wasn’t so bad. Maybe.

                Axel started wandering off in some direction, and Roxas trailed after him to make sure he didn’t get into anything he wasn’t supposed to.

                “What’s down there?” Axel asked, pointing down a hallway.

                “Um,” Roxas went, leaning over to see where he was pointing. “That’s my parents’ bedroom and a guest bedroom, and the door to the garage.”

                Axel “hmmm”ed, and then crossed the living room again to peer down the other hallway. “And this?” he asked.

                “That’s…my siblings’ bedrooms, and mine.”

                “Oh? Which one’s yours?”

                Roxas raised a hand to point, but stopped himself. “Well, you’re not allowed to go in,” he said. Why had he cleaned it, then? Oh, well. He felt like it’d be too…weird, for some reason.

                “Aw, really?” said Axel, pouting. “Well, okay…”

                Axel gave one more look around, and then sat himself down on one of the couches, leaning back and looking very much at home.

                “So, how many siblings do you have?” he asked.

                Roxas blinked. He wasn’t sure entirely sure what was going on here—and Axel looked really weird just lounging in his house, too. His firetruck-red hair didn’t really mesh with the puke-green couches they’d had since the 90’s.

                There was one thing he knew he needed to do, though.

                “Uh, hold on. I need to…before I forget…”

                Roxas went to his room, grabbed Axel’s wallet (keeping very careful to make sure it didn’t fall open accidentally or some horrible sitcom plot event like that) and went back to the living room. “Here,” he said, holding it out for his friend to take.

                Axel did, and looked over it. He smiled, but it looked like a nervous one.

                “Sorry for asking, but, did you look in it?”

                “No,” said Roxas.  “I promised, didn’t I?” he smiled, and sat down next to Axel, sinking into the couch cushion.

                “Yeah, I guess you did,” said Axel, sticking the wallet in one of the many pockets he had at the time. “Thanks.”

                “Sure. Um…you were saying?”

                Axel gave him a blank stare for a moment, but then realization came.

                “Right. Your siblings. This is a pretty big house, so…”

                “Oh, yeah. I have four brothers, two of them are—wait, no.” He frowned, shaking his head. “Three brothers and a sister, sorry. Um. Yeah, the two oldest are in college, so they aren’t here much. Then there’s me and Sora, and our little, um, sister is Xion. Yeah. She’s…”

                Roxas flushed. He didn’t know what the right words were for this. “I don’t really know how I’m supposed to say this. She used to be my brother, I guess, but…”

                “Oh!” went Axel, sitting up straighter. “Is she transgender?”

                “Yeah, that’s the word,” said Roxas, nodding. “She only figured it out, or, she only told me, pretty recently but. I’m doing my best, but, you know…”

                “It sounds like you’re being pretty respectful,” Axel said, sagely. “So just keep doing that and it’ll be fine.”

                “Yeah…”

                Roxas stared at the coffee table in front of them. This stuff was kind of weird for him to wrap his head around, but he’d do anything to make Xion happy.

                “Oh, but,” he said, looking back at Axel again, “Make sure you don’t mention it to my parents, if you ever end up talking to them. She said it’s okay to tell our friends and stuff but she wants to talk to them about it and I don’t know when she’s going to do that so. Uh, just in case.”

                “Sure, sure,” said Axel. “Speaking of, where are they now? You have the house to yourself for the weekend?”

                “Yeah. They all went camping,” said Roxas. “They used to make me go too, but a few years ago I…”

                He flushed, remembering what a disaster that trip had been. On second thought, maybe he wouldn’t tell Axel about that.

                “It, it wasn’t pretty,” he settled on. “So now I get to stay home.”

                “And play video games?”

                “Ah, how’d you know,” Roxas said, joking. “Um…do you wanna play some?”

                Axel shrugged.

                “Why not?”

~~~

                Roxas really didn’t understand how Axel was so bad at video games. Like, okay, he obviously didn’t play very many but…it wasn’t that hard to pick up, was it? You just press some buttons and the character on screen does stuff. Do a lot of stuff and you win. Right?

                Then again, people did always complain about how good Roxas was at it. He didn’t really think he was, but if that many people all agreed…

                “You are scary good at this,” Axel said, frowning as his character flew off the screen for what was probably the 50^th time. Roxas was kind of surprised Axel had put up with him for this long. Most people quit after an hour or so. “Either that or I’m just really bad.”

                Roxas laughed, somewhat nervously. He wished he could offer some consolation, but he wasn’t entirely which one it was, either.

                “Do you want to do something else?” he asked, trying to disguise his reluctance. He hardly ever got anyone to play against these days.

                “Psh, you think you can break me that easily?” Axel said, grinning and going through the character select screen again. “Come on. I bet I can beat you next time.”

                Roxas laughed, and set up the handicap again. Axel did nearly beat him a few dozen rounds ago, by a stroke of what was probably pure luck, but who knows, maybe he had a fast learning curve.

~~~

                Axel did not, in fact, have a fast learning curve, and was completely full of shit. He couldn’t beat Roxas ‘next time,’ nor the time after that, and likely would not be able to beat Roxas at any point in the future unless he put some serious training in.

                Roxas gave him the benefit of the doubt.

                But a few rounds later, it seemed like Axel had completely given up. He was hardly even attacking anymore, and his actions seemed really uncoordinated.

                Roxas knocked him off the map again, and then looked over at him. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was planning on saying, but after seeing Axel’s face, those words definitely changed.

                “Woah,” went Roxas, “Are you okay?”

                Axel’s frown lifted suddenly, but his face was still way paler than it usually was.

                “I’m fine,” he said, with a completely unconvincing smile.

                Roxas stared at him.

                “Okay,” Axel said, “No, I’m not.”

                He set the controller down very carefully, and then proceeded to fold himself over, touching his forehead to the floor and groaning. Which, all things aside, was a pretty impressive show of flexibility.

                “Uh,” went Roxas, staring wide-eyed. “Did—are you—are you in pain? Do you need to go to the hospital??”

                Axel, for some reason, laughed at this, though it sounded as strained as anything.

                “Yes to the first, no to the second,” he said, to the floor. “Do you have any painkillers?”

                “Uh, yeah, I’ll—yeah,” Roxas said, and then jumped up and ran to his bathroom, sliding the mirror over to look at the bottles of pills in the cabinet. There were about a billion different kinds of painkillers, so he just grabbed everything that didn’t have a prescription label on it and ran back to the living room.

                “Here,” he said, sitting down next to Axel and holding the bottles near his face. Axel looked over, just turning his head towards him and setting it back down on the floor. He grabbed the bottle with the blue pills in it.

                “Water?” he asked.

                “Right,” Roxas said, getting up and grabbing a bottle of water from the kitchen. He brought it to Axel, setting it on the floor next to him.

                Axel laid there for a moment, took a deep breath, and then sat up, slowly. He took two pills, and sighed.

                “Sorry,” he said, sheepish smile still more of a pained grimace than anything. “I’ll be okay. Promise.”

                “What’s wrong?” Roxas asked. “Does this happen a lot?”

                Axel thought about it for a moment, then just smiled, and put a finger over his lips in a “shh” gesture. Then he pulled out his phone before Roxas had time to ask any more questions.

                “Wow, it got pretty late,” he said.

                Roxas looked at the clock on their sound system. “Oh,” he said. “Yeah, I guess. Do you need to be getting home?”

                Axel shrugged, putting his phone away. “Probably,” he said. “Unless you want me to spend the night.”

                “Will you—“ Roxas started, words coming out of his mouth before he fully formulated a thought. “I mean, if you, you can if you want, I wouldn’t…mind…”

                Axel raised an eyebrow at him, evidently amused. It seemed like whatever had happened to him was…passing, at least. “I’m not actually technically supposed to drive at night,” he said. “I have…well, vision problems, of a sort. So I figure it’d probably be a good idea.”

                Vision problems? Axel didn’t wear glasses, though, did he? Or contacts—Roxas was pretty sure he didn’t wear contacts either. He didn’t see any, at least.

                “I guess you should stay, then,” Roxas said, looking around. “I’ll get some blankets out of the closet and…or…” He frowned, an image coming to mind. “Um. I could set you up on the couch, but…I don’t know. My family’s not supposed to be back until Sunday but…if they come back early for some reason and see you on the couch…”

                Axel laughed. “Yeah, that might be a little hard to explain.”

                Well, Sora would know exactly who you were, Roxas thought, trying not to think about the kinds of things his brother would tease him about in that situation.

                “So you could take my bed, I guess,” Roxas said. “And I’ll just sleep on the floor…”

                “Nah, I’ll take the floor,” Axel said, getting up (a little haltingly—was he still in pain?) and looking around. “I’ve slept in worse spaces. Need help with the blankets or anything?”

                “Oh, sure,” went Roxas, taking a moment to turn the TV off (the game system could stay on, it wouldn’t really hurt anything) before getting up and going to one of the hall closets. Axel trailed behind.

                Roxas opened it slowly, mindful of a possible blanket avalanche. When no such disaster happened, he opened it all the way and gestured to the pile of bedding. “Want anything in particular?” he asked, laughing slightly at the sheer amount of blankets they’d somehow acquired over the years. Roxas had been using the same ones for at least six years now, so he wasn’t sure where they’d all come from…

                Axel just picked the thing off the top of the pile and draped it over his arm. “Will you tell me which one is your room this time?”

                Roxas grabbed a few pillows. “Yeah, I guess,” he sighed, jokingly. “Follow me.”

                He went to his room, and nudged the door open with his foot. None of his lights were on, and it had gotten dark since he’d cleaned. That was…probably good. Somehow he didn’t want Axel to be able to examine his room with much clarity.

                He walked inside, and Axel stayed in the doorway, blinking in the low light. And—oh, god dammit.

                “Are those stars?” he asked, looking up at Roxas’s ceiling. Roxas huffed.

                “Sora—er, my brother put them up there when we shared this room, and I…just never took them down, so…” he dropped the pillows on the floor, and turned on a lamp, which was the lowest level of illumination possible without it being completely dark in there. Axel didn’t need to see the details of this mess, even if Roxas had tidied up quite a bit.

                Axel dropped the blanket on the floor next to where Roxas had put the pillows. “Could you point me to the bathroom?” he asked. Roxas went over to his doorway and pointed down the hall.

                “It’s the only one with the door open,” he said.

                “Thanks,” Axel said, and went to go visit it.

                Roxas turned around and looked at his room.

                Roxas flushed.

                This was weird. This was really weird, and Roxas couldn’t really say it wasn’t a bad weird, either. He tried to get his brain to shut up while he laid the blanket out on the floor and arranged the pillows in a halfway reasonable way. Axel would probably move them, anyways.

                He sat on his bed, and looked around. He usually didn’t have friends over in his room…he either stayed at their houses (less hectic) or he had a few over and they all camped out in the living room playing video games and consuming dangerous amounts of caffeine and cheesy snacks until the early hours of the morning.

                Besides, Axel wasn’t really like the rest of his friends.

                For one, Axel was kind of a mystery. Roxas didn’t really know what he was interested in. He tended to spend more time listening to Roxas talk endlessly about video game mechanics, and more often than not ended his own potential sharing time with a “ah, but you probably don’t care about that,” and changed the subject.

                As much as Roxas appreciated someone who was willing to listen to him, it felt pretty one-sided after a certain point, and Roxas’s experience with one-sidedness was, more often than not, people soon getting annoyed at him and snapping at him to shut up.

                He frowned at the floor. He hoped Axel never did that. He wasn’t sure if he could take it.

                Roxas settled into bed, setting his pillows up to sit up on and pulling his covers over himself. He wasn’t really that tired.

                Not very long later, Axel returned, face clean of the make-up sort stuff he usually wore. It, well, it was make-up, but Roxas felt kind of weird calling it that. Axel’s eyes looked a lot different without the red lining. He had also acquired another pillow, and was holding it against his chest.

                “Can I turn this off?” he asked, pointing at the lamp. Roxas nodded, so he switched it off, and then got settled into his little floor bed, fabric shuffling around for a short bit.

                “Are you tired?” Roxas asked.

                “Hmm,” went Axel. “A little. Mostly I just want to sleep this off.”

                ‘This?’ Oh, right.

                “Oh.” Roxas wasn’t really sure what to say. “You’re…gonna be okay, right?” he asked.

                “Yeah, yeah,” went Axel, “I promise.”

                “If you say so,” Roxas said, frowning. “Goodnight, I guess.”

                “Goodnight,” said Axel. “Sweet dreams.”

                Roxas blushed, and was glad Axel’s face was currently buried in a pillow.

                “You too,” he muttered, and pulled his blanket up over his head.

~~~

                Axel woke up again at god-knows-when in the morning, and squinted his eyes against the blue glow emanating from somewhere to his right. Once his eyes woke up a little bit, he rolled over to see Roxas, sitting up in his bed with his eyes glued to another one of his hand-held video game things.

                He was also wearing a hoodie with the hood pulled up over a pair of headphones, with the pull strings for his hood stuck in between his teeth.

                Axel stared at him. That was definitely a familiar wardrobe choice.

                “You’re still awake?” he asked, his voice hoarse from sleep. But he didn’t get a response. Right, headphones.

                He tossed one of his pillows vaguely at Roxas’s bed, and Roxas jumped, startled at the movement.

                He moved his headphones down around his neck, and spat the drawstrings out, apparently trying to play it off.

                “You’re awake,” he said, eloquently.

                “I am,” said Axel, sitting up, keeping the blanket around his shoulders. “So are you. Have you even slept yet?”

                “Um,” went Roxas, “No.”

                “What time is it?”

                Roxas pressed a button on his console.

                “About four,” he said.

                Axel sighed. “Do you usually stay up this late?”

                “Yeah,” said Roxas. “Or, well…until one or two, usually, on school days when I’m actually trying to sleep…um. How are you feeling?”

                Axel stared at him. How was he feeling? He was feeling fine. A little sleepy, but—oh. Right. That.

                “I feel better,” Axel said. For now, at least. “And I’m still going to be okay.”

                “That’s good.”

                “Yeah. I’d kind of like if you stopped asking, too, it’s kind of wigging me out here.”

                Roxas frowned, and looked away from him.

                “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll stop.”

                “Thanks,” Axel said.

                Then he yawned, and stretched his arms out under the blanket. Was it just him, or was it kind of cold in here? Maybe Roxas’s family was the type who always kept the thermostat down ridiculously low.

                “Were you chewing on your sweater?” he asked, once he got settled under his blanket again.

                Roxas continued not looking at him. “Yeah, I know,” he said, pouting and pressing a few buttons on his game.

                “You know?” asked Axel. “Know what?”

                “I shouldn’t be doing that,” Roxas said.

                Axel frowned. Who had put him in that state of mind? It would have made the hair on the back of Axel’s neck stand up if they weren’t already.

                “That’s not what I was going to say,” he said. “Who told you you shouldn’t be doing that?” And is it someone I can punch?

                “My mom, mostly,” Roxas said. Oh, so no punching, then. “But usually only when I do it in public, she doesn’t mind so much when we’re at home now.”

                “I think you should be able to do it whenever you want to,” Axel said, tone taking perhaps a little too much of a defensive turn.

                Roxas finally looked back at him.

                “It’s really not that big of a deal,” he said. “I can go without chewing on my clothes for a few hours.”

                “Yeah, but,” Axel started, frowning. “You shouldn’t have to.”

                Axel was sort of at a shortage of words here. There were only so many things he could come up with when his brain wasn’t working at full capacity, and he wasn’t entirely sure how he should be phrasing things when talking to Roxas. After all, Axel didn’t really know how far this whole ‘thing’ went. Though…after talking to the kid for a while, he had gotten a pretty good idea.

                But still, it wasn’t really his place to say.

                “I mean, I chew on my hair when I’m trying to focus. That’s basically the only reason I keep it this long,” he said. That wasn’t entirely true, but it would suffice. “And I also, um…hold on.”

                He fumbled around on the dark floor, looking for his jacket. Once discovered, he dug through the pockets, and took out a few choice objects. Then he scooted over to Roxas’s bed, abandoning his blanket.

                “Here’s some of the stuff I keep to fidget with,” he said, placing them out on Roxas’s blanket. “I mean, you probably don’t care, but…I guess I’m telling you anyways.” It was that point in the middle of the night, you know? Besides, it had been so long since Axel got to share these with someone else. He was kind of excited, actually.

                “This used to be full of mints, but I kept it because I like the way it clicks when you open it. I’ll probably have to get a new one once it gets worn down, but…”

                Roxas picked up the box and clicked it open and shut a few times.

                “This is…a rock, I guess. I just like how heavy it is.”

                Roxas picked up the rock, thing, and held it in his hand.

                “I just like running my nails over this thing.” Axel placed a keychain on the blanket. It had some sort of column attached to it, that was weaved out of plastic string things. He was pretty sure he’d bought it off a girl scout.

                Roxas picked up the keychain and ran a fingernail over the plastic part. He wasn’t really doing it right, but it Axel didn’t mind too much.

                “I like keychains, too,” Roxas said. “I keep a lot of them…”

                “Really?” Axel asked, grinning. “Any particular reason?”

                “I dunno. I just like…” he put the keyring part over his finger, and tugged on it. Then he shrugged, and put it down with the rest of the stuff.

                “I do care, by the way,” he said.

                “Hm?” went Axel.

                “I care. You always say stuff like, ‘you probably don’t care,’ but I always care about what you have to say.”

                Axel stared at him, unexpected emotions welling up in his chest.

                He thought that, probably, this wasn’t the right time to start crying.

                “Oh,” he said, instead of that. “I…thanks.”

                Roxas nodded. “Well, I figure it’s only fair, considering how much stuff I always make you listen to…”

                “You don’t make me,” Axel said, laughing. “I like listening to you talk about stuff.”

                “So what makes you think I don’t like listening to you?” Roxas said, frowning.

                Axel looked back at the blanket, rubbing the back of his neck. “I guess you got me there,” he said, though not entirely truthfully. He knew exactly why he didn’t think people would be interested. Not Roxas in particular, of course, just…people.

                But that wasn’t really something Axel wanted to reveal at that point in time. That was like…level 50 friendship level. They were probably at about a 20.

                Axel gathered up the things he’d littered over the blanket, and stuck them back in his pockets.

                “So…you just carry this around to fidget with?” Roxas asked, slowly, as if he wasn’t entirely sure what words to use in this situation.

                “Yeah,” said Axel. “It helps to have something to mess with when I get stressed out or…well, bored, mostly. I also—well…” he frowned. Maybe it wasn’t time to reveal that, either.

                “You also what?” Roxas asked, purposefully.

                Well, how could Axel say no to that?

                “It’s kind of personal,” he said.

                “Oh,” went Roxas, frowning. “Well…I guess you don’t have to…”

                “Well,” went Axel, “It’s not that I don’t trust you, I just…well, I don’t want you to freak out or anything. Will you freak out if I tell you?”

                “How am I supposed to know?” Roxas said, more amused than exasperated. “I’ll try not to. You don’t kill people, right?”

                Axel laughed. “No,” he said. “I don’t kill people.”

                “It can’t be that bad, then, right?”

                It definitely could. But Axel decided to take this leap of faith. Nothing could would come from keeping secrets, and he’d much rather reveal this willingly than have Roxas stumble upon it later.

                He tugged up one of his sleeves, and laid his arm out on the bed for Roxas to see. He was thankful for the low light, because it concealed most of the damage, but a few dark scabs were still visible, circular, mostly at the top of his forearm.

                Axel stared at his arm, seeing Roxas do the same out of his peripheral vision. He wasn’t really sure he wanted to know what Roxas’s reaction was to it.

                “Um,” he heard.

                Axel took his arm off the bed and pulled his sleeve over it again. He continued staring at the blanket, heart pounding against his chest. He really didn’t like showing people these things.

                “They’re burn scars,” he said, fidgeting with the edge of his sleeve.

                “You…do that to yourself?”

                Axel nodded.

                “Most of them are old,” he said, semi-truthfully. Most of the ones he had in general were old. Specifically the ones on his arm, maybe not so much.

                “Why?” Roxas asked, quietly.

                Axel shifted, leaning his head against the bed and staring at the wall. Why? Well, wasn’t that a complicated question.

                “It’s kind of a long story,” he said, somehow smiling at the phrasing. At his flippancy. “Part of it is…the same as the keychains. I just get bored and want to feel something, and before I know it I just…”

                He shrugged, turning and pressing his forehead into the mattress, trying not to think about the feeling, trying not to think about what Roxas was going to say next, his head trying to provide lines like That’s so stupid, Why don’t you just stop?

                “I’m…sorry,” is what he really did say. “I don’t really know what to say.”

                Axel nodded, sort of.

                “It’s alright,” he said. “I’ve heard about everything by this point anyways.”

                Silence hung in the air for a few long moments.

                “You can always talk to me about it, if you want,” Roxas said. “I might not know what to say, but…I can listen.”

                Axel looked up at him, and sighed.

                He reached up and pat Roxas’s knee, in some attempt at a comforting gesture. It was kind of awkward from his position, but he was pretty sure the sentiment would come through.

                “Thanks,” he said. Then, “You should probably get some sleep.”

                Roxas huffed, the mood in the room suddenly changing.

                “I’m almost to the end of this chapter, though,” he said, pouting. Axel had never heard video games referred to with “chapters,” but he was pretty sure he understood what Roxas was talking about.

                “Then you can look forward to playing it in the morning,” he responded, grinning.

                “Orrrr…” went Roxas, shrugging slowly.

                Axel rolled his eyes.

                “Let’s make a deal,” he said. “If you’re sleeping when I wake up, then I’ll make you breakfast.”

                Roxas frowned at him, squinting suspiciously. “When will you wake up?” he asked.

                “Probably in another four hours or so.”

                “What? Do you usually wake up that early?”

                “Trust me, Roxas, with a job like mine, that is sleeping in.”

                Roxas made a face at that.

                “Remind me to never work in retail,” he said.

                “Do I not do that every single day already?”

                Roxas laughed. “Alright,” he said. “Fair enough. It’s a deal.”

                “Good,” said Axel. “Now go to sleep.”

~~~

                Axel ended up awake around five hours later, a little bit longer due to the fact he wasn’t expecting Roxas’s curtains to block out the entire sun. It almost seemed like the middle of the night in there.

                He sat up to see Roxas fast asleep, looking more like a steadily rising-and-falling mass of blankets than an actual human being.

                Axel stood up and walked over to him, leaning over and examining his face.

                He blew on him slightly.

                There was no reaction, so either Roxas was really good at playing at sleeping, or he was actually asleep. Either way, Axel supposed he’d keep his side of the bargain.

                There was plenty of food in the fridge—Axel supposed there had to be, with this many teenagers in the house—so he had no trouble whipping something up. He sort of regretted not asking Roxas if he had any food peculiarities, but compromised on his lack of knowledge by making an omelet with various additions cooked separately and added on top of it, instead of in the eggs themselves. If Roxas didn’t like anything, he could just pick it out.

                Axel put the food on a plate and covered it with plastic wrap, before sticking it in the microwave. Then he cleaned everything he’d used, put it away, and went back to check on Roxas.

                Still fast asleep. Axel didn’t think he’d even moved.

                Well, he couldn’t just wake him up, could he? The kid had probably only gotten like, two hours of sleep by now, anyways.

                He went back into the kitchen and wrote a note instead. “You win. Open for food,” it said.

                He stuck it on the microwave, made sure he had all of his things (his wallet, especially), and left, bound for home and hopefully avoiding any human contact for the next twelve hours.

                He was glad he had spent the night with Roxas, but…he needed some time to recharge.

Chapter Text

                Roxas frowned at his sketchpad as if it had personally affronted him. His drawing wasn’t horrible, he supposed, but he couldn’t seem to get his pencil to do what he wanted it to do. His hands weren’t working right, and marks kept coming out darker than he’d intended or not in the right place or—

                He huffed, rubbing his eyes. This was giving him a headache.

                When he looked back at his paper again, he saw Namine glance at him out of the corner of his eye. He’d told her, at some point previous, not to try and help him unless he actually asked for it (it got kind of annoying when you wanted to figure out how to do something yourself, and people kept trying to tell you how to do it), but he wasn’t really sure what to ask for here.

                “Okay,” he said, sighing, giving in. “Help?”

                Namine leaned over, and looked at his drawing. He flushed, sure she thought it was completely horrible.

                “Hmm,” she went, tilting her head slightly. Then she looked up at the park scene they were sitting in front of, then back at the drawing. “What are you having trouble with?”

                If Roxas knew the answer to that, then he probably wouldn’t be asking Namine for help. But, there was no point in snapping at her. It wasn’t her fault he couldn’t get his hands to do what he wanted them to.

                “I’m trying to draw these leaves,” he said, pointing at a particular area. “I don’t know how to get them to look okay, though. I know you’re not supposed to draw every single one, but…everything else just looks weird…”

                “Ah,” Namine went, smiling. “Well, it will look weird until you’re done with it, if you’re doing something like that.”

                Roxas looked over at her, and frowned.

                “Then how will I know if I’m doing it right? What if I mess up the entire tree?”

                She shrugged, sitting back up and turning back to her own drawing.

                “Then you pass it off as an artistic liberty,” she said, smiling.

                Roxas gaped at her.

                “I knew it,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “You’re a fraud.”

                She laughed, and shoved his arm, gently. He leaned over as if she’d hit a lot harder.

                “Hey,” she said, tone suddenly changing. Roxas sat up, and raised his eyebrows in question.

                “You’ve gotten a lot better,” she said.

                He frowned, and looked down at his drawing. As far as he was concerned, it was about as good as anything he’d done all class, which was…well, not that great.

                “Have I?”

                “Well…” Namine tilted her head again, thinking it over. “You’ve gotten a lot better at sitting down and working. A few months ago you would have probably gotten frustrated and quit by now. And working on something you’re only a little bit good at is the first step to getting really good at it.”

                Roxas continued staring at his drawing, thinking over what she said. She wasn’t entirely wrong, was she. He’d found it a lot easier to keep his emotions from getting out of hand recently—at least in situations where they shouldn’t be. Even if he still dreaded doing his homework, he didn’t want to stab anything by the end of an assignment.

                “Yeah,” he said. “I guess you’re right.”

                “I think you’ve been a lot happier in general, recently,” Namine said, calmly, scratching out more shapes on her paper. “I wonder why that is?”

                “Huh,” went Roxas. “I dunno. Have I?”

                Namine laughed behind her hand. Roxas blushed.

                “What?” he said, pouting, “What’s so funny?”

                “Oh, nothing,” Namine said, smiling politely, effectively ending the conversation.

                Roxas huffed, not really as irritated as he was playing on.

                Namine was weird sometimes.

~~~

                “Hello! Roxas! How are you? How’s school? How are your friends? Are you getting enough to eat? Are you sleeping well? [fire emoji x 3]”

                Roxas blinked at the sudden influx of questions on his phone screen. Someone was feeling energetic. The next text was, “You may answer one, or some, or all of these questions.”

                “Hello Axel,” he sent back, taking his time to think over everything he’d been asked. Then, “im okay. School is school. My friends are okay I assume. I am currently eating lunch. I am always tired.”

                Axel: “Good job. Nice response.”

                “School is school?”

                Roxas: “Yes. School is school”

                Axel: “What’s that mean?”

                Roxas: “I mean schools never really good so. School is just school.”

                Axel: “oh”

                “Do you have trouble with it? Is that’s why it’s never really good?”

                Roxas frowned. Axel always asked the wrong types of questions. Or…maybe the right ones. He certainly got to the point of things.

                Roxas: “Yeah”

                Axel: “Why do you think that is?”

                Roxas: “Well im kind of stupid so that’s part of it.”

                It wasn’t really the ideal way to describe it, but it fit well enough. He wasn’t sure what else to call it when someone could ask him what five plus three was and he’d usually have to stop and think about it.

                Axel: “That’s an interesting choice of words.”

                “What do you mean by ‘stupid’?”

                He blinked. That wasn’t what people usually said when Roxas talked about this. It was usually, “You’re not stupid,” or…well, usually that. Which didn’t really help that much when he was legitimately feeling stupid.

                Roxas: “I mean it takes me a long time to do assignments and I have trouble thinking I guess?”

                “Math doesnt make sense to me. I can never keep up w the readings in english.”

                “Im only not failing a lot of things because im good at figuring out what the answers are when it’s multiple choice so my test grades are ok.”

                He felt something welling up in his chest, but he tried to ignore it. He thought he was used to this stuff by now, but…it still kind of felt bad.

                Axel: “So you’re not good at completing assignments. Do you have trouble focusing? Learning the material? Understanding what the teachers are asking of you? Something else? Some of these? None of these? All of the above?”

                Roxas stopped, and read over that text a few times.

                Roxas: “All of the above.”

                “Usually I can get what my teachers are saying, except this one teacher”

                “like I can understand what words he’s saying but they never make sense in my head.”

                “I guess that sounds kind of weird…”

                Axel: “no, I understand exactly what you mean!”

                Roxas flushed. Well, that was a first.

                Axel, again: “have you looked this stuff up on the internet?”

                “like, people who have these problems too.”

                Roxas: “some of it…? usually I just get google saying I have ADD or st…”

                “I’ve talked to the counselor about it too but nothing she says really helps…”

                Axel: “Counselors aren’t shit, Roxas. That’s your first life lesson from Mr. Axel”

                “I’ll send you some links to stuff you can get some better information from”

                “I mean, if you want. I guess I’m being kind of pushy with this”

                “I’m gonna rephrase this: Hey Roxas, do you mind if I send you a few links for you to read over? I know head stuff is a very personal thing so I wouldn’t want you to feel like I’m trying to tell you what to think about how your own brain works.”

                Roxas: “yeah…that’s fine”

                “Thanks I guess? I’m not sure what you just said haha”

                Axel: “in short: I will back off if you want me to.”

                Roxas: “Okay. I don’t want you to back off.”

                Axel: “Cool. I’ll send you some stuff.”

                Roxas frowned at the conversation. He hadn’t really ever had a good experience with people trying to…get him to not do the things he was doing, but so far Axel hadn’t pulled the “Have you tried not doing that?” so Roxas supposed he could, at least, keep an open mind.

                Besides, who knows. Maybe this could actually help?

~~~

                Axel: “So, since I’ve been over to your house, I feel like it’s only fair I invite you over to mine”

                “Feel free to decline.”

                Roxas set his DS down on his bed to answer his messages.

                Axel’s place…? Well, that could be…interesting. He wasn’t really sure what he thought about that.

                “Do you live with anyone else?” he sent. That was probably his main concern. He’d kind of gotten the feeling that Axel lived with this Larxene person, and if that was so…

                Axel: “Nope. Got this place all to my lonesome.”

                Roxas blinked. Did he?

                Roxas: “Oh. Well okay. Sure that could be fun”

                And he’d take any excuse to postpone working on his homework, after all.

                Axel: “Do you have homework to do this weekend?”

                God damn it.

                Roxas: “Not a lot…”

                Axel: “Well I can’t distract you from your studies.”

                “Bring it over and I’ll try and help you with it.”

                Roxas laughed to himself. That was the opposite of what he considered fun, but knowing Axel’s work ethic, they probably wouldn’t be getting much actual work done anyways.

                Roxas: “Well, okay. I guess I can spend some time tomorrow, then.”

                Axel: “Works for me.”

                Roxas: “Yeah. Send me your address?”

~~~

                It turned out that Axel’s house—no, apartment, actually—was within reasonable biking distance, so Roxas biked there, wondering all the way about how it possibly took Axel half an hour to get from his apartment to Roxas’s house by any means.

                Maybe he had to do his hair or something.

                Roxas locked his bike onto the convenient bike rack outside of the apartment complex, and looked around. It was…kind of a nice-looking place. Roxas had expected more, average-to-slightly-dilapidated what with how Axel was complaining about his income all the time, but this place didn’t look so bad.

                He pulled out his phone to make sure he knew which apartment number Axel’s was. That would be ground floor, so…

                Roxas looked around, and went what he assumed was the right direction. Not that door, not that door…ah.

                He looked at his phone again, then back up at the door. This should be the right one, so...

                Roxas stared at the door. He should knock. It would be the easiest course of action. Just knock, and…

                He huffed, and opened up his messaging app. “I think I’m here,” he sent. It would take a little bit longer, but at least he wasn’t in danger of knocking on some random person’s apartment door.

                The door in front of him opened, and behind it was an Axel.

                “Hey,” said Roxas.

                Axel grinned.

                “Come in!” he said, opening the door for him. Roxas walked past him, and looked around. “I tried to tidy up a little so it doesn’t look quite so much like a hurricane came through. Do you want something to drink?”

                “Um, no, thanks,” Roxas said, setting his backpack down next to some table, trying to look inconspicuous. Maybe Axel will forget he told Roxas to bring his homework.

                It smelled kind of like something was burning.

                Roxas remembered Axel’s scars, and felt a little sick. It wasn’t that, though. It definitely wasn’t that.

                “This place is…nice,” he said. “Do you really live here all alone?”

                “Yep,” said Axel, shrugging. “I don’t like having people around all the time. They get hard to deal with. Anyways, did you bring your homework?”

                Roxas huffed. “Yeah,” he said. “I was hoping you forgot.”

                “Nope,” went Axel. “I have a memory like…whatever animal it’s supposed to be. Come on, let’s knock some of this out.”

~~~

                Homework was a lot easier when Axel was around. Or, at least, it was a lot easier to deal with having homework—they didn’t really get all that much done. For one, as Axel had not actually finished high school, as he had told Roxas many times before, so the properties of Algebra II were a little bit over his spiny head.

                Weirdly enough, though, Roxas having to dig out his textbook and explain to Axel what factoring meant actually helped him get through a few of the problems. The review was nice, and it was relieving to finally not be the only one who was completely perplexed by the material.

                So it probably would have worked out pretty well, if either of them could manage to stay focused for more than about five minutes at a time. Every three things would remind one of them of some incredibly interesting story that they just had to mention right then and there, which would lead to another anecdote, then another, then perhaps a discussion about philosophical ideas or something less scholarly, and on and on until one of them inevitably pulled the, “oh, shit, we were working on something,” and they pulled themselves back together for a few minutes—at which point, of course, the cycle started all over again.

                A few hours later, they had managed to get through about half of Roxas’s relatively short math assignment. However, Roxas actually felt pretty confident about the work he’d done, and he’d basically done it all by himself, too. Axel had been helpful, but it’s not like he could have provided any actual answers even if he’d wanted to.

                “This…actually works pretty well,” Roxas said, staring at the scrawl all over his scratch paper. He wasn’t entirely sure what half of it meant by that point, but it looked pretty impressive.

                “Really?” went Axel. “I feel like all I’ve done is distract you.”

                “Well, yeah, but somehow I still actually got stuff done, which is more than I can usually say.”

                Axel sat back looking over their accomplishments. “Weird,” he said. “Well…do you wanna keep going?”

              Roxas laughed, and shut his book. “Absolutely not,” he said. “I think that’s about all the math I can take for the day.”

                “Okay, good,” said Axel, “Because I don’t know how much more I could take, either.”

                Roxas grinned, and put his homework back in his backpack, zipping it up and kicking it under the table. Out of sight, out of mind.

                “Sooo,” went Axel, glancing around like he was oh-so-interested at the interior of his own apartment. “Are you hungry?”

                Roxas blinked at him. “I could eat,” he said. He could always eat.

                Axel stood up. “I’ll make dinner, then,” he said. “Do you like spaghetti?”

                “Um,” went Roxas. Well, at least Axel wasn’t trying to ask him what he wanted. “Yeah, sure.”

                “Perfect.”

                Before Roxas could say anything else, like maybe offering to help, or what he was supposed to do in the meanwhile, Axel had already disappeared into the kitchen.

                “Okay,” said Roxas, quietly, to himself.

                He looked around the room.

                Then he got up and went into the kitchen, to see Axel skillfully combining a lot of things into a single pot. Apparently he was actually cooking, and not just heating up a bunch of things in jars.

                Cool.

                “That breakfast you made was pretty good, by the way,” Roxas said, sitting himself at Axel’s kitchen counter. There was a haphazard stack of papers on one corner of it. Roxas picked up one of them and looked it over. What was this? Well, it didn’t look like anything interesting.

                “Oh, thanks,” Axel said, glancing at him. “I wasn’t sure if you had any…well, if there was anything you didn’t like eating, so I kind of had to wing it. It was okay?”

                “Yeah, definitely,” Roxas said, setting the paper on the counter and picking up the next. Oh, this one was some sort of electricity bill. Did Axel have to pay for electricity here? Brutal.

                Axel turned back to the pot full of what Roxas had figured out was tomato sauce. It smelled excellent.

                The next thing in the pile was an ID card. Roxas saw the back of it, with a little heart on it. It also had a hole punched in it, so it must have been an old one.

                He picked it up and turned it over. The picture looked unfamiliar. Someone with a big mane of black hair, which was haphazardly pulled back to keep out of their face for the picture. They looked kind of sick, actually. Like they hadn’t eaten for a while, and…

                Wait, were those tattoos on their face?

                Tattoos that looked suspiciously like…

                Was this Axel?

                Roxas looked at the rest of the ID card. The name listed wasn’t Axel, but “LEA.” Was that like “Lee?” Maybe ‘Axel’ was a nickname, or…

                Roxas stared at the bottom of the ID card.

                “Sex: F”

                He blinked a few times. That was definitely the letter F. The picture and name bounced around in his head along with this information.

                Before he could connect these three things together with much sense to them, the ID card was snatched out of his hand.

                He looked up, to see Axel staring at him, jaw set into a carefully neutral expression.

                Oh. Oh.

                “I think you should leave,” he said.

                Roxas was—not nervous. Roxas was scared.

                “I-I’m sorry,” he said, weakly. “I didn’t mean to, I…”

                “Roxas,” Axel said, voice strained, forced to keep quiet. “I would like you. To leave.”

                Roxas nodded, barely, and then nodded again, got up from the counter, grabbed his things, and left.

~~~

                Axel sat on his kitchen floor, knees to his chest and face in his hands, rocking himself back and forth, memories he didn’t want to remember rising to his head in waves as he tried to force them down, away again. He tried to keep his breathing steady as his lungs wanted to gasp for air. Roxas wasn’t like them. Roxas wasn’t like everyone else. Axel was safe.

                He was safe.

~~~

                I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to look…

                You’re still Axel

                That’s all. You’re still just Axel to me.

                You can be mad if you need to but I just want you to know that this doesn’t change anything

                It doesn’t change how I think of you. Maybe it changed how you think of me. That’s okay…

                I’ll stop texting you for now but I’ll be here if you want to talk again…

~~~

                Axel peeked out from under his comforter and stared at his phone, lying silently on his bedside table.

                He hadn’t had it on for the past three days. He couldn’t talk to anyone. No—he didn’t want to talk to anyone. He knew what kind of things he would say if he did, and he’d kind of like to keep the friends he had, thanks.

                Even Roxas.

                Yes, he definitely wanted to keep Roxas. No matter how much his opinion tried to turn itself around over the past few days. He still wanted Roxas around.

                He reached out and grabbed his phone, and then ducked back under the covers.

                He switched it on, and laid it on his bed, waiting for it to boot back up.

                He waited for a moment once the screen came on.

                Then it vibrated for about a minute straight.

                Oops.

                Once it stopped—and he waited for a little bit to make sure it had—he picked it up and went to read his messages. There were a few from Roxas, but he saved them for last. The majority of them were from Larxene, such as “Are you skipping work today?” and “I told the manager you were sick, you better not make me regret this” “Where are you?” “Answer your goddamn phone before I kick your door down.”

                There were also a few messages from other friends, some who hardly even texted him in the first place, so that was a little suspicious—until he saw the one from Demyx, which said “Larxene made me send this to check up on you please be alive or shell kill me,” which solved that particular mystery.

                He just texted back, “im alive,” and made a mental note to respond to the rest later.

                Which he wouldn’t, of course, he would just wait until Demyx told everyone and the inevitable rush of messages came in, which he would then respond to. That was more efficient.

                Then, the only ones left were from Roxas.

                Axel took a deep breath, and then opened the thread, scrolling to the top and reading through all of them slowly.

                He wasn’t mad.

                Axel sighed, and put a hand over his eyes. If he had had it in him, he might have cried in relief.

                “would you mind calling me?” he sent. He stared at the screen for moment.

                It didn’t look like Roxas was going to be replying immediately, so he pulled up his twitter feed and started scrolling through three days’ worth of missed content.

                He didn’t actually care about most of it, but he felt a sense of duty to it. Maybe he should unfollow some of these people…

                A notification popped up on the top of his screen. “sure give me 15 minutes.”

                Axel frowned, and checked the time. Roxas was probably at school. He had half a mind to tell Roxas not to bother, to wait until he went home, but…

                No. He wanted to talk to him now. And if Roxas didn’t mind…

                He huffed, and buried his face in his pillow. He could never figure out what the right line was between clingy and distant.

                Well, refusing to talk to someone for three days was definitely distant, so a little clingy wasn’t going to hurt anyone.

                Was it?

                Maybe he was switching too fast. Maybe it seemed pushy, or manipulative. Maybe—

                He groaned into his pillow.

                “Shut up, brain,” he said. He was doing the best he could. He wouldn’t know until someone told him.

                He grabbed his phone and got out of bed, stretching towards the ceiling, onto his tiptoes, before walking out to his kitchen.

                The memory of three nights ago still hung in the air. He wasn’t really upset about it anymore—he was never really upset about “it,” what Roxas did, in the first place. It just…reminded him of some stuff he would have rather not been reminded of.

                He went to his fridge and tried not to think about it. Food. Food was good—especially since he hadn’t been eating much. He could manage a few pieces of toast, at least.

                He had just about finished with said toast when his phone started ringing.

                He checked the screen.

                Roxas.

                Shit—he should have thought about what he was going to say to him. He almost wanted to let it ring, but…no. He was the one who asked him to call. That would just be mean.

                He answered it.

                “Hey,” he said.

                “Hey,” said Roxas back. He sounded quiet. Maybe it was just the connection. “How are you?”

                “I’m…” Axel thought about it for a moment. “I’m alright,” he said. “I’m better now than I was.”

                “That’s good.”

                There were voices in the background, behind Roxas’s speech.

                “Hey, listen,” said Axel, “I want to apologize. I got upset at you and that wasn’t really fair.”

                “Um,” went Roxas. “Apology accepted. I don’t think there’s…I’m not mad or anything though…”

                Axel sighed.

                “I don’t really know what I’m trying to say,” he said, rubbing the back of his head. “I just…I wasn’t really upset with you, honestly. I’ve just had some bad experiences with…with being outed, and it sort of…I felt like you were going to react like that, even though part of me knew you wouldn’t. I trust you, but it’s hard to remember that sometimes. If that makes any sense…”

                The line was silent for a moment.

                “Yeah,” said Roxas. “That makes sense.”

                “Okay…well…I don’t know. I try not to do this but…it actually happens kind of a lot. Kind of a lot a lot. And sometimes my friends end up having to deal with it. So…so if you want to keep your distance then I’d understand.”

                “Do you want me to?” Roxas asked. “To keep my distance?”

                Axel didn’t even have to think about it.

                “No,” he said. “Not at all.”

                “Then…I want to be here for you.”

                Axel smiled at his counter. He felt tears coming. What, more of these?

                “Well…could you do me a favor, then?”

                “Um,” went Roxas, “sure, I guess.”

                “Pretend you didn’t see that ID for, like, half a second.”

                “Okay…?”

                “Are you pretending?”

                “I’m pretending.”

                “Okay. Then, Roxas, I have something to tell you.”

                “Oh…?”

                “I’m a trans guy. My ID says female on it for some reason. Surprise.” There, that wasn’t so painful.

                The line was quiet for a moment.

                “Oh,” is what Roxas said, eventually. “Okay.”

                Axel couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Oh, okay?’ That was simultaneously the worst and probably the best response Axel had ever gotten.

                “There,” he said. “All better. Thanks.”

                “That’s what friends are for, right?”

                Axel grinned at his counter.

                “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Roxas was such a dork. It was wonderful. “Hey, I wanna make it up to you. Do you want to get dinner sometime?”

                “Dinner?” Roxas repeated. “I kind of feel like I should be the one doing that…”

                “Well, you can buy mine and I’ll buy yours. Then we’ll be even.”

                “What?” Roxas said, laughing. “Okay. That works, I guess? When did you want to go?”

                “Hmm. Well, I’m probably going to end up putting in some penalty hours at work,” ouch, “So maybe sometime next week? Would that work?”

                “Uh, yeah,” said Roxas. “I mean, probably.”

                “Probably works. We can figure out a time later, hm?”

                “Sure. Um. Goodbye, then?”

                “Goodbye,” Axel said. “I—“ No. He couldn’t say that. “I’m…glad you’re my friend.”

                “Yeah,” said Roxas. “Me, too.”

                “Okay…bye for real now.”

                Roxas laughed. “Goodbye. See you soon.”

                That was…nice to hear.

~~~

                They’d decided on meeting at a burger joint that was mutually convenient for both of them—and not too much of a burden on Roxas’s poor high schooler wallet. Though, honestly, Axel was probably about as well off as he was. A pocketful of birthday money lasts a lot longer when you’re a teenager.

                The first thing Roxas did when he showed up was hold his arms out at Axel.

                Axel frowned at him.

                “Come on,” said Roxas. “Or do you not want a hug?”

                Oh, is that what was going on here?

                “I dunno,” Axel said, grinning. “You’re pretty far down there, I don’t know if I can reach.”

                Roxas huffed, and put his arms down. “Jerk.”

                Axel laughed. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Come here.” He held a single arm out, but when Roxas came close enough he wrapped both his arms around his waist and hauled him up to eye level.

                “Ah--!” went Roxas. But he quickly accepted his new altitude and threw his arms around Axel’s shoulders, hugging him anyways.

                On a scale of one to awesome, this was probably one of the best hugs Axel had ever gotten.

                He placed Roxas down, gently.

                “Okay,” he said, “Enough sappiness, let’s get something to eat.”

~~~

                Roxas must have been starving or something—well, he was a teenager, they were known to eat everything in sight, weren’t they?—because he still managed to make quick progress through his burger while talking almost constantly. Apparently something big had happened in the video…game-o-sphere…and it didn’t take much prompting for Roxas to start telling Axel every little detail of what was going on.

                It was kind of adorable, actually, though Axel really wished he would stop thinking that. In any case, it was pretty rare to see Roxas get this outwardly animated about something.

                “So we’re finally getting to see all of this unreleased content that apparently bridges the storyline between all these games, and they might be adding in a remake of this other game that no one’s played because it’s on this really old system and it’s, like, impossible—“

                Halfway through this particular bit of information, Roxas started rotating one of his hands back and forth excitedly in a somewhat atypical fashion. Axel took small note of it, hardly thinking much of it—but then Roxas paused, frowned, and stuck his hands under the table.

                “Uh, er,” he tried to pick up his train of thought again. “Anyways…”

                Axel frowned. Right. Most people didn’t do that, did they?

                “You don’t have to stop,” he said.

                “Well, yeah, I just forgot what—“

                “No, not that.”

                Roxas blinked at him, face blank. Apparently he had no idea what Axel was talking about.

                “Your hands,” said Axel. “You were…” Hm. Did Roxas know that word? “You were doing this,” he said, imitating the movement for a moment. “You don’t have to stop.”

                Roxas flushed and looked down at the table, picking at his food. Axel felt an unbidden surge of anger—not at Roxas, but definitely about Roxas—and tried to keep it from showing.

                “Do people tell you not to do that?” he said, keeping his voice as neutral as he could. “Who?”

                “Not really…I don’t know…”

                Roxas sighed, and Axel’s anger all but dissipated. Ah—he’d upset him, hadn’t he? Sometimes he forgot that righteous anger wasn’t always a welcome reaction to this kind of thing.

                “People don’t really tell me to stop, they just kind of make fun of me for it,” Roxas said to his plate. “One of my friends told me it makes me look, um…retarded.”

                Axel frowned, scrunching his nose up. Well, wasn’t that just great.

                “That’s not a very nice thing for them to say,” Axel said, not entirely sure how else to put it.

                “Yeah, I know.” Roxas sighed. “It is kind of weird though, isn’t it?”

                “No,” said Axel, decidedly. “It’s perfectly normal.”

                Roxas frowned, apparently perplexed at this answer. “No one else does it, though. I mean, I’ve never seen anyone do it.”

                “I know a lot of people that do that. Well, not exactly that, but stuff like that. People just show their excitement in different ways, that’s all. If people make fun of you for that, then…” you should punch them right in the face. No, that probably wasn’t the best piece of advice. “They’re…not being very nice, and that’s a problem with them, not you.”

                Roxas shrugged slightly at this, apparently having no further response.

                “…anyways,” Axel said, in a weak attempt to salvage Roxas’s excitement. “You were about to tell me when that game’s coming out , right?”

                “Oh. Yeah. Well…”

                It didn't take him that long to get back into the swing of it.

Chapter Text

                Axel sprawled out on his couch, head awkwardly propped up on the armrest, one leg laying across Larxene’s lap and a bottle of the cheapest shit he could find in his hand.

                “But then he was actually totally cool with it,” he said to a spot a few inches above Larxene’s head, “I mean, apparently his sister is trans so, I guess he kind of knows a little about this kind of stuff but…you know, that doesn’t always mean a good thing. Like, you know how Zexion’s sister was.”

                Larxene wrinkled her nose, which was enough to indicate that she knew exactly what Axel was talking about.

                “But no. He didn’t really say anything. He was just all, ‘you’re still Axel it doesn’t really change anything,’ and…” Axel sighed dreamily, looking up at the ceiling. “It was just wonderful. I think I’m in love.”

                The words had hardly come out of his mouth when Larxene was suddenly whacking him over the top of the head with a magazine. “No!” she said, “Down, boy.”

                “Hey!” Axel complained, going to shield his head with his arms and only accomplishing spilling part of his beer on his shirt. Oh, well. “I didn’t say I was going to do anything! This doesn’t count!”

                Larxene stopped hitting him, but nevertheless continued with her glare. “It counts,” she said. “Admitting it is the first step to disaster. You stick to friendship until he turns 18, got it? You shove those feelings deep, deep down inside of you.”

                “Okay, okay,” Axel said, sighing. “Man, now I’m going to have to wash this…”

                He picked at the slightly damp fabric on his chest. Well, it wasn’t too urgent.

                “But, I mean,” he continued, mood settled into a determined pout, “it’s not like he’d be interested anyways. I’m too clingy, and—“

                Larxene hit him over the head with the magazine again.

                “What--!”

                “I’m definitely not going to give you sympathy if it’s coming in the form of telling you it’s okay to be romantically interested in a child.”

                Axel rubbed his forehead, as if she’d actually hurt him at all and not just messed up his hair a little bit.

                “Fine, fine,” he grumbled. “I guess that’s for the best…”

~~~

                “But, I don’t know, he’s kind of older and…he has his own apartment and everything—it looks really nice actually, it’s kind of messy but the furniture is cool, like, I don’t really know how you would call it—uh, anyways, I just sort of think. I don’t know, he probably just wants to be friends anyways, so I guess it doesn’t matter…”

                Namine watched Roxas talk, keeping a carefully polite smile on her face. It wasn’t as if she was uninterested, far from it. Roxas was just a little…well, ridiculous at this point. His switch from talking about school or whatever new game came out to talking about Axel almost every opportunity he could get wasn’t exactly subtle. At least he wasn’t talking about “this guy I’ve been texting” and trying to be so secretive about it anymore.

                “Would you say yes if he asked you out?”

                Roxas flushed bright red, as he was prone to do.

                “Well,” he said, “Um…yeah. I guess. Probably.”

                “Hmm,” went Namine. “You definitely like him then, don’t you?”

                Roxas nodded, frowning in what seemed to be confusion.

                “I mean,” he said, “I’m pretty sure I do.”

                “But you like being friends with him, too?”

                “Of course!” Roxas answered immediately, meeting Namine’s eyes. “I wouldn’t give that up for the world.”

                “Then maybe you should tell him that,” she suggested. Then Roxas was looking away again, and the frown was back. “Do you think he’d stop being friends with you because of it?”

                “I don’t know,” he said, fiddling with his sleeves. “I…I don’t think so.”

                Namine nodded, and let the silence hang for a moment.

                “I don’t think there’s anything else I can help with,” she said, eventually. “The rest is up to you.”

                Roxas sighed, heavily. “Yeah, I guess it is,” he said, though he didn’t seem happy about it. “Well…thanks for listening.”

                “Of course,” she answered.

                Perhaps it was best she kept the rising foreboding feeling to herself.

                She trusted Roxas—and by extent, she trusted Axel.

                Well. It was probably nothing, anyways.

~~~

                Roxas felt like he was walking on eggshells when he next stepped into Axel’s apartment. He knew he had no reason to, but the memory of what happened last time was still fresh on his mind. And, no doubt, fresh on Axel’s as well.

                But if it was, Axel didn’t show it.

                “Roxas!” he said in greeting, grinning and holding an arm out to him. Roxas gave him a quick hug. “How are you?”

                “I’m, uh, I’m alright,” Roxas answered. He was never quite prepared for that question. “How are you?”

                “Better now that you’re here,” Axel said. Roxas tried to hide his blush. “Did you bring more algebra?”

                “Oh, no,” Roxas said, glancing back at his backpack as if that would reveal what was in it. “It’s…English, mostly. Is that okay?”

              Axel shrugged, and walked over to his table. “I’ll be about as much help with it as I am with anything else. Come on.”

                Roxas took his place at the table, and their extremely inefficient study session began.

~~~

                “So, I’ve been kind of thinking about therapy,” Roxas said to his book, tapping his pencil on the side of it. He felt Axel shift beside him.

                “Oh?” said Axel, in a tone that Roxas felt was slightly off, though he couldn’t quite put a finger on it. “For…I mean. Uh, have you?”

                Roxas looked over at him, to see that he was frowning. Weird. Had be brought up a topic he shouldn’t have?

                “Yeah,” said Roxas. “To see if it would help with my…attention problem. I mean, I’ve only ever seen school counselors, so I thought maybe if I talked to someone who was more…um. I don’t know. Had more time for me, for one. And…professional training? I don’t know, maybe it wouldn’t be much different…”

                Axel nodded, slowly, gaze drifting to the wall.

                “That’s…an option,” he said, slowly, as if he were somewhere else entirely.

                Roxas frowned.

                “Is it not the right option?” he guessed. What else would Axel be making that face for?

                “Well, it’s…no. I mean…” Axel started, trying to find the right words. But he gave up, and sighed. “It could be the right option. It could be the wrong option. It all depends on what therapist you end up with. You could get a good one or…your life could be completely ruined and you could feel like shit for the next few years. It all kind of depends.”

                Roxas blinked. That sounded…drastic.

                “I’m guessing you haven’t had a very good experience with them,” he said, quietly. He wasn’t sure if he was stepping over boundaries here or not.

                Axel laid his head down on the table, somewhat abruptly. Well, that answered that question, Roxas supposed.

                “That’s another one of those big questions,” Axel said, mostly into the table.

                “Well,” Roxas said, carefully. “Do you want to talk about it? I-I mean, you don’t have to, but…”

                Axel turned his head slightly, just enough to look Roxas in the eye.

                “I’m not sure you know how big of a hole you’re digging yourself into here,” he said.

                Roxas flushed. Was that a bad thing? Should he not be asking?

                “Well, I—“ he started, “I want to hear about it if you want to talk about it.” Was that the right thing to say? “B-but you don’t have to, of course,” he repeated, attempting a smile. There. How could that go wrong?

                Axel sat up, slowly, gaze staying at the table, and then rubbed the back of his neck, frowning in thought.

                “Well…I’ll spare you my life story, but…”

                He tilted his head slightly, staring off into the distance. Roxas waited, fiddling with his pencil nervously.

                “It probably all started when my parents figured out I was autistic…”

                Roxas’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, and then he quickly tried to assume a neutral expression again. Unfortunately, it seemed Axel caught him.

                “Oh, yeah,” he said, laughing slightly, “I haven’t told you that yet, have I? I thought it was sort of…well, never mind. Surprise.”

                Roxas nodded, slowly. He wasn’t entirely sure what that entailed—or, he guessed he did kind of know already, didn’t he? It meant Axel was Axel. Surprise?

                “Anyways,” Axel continued. “I’ve probably had shitty therapy since before I can even remember. Not that I’d really want to. Poor child me went through so much shit…by the time I was an adult I’d been in and out of therapist’s offices, mental institutions…jail. Rehab. You know, all that fun stuff. Therapists all the damn way down the line, and I don’t think a single one of them actually helped me do anything except learn how to keep my emotions hidden, and that’s when they thought I even had emotions. But, you know, that was probably because my parents were always seeking out people who could fix their daughter,” he spat out the word like it had cut him. “They’ll talk about you in front of you like you’re not even there, like you don’t have a brain instead of, you know, just being tired of all their bullshit, and I--”

                Axel’s voice caught. Roxas felt very, very small. What could he even do to help this? Should he help?

                “I kind of started to believe them,” Axel continued, taking a deep breath. “You stay around people like that and…” He sighed, and ran his hands over his face. “But, I got better,” he said, sitting up straighter. “I got friends who treated me like I was a human being. People who treat me like I matter. People…people like you.”

                Axel turned to Roxas again, attempting a smile. “You…” he sighed, eyes glistening. “You make me feel like I have a heart. That’s…that means more to me than I think I could tell you.”

                Roxas nodded. Then he scooted closer, slightly, and placed a hand on Axel’s arm, not knowing if he would flinch away or not.

               Axel smiled, and sniffed, and held an arm out for him. “C’mere,” he said, and Roxas hugged him as tight as he could. Axel set his head down on Roxas’s, no doubt getting a faceful of hair. Oh, well.

                They sat there for a while, until Axel’s sniffling had subsided and he sat up, face damp with tears.

                This was the first time Roxas had seen him cry, wasn’t it?

                Before he could think, his hand was at Axel’s face, wiping away his tears.

                Axel froze for a moment at the touch, and then his gaze traveled down Roxas’s arm, meeting his eyes.

                Roxas thought his heart might have stopped for a minute.

                Was Axel’s face red, or was he imagining things?

                He must have been. He took his hand away and Axel pulled him closer again, hugging him tight.

                If Axel’s heart was beating a little faster than it had been…well, that didn’t have to mean anything.

~~~

                Roxas ended up spending the night there, much to the confusion of his parents. He didn’t really want to tell them exactly where it was he was staying, but eventually managed to get his mom to stop asking questions, ending with a, “We’re just glad you’re having fun with your friends.”

                It was good having parents like that sometimes. Though he did he did feel a little bad taking advantage of their trust like this…he was having fun with his friends, though, wasn’t he? It wasn’t like he was lying.

                Not exactly.

                He did almost regret it, though, when an alarm went off at god-knows-when in the morning.

                He sat up from his nest on the floor, squinting in the dull light and looking around for the source of the noise. Axel was, somehow, still passed out on his bed, sprawled out, one leg hanging off the edge of his mattress.

                Roxas scooted over and brushed a finger against the underside of Axel’s foot, and nearly got kicked in the head for it.

                Axel’s head shot up, his hair sticking in every which direction. You know, even more than usual.

                “Shit,” he said, voice groggy. “Shit, I forgot—ugh. Sorry.” He got up and shut the alarm off, and then stepped over Roxas to get to his dresser. “I have this…meeting thing. You can go back to sleep.”

                Roxas watched him move around the room, his brain not entirely caught up with the situation yet. Everything looked kind of…different, this early in the morning.

                “Meeting?” he asked, eventually. “What for?”

                Axel paused in his doorway, wad of clothes bundled up against his chest.

                “It’s a…”

                His mouth hung open, gaze drifting slowly upwards.

                “Autistic thing. I guess. It’s basically just me and my friends and my friends’ friends hanging out for a few hours, but occasionally we get things done. You can come, if you want, I guess.”

                Roxas blinked at him.

                “I can?” he asked. “I mean…would that be okay?” That wasn’t entirely the question he wanted to ask, but he wasn’t sure exactly what it was.

                “Oh, yeah,” Axel said, grinning. “I think it’d be fine.”

                “Oh,” went Roxas. “Well, okay, then. Um…you wouldn’t happen to have a clean shirt I could wear?”

                “That fits?” Axel asked, raising an eyebrow. Right, that might be a problem.

                “Well, it doesn’t have to be perfect or anything,” Roxas mumbled, “I can wear my own, though, it’s alright…”

                “Hmm,” went Axel. “Okay. Well, you can search my dresser for one if you still want. I’m gonna go get dressed.”

                Axel left, and Roxas looked around. Search Axel’s dresser…? The last time he’d searched through anything here it…hadn’t turned out well. But it might be okay, right?

                He got up and opened one of the drawers, tugging on it a bit to get it to actually open. It just looked like a mass of fabric had been shoved in there. It…looked vaguely like shirt material though, so, maybe?

                He pulled out a few things, decided they were gigantic, and shoved them back in, giving up. He felt kind of weird going through Axel’s clothes anyways.

                Axel came back, dressed and hairbrush in hand, taming his mane of spikes into…a slightly more organized mane of spikes.

                “Here,” he said, picking up a mound of fabric off the floor, “wear this.”

                He tossed it at Roxas, and Roxas put his arms up to catch it in vain, getting enveloped by it anyways.

                “…um,” he went, pulling it off himself and examining it. It was a hoodie. “This is gigantic.”

                Axel grinned at him, and disappeared into his closet.

                He was pretty sure Axel was joking, but…

                He tugged off his shirt and put the hoodie on, having to dig around a bit for the arm holes.

                He felt like he was wearing a blanket. But…it was a soft blanket. A very warm, soft blanket.

                So…not so bad, actually.

                He rolled the sleeves up enough so he could see the tips of his fingers. There. Good enough.

                Axel came out of his closet with a jacket on, looked at him, and stopped.

                “…I’m sorry,” he said, very obviously trying not to laugh at him. “You look…like you’re drowning in that thing.”

                “Yeah, I kind of do,” Roxas said, looking down at himself and grinning. “It’s comfortable, though…”

                Axel shrugged. “Alright,” he said. “You can wear it, then. But we have to leave in five minutes if you want to come to the thing with me, so…I dunno. I’m gonna make some food. Figure out what you’re doing.”

                Axel disappeared, again, and Roxas got up to find his shoes.

                This sweater was awesome.

~~~

                The “meeting thing” that Axel was so eager to get to (seriously, Roxas doubted anything else could actually make Axel wake up and stay up that early in the morning) was located in the basement of some library. When they got there, there were already three people sitting at a table, all talking to each other. Or, one of them was talking, and the other people seemed…at least involved in the conversation.

                Roxas tried to inconspicuously scoot behind Axel to hide himself somewhat. Maybe meeting new people in a new place wearing someone else’s clothes wasn’t the best thing to put him at ease.

                “Hey guys,” Axel said, announcing himself as he walked over to the table. He looked around for a moment, and then back at Roxas, when it became apparent that he was no longer as close to him as expected. “…are you standing back there?” he asked.

                Roxas shuffled over slightly closer. Axel seemed to accept this.

                “Roxas, this is Zexion,” he pointed to a person about Roxas’s size (good, not everyone here was a giant) with short hair of an undeterminate blue-ish color, “Lexaeus,” this one was definitely a giant, though, “and Vexen.” Vexen seemed normal-sized and had sort of a…professor-y feel. “Everyone, Roxas.”

                Vexen waved at him, briefly, and the other two didn’t react, beyond Lexaeus looking at him for a short moment. Roxas kind of twiddled his fingers at them. He wasn’t sure if he was intimidated by these people in particular or just intimidated because they were new people.

                Zexion’s attention turned to a tablet lying on the table, fingers typing something into it, and then scooted it over to Axel. He picked it up and read it. Roxas tried to glance up and see what it said, but there was a glare from where he was standing.

                Axel’s ears turned red, and suddenly Roxas was really interested in what it said. His eyes followed it as Axel placed it back down on the table, but Zexion snatched it away before he could see.

                “Yep,” he said, simply, and then turned towards Roxas. “Do you want to sit?”

                Roxas looked around. At the same table? There was only one chair left, and he didn’t want to sit down if Axel wasn’t…

                “Chairs,” he said, frowning. “Um…”

                But, before he explained more, Axel had already dragged another chair to the table.

                “Does that fix it?” he asked.

                Roxas blinked. He wasn’t entirely sure how Axel had gotten that from “chairs,” but he nodded, and sat down. Axel sat down next to him, leg settling just close enough to brush against Roxas’s.

                No. He wasn’t going to blush in front of all these strangers.

                He kept his eyes trained on the table and hoped his hair would do a good enough job of hiding his face.

                “Marluxia showing this time?” Axel asked the general vicinity.

                “I highly doubt that,” answered…uh…Vexen. Right. “If his previous attendance is anything to go by.”

                “Ah, sucks,” said Axel. “I needed to discuss some things with him…”

                “Don’t you always?” Vexen said, in a tone Roxas couldn’t quite read. Who was this Marluxia guy? And why did he inspire such weird tones of voice?

                Before he could wonder much more, a tablet was slid into his area of view, the conversation continuing out of his realm of attention.

                He blinked, and looked up at Zexion, who was staring at the tablet expectantly.

                Roxas turned the tablet around to read the words on the screen. “The infamous Roxas,” it said.

                Roxas blinked. “Um,” he said, “Infamous?”

                Zexion pulled the tablet back out of view. When it returned, it said “Axel’s new special interest.”

                Roxas frowned. Special interest—he knew that phrase. He had been reading about stuff like that on the Internet recently.

                That…sort of implied that Axel’s interest would go away eventually, didn’t it? Or was that not always true?

                The tablet disappeared again, and then returned with the words “Please stay until Larxene shows up,” and a short row of devilish smiley faces.

                “Um,” went Roxas. “Okay, I guess…”

                He wasn’t entirely sure what to say about that. Those smiley faces gave him kind of a foreboding feeling, though.

                Axel looked over at the two of them right when Zexion took the tablet back.

                “What’re they saying to you?” he asked, making a show of leaning over to look at the tablet. Zexion covered it with their hand, and Axel laughed. “They’re not bullying you, are they?” he said, turning to Roxas.

                “No?” he said, frowning. Really, he wasn’t entirely sure what had just transpired there. “They…said to wait for Larxene…?”

                Axel’s eyebrows shot up.

                “Right,” he said. “Larxene. Yeah, she…” He shrugged, relaxing, but scooting away from Roxas in the same movement. “She’s not so bad, I won’t let her get at you. Don’t worry.”

                Roxas frowned. He wasn’t really worrying in the first place, but now that Axel told him not to, he had trouble doing just that. What was she going to do? Was Roxas not supposed to be here?

                Roxas heard the door open behind him.

                The hairs on the back of his neck stood up as he saw three of the four people in front of him turn to look towards the sound.

                “Hello, Larxene,” Vexen said, in another one of those tones of his. Roxas got the gist of this one, though, especially with the aid of Vexen’s sly grin.

                Roxas was in trouble. Someone was in trouble.

                He slowly turned and looked behind him, to see that person standing in the doorway. She spotted him, frowned, crossed her arms, and then—smirked, walking over to the table.

                “Well, if it isn’t Axel’s little friend Roxas,” she said, placing her hand on the back of his chair. Roxas leaned slightly away from her. “Did you get an official invite, or did Axel just drag you along for his own amusement?”

                Roxas glanced at Axel, confused—only to become more confused to see Axel looking at Larxene, grimace on his face, hand waving in front of his neck in a “ixnay on the ingthay” motion.

                Roxas frowned. What was going on here?

                Larxene seemed to comply with this, though, as she dropped the thread of conversation.

                Vexen, at this point, became uninterested with what was conspiring and continued whatever conversation he was having with the other two before Axel had so rudely interrupted.

                Roxas glanced at him when he heard speaking, but had his attention quickly pulled back to the newcomer when Larxene’s hand was suddenly at his shoulder, lifting up the fabric there in examination. He flushed, not really sure what to do about this, but Larxene soon let go.

                Then she gave Axel a look, all narrowed eyes and suspicious eyebrows.

                Axel’s eyebrows went up and he began shaking his head, waving his hands widely in a ‘no way’ motion.

                Larxene’s look didn’t diminish, and Axel began to look even more panicked.

                “Honestly!” he said, voice higher-pitched in what Roxas imagined was probably fear. Axel crossed a finger over his heart, and Larxene relented, though apparently not completely convinced of…whatever had just happened there, and she gave Axel an ‘I’ve got my eye on you’ motion before walking to the other side of the table and forcing her way in between Laxaeus and Zexion.

                “So,” she said, sitting back in her chair. “Are we actually going to get anything done this meeting or did I wake up at the asscrack of dawn for nothing?”

~~~

                The rest of the meeting that transpired wasn’t really anything to be accounted in great detail—once the actual business got started it was mostly Vexen and Larxene duking it out, with Zexion’s occasional additions and Lexaeus talking about as much as he had before. Axel apparently decided his attention wasn’t needed and started texting Roxas under the table a few minutes into it.

                It was surprisingly like being in class.

~~~

                “So yeah, we usually meet every month or so. That’s just the morning group that I got dragged into attending because my work schedule is ruining my life,” Axel said, explaining in better terms what that had all been about as they walked back to his apartment. “There’s another group of us that meets…uhh…I don’t even know anymore. But yeah, we all got dragged together by Xemnas, or…he dragged a few of us in and then it was sort of a chain reaction. Sometimes we all get together for events and stuff, but usually I don’t see much of the other half, except Demyx, who gets around. And…”

                He paused, frowning suddenly. “Yeah. Anyways…Vexen is the oldest member of our group, and also…the oldest member…coincidentally…so he usually runs stuff when Larxene isn’t butting her way into everything.”

                Roxas nodded, mostly staring at his feet. There was one thing that was bugging him, but it definitely wasn’t important enough to interrupt anything for. But, Axel seemed to have stopped for the moment, so…

                “How do you spell ‘Marluxia?’ “ he asked, looking up at Axel.

                Axel raised an eyebrow at him, smiling slightly. “Uh,” he said, “M-A-R-L-U-X-I-A, why do you ask?” Yeah, he obviously thought it was a ridiculous question.

                “Do you all have x’es in your names?”

                Axel laughed.

                “Oh, yeah,” he said. “Well, it’s not like you can talk.”

                “But if it’s just the two of us that can just be a coincidence! I refuse to believe you randomly ended up with twelve people in your group that isn’t a ‘people with X’s in their names’ club.”

                “Yeah, alright, you got me,” Axel said, putting his hands up. “It’s kind of a…joke? I guess? It started out as one, and then it kind of escalated beyond control, as most of our inside jokes are prone to do…”

                “A joke about you all having X’s in your names?” Roxas asked, frowning. That didn’t seem right. Or very funny, but who knows.

                “Kinda’,” went Axel. “It was…well, I can’t really remember how it started…I think Demyx and I were talking about our group and how we should have…secret identities, or something? Maybe we were superheroes…I don’t know. In any case, we started mixing up everyone’s names, and Demyx was like, ‘you can be Axel!’ and I was like, ‘that’s one too many letters there, buddy,’ so we just…started adding x’s to everyone’s and…I guess we started calling everyone that and it kind of spread? Some of us were kind of…looking for names anyways…” Axel shrugged, smiling sheepishly and rubbing the back of his head, “So we started going by those names everywhere else and…it just got easier to call everyone that. So. There you go.”

                Roxas frowned.

                “What kind of name can you use to make Demyx?” he asked.

                “Ah, yeah,” Axel said, laughing. “Well…you can see why we may have wanted to change our names.”

                “I guess so…”

                Dime? Demi? Whatever.

                “So, do you want to stay a little longer or do you need to be getting home?”

                Roxas looked up, and realized they were standing in the parking lot in front of Axel’s apartment.

                “Oh,” he went, “I guess I should go home. I don’t want my parents…asking too many questions…”

                Axel laughed, and pat him on the back. “Illicit affairs, huh?” he said. “Well, I guess I’ll see you later, then.”

                “Yeah, guess so,” Roxas said, to the ground. Then he looked up at Axel, smiling sheepishly. “Um…goodbye hug?”

                Axel grinned, and complied, wrapping his arms around Roxas and holding him tight.

                There. Now he could leave.

~~~

                Axel: “you left your shirt at mine”

                Roxas: “shit”

                “im still wearing this monster sweater aren’t I”

                “do you need your sweater back?”

                Axel: “not immediately”

                Roxas: “ok ill take care of it until we can trade”

                Axel: “thx xxx”

                It was actually Axel’s favorite sweater, but he’d survive without it.

                After all, when he got it back, it’d smell like his favorite person.

Chapter Text

                Roxas stared at his phone screen, the message box’s cursor blinking slowly. He knew what he wanted to type…sort of…his fingers just really didn’t want to press the buttons.

                “so,” he typed in, slowly. No, maybe not…or…

                He huffed, and deleted the three characters. Fuck. This was harder than he thought it would be.

                He closed his eyes, and typed in the message quickly, and then peeked up at what he’d put.

                “so I think I mught be ajtistic”

                That was surprisingly close…

                He fixed the typos and then, with a deep breath, send it off to Axel.

                He threw his phone onto his bed and buried his face in a pillow, the expected rush of nervous energy overwhelming him. He hummed loudly, focusing on the sound. It was fine. It was cool. This was really no big deal.

                His phone vibrated, and he just about jumped a foot in the air.

                He lifted his head up a little bit to look at the screen. Oh, good, it was face-down. Great.

                He poked his foot out and tried to flip it over without actually picking it up. No…no, this wasn’t working. He just picked it up and looked at the screen.

                Holy shit. It wasn’t even Axel responding. It was Hayner sending him some video.

                Okay, fine. He could use a distraction.

                He tapped the link, and waited for the browser to load.

                It was a video of a dog on a scooter. Roxas tilted his head, part confused, part amused and a few parts other things entirely. He wasn’t entirely sure what was going on in his head at the current moment.

                “that’s pretty great but, like, why?” he responded to Hayner. Then his phone vibrated for real—this time it was Axel. “nice” said the notification at the top of his screen.

                Roxas switched to the other conversation.

                “welcome to the club,” was the next message that popped up.

                Roxas frowned. He was kind of relieved, but…was that it? It was that easy? He couldn’t say he was disappointed, just…surprised.

                “Is that okay?” he sent. Then, “I didn’t really talk to a doctor or anything…”

                Axel: “like I said: doctor’s aren’t shit”

                “im pretty sure I said that at some point”

                “in any case you’re the only one that knows what’s going on in your head. I'm pretty sure youre the expert here”

                Roxas laughed quietly at his phone. Alright, he definitely felt better at that point.

                “Thanks,” he sent. “I was worried I was…I don’t know. Doing a bad thing.”

                Axel: “you’re doing a good thing. having a word for this kind of stuff makes it a lot better”

                “not that its going to go away. Probably the opposite. But now you know people who make fun of you are full of shit”

                “even if it still kinda bothers you”

                “its nice to know theyre full of shit”

                Roxas: “haha yeah”

                Axel: “so you can definitely stim as much as you like when youre with me”

                “if you hadn’t figured that out already”

                Roxas: “ill work on that. Thanks”

                Axel: “fair enough”

                Roxas flexed his fingers a bit, noting the sensation and thinking over their conversation a little bit. There was something that was bothering him a little bit…

                Roxas: “I feel like I never see you do that…”

                Axel: “do what? Stim ?”

                Roxas: “yeah you always seem so normal”

                “that’s probably not the right word, sorry…”

                Axel: “the word youre probably looking for is allistic. or nt I guess”

                “neurotypical”

                “yeah, them’s the wonders of therapy. I traded conspicuously stimming to quiet breakdowns in my bedroom haha”

                “im getting better at it”

                “the stimming part, not the breakdowns”

                “im already pretty good at those”

                Roxas picked at his phone case. Axel was always so casual about these things, Roxas was never sure how to react to it…

                Then again, would he really know how to react to it otherwise?

                Roxas: “that sucks…”

                “if theres anything I can do to help…”

                Axel: “thanks for the offer”

                “you could let me paint your nails I guess”

                Roxas blinked. That was not the answer he was expecting.

                Roxas: “ok?”

                “I mean sure. That’s kind of a weird request though”

                Axel: “yeah”

                “I used to like painting my nails but now it’s”

                “you know”

                “or may be you don’t. idk”

                “anyways its nice to have someone to practice on when I cant work up the guts to do it myself”

                Roxas: “well, maybe the next time I come over”

~~~

                That was, in short, how Roxas ended up sitting on Axel’s (surprisingly soft) bed, with the aforementioned man sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of him and looking through a surprisingly numerous assortment of nail polishes.

                “I sort of had a feeling you were autistic, anyways,” he was saying, picking out a selection of blues, “I mean, the whole chewing thing…yeah, you probably figured out what that whole thing was about by now. Do you mind if I cut your nails?”

                Roxas’s head jerked up at the sudden change in the conversation. “Huh?” he went. Then, “Oh, yeah. I mean, it’s fine, go ahead.”

                Axel picked up his nail clippers and trimmed each of Roxas’s fingernails, taking special care with each one. Axel’s hands were kind of cold, which was weird. Roxas had imagined they’d be warm, somehow…

                “A lot of different kinds of people stim, though,” he continued, “even neurotypicals do it—like shaking their legs and stuff—but no one says anything because, you know, they can get away with anything…”

                Roxas nodded, slowly. He wasn’t really used to considering himself as…this ‘other’ yet. Or considering everyone else as ‘other?’ He wasn’t really sure, but it was weird, either way.

                “The one thing I, uh,” Roxas started, “People always told me that autistic people didn’t have emotions, or something like that. I guess that’s why I never really considered…”

                Axel made a displeased face towards Roxas’s hands, and started rubbing something onto his nails with a rag. Was it rubbing alcohol? It kind of smelled like it.

                “Yeah, that’s a pretty common misconception,” Axel said while he worked. “I mean, everyone experiences different levels of emotional response to things, so I’m sure some autistic people would tell you they’re not particularly emotional, but it’s not really an ‘autistic thing’…we just show emotions in different ways which seems to register to people as ‘no emotion at all,’ even though…I don’t know, most the people I know tend to be even more emotional than allistics, but I guess that tends to happen when life is consistently horrible for you.” He shrugged, and grabbed a bottle of clear polish, applying it to Roxas’s fingernails. It was cold, which was…weird. Cold fingernails wasn’t really something Roxas could say he’d experienced before.

                “I heard that ‘no emotions’ shit all throughout my childhood though,” Axel continued, “It kind of fucked me up. I mean, people telling you you have trouble feeling emotions when you’re obviously feeling them, and then you’d get upset—which is an emotion, by the way—and they’d just…” he frowned, pausing for a moment in his work, and then quietly continued coating Roxas’s nails.

                Roxas thought that he probably shouldn’t prompt him to continue. Axel really didn’t have much luck with this sort of thing, did he?

                “I’m starting to think I shouldn’t go to a therapist about this,” Roxas said after it became apparent that Axel wasn’t continuing the conversation.

                “You can if you want,” Axel answered, “but you know how I feel about them. I’d suggest going after you turn eighteen so they can’t tell anything to your parents. Or, they aren’t supposed to.” He blew on Roxas’s nails lightly, and Roxas blushed despite himself. That really shouldn’t be so…well.

                “Um,” said Roxas, trying to get his brain back on track, “I never really…is it bad for my parents to know?”

                Axel looked up at him, raising his eyebrows.

                “Weeelll,” he said, at length, before turning back to his polish, “Not necessarily, I guess. Some parents are okay about it, but most parents…are not. If you do want to talk to them about it you have to keep them off the Internet about it, which would probably be pretty difficult.”

                He picked out a light blue and started painting Roxas’s nails with it. Axel’s hands were steady, and skillfully painted three streaks on each of his nails, hardly getting it on his fingers at all.

                “But still,” he continued, “I really wouldn’t. If you want my opinion.”

                “Yeah,” Roxas said, quietly. He’d like to think he could trust his parents, but…he really didn’t know, did he? He didn’t want to go through what Axel had.

                Maybe he would wait until he was eighteen…or see how college went.

                Eugh, college. That was the scariest thought he’d had all day.

                “You’re really good at this,” he said, wanting to drop the previous conversation. Axel looked up at him again, and grinned.

                “You think so?” he said. Then, “Yeah, I kind of am.”

                Roxas laughed. “Have I ever told you how modest you are?”

                “About a thousand times now,” Axel said, finishing with the coat of blue. “There. Now we just wait for that to dry so we can do the next coat.”

                Roxas blinked.

                “Next coat?” he asked. “You’re not done?”

                “Oh, no,” said Axel. “Not even close.”

~~~

                By the time Axel finished his work, Roxas’s nails gradated from dark blue to a teal-ish color, with diagonal stripes of the dark blue on his middle and index fingers—and a little yellow star stuck to the corner of his ring fingers.

                It was no doubt a work of art, and Roxas was beyond impressed—but his next week at school was…interesting, to say the least.

                The reactions from his friends ranged from “oh, woah, where did you get your nails done?” to “what the fuck is on your hands,” though more of the former, thankfully.

                At some point someone behind him kicked the back of his chair to get his attention, and Roxas turned to them with an irritated expression.

                “Dude,” said the student, “Are you gay?”

                Roxas frowned at them.

                “No,” he said, huffing.

                “Then what—“

                “I’m bisexual.”

                That shut them up pretty quickly.

~~~

                Axel: “Got any Halloween plans?”

                Roxas: “Yeah, I’m hanging out with some of my friends.”

                “Why, am I invited to something?”

                Axel: “Yeah me and my friends are going out too I was just going to invite you if you didn’t have anything to do.”

                Roxas: “What time?”

                Axel: “idk probably like nine or ten?

                Roxas: “I could make it if it was later…like elevent”

                “Elevent*”

                “Fuck. Eleven*”

                Axel: “Haha”

                “Elevent”

                Roxas: “shut up”

                Axel: “okay okay. Well you can show up at Elevent if you want we probably won’t be in full swing at that point”

                Roxas: “ok I might.”

                “jerk.”

                “should I dress up?”

                Axel: “most of us will be dressed up yeah”

                “you don’t have to though.”

                “low stress.”

                Roxas: “ok…well we’ll see”

~~~

                Roxas, the creative child that he was (that was sarcasm there, if you missed it) ended up being Link for Halloween. According to his friends his hair was perfect, and the other ideas had been the standard “dress up as Sora!” that he got every year and, for some reason, the suggestion that he dress up as a parakeet. Link was obviously the best choice out of these three, and besides, it gave him an excuse to communicate entirely in “hiyah” noses and whacking people with a poorly-made cardboard cutout of a sword.

                Though it ended up breaking about half an hour after he started doing that, so maybe that wasn’t the best idea in the world.

                The party wasn’t exactly over by 10:30, but he pulled out his phone to text Axel anyways.

                “Looks like it’s winding down. Should I show up?” he sent. And, before it even marked itself as “delivered,” two very loud people were poking their heads over Roxas’s shoulders.

                “Is that Axel?” Sora said, grinning widely to his right (dressed up as, according to Sora himself, “Navi,” though it was really just a shitty fairy costume he threw together in order to bug Roxas) (Roxas didn’t really mind).

                “Are you ditching us for your cool older friends?” Hayner said to his left, in the grumpiest voice he could muster.

                “I’m sorry...!” Roxas said, laughing slightly. “I just…I mean, I said I’d be there, and I thought we’d be done by now…”

                “Who’s going to kick everyone’s ass at Smash Bros now, though?” Sora said, grin quickly turning into a pout. “You were supposed to play as Link all night! It was going to be hilarious!”

                “It was going to be slightly funny,” Roxas amended. “I guess you’ll just have to do it, brother.”

                He placed his hand on Sora’s shoulder, and made a very serious face.

                “I believe in you,” he said voice grim, before abruptly walking off, escaping out the door before anyone could stop him, to Hayner’s affronted “Hey!” and Sora’s, of course, laughter.

                He wasn’t really sure how else he was supposed to get out of there.

~~~

                He had to wander around for a little while, since he hadn’t actually waited for Axel’s reply before leaving, but he got it soon enough and jumped on his bike to head over there. It was, apparently, the house of the guy who founded their little group, which seemed weird somehow—from what Roxas had heard about the guy, he didn’t seem like a partying type.

                Oh, well. It didn’t really matter.

                He followed his phone’s instructions into a pretty fancy neighborhood (maybe he should stop and see if he could convince anyone to give him candy?), and stopped in front of the house with the most lights on. He checked his phone. He was pretty sure this was the right place.

                “I think I made it,” he texted Axel, and then waited for a moment. Sure enough, a figure that seemed vaguely Axel-shaped appeared in the doorway, mostly silhouetted, and started waving at him. He looked kind of weird, though. What was that stuff sticking out of him?

                Roxas dragged his bike into the yard and dropped it on the lawn (no one steals shit in rich neighborhoods), and then stepped up onto the porch, getting a better look at Axel and his…costume?

                He was dressed in ragged clothes, and had sticks coming out of him.

                Roxas tilted his head, frowning.

                “What are you?” he asked.

                “Uh, a scarecrow. Duh.” Axel held out his arms and made a face.

                “Oh,” said Roxas. “Sorry, it was kind of hard to tell, considering you always dress like that.”

                “Hey!”

                Roxas laughed, and Axel huffed, leading them inside. It was pretty heavily decorated, though it looked kind of…weird. The interior was almost all white and off-white, like the kind of interior design a high-class middle aged suburban woman would take a liking to, and the decorations seemed to be haphazardly thrown around, and most of them didn’t really match all that well.

                “It looks like Halloween threw up in here,” he said, looking around. He didn’t see any other people, but he could hear them mingling somewhere.

                “Oh, yeah,” Axel said, “Xemnas didn’t want to decorate so we all showed up with our own decorations and spent half an hour putting them up before we got things going. It turned out…well, it’s not so bad.”

                “Yeah, I guess…”

                “So you’re dressed up as like, Zelda, right?”

                Oh god.

                Roxas put his hands over his face and groaned, at length. “Please be kidding,” he said. Jesus, how old was this guy?

                “What?” said Axel, in a genuinely confused tone, “aren’t you?”

                “Ugghhh,” continued Roxas. “It’s…whatever. Where’s everyone else?” He walked further into the house, poking his head into another room. It looked like a dining room. There wasn’t anybody in there either.

                “Whatever,” Axel said, frowning. “Uh, they’re all over here. Come on.”

                He went to the back of the house, into a den of sorts, floor slightly lower than the other rooms. Thankfully the design in this room was somewhat more varied than the rest of the house. There were a few people there, all gathered around some sort of table-top game.

                Axel’s friends were weird.

                A few of them glanced up at Axel when they entered the room, but mostly they weren’t given much acknowledgement.

                “Let’s see, who here haven’t you met,” Axel thought out loud, looking over the group of people. “Uhh, Marluxia’s the one dressed up as a tree, the pirate is Xigbar, and Demyx is the asshole in the fursuit.” He said this last part loud enough that it was obvious it was meant more for the group than Roxas. Someone in a cheap-looking lion costume flipped them off, using both hands for added effect, though they didn’t look up from the game.

                Roxas guessed this one was Demyx.

                Axel then leaned (pretty far) down to talk in Roxas’s ear, “Listen,” he said, conspiratorially, “Marluxia’s been trying to set me on fire all night, so could you keep an eye on him for me?”

                Roxas looked over at him, not sure whether he should laugh or not.

                “No, really,” Axel said, voice completely serious, “He has a lighter. If you see him digging around in his pocket, jump him.”

                Before Roxas could even respond to this request, Axel was standing up again, continuing his introductions.

                “I think you know the rest of the people here,” he said. “The rest of the group’s upstairs, but, ah…you probably don’t want to go up there right now.”

                Roxas raised his eyebrows.

                “Why….?” He asked, slowly, not entirely sure he wanted to know.

                “Luxord managed to convince a bunch of us into playing a game of strip poker, so…I’m assuming that’s what’s happening up there, unless they all gave up and decided to watch Netflix.”

                Roxas made a slightly confused face, furrowing his eyebrows. While he definitely didn’t want to go up there, there was one small part of him that wondered what a game of strip poker would look like when most of the participants were, he assumed, wearing Halloween costumes.

                “Oh,” is what he ended up saying. “Yeah, I think I’ll stay down here.”

                “Want something to eat?”

                “No, I’m pretty gorged on pizza already.”

                “Fair enough. Well, pull up a chair while I try and convince everyone to do something more entertaining than playing this stupid game.”

                Just then, the person in the lion costume shouted something that Roxas was pretty sure was “I have wood for sheep!” and the rest of the group groaned loudly.

                “What the fuck.”

~~~

                Roxas spent about fifteen minutes wedged in between Axel and the guy in the pirate costume while he tried to figure out how exactly the game was played, since no one seemed to want to explain it to him and Axel wasn’t very good at it in the first place. Which meant, really, he spent fifteen minutes all but glued to Axel’s side, since that was preferable than sitting any closer than he had to to the strange man sitting on the other side of him.

                Pretty soon, it seemed that everyone was getting pretty frustrated with—uhh, which one was that again? Vexen?—winning, and a few of them plain got up and left, apparently going to find better things to do. Vexen, however, seemed completely unperturbed by this, and the game continued.

                That is, until Roxas frowned, noticing something was slightly off. It smelled like…like something was…burning?

                He whipped around in his seat, just in time to catch the sight of pink hair and leaves disappearing around a corner, and—oh, fuck.

                “Axel!” he said, his panicked tone enough to alert the rest of the table that holy shit, Axel was on fire.

                “Oh, god dammit,” Axel said, leaping out of his chair, tripping slightly, and ineffectively trying to pat the fire out with his one hand that could reach.

                Rather than concern, which seemed to be the appropriate reaction to something like this, most of the table was laughing hard enough to be falling out of their chairs themselves.

                “Fuck all of you guys!” Axel said, sounding slightly panicked. “Someone put me out…!”

                Demyx was the one who actually recovered himself, and picked up a half-full glass of water, throwing it onto Axel’s back.

                The fire hissed, and went out, leaving a puff of smoke in its wake.

                Axel dripped, pitifully, and laughter could be heard from somewhere outside of their game room.

                And, really…now that it was over, Roxas couldn’t help but giggle a little bit.

                “Et tu, Roxas?” Axel said, pitifully.

                “Give the kid a break, that was hilarious,” Xigbar said.

                “No one asked you, old man,” Axel huffed, before brushing himself off ineffectively. “Well, I’m going to go dry myself off and…sweep up my dignity. Have fun with your sheep boners.”

                He stomped out of the room, and after Roxas realized he had been left with a bunch of strangers, he quickly got up and followed after.

~~~

                Roxas hovered outside of the bathroom doorway awkwardly as Axel stood inside, patting his back with a hand towel.

                “Is this how your parties usually go?” Roxas asked, not sure whether Axel was actually upset or was just pretending to be.

                “Do people usually get set on fire?” Axel said, “No, but…well, I guess I’ve helped pull things like this on everyone else before, so I can’t be that upset.”

                “Have you…” Roxas prompted.

                “Yeah. Like, we managed to dye Marluxia’s hair pink a few years ago as a joke, though that kind of backfired because he liked it and keeps doing it now. Then there was that time where we set all of Luxord’s clocks to random times, which…well, you haven’t seen his house, so you don’t really know how big of an achievement that was. And that one time everyone…“

                Axel stopped in the middle of his sentence, his expression suddenly falling into a somber one. He set the cloth on the counter, and Roxas was about to ask what was bothering him, but—

                “Shots!” came a voice from somewhere else in the house, then the sound of glass clinking. It sounded like Larxene.

                “Oh,” went Axel, sticking his head out of the bathroom and looking towards the source of the voice. “I guess it’s about that time.”

                He looked back at Roxas, who made a face.

                “Not a fan?” Axel asked, and Roxas shook his head. “Huh…well, we could get out of here, if you want.”

                “Oh,” went Roxas, though he had a feeling Axel’s phrasing wasn’t quite…right. “Um…where would we go?”

                Axel thought about it for a moment, and then shrugged.

                “Coffee?”

~~~

                Roxas knew better than to drink any caffeine this late at night if he wanted to even entertain thoughts of going to bed in the next, well, twelve hours probably, so when Axel led him to a little coffee shop nestled in between two restaurants downtown, he just picked out a smoothie and settled for that.

                Axel, however, didn’t seem to have the same concerns, and ordered an espresso. Roxas supposed it was possible he just reacted to caffeine differently, but somehow he had a feeling that wasn’t really the case.

                Once their drinks were set out on the counter for them, Axel picked his up and looked around. Roxas followed his gaze, and it ended up on a little table in the corner, half of it facing a booth and the other manned by a single lonely chair.

                Axel glanced at him, made eye contact, and then ran over to the table, stealing the space at the booth.

                “Hey!” Roxas said, laughing and going over. “No fair.”

                “Is too fair,” Axel said, sipping at his death coffee, “I’m the oldest so I get to pick where I want to sit.”

                “Ugh,” went Roxas, “You sound like my brother.”

                “Which one?”

                “My twin, obviously. You know what, move over.”

                Roxas sat down next to Axel, only having a reasonable about of room because Axel was so stick-thin. Speaking of sticks, though…

                Roxas tugged a stick off of Axel’s costume and placed in on the table.

                “Hey,” Axel said, looking down at where said stick had originated, “What was that for…”

                “It was poking me,” Roxas said, scooting closer in order to put his drink down on the table.

                “Oh,” said Axel, “Sorry.”

                Roxas blushed slightly. He was supposed to continue to be annoyed at him, or at least pretend…he wasn’t supposed to apologize…

                Oh, well.

                “So, why a scarecrow?” Roxas asked, stirring his drink idly.

                “Oh, I dunno. We were supposed to be doing an Oz theme at some point but a few people backed out so…eh. It was a costume.”

                “Huh,” went Roxas. “Fair enough.”

                “So, why an elf?”

                Roxas huffed, and glared up at Axel, who put his hands up in surrender. “Sorry, sorry,” he went. “I guess I don’t know who you’re dressed up as. My bad.”

                “…it’s Link,” Roxas said. “From the Zelda games.”

                “Didn’t I say that before?”

                “No, you said Zelda! That’s the princess!”

                “Oh, well, sorry,” Axel said, mock-offended. “Not all of us are veritable encyclopedias of video game knowledge.”

                “That’s not even obscure, that’s like, a common fact,” Roxas mumbled into his straw. Oh, well. This was probably a lost cause.

                They both went to sipping at their somewhat over-priced drinks for a moment, and then Roxas glanced over at Axel. He was staring out the window, eyes looking like they weren’t focused on anything in particular.

                Roxas chewed on the inside of his mouth for a moment, contemplating, and then decided if he thought about it too much, it probably just wasn’t going to happen.

                He scooted over, and leaned on Axel, picking up his smoothie with both hands and suddenly becoming very interested in it.

                He felt Axel shift slightly, but couldn’t work up the courage to look up and meet his eyes.

                Then Axel put an arm around his shoulder and pulled him closer, settling into a more comfortable position.

                Roxas couldn’t help but grin.

Chapter Text

                “You’ve really never been down here before?” Axel asked, turning to look at Roxas, who was keeping close to him due to the steady stream of people walking past.

                “No,” he said, looking around. “I didn’t…I don’t know. I’m not really an artsy person, so…”

                Axel laughed, and ducked into a bookstore on the side of the street. It was cramped in there—it was already a small store, and currently full of people—but it was one of Axel’s favorite places to hang out (when it was less busy, of course).

                “It’s not all art,” he said, shuffling his way over to an empty spot by a bookshelf. Roxas took a moment to duck through the crowd in order to follow him.

                Roxas said...something, but Axel couldn’t quite understand over the murmur of the people around—and the fact that Roxas seemed to be talking to the floor.

                “I didn’t catch that,” he said, leaning down slightly.

                “Then why’s it called an art walk?” Roxas repeated.

                “Well…there’s a lot of art, I guess. I dunno. It’s good for people watching, and it’s less scary to be out and about in the middle of the night if there are a lot of people around.”

                He laughed slightly, but Roxas didn’t seem to appreciate the humor.

                “There are a little too many people around,” he mumbled, looking out into the crowd.

                “Yeah, this place is a little packed, isn’t it?” Axel noted, looking around. “C’mon, let’s find someplace quieter.”

                He made his way out of the store again—pausing for a moment went he felt something tugging at his sweatshirt, but it turned out that Roxas had just decided to get a hold of him so as to not lose him in the crowd (that was kind of cute)—and started walking in some direction, keeping an eye out for somewhere that would be a little more sensory friendly.

                “There’s this clothes shop just past the square,” he said, glancing back at Roxas who was still keeping a hold of him. “There’s usually not a lot of people in it. Do you want to see it?”

                Roxas said something that, again, Axel couldn’t make sense of.

                “What?”

                Roxas huffed, and then nodded. Well, that worked as well as anything.

                Axel went to the square, looking around at the different stores on the side. Most of them were fairly empty—all of the people were out in the actual square, partaking in the live performances and generally being a very large mass of people.

                Axel made to continue walking, but then caught something bright out of the corner of his eye—which, looking over, turned out to be a pillar of flame.

                He stopped, and Roxas ran into him.

                “Ah, sorry,” he said, patting Roxas' head but continuing to look towards the middle of the square. There was someone there who was breathing fire, juggling things, stuff like that. Unfortunately there was a huge circle of spectators around them, but there were some advantages to having Axel’s height…

                “I tried learning how to do stuff like that once,” he said, “My eyebrows are a testament to how well that worked out. They never really grew back.”

                Something wrapped itself around Axel’s waist.

                He looked down, and that something turned out to be Roxas, who was now burying his head in Axel’s sweatshirt.

                “Hey there,” Axel said, staring down at him. “You okay?”

                There was no response, which was a pretty obvious answer. Axel tried not to let himself panic—that wouldn’t help anyone, even if the situation was really all too familiar for him and wasn’t bringing up the best of memories.

                “Come on,” he said, “let’s get out of this crowd.”

               He tried to walk, but Roxas kept a firm hold on him which made things a little difficult. People were starting to stare, which also didn’t help at all. Axel felt a surge of anxiety, but—no. No. He needed to help Roxas.

                “Could you let go for just a few seconds? It’s a little hard to walk like this.”

                Roxas, luckily, didn’t seem completely past words, and complied. Axel hurriedly moved them to a coffee shop off the side of the square, and led him to a section in the back, where there weren’t currently any people.

                He sat Roxas down at one of the tables. Roxas’s hands remained clinging to his sweater.

                “…do you want me here, or just my sweatshirt?” Axel asked, laughing slightly (what else could he do?)

                Roxas seemed unresponsive, so Axel tugged the sweater over his head and placed it in Roxas’s lap. “I’ll be right back,” he said, “Okay? Keep that for me for a little bit.”

                He walked back to the front of the cafe (in just an undershirt and—could you see his binder? Eurgh—no, it was okay…no one would notice. No one would realize) and stood in front of the counter, looking at the menu and pretending like he was trying to make a decision rather than trying to decipher what anything on there said in the first place.

                “What can I get you?” asked the person behind the counter. Their eyes darted down to Axel’s arms, littered with band-aids. Don’t pay attention to it. Don’t mind them.

                Axel held up two of his fingers, hand shaking slightly. “Two,” he said, “Um…let’s see…” something on the menu was red. What was that? “Strawberry smoothies, please.”

                “Sure, what size?”

                “Big,” he said. God dammit, that wasn’t a size, was it? Well, the cashier was putting something into the register anyways, so apparently it was an acceptable answer. They said some number at him, and he handed over a $10 bill. That would probably cover it.

                Sure enough, moments later he had a handful of change. He dumped the coins in a tip jar sitting on the counter and shoved the paper back into his pocket.

                “Is that guy gonna be okay?”

                Axel looked up at the cashier and stared at them for a moment.

                “Is he…oh. Yeah. He’s just…” Axel made a motion with his hands around his head, hoping it came off as 'frazzled.' “There’re too many people out there.”

                “Yeah, this place can get a little hectic, huh?”

                “Yeah…” Axel said, slowly inching away. This really wasn’t the time for small talk.

                “I’ll have those smoothies out in just a few minutes,” the cashier said. Thank fuck.

                Axel went back to the table he’d left Roxas at, and found him wearing the sweatshirt, hood up and head lying on the table, face-down.

                Axel sat down across from him. He wasn’t really sure what to do at this point. Roxas might not be able to tell him what he wanted, which could range from being left completely alone to getting pulled up into Axel’s lap and hugged on.

                And, well, Axel kind of wanted his sweatshirt back, but he wasn’t about to ask for it.

                “Are you feeling any better?” Axel asked. Roxas’s shoulders wiggled in an unreadable motion, which Axel supposed was an improvement from before. “Well, take as long as you want. This place isn’t closing for another few hours.”

                Roxas laid there for another moment longer, and then lifted up his arms and laid them on the table, stretching his hands out towards Axel.

                Axel stared at him. He wasn’t sure what that meant, but…

                He set his hands next to Roxas’s and nudged them slightly. Roxas’s hands found Axel’s and then his wrists, grabbing onto them firmly and pulling. Axel allowed this, and found his hands under Roxas’s face, the younger shifting for a moment to find a comfortable way to rest on them.

                Well, alright. If that’s what he wanted.

                The cashier from before found them like that, and just quietly set the smoothies down on the table and left with a polite smile.

                Roxas looked up when he heard the glasses hit the table. His eyes were red and puffy, and bluer than ever.

                “Drinks,” he said, frowning.

                “Strawberry smoothies,” Axel answered. “I think that’s what you got on Halloween, isn’t it?”

                Roxas set his head back down, but sideways this time, facing the smoothies on the table. He continued to hold Axel’s hands captive.

                “I think so,” he said. He sniffled, and then took a deep breath. “Sorry…”

                “It’s okay,” Axel said. “Happens to me all the time.”

                “Liar,” Roxas huffed, but sat up, finally releasing Axel’s hands. Axel sat back and watched him take a smoothie and stick a straw in it, sipping at it and looking at the wall.

                Axel took his hands back and picked up his own smoothie. It was kind of cold in there, but that was probably because…

                “Are you planning on keeping my sweater?”

                Roxas looked at him, blinked a few times, and then looked down at himself.

                “Oh,” he said. “Sorry, here…”

                He fumbled with the sweatshirt for a moment, trying to navigate its huge fabric-y-ness, until he finally got it over his head, even if it was a little inside out.

                “The…sleeves are a little damp…” he mumbled, holding it out to Axel.

                “I’m sure I’ll survive.” He took his sweater back and managed to sort it out before pulling it over his head again. Nice and warm.

                Roxas’s attention went to his smoothie again, and Axel looked around the room.

                “I’m glad you’re okay,” Axel said. “Let me know if anything like this happens again, alright? I should probably be the first one you should call, actually. I’ll take care of you, alright?”

                Roxas looked at him, and kept his gaze for a moment.

                Axel frowned, and Roxas just went back to his smoothie.

                “So…do you want to look at more stuff after this, or should I take you home, or somewhere else?”

                “Home,” Roxas said.

                “Alright. I can do that.”

~~~

                The next day, Axel woke up to an inbox full of texts. Well, not full, really (how many would that be, anyways?) but there were certainly a few.

                He sat up, rubbed his eyes, and opened the messages, waiting for a moment while his eyes focused enough to read.

                They were from Roxas, of course.

                Thanks for doing that I appreciate it

                I felt kind of weird when you said you should be the first one I should call though…

                You said I should let you know if you were coming on too strong and I kind of felt like it then

                I’m not creeped out or anything really but…yeah. It was just weird.

                I’d probably call you first anyways but…it’d be cool if you didn’t say that…

                Yeah. Thanks

                Let’s hang out again soon

                Axel stared at his phone, his heart pounding against his chest. He knew Roxas wasn’t mad about this, his texts didn’t sound mad, he said he wasn’t upset, but…

                Axel rubbed his eyes, trying to let logic run the show instead of the emotions welling up in his throat. It wasn’t working. It really wasn’t working.

                But—“Let’s hang out again soon.”

                Axel let that run over and over in his head, trying to make it drown out all the other thoughts.

                He picked up his phone, took a deep breath, and typed out a response.

                “I’m sorry,” he sent.

                “Thank you for telling me. Really”

                “You can go to anyone you want to when you’re upset. I definitely shouldn’t have said that”

                “Let me know when you’re free again and I’m there!”

                A few tears decided to run down his face while he was responding, but he managed to get ahold of himself pretty well.

                Roxas told him that he’d upset him.

                Just now. This was the first time he’d told him that.

                Which means that all the other times Axel was afraid he was coming on too strong, Roxas hadn’t felt that way. That was what it meant, right?

                Roxas would actually tell him when something was wrong.

                Axel’s eyes were still watering against his will, but his anxiety suddenly gave way to immense relief.

                Roxas would tell him.

                He didn’t have to worry so much anymore.

~~~

                Roxas ended up in Axel’s bed.

                It wasn’t anything—it wasn’t like that, no, it just happened, with Axel sitting on one end of it, leaning up against his wall with his computer in his lap and Roxas on the other end, head hanging slightly off the foot of his bed while he played another one of his video games. Or maybe the same one? Axel could never really keep track of these things.

                Axel tapped his fingers against his keyboard, not hard enough to press any buttons. This was okay, wasn’t it? Having Roxas in his bed wasn’t crossing any lines…right? He’d had friends in his bed before, so it wasn’t like…well, he had also had sex with friends before, so maybe that wasn’t the right comparison to make.

                They weren’t even touching each other. It had to be okay.

                Though…Axel could think of quite a few things that would definitely not be okay that didn’t involve touching at all.

                He grit his teeth, and pulled up pictures of kittens on the Internet. He definitely did not need to be thinking about those kinds of things.

                “Hey, Axel?”

                Axel looked over to where Roxas was now sitting up, game system in his lap.

                “Huh?” went Axel. Kittens. Kittens.

                “Do you date people?”

                Roxas didn’t meet his eyes as he asked this, idly messing around with something on his handheld.

                “I’ve been known to do that in the past, yes,” Axel answered, slowly, frowning. He wasn’t sure where this conversation was going, but he had a feeling that either way, he wasn’t going to like it.

                Roxas scooted slightly closer to him on the bed. Axel tilted his laptop screen down on impulse, despite the fact that the only thing on it currently was kittens.

                “What kind of people?” Roxas asked, looking up at him this time.

                “Well,” Axel said, cautiously. “Historically, men…”

                “Hm,” went Roxas, looking back at his game. He pressed a few buttons, then shut the system, sticking it in his pocket. “Historically?” he asked, scooting closer again. Axel stared at him, unconsciously following Roxas’s lead and shutting his laptop completely.

                “Yes,” he said. “Historically. As in, I’m not dating one at the current moment.”

                “I see,” said Roxas, picking at his fingernails. “Um…”

                He stayed quiet for a moment. Long enough for Axel to prompt, “Um?” against his better judgment. Like Axel had ever listened to that.

                Roxas laughed, slightly, more of an intermittent exhale than anything. “Um. Come here for a second.”

                Axel frowned. As far as he concerned, they were close enough to each other for him to be considered “over there,” but…

                Axel set his laptop on the bed and scooted over to him.

                “A little closer.”

                Axel complied. Roxas spent a moment longer examining his hands, and then looked up at him.

                “Um,” went Roxas, again, quietly, “I, um…”

                Axel stared at him. Roxas reached up and slid a hand around to the back of Axel’s neck, slowly, the touch giving him goose bumps. He pulled Axel closer, and he, he—

                Roxas kissed him.

                Just lightly, just for a moment, and then took his hand away, turning away, face as red as Axel had ever seen it.

                Axel stared at him, as the situation became clear as day.

                Oh….no. Oh, no. Oh fuck, oh fuck. Axel sat up, a panicked energy welling up in his chest, eyes wide as he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with his expression.

                Roxas wanted to—oh, no. This wasn’t—

                Roxas looked back at him for a moment to see his reaction, and then looked away again. “I-I’m sorry,” he said, covering his face. “I didn’t know how else to…I’m sorry. I guess you don’t…feel that way…”

                “No!” Axel blurted. Then—“I…that’s not true, I…”

                He really should lie. He should lie and Roxas would get over it and be a little hurt but they could go back to being friends, but, no, he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t lie to him. Roxas deserved the truth.

                The same Roxas who was now looking up at him again, eyes large and hopeful.

                “But,” Axel said, and Roxas’s expression fell at just that small word, “But I…you’re…you’re sixteen,” Axel said, quietly.

                Roxas frowned. “So what?” he said. So what, as if it was that simple.

                Axel wished it were “so what.” He had been wishing that for months now, to just throw caution to the wind and go with it, that things would turn out okay in the end and it didn’t really matter, but—no.

                It didn’t work that way.

                “I’m sorry,” he said, swallowing hard as tears threatened to come. “I’m sorry, I just…you’re too young. I’m. I could hurt you. I don’t trust myself not to hurt you.”

                “I trust you, though,” Roxas said. “You wouldn’t hurt me.”

                “You don’t know that,” Axel said, louder than he’d intended. Roxas flinched back, and—fuck, here were the tears. Axel covered his eyes, squeezing them shut and trying to force back his emotions, like he always had, like he needed to do. “You don’t know that,” he said, quieter, voice strained. “You’re sixteen, you’re just…you’re just a kid, Roxas, and I’m some new guy who suddenly showed up in your life and was just nice to you, just accepted you and that’s…that’s such a low standard to have, you can’t just…” his voice caught, and he pulled his knees to his chest, staring at his bed sheet. He couldn’t look at Roxas. He couldn’t bear to see his expression. He probably hated him now. But he couldn’t. He just—couldn’t. “If you were an adult,” he managed to force out, “Then…it’d be your choice…but I can’t. Do this.”

                “It’s my choice now,” Roxas insisted, leaning forward insistently. “I’m not going to be a different person when I’m eighteen! It doesn’t matter!”

                “I know,” Axel said, pressing the heels of his palms against his forehead. “I know, I know, I’m sorry, but I can’t. I…I can’t. I just…” he didn’t know how to explain it. He knew but he didn’t know the words, he knew that he couldn’t—now more than ever, he knew that he couldn’t let this happen. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself. He didn’t trust himself. “I’m just another stupid adult with their arbitrary fucking rules but, I’m sorry, that’s just how it is. I’m sorry.”

                He tried his best to keep his breathing steady, tried his best to not start sobbing in the middle of a fucking argument, but—

                He looked up at Roxas, needing a reaction in the silence.

                Roxas was staring at him. Staring at him with jaw set and fists clenched so hard they were shaking.

                He hated Axel now. He must hate him.

                “Fine,” he said. Fine. And got up, and left, slamming the door behind him.

                Axel flinched at the noise, staring fixatedly at the door. He didn’t hear anything else after that.

                He sat there and let himself cry. Breathed in, and out, shuddering, until his eyes dried and his heart beat weakly against his chest.

                He felt…not better. He felt empty, which he supposed was preferable to a few other things he could be feeling.

                He got up and used a few tissues to dry his face, and then walked out into the rest of his apartment, looking around.

                Roxas was gone.

                Roxas was, probably, not ever coming back.

Chapter Text

                Roxas’s life went on. It did. Without his express permission, it dragged him along through school and family life and no one acted like anything happened. But nothing had happened, had it? Not to them. He didn’t tell anyone about it, so nothing had happened. Nothing at all.

                It was only four weeks and a few days until his birthday. So it was that and a year until he was eighteen.

                But he doubted Axel would be waiting around for that long.

                Besides, the past three days had felt like three weeks. As far as Roxas was concerned, a year might as well be a lifetime.

                He stared at his DS screen, making his character run around in circles. He knew he’d probably feel better soon, he’d get over it, but he felt shitty now, and hope for the future wasn’t really helping much.

                There was a knock on his door. He frowned at his screen. He didn’t really want to reply, or get up to answer it, so…

                He heard it open, and looked over. Namine was standing there, peering in cautiously.

                “Roxas?” she said. “May I come in?”

                Roxas shut his DS. “Sure,” he said, flatly. “What’re you doing here?”

                Namine walked in, and shut the door behind her before coming over and sitting next to Roxas on his bed.

                He was suddenly aware of the fact that he was still in his pajamas and had his blanket pulled up over his head. He shifted slightly so that it fell to a more acceptable place around his shoulders.

                “I came to visit you,” Namine said, smiling.

                “You saw me yesterday at school…”

                “Well. I saw you, but you weren't really talking much.”

                Roxas blinked, trying to think back to his interactions the day before. He didn’t really remember, but he supposed that was to Namine’s point.

                “Oops,” he went. Maybe he should apologize or something, but he didn’t really feel like doing that. So he didn’t feel like talking. Big deal.

                “Mhm,” went Namine. “So, what’s wrong?”

                Roxas’s heart clenched at the words. Shit. He had been feeling—well, not okay, but not really upset, either, but now that she asked…

                He sighed, tugging his blanket tighter around himself. “Do you really want to know?” he asked.

                “I do. If you don’t mind.”

                Roxas fiddled with the trigger buttons on his DS, and sighed, again, at length. “I told Axel,” he said.

                “Oh,” went Namine, voice soft. Roxas knew she could figure out how well that went by how he had been acting recently.

                “Yeah,” he said, letting his head fall to the side, limp.

                “What did he say?”

                Roxas frowned. Well, it was a fair question.

                That didn’t mean he really wanted to remember it.

                “He said,” Roxas started, taking a deep breath, “He said not until I’m eighteen.”

                “Hm,” went Namine. “Well, that’s better than no, isn’t it?”

                Roxas tugged on a piece of his hair. It seemed like it should be better than a no, but…he didn’t really feel like it was.

                “I guess,” he mumbled. “I don’t really know what to do now, though…”

                “What do you mean?”

                “I mean,” Roxas said, frowning. What did he mean? “I mean if he had just said…sorry, no…then I could say we go back to like it didn’t happen…and just be friends…but…” the memory of that night came back, Axel’s face twisted as he tried to force his tears back, telling Roxas again and again that he had to wait, even though it seemed so much like Axel didn’t like that answer either. “I think I upset him. I didn’t understand why we had to wait and he didn’t tell me, just said we had to. He said…he was afraid of hurting me.”

                “I see,” said Namine. Roxas glanced over at her, and she was frowning, bottom lip stuck out ever so slightly.

                She looked over at him. “Do you want a hug?” she asked.

                Roxas thought about it for a moment, and then nodded, holding one of his arms out with the blanket still attached. Namine scooted closer and put her arms around him, sitting up so his head rested on her shoulder. He wrapped his arms around her, enveloping her in the blanket too.

                Namine stroked his hair, and Roxas couldn’t help but cry, tears falling silently from his eyes.

                He sat back after a while, Namine let him go, and he and wiped his face on his blanket. “Sorry,” he said.

                “It’s okay,” she said.

                Roxas laughed slightly, despite himself. “I just,” he said, “I don’t get it. How is a year going to make any difference?”

                Namine took one of his hands and held it between her own, patting it gently.

                “I don’t know,” she said, “But I do know what whatever his reasons are, he’s doing this because he cares about you.”

                Roxas sighed, at length. He hated that answer, but somehow he felt a little better. “I kinda wish he didn’t care quite so much,” he said, smiling at their hands. Namine laughed, and that definitely wasn’t a bad sound.

                “Well, maybe ask him next year?” she said. “It’s not too long a wait.”

                Roxas nodded. “Maybe,” he said.

                Even if next year did feel like forever.

~~~

                It was a week after, well, that, and Axel hadn’t talked to Roxas at all. Not even a text. For all Roxas knew, Axel could be…

                No. Everything was fine.

                Roxas picked at his phone case idly, staring at the date stamp on his last text to Axel. It couldn’t hurt to just send one. It couldn’t hurt…

                “Sorry for acting like that,” he sent, after a minute or two of careful phrasing.

                But, a few hours later, there was no response. Not even a “read” notification.

                That didn’t…necessarily mean anything, did it? Maybe Axel was busy.

                He frowned at his phone for a minute, and then sent another text, just to be sure. “I guess I sort of overreacted.”

                There. No more texts until Axel replied. He didn’t want to bother him or seem…pushy. He just…

                He wanted to make sure Axel was okay, mostly.

~~~

                The next day, there still wasn’t a reply.

                Maybe a day wasn’t that long, but…it felt like a long time. Roxas was so used to texting him all the time, and he never really realized exactly how used to it he was until now, his phone just laying silent in his pocket.

                He felt…lonely.

                He knew he probably shouldn’t, his friends were still there, he still talked to them at school and saw them, but…

                Well, missing one person didn’t mean he didn’t appreciate his other friends being around as well. It just meant he was missing one person.

                Before he went to bed that night, he sent another text. “I still don’t really understand why we have to wait but if that’s what you want to do then it’s okay.”

~~~

                The next day, “We can still be friends, can’t we?”

                The next: “I think it’s worth waiting a year…”

                “I miss you.”

                “Axel, are you okay?”

~~~

                Larxene pulled her car up to the front of Axel’s apartment, parking sideways across a row of stripes that indicated that area was not for parking. But, fuck it, she’d gotten out of worse violations before.

                She got out of her car into the freezing fucking cold and stomped over to Axel’s apartment door, hands shoved into her pockets until she had to use them to pound on said door, glaring at it.

                There wasn’t an answer in the next twenty seconds, so she pounded on it harder. “Axel!” she yelled, “Open the door!”

                Each second without an answer was another second of her ears threatening to freeze off and another second off—damn it—that ever present fear rearing its ugly head.

                What if he wasn’t in there?

                What if he was—

                The door opened, and Larxene tried not to let the wave of relief show.

                “Axel, Christ, I thought you were dead,” she huffed, stepping past Axel into the apartment before technically being invited in. As far as she was concerned, she had a standing invitation.

                “Sorry,” Axel said, shutting the door behind her. He actually sounded legitimately sorry, which was the first sign something was wrong. She turned to him, and frowned.

                “What happened?” she asked.

                Axel shrugged. He looked like shit. His hair was even more of a mess than it usually was and Larxene had a distinct feeling he hadn’t changed out of those pajamas in at least the last three days.

                She also had a less distinct feeling, more of a hunch, that he hadn’t eaten in those three days either.

                She sighed, and walked over to the living room, placing herself on the couch there and making herself comfortable. Axel slowly followed her, and sat down next to her.

                She stared at him, arms crossed, and he stared at the coffee table.

                “You know I have to ask,” she said.

                “Yeah,” went Axel, having gone through this enough times by now to know the routine, “go ahead.”

                “Have you eaten?”

                “A little bit,” he said. Then, after a moment, “I think I had a bag of chips and some bread at some point.”

                “Well, that’s something,” said Larxene. “At least you're trying. Do you want me to make you something?”

                Axel stared at the table for another few seconds in silence. “Yeah,” he said. “I dunno if I’d eat it but at least I’ll have something around if I want to.”

                “Okay,” said Larxene. “I will.” Then, “Have you been thinking about killing yourself?”

                Axel didn’t answer—and once the silence went on for a little too long, Larxene sighed.

                “Well, shit,” she said. “You sure you don’t want to tell me what happened?”

                Axel faced away from her. “It’s Roxas,” he said.

                Roxas. Of course it was that kid. Larxene knew something bad was going to happen with that—but then again, when did it not, with Axel. The guy had the shittiest luck of anyone she’d ever known.

                “What happened with Roxas?”

                Axel slid down on the couch into an exaggerated slouch. Yeah, yeah, he didn’t want to talk about it.

                “He kissed me,” he answered.

                Larxene frowned. That wasn’t really the answer she was expecting.

                “And?”

                “Well…” Axel sighed, again, rubbing one of his eyes as if there wasn’t eyeliner smudged all over it already. “I told him…I can’t remember exactly what I told him but I meant to tell him we couldn’t be in a relationship until he was eighteen because…I didn’t know how to say because. He doesn’t know, so, I couldn’t explain to him…but…he got mad and said it wasn’t fair and left and…”

                Axel scrunched his face up, covering his eyes. “What if he hates me now, Larxene?” he wailed, “He was so mad and I couldn’t even—I couldn’t tell him why!”

                Larxene sighed, looking away for a moment as Axel’s breathing became sporadic. Great, she was going to get upset if this went on much longer, and then what use would she be.

                “C’mere,” she said, putting an arm around Axel and pulling him up to her. He basically collapsed onto her, wrapping his long gangly arms around her torso and burying his face into her shoulder as he hiccupped pitifully. Axel was such a high-maintenance friend sometimes, but Larxene loved the shit out of him.

                “I think you did the right thing,” she said, rubbing circles into his back, “You’re just looking out for him.”

                “Doing the right thing sucks,” he said, voice muffled.

                Larxene laughed, and pat him on the back one more time before extracting herself from his arms.

                “I bet he doesn’t hate you,” she said. “And I bet if you’d check your fucking phone you’d know that already.”

                Axel laughed, slightly, but then frowned, drawing his eyebrows together. “I,” he started, “I’m…I’m scared, though…”

                Larxene sighed.

                “I could check it for you and then tell you what he said.”

                “How are you so sure he’s texted me since then?”

                “You guys’ phones used to be glued to the palm of your hands, I’m pretty damn sure he’s texted you in the last week.”

                Axel rubbed the back of his neck, sheepishness showing through his misery. “I’m not sure you checking it would be much different than me doing it, but…yeah, I guess…we could do that.”

                “Okay,” said Larxene, getting up. Axel stood up next to her. “Where’d you put your phone?”

                Axel stared at her, a blank expression on his face. Then his gaze slowly drifted up towards the ceiling.

                “Ummm,” he went.

                Larxene shook her head, rolling her eyes. “Is it in your dresser?” she asked.

                “Yeah,” went Axel, not sounding sure at all, “Probably.”

                Larxene went to Axel’s room—which was a mess, but she wasn’t really that surprised about that—and opened the top drawer of his dresser. After digging around for a little bit—lo and behold—there was his phone. She turned it on.

                Axel had followed her and was staring at her apprehensively.

                “Down boy,” she said, frowning at the screen. “You know this is going to take at least a minute to turn on.”

                Axel huffed, and sat down on his bed, fiddling with his sleeve.

                “Hey,” went Larxene, “You should spend a few nights at my place. Just to put my mind at ease, you know.”

                “Yeah, yeah,” Axel went, getting up again and going to his dresser to pull a few things out. His phone finally came on, and Larxene waited for it to catch up on the messages it had missed.

                “You should take a shower,” she said, “And then we can get food and go back to mine. Okay?”

                “Sure,” Axel said, not really sounding all that into the idea, but it was probably the best Larxene was going to get.

                Notifications started popping up on Axel’s phone, and Larxene went to his inbox. Most of the texts were from her, but there were, of course, some from Roxas as well. It looked like the last of them had come in three days ago.

                “Yeah, see,” she said at the phone. Axel immediately looked up at her. “He says he misses you.”

                “Really?” Axel said, suddenly at her shoulder. Larxene held the phone out to him, and he took it, immediately going to scroll through the messages from his dear Roxas.

                He looked through them at least three times, and then smiled, eyes nonetheless glistening and threatening to break out into tears at any moment.

                “Told you so,” said Larxene.

                “Fuck off,” responded Axel.

                Ah, there he was.

~~~

                It just wasn’t the same.

                They texted back and forth again, they had idle conversations, but they stopped hanging out. It just didn’t feel right anymore—Axel felt like he would be doing something wrong by inviting Roxas somewhere, especially alone.

                Roxas didn’t invite him anywhere either, so Axel supposed he felt the same way.

                And one day, they just stopped.

                Axel looked back at his phone one day to see that they hadn’t talked in a week. Their last conversation had petered out and he didn’t feel like there was anything else to say.

                A month later, something reminded him of Roxas, and he went to tell him—but, no. He couldn’t. There wasn’t really any reason to, was there?

                It was over.

                Axel did his best to just…move on.

~~~

                In a relationship with Namine.

                Axel stared at that sentence on his screen.

                He—he missed Roxas, he didn’t want to admit it, he was trying not to think about it but he missed him and he didn’t want to tell him that, didn’t want to push his way back into his life so he’d looked him up on the Internet—it wasn’t exactly a common name, and—

                Roxas was in a relationship.

                And it wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t. Axel apparently hated himself (well, he knew that already), because he clicked on the girl’s page and there were photos that only couples would take and Roxas looked…happy.

                He looked really, really happy.

                And that was the worst part.

                Axel wanted to tell himself that he wanted Roxas to be happy, that’s all he wanted in the world, but seeing him smiling like this with another person and the way it made Axel’s heart clench and, it almost made him feel like he was going to throw up. He had never wanted Roxas to be happy, had he? He had just wanted Roxas to be with him and if that’s what Roxas’s happiness meant then of course he wanted him to be happy but this—

                Axel was upset. And that could only mean he had never wanted Roxas to be happy in the first place. He just wanted him. He wanted him and no one else could have him and—

                He shut his laptop, and stared blankly at his wall, too upset to feel anything at all.

                Why was he like this?

                Why couldn’t he be happy for Roxas?

                …why was he even alive?

~~~

                Roxas sat leaning against Namine, fiddling with the pages of the book he was reading as she scribbled in her sketchbook next to him, pastels scratching at the paper as she worked on what was no doubt a masterpiece. The sound was a nice background noise to his reading, but—it was easy to get distracted by it, too.

                He sighed, shifting slightly and trying to focus back on the words in front of him. He kept zoning out and thinking about—well, it didn’t matter. He shouldn’t be thinking about it anyways.

                But Namine apparently had other ideas. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

                “Huh?” he went, sitting up and looking at Namine. He hadn’t realized she was paying that much attention to him. “I mean—nothing. Nothing’s wrong. Why?”

                Namine raised a skeptical eyebrow at him, and Roxas flushed. He didn’t know why he even tried lying to her—though it wasn’t like he did it on purpose.

                “Sorry,” he said, leaning on her again and hanging his head. “I’m just…worried.”

                “About Axel?” she asked, setting her drawing to the side and putting an arm around Roxas to mess with his hair. He frowned.

                “I’m sorry,” he said again, “I know I shouldn’t let it bother me, I mean I’m…I’m dating you and I feel like you’re always having to talk to me about Axel and that’s not fair at all…”

                Namine laughed, and Roxas blinked, lifting his head slightly to look at her.

                “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, smiling. “You’re allowed to care about more than one person at once. I know you’d be just as worried about me in the same situation.”

                “Well,” Roxas went, frowning slightly. That may not entirely be true, considering Namine probably wasn’t at risk of…of certain things, but…

                He sighed. He really hated this.

                “He just hasn’t texted me in a long time,” Roxas said. “I’m worried something happened to him.”

                “Hmm,” went Namine, idly running her fingers through Roxas’s hair. Roxas leaned his head on her, the motion relaxing him somewhat. “Have you been texting him?” she asked.

                “Well,” went Roxas. “No…”

                “Why not? Not that you have to, of course, but if you want to talk to him, I think that would be the first step.”

                Roxas frowned. That made sense—of course that made sense, but he still didn’t want to do that. He didn’t really know why.

                “What would I even say?” he mumbled, messing with his sleeve. Maybe that was part of the problem. Him and Axel had gotten into the habit of almost daily conversations, and they were natural and good and—it just hadn’t felt that way recently. Not when they last talked.

                “Tell him the truth,” Namine suggested. “That you miss him and you want to know how he’s doing.”

                Roxas’s heart lurched at the notion. He…he missed Axel. He hadn’t considered that, all he’d thought was that he was worried about him—and why wouldn’t he be? But that wasn’t all, was it.

                He missed him. He really, really missed him.

                “…yeah,” he said, quietly, picking up his book again without taking his head off Namine’s shoulder. “Thanks. Um…I love you.”

                Namine kissed the top of his head.

                “I know you do, Roxas,” she said. “I love you, too.”

~~~

                That goddamned shade of yellow.

                He didn’t know what it was about it, the color that kept popping up amid brown upholstered couches with carefully placed throw pillows, frames on the walls with degrees and stock photos of landscapes.

                And always that shade of yellow on the walls.

                This was like déjà vu all over again. Ou dois-je dire, déjà ressenti.

                “Have a seat wherever you’d like,” the lady said, gesturing at the intricately picked interior design. They always gave him women. He wouldn’t particularly mind this, if he hadn’t already figured out the reason why a long time ago.

                “Oh, please,” Axel said, mocking smile on his face—but really, he was just tired, so tired—“After you.”

                The therapist obliged, crossing the room and taking a seat at her desk, turning her chair around to face the rest of the room. Axel sat on a couch, the furthest he could manage to get from where she had placed herself.

                He slouched backwards, crossing his arms and glaring at a spot about three inches to the left of the lady’s head.

                “So, Lea—“ fuck, well at least if he threw up it would match the color scheme, “It doesn’t seem to me like you want to be here.”

                “Axel,” he said.

                “I’m sorry?”

                “My name is Axel.”

                “Axel? Hm.” She wrote something down, and Axel felt his skin crawl.

                “And why do you like to go by that?”

                “I just told you. It’s my name.”

                “I see…”

                Axel highly doubted that.

                “So, why are you here today, Axel?”

                Well. That was progress, he supposed.

                “I made a promise to a friend,” he said, fingers sneaking under his sleeves to mess with the bandages there. It still hurt. He pressed his thumb down, pain shooting up his arm.

                He turned his head to stare at the bookshelf sitting on the adjacent wall.

                “Have you had bad experiences with therapy in the past?”

                Ha. Where did he even fucking start.

~~~

                I think we have already mentioned at this point that Axel’s parents weren’t the best at dealing with his disability. They weren’t the best at that, or the fact that he wasn’t their dear darling daughter they always thought he was, or the fact that he occasionally had thoughts of his own and liked to express them. Sometimes these expressions weren’t exactly the healthiest things in the world, but when you press someone to a certain point, things just stew and bubble until they come out as an explosion.

                He supposed the word to use here would be ‘meltdown,’ but he felt like that applied more to something else.

                At fifteen, he had found himself homeless of his own design. The streets cared for him more than his parents ever had, and at least no one there knew his name.

                He stole things.

                He did work where he could—which wasn’t many places.

                He ended up in shelters, when his hunger overcame his pride and he was willing to swallow it for a chance to swallow anything more substantial.

                He spent a little more than a year like this, and he survived, he was almost getting used to it—

                And then there was Saix.

~~~

                Where had he first met Saix?

                He remembered the lighting most vividly, and the table arrangement—it must have been at some sort of charity event, but…

                Was it a church? Yeah, that was it. Wasn’t it?

                Axel had huddled in a corner—or at least as much of a corner as he could manage while still sitting at one of the tables—purposely hunched over and trying to give off an air of “don’t talk to me” as much as he could while wolfing down the food provided. He was planning on eating and then getting out before they tried to convert him or something, but he wanted to make sure he wasn’t missing out on any handouts beforehand.

                But, despite his insistence, someone did sit across from him. Someone with—he thought his eyes weren’t working for a moment—blue hair, and eyes on the most yellow end of green Axel had ever seen.

                “Hello,” said the stranger. “What’s your name?”

                Axel frowned at him. He hadn’t really figured out his name by that point. “Lee,” he answered. “Who’s asking?”

                “I’m Isa,” he said, more or less answering Axel’s question. “Do you need a place to stay?”

~~~

               Maybe the first red flag was the fact that Saix had insisted that Axel would pay him back for the residence someday, but it was what Axel had needed at the time. He was tired of living off people’s charity, feeling like a worthless member of society. Even if he wasn’t technically paying for anything, he needed to feel like he wasn’t being given it for free.

                So Saix let him share a room. Axel slept on the floor, and cleaned, and helped make food, but it was in exchange for a roof above his head and actual things to eat and a shower, he’d never really understood how precious running water was until he had to go without it.

                And when he’d asked Saix for a little bit of help buying clothes (“It’s important, please, just a little bit, I’ll pay you back, I promise,”), he got it, in exchange for a simple story. Saix wanted to know how he had ended up on the streets, and it seemed reasonable at the time.

                (Later, Axel realized that it wasn’t, it wasn’t reasonable—Saix had asked time and time again and Axel refused, the memories alone worse than all the time he’d spent without a roof to sleep under—but no, Saix wanted the one thing Axel hadn’t wanted to give. He couldn’t just take no for an answer.

                He never took ‘no’ for an answer.)

                Soon Saix knew everything about him. The autism, the gender stuff, the—Axel hadn’t known that there was a word to put to it at the time—“issues” Axel had with his attitude. Saix was the one who suggested it might be Borderline Personality Disorder in the first place, and the symptoms seemed to fit.

                (“People with that tend to get clingy and rely on other people a little too much. You are relying on me an awful lot, aren’t you, Lee? It must be that.”)

                Saix only revealed things about himself when it was useful. Axel didn’t even know how old he was, for such a long time—Axel was sixteen when they met, just sixteen, young, he didn’t know—didn’t know what Saix did during the day, who else he talked to.

                The first things Axel really learned about him was that he was autistic, and Saix didn’t even seem to want to say the word. “There’s this group, for people like us,” he had said. “You should come with me some time. They might be able to help you find work.”

                And Axel did, so much, want to work.

                But something strange happened after that.

~~~

                “Where are you going?” Saix asked, tone not quite as casual as it maybe should have been. Axel turned to him, frowning in the middle of putting his jacket on.

                “Out,” he said. “Is that a crime?”

                “No, of course not,” Saix said, “I’m just worried.”

                Worried? What could he possibly have been worried about?

                “Larxene invited me to a party,” Axel found himself explaining anyways. “I’m gonna be back by tomorrow morning.”

                “Hm,” went Saix, in his ever disapproving manner. “Shouldn’t you get back by three?”

                Axel frowned. “Yeah,” he said, agreeing despite himself. “I’ll try and be back by three. See you.”

~~~

                He did not get back by three. He did not, in fact, remember three o’clock that morning at all, and found himself back at Saix’s apartment much later than that. The next day, maybe—it was somewhere around there.

                In any case, Saix wasn’t happy about it.

                “I said three. You worried me, Axel.”

                Axel gave the hand that was around his wrist—just a little too tightly, just enough to begin to hurt, but not really, not anything to worry about—a comforting pat.

                “Hey, I’m fine,” he said. “I just had a little too much fun.”

                “Maybe you shouldn’t go out with Larxene anymore, if you’re going to forget to come home.”

~~~

                “You’ve been hanging out with her an awful lot lately, don’t you think you’re getting a little too attached? You know how you can be.”

~~~

                “What do you mean you want to move out? You’ve hardly had this job for a few months, what if you lose it? You’re not exactly the most responsible person in the world.”

~~~

                “Larxene is a bad influence on you. I want you to come home.”

~~~

                Axel wondered how he didn’t see it. It all seemed so obvious looking back, but those types of things never seemed clear to him while he was in them.

                Did they seem clear to anyone?

~~~

                He was sixteen. He was sixteen and this person came into his life, this wonderful person who saved him and understood him, whose brain worked the same way his did, who offered him a place to stay, a safe spot, who introduced him to all these other people, who accepted him as he was.

                He was only sixteen.

                Axel just couldn’t trust himself after that.

~~~

                It hurt, even with help, it hurt to cut off communication with Saix, to draw a line that he wouldn’t pass, to slowly realize that this wasn’t how friends acted. That the confusion he felt when Larxene actually gave him a choice of what to do, and when, and how, that this confusion was just the small price he had to pay for freedom—actual freedom, not whatever Saix had tried to force on him.

                He changed that year. He bleached his hair, dyed it every color under the rainbow until he found one he liked, wore it however he want, painted his face with colors until he looked in the mirror and didn’t recognize himself anymore.

                But, he didn’t know why that had to be a bad thing.

                This wasn’t the person he had seen in the mirror for years beforehand. This wasn’t the person with sunken eyes and a mat of hair on their head that kept getting longer from apathy, the sharp lines on their face that came from starvation, physically and mentally.

                This was a new person.

                And Axel would come to accept him. And even, on some days, when the mood struck; actually like him.

~~~

                “Are you currently working?”

                Axel leaned to his side, relaxing for the first time in the face of that hideous shade of yellow, resting his elbow on the couch arm.

                “No,” he said. It was partially true, at least. He didn’t have a steady employment and he wasn’t getting any checks in the mail, but he had ways of keeping a steady income these days. “I’m…between jobs.”

                He smiled to himself. What an interesting phrase.

                “You lost your current one recently, then?”

                “Sure.”

                “Do you have an idea why?”

                Axel huffed, rubbing one of his eyes. “Because I’m a truant. I got lovesick and stopped showing up.”

                “Lovesick?” the therapist said, looking somewhat surprised for the first time in the entire session. “Would you like to talk about it?”

                Ah, he thought she’d never ask. As much as he didn’t like sharing, this was one thing he was more than willing to talk about.

                “Well,” went Axel, smile tugging at his face as his memories reached back to that day. “I think it was around 2:30. On a Thursday, during an otherwise completely unremarkable week…”

Chapter Text

                Roxas couldn’t help but notice the date. He felt it inching nearer, closer and closer, until it was a week before, a day before—

                He needed to talk to Namine.

~~~

                He met her at her house, somehow so different from Roxas’s, clean and quiet and…simple.

                Maybe that came from not having any brothers. Or maybe that just came from Namine’s family somehow being so elegant, even in the smallest of things.

                They were kind of like angels.

                Roxas’s heart clenched at the thought. He couldn’t believe he was doing this. What if Namine didn’t feel the same way? What if he couldn’t tell her why he was—what if—

                He didn’t want to lose Namine. But he couldn’t keep this up.

                Namine sat him down on one of their couches, and sat next to him, facing him with her hands in her lap.

                “What is it you needed to talk to me about?” she asked, frowning slightly. Roxas wished she was actually able to read his mind, like it almost seemed like sometimes. She understood him so well, and…fuck. How was he supposed to say this?

                “I…” he started, looking down at his hands in his lap. “I love you. You know that, right?”

                “I do,” she said. Roxas believed her.

                “I just feel like, sometimes…it’s strange to be dating, somehow? And I…I don’t want to…lose you, I always want you to be around, if…I like having you here, but…”

                He frowned, hands beginning to shake. What was he trying to say?

                Namine reached out and took his hand. He looked up, heart in his throat—

                But she was smiling. And Roxas, suddenly, felt calm.

                “You feel like you’re only doing these things because I might expect you to? That you love me and this is how you think you’re supposed to show it, but you’re not really sure it’s how you want to?”

                Roxas blinked.

                “Yes!” he said, a smile tugging at the side of his mouth. “Yes, exactly! Uh—is that…do you?”

                Namine laughed, and squeezed his hand. “Yes,” she said, “I just thought this was what you wanted, and I wanted to make you happy, so…”

                Roxas grinned, then shook his head, then run his free hand over his face. “Thank god,” he said, laughing slightly, “I was so worried you wouldn’t understand or I was just being selfish or something and…” he sighed, feeling like he might cry from relief. “God. I love you, Namine. I really, really love you.”

                Namine pulled him closer, and Roxas obliged, scooting over and wrapping his arms around her. He could feel her smiling into his shoulder.

                “So,” she said, once they let go, “Are you going to go see him?”

                Roxas flushed. He really couldn’t keep anything from her, could he?

                “I,” he started, “I’m…yes. But…”

                He frowned, looking down at their hands, having found each other’s.

                “I…you know I went through this scene in my head over and over before I told you this,” he said, not helping but smiling slightly at the absurdity of it, “and I kept…I keep…feeling the words…I don’t know. I feel like I’m dumping you for Axel…and that’s not what I want to do. And that’s not how I want you to feel. And…I guess…how do you feel? About that?”

                He looked up, biting at the inside of his mouth nervously. Namine was frowning, considering his question.

                “I feel…hm.” She tilted her head slightly. “I know you’ve been in love with Axel for a long time now. Haven’t you?”

                Roxas blushed, feeling ridiculous even as he did so. It wasn’t like it was much of a secret. He nodded, slightly.

                “So it doesn’t come as a surprise, at least. And I suppose…I am a little jealous of him, and the place he has in your heart. But I know I have a place there too, and I know that you loving him doesn’t stop you from loving me. And that matters to me more than any small amount of jealousy.”

                “Are…are you sure?” Roxas asked, swallowing past the lump in his throat. He hated that he was doing this to Namine, even if she considered it such a minor thing.

                Namine put a hand onto the back of his neck, and pulled him down to kiss his forehead.

                “Go see him,” she said. “And I’ll be here, whatever happens.”

                Roxas sniffed, tears welling up. He wanted to thank her—again, for everything—but the words wouldn’t come.

                He took her hand and squeezed it. That would have to do.

                She leaned back, and tilted her head downwards to catch his eye.

                “I’m glad to have you as a friend, Roxas.”

                He smiled, and laughed, and nodded.

                Me, too.

~~~

                Someone was knocking on his door.

                Axel didn’t notice at first, because it was so quiet—and then the second time he thought he might be imagining it, because who would be showing up on his doorstep in the middle of the night—oh, exactly midnight, actually—he didn’t have that many friends. But the third time he decided there was definitely something at his door, and he should probably figure out what to do about that.

                He set his console down and got up, shuffling over to his door and squinting as he switched his hall light on.

                He got to the door, and opened it the few inches it would allow with the chain still on it.

                It was—

                Axel blinked.

                Then he stared at this person who was standing on his doorstep, details slowly filtering in through the part of his brain that was insisting that, no, this couldn’t be happening.

                “Uh,” he went. “I…need a moment. Don’t go anywhere.”

                He slammed his door shut.

                Holy fuck.

                Roxas was here.

                Axel covered his face with his hands and would have screamed if he didn’t know Roxas was on the other side of the door and holy fuck Roxas was on the other side of the door.

                He ran into the rest of his house, paused for a moment, then headed to his bedroom to pull on a gigantic sweater over his sleep t-shirt, and then ran to his bathroom to check how he looked in the mirror. Fuck, there wasn’t enough time to fix his face, but—

                He ran his hands through his hair a few times and splashed some water on his face, grabbing a towel off the floor to dry off afterwards and then returning it to whence it came.

                “You’re calm, you’re cool, you’re collected,” he said to the mirror, in a good summary of the exact opposite of his current mental state.

                It would have to do.

                He went back to the door, unchained it, took a deep breath, and opened it again.

                Roxas was still there.

                “…Roxas,” he said, to see if this strange apparition would respond.

                “Axel,” said the Roxas. And, woah, had his voice gotten deeper? That would make sense, considering it had been…

                How long had it been?

                “Um…can I come in?” Roxas asked. Right, it was kind of cold outside, wasn’t it?

                “Sure,” Axel said, stepping aside and allowing him to pass, closing the door after him.

                Roxas was…

                Roxas was a lot of things, but at the current moment, Roxas was taller.

                Not as tall as Axel, of course, but not quite as miniscule as Axel had come to expect.

                “You’re…taller,” Axel found himself saying. Fuck, why had he said that?

                Roxas looked down at himself for a moment.

                “Yeah,” he said, “I guess.”

                What, did he not know?

                “You’re here,” Axel said, more to the point. Roxas looked away from him, gaze wandering around the room.

                “Yeah,” he said, again. “Um…do you know what day it is?”

                What day it was? Axel fumbled in his pockets for a second, until he found his phone.

                There was a notification on his screen.

                It was a reminder that he didn’t remember setting, and it said: “RX 18TH BD”

                Axel stared at it.

                Roxas’s eighteenth birthday.

                He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to feel about that. He wished he could remember what he felt when he set the reminder in the first place.

                Hopeful?

                “It’s…your birthday,” he said, putting his phone away. Roxas nodded.

                “Yeah. Um…god, I feel stupid for this now, but…” he rubbed one of his eyes, grinning crookedly. “I’m eighteen now. And I…I still…”

                He looked up at Axel, and he could see the uncertainty in his eyes.

                “I still feel the same way,” Roxas said. “Sort of. I wanted to tell you that.”

                Axel’s heart pounded against his chest. This couldn’t be real. This was like some sort of reoccurring—

                Nightmare. It must be, because Axel was about to wake up any second.

                “Aren’t you…Namine, aren’t you dating her?”

                Roxas laughed, slightly, and looked away again. “Ah,” he went, “You know about that?”

                Shit. Roxas wasn’t doing what Axel thought he was, was he? Not Roxas. Please.

                “Don’t worry,” he said, “She knows I’m here.”

                “Does she?” That didn’t exactly answer his question.

                “Yeah. I’m…I’m sorry, it’s hard to explain, but we’re not really dating anymore, so if you’re worried about that…um, were you worried about that?”

                Roxas sounded almost hopeful at that last part. Which meant…

                He came back. He had really come back.

                “Yeah,” said Axel, hardly believing this was really happening. “Are you…”

                He stepped over to Roxas, slowly, and when he didn’t back away, he placed a hand on his shoulder, sliding it down his forearm. Roxas watched him with what he thought must be amusement.

                “I’m sorry,” Axel said, laughing slightly. “I’m kind of having a hard time believing you’re actually here. I mean,” oh, god, he couldn’t keep his mouth shut, “I stopped texting you and I just thought that, and then Namine and, but you’re actually here, you’re really here, aren’t you?”

                “I’m really here,” Roxas reassured him, gently—tentatively—placing his hands on Axel’s waist. Axel felt kind of…warm, all around, and his mouth was smiling without him having any input over the matter.

                Axel lifted his hands up and placed them on Roxas’s face, running his fingers over his jaw and ears and through his hair and Roxas hummed, smiling, and Axel was sure that if ambrosia was a sound, it would be that.

                “Um,” went Axel, a spark of realization lighting behind his eyes. “Should I be kissing you?”

                “Yes,” said Roxas, “Definitely.”

                And, well, it wasn’t as if Axel needed much convincing.

                He kissed him, and kissed him again, and had to stop for a moment because neither of them could stop smiling, and Axel knew there were some things he needed to work out about this and how he felt but that could come later, right now here was Roxas and he had come back, and he was smiling and everything was…good.

                “You should sleep with me,” Axel said. Then his brain caught up with his mouth, and his face turned about the same color as his hair as Roxas’s eyebrows went up. “I mean—no, that’s not—augh, let me start over,” he said, slapping a hand over his face, still grinning even as he was embarrassed. “If you…don’t have anywhere to be tonight, I would like it if…you stayed here, with me. And we could…share my bed. And sleep. If you want.”

                Roxas stared at him for a moment, and then laughed, and Axel wasn’t sure what to make of that, but—

                “Yeah, okay,” Roxas said. “Why not?”

                Axel smiled, and wrapped his arms around Roxas and held him close, and he was definitely never going to let him go.

                Well, at least, not until Roxas asked him to.

~~~

                Axel, embarrassingly, found himself floundering as to what to do when Roxas crawled into bed with him, but Roxas scooted closer and Axel put an arm around him and it all worked out once Roxas got comfortable and Axel found a way to lay that didn’t involve blonde spikes going up his nose. All in all, it was, of course, very romantic.

                “My parents are going to be wondering where I am,” Roxas said into Axel’s sweater, which Axel was at this point regretting just grabbing off the floor, but Roxas didn’t seem to mind.

                “Is that going to be a problem?” Axel asked, though he wished he didn’t have to. He really didn’t want Roxas to leave.

                “Hmm,” Roxas went. He laid silent for a moment, and then nuzzled closer to him. “No. I’ll just tell them…I dunno. I’ll tell them something.”

                “Tell them you were in heaven,” Axel said, grinning. That must have been where they were, right? How else could Roxas really be here?

                Roxas laughed, and shook his head. “Whatever.”

                Axel sighed, and closed his eyes, hand running aimlessly through Roxas’s hair.

                “…Roxas?” he said, not able to let a small anxiety rest.

                “Hmm?”

                “Are you going to be here when I wake up?”

                “Of course,” said Roxas, with no hesitation. “Even if you sleep for a year.”

                Axel bit the inside of his mouth, bidding himself not to cry. He didn’t want to worry Roxas. He didn’t deserve that.

                Besides. He was happy.

                After everything, he was definitely happy.

~~~

                “I…didn’t have the best year. And it’s not your fault—“ it is because of you, but I can’t tell you that, “but I want you to know that. I’m glad you’re here, and I’m so glad you came back for me but…I can’t be happy all the time. I…no, not just that. Sometimes it will be really bad. I just want you to know that. You haven’t seen how I get.”

                Pause.

                Consideration.

                “That’s…well, I guess I can’t really say…but I’m definitely going to try. I know it’s not going to be perfect and…sunshine and rainbows but I want to be here for you. Through anything you need to share with me.”

~~~

                Roxas’s alarm went off, and his eyes opened, reluctantly. The sun wasn’t even up. God, he hated this.

                He sat up and picked up his phone, switching the alarm off and staring at it for a few seconds while his eyes focused. There was a message from Axel, or, to more accurately quote the name on his message screen, “AXEL [heart emoji x 3].” Apparently he’d fallen asleep in the middle of their conversation.

                Roxas pulled up the conversation and responded to the dropped thread—then sent “Good morning,” and “I love you,” before getting up and getting ready for school.

                He felt better already.

~~~

                A few hours later, he received a reply that was nothing but a large block of emoji, consisting of sparkles, fire, and many of the various heart options. Then, soon afterwards, “THAT’S HOW I FEEL EVERY TIME YOU SAY THAT!!!!”

                Roxas grinned, and then grinned some more, and hardly even noticed Hayner making gagging motions off to his side.

                But he did notice, and flicked a pencil at him with a faux-grumpy face.

                The pencil missed Hayner by a mile, but it was the thought that counted.

~~~

                Roxas: “Hey, so, um…are you doing anything for Christmas?”

                Axel: “Being Jewish”

                Roxas: “oh.”

                Axel: “hah im just messing with you”

                “I mean I am jewish I guess but are you inviting me somewhere?”

                Roxas: “Yeah sort of…”

                “Yeah I am”

                “My family won’t stop asking for me to have you over”

                “it’s fine if you don’t but I just thought, if you weren’t doing anything …”

                Axel: “aww are you inviting me to family Christmas???”

                Roxas: “yeah”

                Axel: “Yes!! I want to meet your twin”

                “he’ll be there right??”

                “Do you guys do a big Christmas morning and everything??”

                Roxas: “yeah he will”

                “yeah but you don’t have to come until lunch if you don’t want”

                Axel: “no I definitely want”

                “can I spend the night Christmas eve?”

                Roxas: “sure”

                “you have to bring Christmas pajamas if you do that though”

                “it’s The Rule.”

                “you have to wear them when we open presents in the morning”

                Axel: “Deal.”

~~~

                It didn’t look like it was going to snow that Christmas. When Axel pulled up in front of Roxas’s house that Christmas Eve, there was still some snow on the ground from a few days before, but it was wet and mushy and somehow made the mood even worse.

                Roxas was waiting for him, standing on the short sidewalk in front of his house. The decorations were…just a little too much to be what Axel considered “tasteful,” but he could handle a little too much.

                Besides, Roxas was looking too cute in his little hat and sweater for Axel to notice much of anything else.

                Roxas grinned at him as he parked his bike, and Axel came over to stand in front of him.

                “You look adorable,” he said, tugging gently on the front of Roxas’s sweater.

                “Yeah,” went Roxas. “There’s kind of an implied dress code.”

                Something moved in the corner of Axel’s eye, and he looked up just in time to see a curtain falling back into position.

                “There are a few pairs of eyes at the window,” he said, raising an eyebrow at Roxas.

                “Yeah,” he went, sighing. A puff of steam rose up between them. “They’re nosy.”

                “I see…” Axel said. He noted that Roxas didn’t seem very much inclined to move from his spot on the sidewalk, despite the house being…over there. “Hey,” went Axel, “You alright?”

                Roxas brought a hand up to rub at his nose, ending up using the inch of uncovered skin between his glove and his sleeve. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, “I know it’s cold, I’m getting anxious about this at the worst possible time…”

                “It’s alright,” said Axel. Then, “The longer I stay out here the colder my hands will be to stick on your neck when you’re least expecting it, so I’m cool with it.”

                Roxas laughed—there it was—and weakly hit his hand against Axel’s chest. “Jerk,” he said. Axel nodded, admitting, and Roxas shook his head.

                “Augh,” went Roxas, approximately, shaking his head in an entirely different matter, as if he was trying to force a thought out of it. “I’m sorry, it’s not you, it’s just…I always assume my family is going to act the worst possible way about this kind of thing, and I don’t like their teasing sometimes, and I know they’re going to ask a lot of questions and…it’s not that I’m, ashamed or anything, but…”

                He made a few gestures with his hands that Axel assumed meant he was lacking the words he wanted. “Questions,” he said, eventually.

                Axel nodded.

                “I understand,” he said, and he kind of did. “I’ll help you out if I can. Or…well, is there something I can do to help?”

                Roxas frowned, and thought about it for a moment.

                “Yeah,” he said, eventually. “If you wouldn’t mind, uh…not…touching me?” He grimaced, word choice apparently not ideal. “No, that’s not right…I just mean, about, affection I guess, if we do anything too…lovey, they’ll start the ‘aww’s and it’s embarrassing…”

                “Of course,” went Axel. “I even would just not touch you if you wanted that. What’s the line here, though? Are hugs alright?”

                “Um…yeah, I think that’s alright,” Roxas said.

                “Alright.”

                Axel waited for a moment to see if Roxas needed to say anything else, but apparently not—he just took a deep breath, steeling himself, and then looked up at Axel.

                “Okay,” he said, “I’m ready. Are you ready? I guess you should be the one nervous about meeting my family…that’s how this goes, right?”

                Axel laughed. “Yeah, generally, I guess.” He was honestly a little nervous, but if the rest of the family was half as nice as Roxas was, he’d be okay. “But, yeah. I’m ready.”

Chapter Text

                In descending order, by age:

                Roxas’s mother was a large woman, both physically and presence-wise, and if Axel had to pick a word to describe her, he supposed it would be “busy.” But, that may have had to do with the fact that she was currently orchestrating the entire family’s preparation for the holiday. It seemed like Axel wasn’t the only guest they were having over—and having just the immediate family there seemed like people enough, honestly.

                Then, his father, who must have been who Roxas inherited his height from (though Roxas was getting a little tall—Axel had yet to decide whether he was still growing or not), who didn’t speak much but seemed like a genial enough man, shaking Axel’s hand when he entered and greeting him with a smile and a “welcome to the family,” which may have been exactly what Axel needed to hear.

                Down to the next generation.

                Ventus was Roxas’s oldest brother, and Axel could have sworn he was seeing double. If he hadn’t been intimately familiar with every feature of Roxas’s face at that point, he might have mistaken them for each other. But, Ventus was all smiles, and though Roxas wasn’t exactly a grumpy person, he wasn’t so outwardly…sunny.

                Then there was Vanitas, who was apparently Ventus’s twin (what were the chances of that? Seriously, what even was Roxas’s family?), and was immediately identifiable by the fact that he was wearing some kind of tinted glasses, indoors. Axel decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he had a reason for it beyond…well, assumed he had a reason for it. Besides, he, Mr. Facial Tattoos, kind of felt like he didn’t have room to talk.

                The next in line was Sora, the twin, finally, and god, Axel didn’t really know what to think of this guy. Maybe it was because he had this underlying mental image of “Roxas’s Twin” from way back, and was it anything but this. He could see it, really, all he had to imagine was Roxas, turned up to eleven.

                Then there was Roxas, who was perfect in every single way—perfectly imperfect, of course. Axel had gotten over that particular mindset.

                And last but certainly not least was Xion, the lone girl of the sibling group, who was quiet but not unnoticeable. She just seemed to choose to listen more than speak, and when she did choose to speak, she had a similar quiet cheerfulness to Roxas. If Axel had to pick anyone as Roxas’s twin—based on personality and not weird sibling doppelgangers—it would have been Xion.

                This is what he gathered after the night had transpired and things had calmed down quite a bit.

                His initial experience was a lot less organized.

~~~

                He was greeted at the door by the gossip crew, which consisted of Sora and the mother, the latter of whom had much more tact in her prodding for information, while the first thing out of Sora’s mouth at seeing Axel was, “Holy shit, he really is that tall,” which was a pretty good tone setter for the rest of their conversation.

                Over the dinner table Sora had leaned forward, looking around the Roxas who was in between them, and said, “I know I just met you, but I feel like you’ve been basically living here for the past few years. I mean, Roxas talks about you so much, you’re like—“ and was presently interrupted by Roxas elbowing him in the side.

                “Shut up, Sora,” Roxas huffed, though Axel couldn’t help but notice that many of the other siblings seemed to have agreed with Sora’s statement.

                Sora stuck his tongue out at him, and Roxas—Axel’s heart couldn’t take this—stuck his tongue out back, and they started a momentary elbow/shove scuffle at the table before their mom said in that pointed tone, “Boys,” and the two of them settled down.

                Roxas grinned sheepishly at Axel after this, and Axel couldn’t help but smile back.

                Agreeing to this holiday was probably one of the best choices Axel had ever made.

                Besides responding to that text from a random number, of course.

~~~

                The whole family turned in early that night, the parents making joking references to Santa coming soon despite the youngest, Xion, being…well, Axel didn’t really know, but he was pretty sure she couldn’t have been any younger than fourteen. Regardless, Roxas managed to sneak him back to his room fairly early without much fuss from the family.

                Roxas shut his door behind them, and then immediately turned around and wrapped his arms around Axel, burying his face in his shirt. Axel held him close and smiled into his hair.

                “Your family is adorable,” Axel said, rubbing Roxas’s back.

                “Hrrmph,” went Roxas, approximately. “Yeah, I guess they’re not so bad.”

                Axel let him go, and leaned back slightly to try and see Roxas’s expression.

                “How are you?” he asked. “Was the teasing tolerable?”

                Roxas smiled, slightly. “Yeah,” he went, “It definitely wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I don’t think they ever really are, I just…you know, I start remembering every little thing they’ve ever said at some point and…yeah. They’re not really that bad.”

                “That’s good,” Axel said. “Though I think there was one thing about tonight that hasn’t been great.”

                Roxas looked up at him, frowning. “What?” he asked.

                “I haven’t gotten a chance to kiss you yet.”

                Roxas blinked, and then laughed, and wrapped his arms around Axel’s shoulders and pulled him down into a kiss.

                “There,” he said.

                “Yes,” went Axel. “Now everything is perfect.”

                Roxas laughed, shaking his head slightly, and then glanced at his bed.

                “Um,” he went, “Where would you like to sleep…?”

                “Where would I like to sleep?” Axel repeated. “Well, with you. Where would you like me to sleep?”

                Roxas grinned. “Yeah,” he said, “With me.”

~~~

                Axel found himself awake way too early in the morning, but he couldn’t make himself go back to sleep, even with Roxas snoozing soundly next to him. He laid there for a good fifteen minutes watching him, until he started to feel kind of creepy and carefully got up from the bed, doing his best not to jostle his sleeping beauty in any way.

                He pulled his coat on over his t-shirt and zipped it up before carefully venturing out into the hallway, checking both ways to make sure no one else was out there. He didn’t really mind Roxas’s family, but…well, running into them at the asscrack of dawn the day after he met them all might have been a little awkward.

                But when he left the hallway, it turned out someone was up. Xion was sitting in the living room, cross-legged on the floor and eating cereal out of a box while she—Axel assumed, he couldn’t really see the television from where he was standing—watched something on mute.

                “Hello,” he said, raising an eyebrow. Despite his own bizarre sleeping patterns, he found it odd that someone would be up at this time of day.

                Xion jumped, surprised at his presence, and Axel couldn’t help but feel a little bad for that.

                “Oh,” she said, “Um. Good morning, Axel.”

                “Good morning, Xion,” he said, stepping into the living room and turning to look at the television. Apparently she was watching cartoons. Well, each to their own.

                When he turned to look at her again, she was making some sort of face.

                Axel stared at her.

                “What?” he asked, frowning. Had he done something wrong? Was there something on his face? He couldn’t help but rub his nose slightly at the thought. Just in case.

                “Um,” went Xion, “You know…um, my name?”

                Well, that didn’t clear anything up at all. Of course Axel knew her name, he’d met everyone last night and—

                Oh. Wait.

                He put a hand over his mouth. Bad Axel.

                “I’m sorry,” he said, “Is that not what you go by around your family?”

                “Not yet,” she said, turning back to the television. “Um…did Roxas tell you?”

                “Yeah,” Axel said, hoping he wasn’t getting Roxas in trouble or anything. But really, Roxas probably shouldn’t have been going around telling other people in the first place, if he hadn't been given permission. “But, I mean, I’m trans too, so…”

                He glanced around the room again, to make extra sure there weren’t any eavesdroppers. Looks like he was safe.

                “Oh!” went Xion, eyes lighting up. “Really? I didn’t—I mean…so, are your preferred pronouns…?”

                Axel had to think about it for a second. Shit, what were those words again? He waved a hand vaguely as he waited for them to come to him. “Yeah,” he went, “He, him. Yours?”

                “Um. Well…” Xion turned back to her cereal and fumbled with the box. “She, her, ideally, but around family…he, for now…”

                “Sure thing,” Axel said. “And should I call you by a different name…?”

                Xion looked back up at him. “Do you know my birthname?”

                “Nope.”

                “Oh. Well, I think…I like it better that way. So you can just call me Xion. I don’t think that will raise any questions…”

                “Got it. And, hey, if you want to talk about any of this stuff, I’ll do what I can. I mean, you just met me so I know that’s kind of a weird offer, but, you know.”

                Xion laughed. “Alright,” she said. “I’ll keep that in mind. Besides, I have a feeling you’re going to be sticking around for a while anyways.”

                Axel’s heart skipped a beat, and he felt his face flush red.

                “Um,” he went, “D’you…really think so?”

                “Um-hm. Definitely.”

                Axel couldn’t help but grin.

                Oh. So this is what Christmas felt like.

~~~

                Axel ended up spending an hour or so with Xion, eating cereal and watching cartoons, before the rest of the family started waking up. The first one was Sora, who walked into the living room and immediately went, “Aw, man! I was sure I was gonna be the first one this year!” and then waited all of about five minutes before disappearing into the hallway that housed Roxas’s room and returning sometime later with a somewhat reluctant, sleepy, Roxas.

                Roxas immediately found Axel and joined him on the recliner that was just slightly too small for the both of them, which Axel didn’t mind in the slightest. Apparently sleepy Roxas cared a little less about the whole “family teasing” thing, and snuggled up to Axel easily.

                Or, maybe it was just that he was trying to get away with going back to sleep. Axel guessed it was probably the latter, considering how quickly he dozed off again.

                Sora seemingly wasn’t as willing to barge into the rest of the rooms in the house and drag people out of their beds, though, and instead went into the kitchen and started frying up a huge pan of bacon, which Axel though was a pretty effective way to do things, actually. Vanitas emerged from his room soon after, looking incredibly intimidating in his candy-cane printed pajama bottoms, and squinting up a storm. Considering how he turned off the light in the kitchen the moment he entered (to Sora’s very vocal protest, though it wasn’t like he did anything about it), Axel guessed that, yeah, the glasses were probably a necessary thing.

                The parents came out soon after to help Sora with the food aspect of things, and the last one out was Ventus—though had Axel been keeping score or anything, he wasn’t sure he would consider Ventus last, since Roxas was still passed out at his arm. He was out of his room, though, so he guessed that counted for something.

                Some sort of breakfast was put together, and Roxas finally stirred when more guests started showing up. Apparently Roxas’s family was popular—Axel was already there, and four other guests showed up besides him. Two people, Terra and Aqua, who seemed to be Ventus’s friends (from college—either their families were too far away to return for the holidays or there was another reason behind it, Axel couldn’t quite figure it out) and then two girls, one of which Axel recognized as Namine.

                He, admittedly, did not feel a great feeling at the sight of her, but he kept it to himself. It wasn’t so much Namine herself, after all—it was more the memories she brought up, and that wasn’t her fault at all. Axel could keep a hold of himself.

                The other girl was Kairi, who was apparently—god dammit—Namine’s twin.

                “How many sets of twins do you know?” Axel whispered to Roxas. “Is there something in the water in this town or what?”

                Somehow they all crammed themselves into the living room along with the absolutely overflowing pile of presents under the suddenly inadequate tree—and that seemed to describe the atmosphere of the family, as well. Overflowing with kindness and joy and, just…

                Family really could be a good thing, couldn’t it? Every once in a blue moon.

                Roxas finally had to leave his side when him, Sora, and Xion, being the youngest of the family, were tasked with distributing presents to everyone, which they did with startling efficiency.

                “They’re our own personal helper elves,” Roxas’s dad said, after Axel had commented on it. “You should have seen when Sora and Roxas were younger. They had little elf costumes and everything.”

                “Dad!” Roxas complained, looking up from his courier work to pout at the two of them. To his credit, his dad did apologize, even if it was somewhat jokingly.

                Once everything was distributed, Roxas came and sat down next to Axel again—and Axel had ended up with four presents in his lap. Four whole presents. He was expecting one, maybe, if Roxas had figured out something to get him, but—four! And he hardly even knew any of the family!

                Though, one of them was from Sora, and had a little devilish smiley face on the tag, so that was at least one thing he probably shouldn’t be feeling so…heartwarmed about.

~~~

                Roxas was blessedly easy to shop for, considering how much he talked about video games, Axel just got him one he had shown interest in in the past but apparently hadn’t gotten his hands on yet—and his delight was very apparent upon opening it.

                Axel’s four gifts were from Sora (as mentioned), “the family,” Namine (oddly), and, of course, Roxas.

                The gift from Sora was a CD from some pop singer, which must have been some sort of inside joke (not that Axel was surprised), because the second Roxas saw what it was he made a strangled noise and took it from him, shoving it down into a crevice in the chair and refusing to inform the rest of the family as to what it was. Meanwhile, Sora was laughing himself to tears across the room. Roxas threw a pillow at him to get him to shut up.

                The gift from “the family” was a set of gift cards to various places, which actually seemed surprisingly useful. He had been dreading pretending to be excited about some weird impersonal generic son-in-law gift (was that what he was, at that point?), but his thanks at this one was genuine.

                The one from Namine, which he was also dreading for a completely different reason, turned out to not be so bad either. It was a little, dimensions-wise, book about nail art, and a few different colors of polish. Axel grinned at Roxas, with a quiet, “Have you been gossiping about me?” and Roxas ended up mentioning that the colors included in the gift were actually his favorite. Axel thought he might actually come to like Namine someday. He was already on his way.

                Then there was the one from Roxas. Axel had been thinking about what could possibly be in it ever since Roxas had brought it over to him, but he couldn’t narrow it down at all. Which meant that, probably, he had been a pain in the neck to shop for, which he felt kind of bad about but, hey, what could you do?

                It turned out it was a scarf.

                It was a really big scarf and the yarn was really soft and colored in some sort of red-orange-yellow gradient and Axel already liked it when he noticed that parts of it seemed just ever so slightly uneven, and it wasn’t bad, but it marked it as probably not machine-made, and probably not made by an expert either, so maybe…

                He turned to Roxas an raised an eyebrow, and Roxas flushed red, and that was really all the answer that Axel needed. But, to make it perfectly clear, Sora decided to comment, “There’s love in every stitch!” and Roxas huffed, grinning regardless.

                Axel wrapped it around his neck and then wrapped his arms around Roxas, wishing he could kiss him but settling for what he could.

                “Thank youuu,” he said, trying to put everything he could into those words. “I love it.”

                “Well…I sure hope so…”

~~~

                Axel almost thought he’d gotten away without suffering any intimidating family talks, but while things were winding down and guests were beginning to filter out, Vanitas got his attention by cornering him in a hallway and staring him down from behind his tinted eyeglasses.

                “Um,” went Axel, “Can I help you?”

                “How old are you?”

                Axel frowned.

                “Twenty five, the last time I checked. Why?”

                “Roxas is still a teenager.”

                “Um…yeah, I’ve noticed that. Trust me, we’ve been over this. Come give me the intimidating brother talk if he actually says he’s uncomfortable, alright? I’ll be more than happy to listen then.”

                He tried to side-step out of the situation, but Vanitas continued blocking his way.

                Axel crossed his arms, and Vanitas frowned.

                Then he poked Axel in his chest, just barely hard enough to hurt.

                “Take care of him,” he said, and then walked off.

                Axel watched him go, rubbing his sternum irritatedly.

                Well, that…could have gone worse.

~~~

                Axel didn’t really know how to describe Roxas’s particular brand of affection.

                Or, maybe he did.

                Roxas was kind of like a cat. Not like one of those grumpy off-putting cats who would yowl at you if you touched them, but like a…mildly friendly cat. He’d more often than not return Axel’s affections when they were presented, and only rarely brushed him off—though Axel was more than happy to dial down when he was asked—but he didn’t generally initiate things. Not generally, meaning nine times out of ten he wouldn’t, but that tenth time always came as a surprise. He got really super cuddly and affectionate sometimes, and Axel wondered if it was just a matter of reserve energy or something like that.

                But whatever the case was, Roxas was hard to read. Axel resorted to outright asking about most things before he did them.

                For example, when Roxas was spending the night, and Axel figured it was high time for the question—

                “Hey, Roxas. How do you feel about sex?”

                Roxas sat up on the bed from his place mostly-on-top-of his boyfriend, and stared at Axel liked he’d just grown a second head. Axel put his hands up in a ‘surrender’ motion.

                “Just asking. You know, for future reference. I want to know what you’re comfortable with. Or…aren’t comfortable with.”

                Roxas frowned.

                “Well,” he said, “I don’t know. I’ve never done it.”

                “Hmm,” went Axel. “I know some people with pretty strong opinions about sex who’ve never had it.”

                “Yeah…”

                Roxas rubbed the back of his neck, staring down at the bed sheet.

                “I don’t know,” he said, again. “I feel like…I should…try at some point…just to see.”

                “ ‘Feel like you should’ and ‘want to’ are two very different things.”

                Roxas laughed, slightly, obviously less amused than uncomfortable.

                “I guess you’re right,” he said. “Um…I guess…maybe someday?” He looked up at Axel, smiling somewhat, and then looked back down at the bed to frown again. “That’s probably not what you wanted to hear…”

                Axel sat up, and took his hand. Roxas turned his and intertwined their fingers. Axel smiled.

                “I wasn’t looking for anything in particular,” he said. “I just wanted to know how you felt. And you told me. So…” He pat Roxas’s arm awkwardly. “Good job. A plus.”

                Roxas laughed, and squeezed his hand.

                “Yeah, alright,” he said. He looked up at Axel, smile fading slightly. “Are you…sure, though? I mean…I could probably come up with a more definitive answer…maybe…”

                Axel shook his head.

                “It’s fine. I’m sure. I’m super sure. I’ll just…take it as a standing ‘no,’ but if you ever change your mind I won’t be surprised. Alright?”

                Roxas nodded slightly.

                “I guess that works…”

                Axel tilted his head, not sure how to get more than an “I guess” from him. He wanted Roxas to feel better about this, but…well, maybe “I guess” was the best he was going to get.

                “And if you don’t completely change your mind then that’s okay too. We can try some things out and stop whenever you want to. I mean, the stopping whenever you want to is something that’s true for everything ever, but, you know. It’s worth saying,” he added anyways.

                Roxas laughed, and shoved Axel’s shoulder, lightly.

                “Alright, alright,” he said. “Lay back down. I was comfortable.”

                Axel flopped backwards, and Roxas crawled back on him again, laying his head down on Axel’s chest.

                Yeah, Roxas was definitely like a cat.

~~~

                Axel: “Hello sunshine, darling, light of my life, how are you? How’s school? How’s family? I love you.”

                Roxas: “Hello Axel :’)”

                “I love you too! I’m doing pretty good things haven’t really started up yet at school…everyone’s tired from the break…”

                “We’re just getting a lot of college stuff pushed on us at this point. I haven’t completed any applications yet and I probably should…”

                Axel: “Oh”

                “I guess you’re probably going to college then? Where’re you thinking?”

                Roxas: “Idk out of state probably, I’m applying to the university here because I could go for cheap and…you know my grades aren’t great…but I’d kind of like to get away from home for a while you know?”

                Axel: “Yeah that makes sense…”

                “I’ll help you fill things out if you need”

                “I mean I don’t know anything about filling out college stuff but I helped you with your math homework so who knows”

                Roxas: “thanks!! I’ll keep that in mind”

                “love you”

                Axel: “duh.”

~~~

                Well. Axel was glad they hadn’t had that conversation face-to-face. It was a lot easier to text like you weren’t about to cry than it was to hide your emotions up close and personal.

                Roxas was going to college.

                Axel stared at his phone, and leaned against his wall, swallowing past the lump in his throat. He was going away, probably to a different state, and he was going to be far away and Axel wasn’t going to get to see him and…

                What if he met someone else there? What if he met someone more stable than Axel and less clingy and more—

                Axel ran a hand over his face, taking a deep breath.

                He knew he shouldn’t be thinking these things. He knew—he told himself—that Roxas wouldn’t do that, that Roxas loved him (didn’t he always tell him that?) and would stay with him for—well, who knows.

                Who knows…

                What if, though?

                He couldn’t not think about the what if’s.

~~~

                Roxas had moved himself to Axel’s lap and Axel couldn’t be happier about this development, wrapping his arms around Roxas waist and holding him close as he kissed down his jaw to his neck and then back up again, brushing his lips over the skin under Roxas’s ear and grinning when his breath caught.

               Roxas put his hands on Axel’s jaw and held his head still to kiss him properly, and Axel was more than okay with this, leaning forward, parting his lips slightly, tongue prodding at Roxas’s, urging him to do the same—and Roxas did, somewhat haltingly following Axel’s lead until—

                He moved his hands from Axel’s face down to his shoulders and pushed, slightly.

                Axel stopped, righting himself, and frowned.

                “Is something wrong?” he asked.

                Roxas stared at his hands, then brought one up to cover his face, and leaned down to bury his face in Axel’s shoulder. Axel laughed, hopefully not cruelly, and brought a hand up to pat Roxas’s head.

                He hadn’t done anything wrong, had he? He hadn’t noticed Roxas wanting him to stop before that, but maybe…?

                Roxas took a moment, then sat up, frowning.

                “You okay?” Axel asked, again.

                “Um,” went Roxas, finally using his words, “Yeah, sorry…”

                “There’s nothing to apologize for,” Axel said. “Do you want to do something else?”

                Roxas frowned.

                “No,” he said. “Just…it’s kind of…weird…”

                “Weird?” asked Axel. “What’s weird? Something in particular?”

                “Yeah,” went Roxas, looking to the side. “The…tongue thing…”

                Axel grinned. Well, that wasn’t too bad. “Yeah? Okay. We don’t have to do that.”

                Roxas turned to look at him, and blinked. “Really?” he said. “I mean…I…I don’t know. Really?”

                “Sure,” said Axel. “Were you expecting a different answer?”

                Roxas shrugged, and thought about it for a moment.

                “I don’t know,” he said. “It just seems like…I don’t know. I don’t want to make you stop doing things just ‘cause I’m a little weirded out by them…”

                Axel frowned at him.

                “You’re not making me,” he said. He wasn’t sure how he was supposed to say this. Did Roxas really think…? What did Roxas think? “I don’t want to do things that make you uncomfortable. It’s not that I don’t want you to get upset at me or…well, I obviously don’t want you to get upset with me either, but I mostly just don’t want to make you uncomfortable. You know? Does that make sense?”

                Roxas hummed, and then sighed.

                “It’s—“ Axel started, but Roxas lifted a hand up and put a finger over Axel’s lips.

                “Okay,” said Roxas. “We should go back to kissing.”

                “Oh,” went Axel. “Well, if you insist.”

~~~

                Roxas, for all intents and purposes, thought things were going pretty well.

                He had been scared before that Axel would have changed, or not liked him anymore or—be mad at him or something, but he hadn’t. They did have a conversation about how Axel had felt in those months where they stopped talking, and he said that he was still working on that, but overall he said he was just glad Roxas was there, now—and that seemed…good. If things were too perfect Roxas would be worrying, but things were just perfect enough. Good with a few bumps, and they could get over bumps.

                Couldn’t they?

~~~

                Roxas had decided to take Axel up on his offer to help with applications. After all, Roxas had all he needed, really, he just needed help focusing and actually filling out all the various essay questions colleges had decided to ask, which seemed to him to be completely pointless.

                And, if there was anything Axel was an expert on, it was Roxas, so he figured he would be some help.

                (Axel was also an expert in a few other things, which Roxas was slowly discovering. Nail art, obviously, but he was also an astounding cook when he put his mind to it, and Roxas had a feeling there were a few other tricks he was hiding under his sleeves, so to speak. He had actually performed a card trick for him once, so that figure of speech might not have been so figurative after all.)

                The first thing Axel had done was flip through the tabs on Roxas’s computer, looked at all of the places he was applying to, gone “hm,” and then asked Roxas what the needed help with.

                He didn’t seem weird at first, but Roxas started to notice after a while that he was being uncharacteristically quiet.

                “Um,” went Roxas, pausing in the middle of typing out an outline. “Are you alright?”

                Axel raised his eyebrows and looked over at him. “Huh?” he went. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

                Roxas frowned. He couldn’t really believe that.

                “Are you sure?” he asked. “You seem…I don’t know. We can do something else if you want…”

                Axel sat up straighter and focused his attention on the laptop screen.

                “Well, I mean, this isn’t exactly the most thrilling thing in the world, sure,” he said, “but you should definitely work on it, right? So. You know. Let’s do this.”

                “Hmm,” went Roxas, looking back at his laptop screen. He didn’t want to push if Axel didn’t want to talk about it, but… “You’d tell me if something was wrong, right?” he asked.

                Axel’s silence was enough of an answer.

                Roxas tilted his laptop screen down, and then turned to face Axel, frowning.

                “Is it something I did?” he asked.

                “No!” Axel said immediately, and then attempted something of a reassuring smile. “It’s…really, it’s nothing. I’m just…worrying over stupid stuff again. I’ll get over it.”

                “What kind of stupid stuff?”

                Axel shrugged, and Roxas sighed, opening his computer again and reluctantly turning back to his outline.

                “Fine,” he said, slowly typing out another word. “You don’t have to tell me about it if you don’t want. But…” he glanced at Axel for a moment. “I’d rather you talk to me about these things, you know? Even if I can’t do anything to make you feel better, I like knowing what’s bothering you. So if…I don’t know, if it’s just really something you don’t want to tell me about then that’s fine, but if you feel like you’re bothering me…you’re really, really not.”

                Axel frowned. Then he leaned over onto Roxas, slowly at first, but then going completely limp.

                “Axel…!” Roxas went, laughing slightly, “what are you doing?”

                He wiggled around to push him up, and Axel let him struggle for a moment, but then sat himself up. He turned the laptop to himself, and went to one of the applications.

                Roxas frowned, and leaned over to try and see what Axel was doing, but he turned the laptop more to hide it.

                “What’re you doing…”

                “Best, boyfriend, ever, award,” Axel said, as he typed something pointedly. “Awarded by institution: Axel, given…today.”

                Roxas laughed, and took his laptop back, to see that Axel had actually typed things to that point in one of the “special achievement” boxes. Roxas deleted it.

                “What’s my prize for being the best boyfriend ever, then?” he asked, grinning.

                Axel thought about it for a moment, and then slowly brought up a hand to point at…himself.

                “Me,” he said.

                Roxas laughed, and stretched up for a moment to kiss his face.

                “In that case,” Roxas said, “I accept.”

Chapter Text

                They were laying together, not really napping, just laying there, Roxas’s head on Axel’s shoulder, messing with the hair at the base of his neck. Axel seemed to be having trouble being that idle, and his hands were…wandering. He went from playing with Roxas’s hair to fingers traveling along his arms, finding Roxas’s free hand and fiddling with his fingers, tracing lines down Roxas’s back and then finding the inch of skin where Roxas’s shirt had risen up over his back and brushing his fingers against it lightly—Roxas gasped, and then laughed softly, burying his face in Axel’s shoulder.

                “Nooo,” he went, though he couldn’t help but grin. “That tickles.”

                Axel’s hand stilled, and then spread out, laying flat on his back.

                “So don’t do that?” he asked.

                “Mm,” Roxas agreed, vaguely. “Don’t do that.”

                Axel lifted his hand up, and then dragged his nails across Roxas’s back instead, too firmly to tickle but nowhere near hard enough to hurt.

                “Is this better?”

                Roxas went limp on him, and hummed appreciatively.

                “Yes,” he said, “Do that forever.”

                Axel laughed, and proceeded to do so, dragging his hand back and forth across his back for a while until, at some point, Roxas noticed that his shirt was riding up further and further, and he made a quiet noise of surprise. Axel’s hand stopped.

                “Is something wrong?”

                Roxas thought about it for a moment, and then propped himself up on an elbow to look Axel in the face.

                “Are you trying to take my shirt off?” he asked, smirking. Axel stared at him for a moment, and then shrugged, slowly.

                “Well,” he went, “I wasn’t really planning to, but I can’t say I’d be opposed to that outcome.”

                Roxas laughed, and then sat up, to Axel’s immediate disappointment, but his expression soon changed when Roxas tugged his shirt over his head, tossed it away, and laid back down, returning his head to Axel’s shoulder.

                Axel paused for a moment, but then both his hands found Roxas’s back, tracing over his shoulders and down his spine and back up again…Roxas felt that he might actually fall asleep if this kept up for much longer.

                Though there was one thing keeping him from being completely relaxed, a question he wanted to ask, that he wasn’t quite sure how to phrase. He didn’t want to upset Axel, but…if it was just a question…

                “I guess,” he started, slowly, “it’s…a little different for you. Um.” Great, how was he supposed to say this. “The…shirt thing.”

                Axel was quiet for a moment, but then he laughed, which wasn’t the worst outcome.

                “The ‘shirt thing,’ “ Axel repeated, sounding amused. “Yeah, you’re right, it is a little different for me.”

                Roxas nodded, slowly. He supposed that was the end of the conversation.

                Axel, however, seemed to have a different opinion.

                “Why?” he asked, “Do you want to level the playing field?”

                Roxas laughed at the phrasing. “Um,” he went, “I mean, yeah, I guess, but…not if you’d be uncomfortable or anything.”

                “Hmmm,” went Axel, and Roxas felt the vibrations in his chest as he did so. “I’d be a little uncomfortable, yeah.”

                “Oh,” went Roxas. He felt a little…he wasn’t sure. He hoped that Axel would be able to feel comfortable around him, but he supposed they weren’t quite there yet. Or maybe they would never get there. Either way…

                “But,” went Axel, “Well…hm. Let me think about this.”

                Roxas shifted his head slightly to look at him, as Axel stared up at the ceiling, worrying at his lip. Which was…really, really cute. God, Axel was adorable.

                “Ah, well,” went Axel, after a few seconds of pondering, “Fuck it. Get up for a second.”

                Roxas blinked, and then sat up, resting back on his feet.

                Axel sat up after him, and then pulled his shirt off, carefully, especially the sleeves, and dropped it on the bed.

                It didn’t seem like he knew what to do after that. He looked down and fiddled with his fingers, then picked at a bandage on his arm, and then after taking a deep breath, he glanced over at Roxas, suddenly seeming very, very vulnerable.

                It wasn’t…surprising. Roxas knew, in his head, what it was that Axel usually kept hidden under his clothes, but it was something different actually seeing it. His binder, his arms—for the first time in clear light—scarred and…newly bandaged.

                He felt a little sad, a little worried, a little of a lot of things, but mostly he just felt…love. This was Axel, and Axel trusted him enough to show him this, and really, what more could Roxas ask for?

                Roxas grinned, and Axel followed suit, self-conscious look turning to a nervous smile, and he laughed slightly. Roxas put his hands on Axel’s shoulders, nudging him back. Axel obliged, and laid down again so Roxas could return to his previous position.

                “Still nervous?” he asked, though he could feel Axel’s heart beating hard against his chest.

                “A little,” Axel answered.

                “Hmm,” went Roxas. “Fair enough.”

                He scooted himself up and propped up on his elbows to kiss Axel, and he wrapped his arms around Roxas and though he could feel the rough skin and the bandages against his back, Axel was warm, and it was wonderful.

                Roxas set his forehead against Axel’s.

                “I love you,” he said.

                Axel laughed, and kissed Roxas once more, and then grinned.

                “Oh,” he said. “Thank god.”

~~~

                It was weird. To have everything going so, so very right, and yet so horribly wrong. Axel loved Roxas, he loved him with all his being and was sure—was so sure that it was alright this time, that he wasn’t being selfish or controlling or anything like that, and he knew Roxas loved him back, he was absolutely positive of it but—

                That just made it all that much worse. And it was getting harder to hide.

                He couldn’t just change the subject every time Roxas brought up college. It was a huge part of Roxas’s life now—applications, considering different places, trying to figure out what he wanted to major in, what classes he wanted to take…even if Roxas wasn’t all that interested, it was apparently the only thing that his high school was talking about in this last semester of their senior year, so it couldn’t be avoided.

                Which meant he was talking about it to Axel a lot.

                And Axel had to offer support—which he wanted to, he really, really wanted to help Roxas through this—while pretending that he didn’t feel like complete shit.

                It was only a matter of time before Roxas noticed, really.

                But it was Axel that broke first anyways.

                Roxas was talking about applications, about how he had most of them done, he was just wrapping a few up and he was going to send them off soon, and...

                Axel’s eyes started watering, completely without his consent, and he tried to wipe the tears away inconspicuously but of course Roxas noticed, of course he did, and he frowned, story trailing off.

                “Axel,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

                Not even ‘are you okay,’ just, ‘what’s wrong.’ Great.

                “Uh,” went Axel. “Would you believe me if I said there’s something in my eye?”

                Roxas sighed, and shook his head.

                “You keep doing this,” he said. “It’s really obvious something’s been bothering you and I wanted to let you figure it out yourself because, it didn’t seem like you wanted to talk to me about it, but…please, Axel? I’m worried.”

                “Yeah,” Axel said, quietly. “It’s just…”

                He frowned at his table. He didn’t feel like he was allowed to feel this way. He definitely didn’t want to feel this way, but it didn’t seem like he was going to stop, and he couldn’t just keep saying it was nothing because then Roxas would get mad and—

                No. Roxas wasn’t going to get mad. Maybe frustrated. Definitely worried. But…not mad. Roxas wouldn’t get angry at him.

                Axel sighed.

                “It’s just,” he started, “I…I’m really happy for you. Really. That you’re…going to college, and all of this, and I bet you’re going to go somewhere wonderful and do great and, really enjoy yourself and…stuff, but…it’s just…”

                He huffed, rubbing at his eyes.

                “You’re going so far away…”

                He bit his lip, trying not to whimper as the reality of the statement finally hit him. Saying it made it that much more real and he really, really didn’t want to think about it.

                Roxas put a hand on his arm. Axel didn’t want to look at him.

                “It’s only a few hours,” he said. “I’ll be coming home a lot…”

                “I know, but…”

                Axel huffed, shaking his head.

                “I know I shouldn’t feel this way, I know it’s just…stupid, but…I’m afraid you’ll forget about me and make new friends and just…I want you to make new friends! But. I’m just…I’m scared.”

                He set his forehead on the table, and closed his eyes, trying to make the bad feelings go away. He didn’t want Roxas to have to deal with this. It wasn’t fair.

                Roxas put a hand on his back and rubbed circles into it, which was…nice.

                “I know it’s selfish,” he started, voice echoing off the table, “But…could you make sure to call me when you can? And…text me and…come visit me, when…during breaks, when you’re not with your family…once you leave…”

                Roxas, of all things, laughed, and Axel blinked, turning his head to look at him.

                “Axel,” Roxas said, grinning, “Of course I will. I’m going to miss you, too, you know. And maybe I will make new friends, but I’m still going to love you. I’m still going to be friends with all of my friends that I have here, and I’m still going to want to be with you. I promise.”

                Axel sniffled, anxiety slowly fading away to be replaced by…embarrassment, for one. He felt kind of silly for worrying about this now.

                He held out one of his pinkies to Roxas.

                “Pinkie promise?” he asked.

                Roxas smiled, and linked his finger with Axel’s.

                “Yeah,” he said.

                Axel sighed, and sat up, and wiped his face with his sleeves.

                “I’m sorry,” he said. “I just…get worried that people are going to leave me. And I know you won’t. Barring some…horrible thing, I know you don’t want to do that…but…”

                He laughed, slightly, despite himself.

                “I don’t really get to pick how to feel about these things.”

                “Yeah,” said Roxas. “That’s…okay. Really.”

                Axel nodded, looking down at his lap.

                Then he scooted over and wrapped his arms around Roxas, holding him tight. Roxas laughed, and hugged Axel too.

                “I’m going to miss you so much,” Axel said, burying his face in Roxas’s hair.

                Roxas rubbed his back.

                “I’m gonna miss you, too,” he said. Then he leaned back slightly, and Axel let go.

                Roxas looked up at him.

                “Will you…” he started, and then frowned, and looked away. “I mean, you don’t have to, but…I’d like it if you…told me what was bothering you…more often. If that’s okay.”

                Axel sighed. He leaned over, and placed a kiss on Roxas’s forehead.

                “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll try.”

~~~

                Despite all of that, Axel cried a little more than he’d like to admit when everyone was finally seeing Roxas off. He’d helped pack what Roxas needed to bring, along with the rest of his family (so there really wasn’t much for him to do, between the various siblings), and played at refusing to let Roxas go afterwards, hugging him and waiting a little too long to let go once Roxas had.

                “Come on, Axel,” Roxas said, laughing and pushing at him slightly. Axel let him go and conjured up the mopiest face known to mankind. Apparently he was just going to be childish about this, but it was easier to do this than show how he really felt.

                Roxas grabbed Axel’s shirt and tugged on it, urging him to lean over. Axel did, and Roxas kissed him, despite the various family members hovering around like worker bees.

                Axel smiled, he had to, and Roxas sighed, looking down at the ground. Then he dug around in his pockets for a moment, and Axel frowned, wondering what he could be missing.

                “Give me your hand,” Roxas mumbled, and Axel stared at him for a moment, before holding out his hand, not sure what he was supposed to be doing.

                Roxas used one of his hands to cover up what we was doing, shielding the events from family eyes, and then slipped a ring onto Axel’s finger.

                Axel stared down at it.

                “Um,” he went.

                Roxas blushed bright red.

                “This is just,” he started, “It’s…just. Keep this for me until I get back, okay?”

                Axel grinned, and Roxas refused to meet his eyes.

                “Sure,” he said. “I’ll take good care of it.”

                Roxas nodded a few times, and then finally looked back up at Axel, and—oh. His eyes were glistening, threatening to start shedding tears at any moment.

                “And take care of yourself, too. That’s the most important thing.”

                Axel nodded, and said, “I promise,” and then Roxas was hugging him again, and Axel felt a little less ridiculous.

                He wrapped his arms around him, and kissed the side of his head.

                “See you in a few months, okay?” he said. Roxas nodded, and let him go, and finally, at length, left.

                Axel stood in the driveway with the rest of the family, quiet in Roxas’s departure.

                It was Xion, surprisingly, who broke the silence.

                “Are you going to be okay?” she asked, placing a hand lightly on Axel’s arm, looking up at him with those big blue eyes of hers.

                He thought about it for a moment.

                “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I think I am.”

Chapter Text

                Roxas sent him pictures of everything. The campus, his dorm room, his roommate (though the picture wasn’t entirely clear, it was pretty obvious it was sneak shot), the food there, a few of the classrooms…Axel almost felt like he was there himself. Almost. Sort of.

                Well, not really, but that didn’t stop him from scrolling through the pictures every once and a while and grinning at his phone, probably with the dopiest look ever on his face, as evidenced by Larxene snatching his phone away.

                “Stop texting your boyfriend on our date,” she said, from across the table. Axel stuck his tongue out at her and took his phone back—and she obviously let him, otherwise he would never have been able to get his hands on it again.

                “Make me,” he said, nevertheless putting his phone away.

                Larxene rolled her eyes, picking at her french fries absently.

                “So,” she said. “He’s been texting you a lot, then?”

                “Yeah,” went Axel. “A whole lot. Why?”

                She shrugged, scooting her unfinished fries over to Axel. He took a few and then returned the plate.

                “I’m sort of wondering how you’re going to feel when he stops texting you so much. I mean, I doubt he’ll stop, but he’s not going to be able to keep up with this constant communication forever.”

                Axel sat back, and frowned.

                “Well, I don’t know,” he said. “I never know how I’m going to feel until something actually happens. But…”

                He shrugged, and pulled out his phone again without really realizing he was doing it. There wasn’t anything new.

                “I feel like I’m going to be okay,” he said. He smiled, slightly. Yeah. He’d be fine.

                “Really?” said Larxene, raising an eyebrow. “I mean, that’s…good. But. I don’t know, I’m surprised, honestly. I felt like you’d be reacting worse than this. I mean, after what happened with…you know. Before Roxas’s birthday…”

                “Yeah, yeah,” Axel went, scrunching his nose up. “I know. That was way different, though. It’s…he said he’d miss me, and that’s…I mean, that’s basically it. That’s the whole difference. He misses me, too, so it’s okay that I miss him, and I know he’ll come back and see me again. That’s why he gave me this.”

                Axel held out his hand with the ring on it, twiddling his fingers and grinning. “He said to take care of it for him. So I know I at least get to see him one more time. And as long as I know that, I’m okay. And…” he set his hand down, shrugging. “I still have you, and Demyx, and everyone else. I don’t know. I feel…”

                He looked up at the ceiling.

                “I feel like. Even if something did happen, I’d be okay. It’s weird, isn’t it?”

                He looked back at Larxene, frowning.

                “I thought I’d feel horrible again and hole myself up in my room for a week trying to get used to Roxas being gone, but…I didn’t. I’m a little sad, but I’m okay. I haven’t felt like this since…I don’t know. I can’t even remember.”

                Larxene stared at him for a moment. And then—this was a moment for the ages—she smiled. Not a smirk, but an actual, genuine smile.

                “Wow,” she said. “That’s…I’m happy for you. Really.”

                Axel nodded, and looked down at his hand, messing with the ring on his finger.

                He loved Roxas.

                He loved him so, so much—but he wasn’t the only thing. He loved his friends, and the families he’d been welcomed into, and so many other things.

                And that’s how he knew it was real.

                Roxas wasn’t perfect. Roxas wasn’t his one and only. Roxas was just…Roxas. And that was enough. That was so, so much more than enough.

                Larxene reached out and took his hand, and Axel blinked, looking up at her. She spread his fingers out, and examined the ring.

                “…you know,” she said, “I bet I know what this ring thing is about.”

                Axel frowned, and looked at the ring. What it was about? It was just Roxas saying he’d come back and visit him, wasn’t it?

                “What do you mean…?” Axel said, slowly.

                “I bet,” said Larxene, “He was going to propose to you, but then chickened out at the last minute.”

                Axel’s mouth fell open.

                “Really?!” he said, probably a little too loudly, leaning forward. “Do you think so? Do you think he wants to?”

                Larxene laughed, sitting back in her chair. “Hell if I know,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised, though. That kid is head-over-heels in love with you.”

                “He’s not a kid anymore,” Axel said, meaning to put up more of a protest but now too distracted by the band around his finger.

                He ran his fingers over it a few times, ridges running against his skin.

                Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

~~~

                4:33 pm. It was 4:33 pm on a Wednesday, and it had snowed not a few hours prior. But now the sky was clearing up and the gray clouds were drifting away to reveal the sun slowly sinking towards the horizon, fresh snow glittering in the light.

                Roxas leaned on Axel’s shoulder, and Axel put an arm around him, holding him close. It was cold, but neither of them wanted to go back home. They could wait, at least, until the sun set, until the park stopped looking like a piece of heaven on Earth. Their noses would probably survive.

                One of Roxas’s hands fiddled with something in his pocket. A small box, which he opened, and shut, and opened, and shut, feeling the resistance as it clicked softly, too quietly to really be heard.

                “Hey, Axel,” he said, voice quiet, but so loud in the stillness surrounding them.

                “Hmm?” he answered.

                Roxas’s heart beat hard against his chest, and he swallowed, working up his nerve.

                “Do you ever think about…getting married?”

                Axel was silent for a moment, and Roxas felt like it stretched on forever.

                “Yeah,” he said, eventually. “A little.”