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Sora doesn’t know how he managed to be caught so off guard. His attacker must have been watching him, waiting for the perfect in — alone, without the support of his friends, momentarily distracted by thoughts of far off people. All it had taken was a single moment of carelessness and he was easy work. On his back, on the ground, everything hurts and he just doesn’t have the energy to magically Cure himself anymore. Exhausted. Nothing left with which to fight. He grips the Keyblade regardless.
Axel is standing over him. The Nobody stares down at the Somebody with sharp, sharp eyes the color of shards of jade. Sora is in the way. He has Roxas, and Axel wants Roxas — more than anything. He would cut him out of the youth before him with his teeth. He sneers savagely as he closes the distance between them, small as it is, as though prowling.
Sora tries to scramble backwards at Axel’s approach, but he’s got so little left, and the ground he makes is swiftly eaten up by the other. Seeing those blades get closer has his heart beating fast, his whole body bracing itself for a last stand against their killing bite. But that isn’t what happens. Axel straddles his intended victim, the twin chakrams in his hands vanishing as he does. He grips the front of Sora’s shirt tightly and drags him up to meet himself. “You’ve got an awful lot of nerve.”
They’re so close that Sora can feel the lingering heat of Axel’s Fire magic on his clothes, and then closer still, weight bearing down on the younger’s injured body. In spite of the confusion and fear, it’s defiance that wins out, a snarl on his face. (So like his face.) The grip he’s got of the Keyblade doesn’t falter. His other hand braces on one of Axel’s. He’s got to wait for an opening if he stands any chance at all. “Yeah? How d’you figure?”
But Axel won’t give him that opening. Victory is already his, and he is by no means stupid enough to let it be taken away from him after the fact. The snarl on Sora’s proud face infuriates him, makes it all the worse. His body is filled with fire and it burns him from the inside out, so that it consumes him and every little thing he touches. It’s no wonder he could never like anybody but Roxas. There’s nobody else he could possibly like. All anybody else could do is be set on fire by his presence. His teeth are bared as he stares down into rebellious eyes. “Showing up again and again with that face, wearing it like you have any right to it. Makes me want to tear it off of you.”
Sora’s heart is pounding. He’s had a lot of people look at him in a lot of different ways, but it’s never felt so personal as the intensity of the hate in the green gaze staring down at him. That fire, too hot to touch, which radiates from Axel’s skin into Sora’s. He might burn him alive.
“It’s the only face I’ve got,” he retorts. “You’re going to have to get used to it sooner or later.”
Like he doesn’t have an inkling of what Axel means. He does, in a way. He’s picked up on why they keep calling him Roxas; he just doesn’t want to admit it to himself, because that would mean he really is keeping someone locked away inside him. An idea as hot to the touch as Axel himself.
If possible, Axel grips Sora’s hoodie even harder, giving it a savage jerk upwards. There is no room for games anymore. The rogue Organization member is so singularly fixed on the point that he can’t possibly see anything else. Yet even focused, fire destroys all in its path indiscriminately. “I don’t intend to let you live long enough to get used to it. I’m going to take you apart myself, piece by piece.”
Perhaps the swiftest way to wake him up. Or... in his brashness, might another solution be readily available to him? The taste lost to his nothing tongue and his nothing lips seems to taunt him. He snarl does not soften as he reaches to viciously grip spiky brown hair.
Sora cries out, his back arching, his own hands snapping around the one still holding him by the hoodie. The grip of his hair hurts, but his own defiant expression doesn’t falter. He’s been closer to death before and never given up. He doesn’t intend to start now. (If that thought that keeps flitting through his head is true, would killing him even accomplish what Axel thinks it would? It takes specific circumstances to make a Heartless, and the body has to be intact to become a Nobody — right? He’s not stupid, but he’s no scholar. The reports that come into his hands are way beyond him, though he reads them anyway. He’s always been playing a game to which he doesn’t entirely understand all the rules.)
He sweeps his arm up to strike at Axel with the hilt of the Keyblade. Axel dismisses it with a swift and furious kick, righted like he hadn’t been crouching over Sora an instant prior. An easy demonstration of the power that even the most unsuspecting Organization member possesses. They are not things to be trifled with. Sora cries out as the Keyblade spins away from him on the brick.
“Watch yourself! I’m only giving you one chance!” Axel barks, eyes wild. He’s a desperate Nobody. There’s something he wants badly to protect.
Sora could summon his Keyblade back to himself. He doesn’t. There’s something about the way Axel says that which seems to forbid it. He’s also not the type to roll over to anybody, but he is the type to follow what his heart says. Right now his heart says don’t fight. Deep blue eyes look back up at Axel (just like his), but he lets his arm lower, propping himself up on his elbows but not trying to stand.
“One chance to do what?” Understanding. Not understanding. Trying to understand. Isn’t he himself running all over creation, fighting countless Heartless and Nobodies, risking his very being, just to find one person he cares about?
Upon him once more, Axel gives Sora a harsh shake, needlessly rough, and he brings his face up to the boy’s, so that they are dangerously close together. He could bite. He could rend. Axel doesn’t do these things to Sora just then. There is more to this. Layers that go down deep. A need for that one person that cannot be accurately broken down into mere words.
“Submit to me.” He does not give Sora the chance to answer before he is ferociously kissing him on the mouth.
Sora inhales sharply through his nose, hands half—lifted, eyes widening like he could somehow make it make sense if he looked closely enough. He’s dazed from being shaken so violently, but all the more so from the way the Nobody’s mouth crashes into his. It overcomes him in his entirety, seems to fill him up with that fire that burns Axel so brightly. He’s never been kissed, except for a quick, childish little peck on the lips when he was younger. It was from Kairi — though the strong, masculine form now viciously bearing down on him calls more to Riku, always the bigger of the two, possessor of strength Sora admired and desired in equal measure. But he suddenly feels certain that his body has known this mouth, has known the touch of the broad, possessive hands that grip him. He feels it deep within him, knows it as certainly as he can know anything in his heart.
And he is just as sure, suddenly, that what Axel wants is inside him. There ceases to be a question of it. It must be the part of him that is Roxas that strains in him, has the hairs on his arms on end, makes his skin hot. That feeling that he couldn’t define meets with his fear and in the middle he is left feeling like the ground underneath him has vanished, leaving him with nothing except Axel holding onto him and keeping him from plunging down into whatever is there. He neither reciprocates nor pulls away.
But he doesn’t have to reciprocate — Axel feels enough for the both of them. His fire burns bright enough, hot enough, tall enough to light the way. His pyre is ready; he needs only Roxas. Can he feel this? Is he listening? Does the kiss echo far enough down? Surely Roxas must react to him. He has to know. He’s in there, waiting for Axel, just beyond reach.
And so he must be. Sora can feel him deep within — a sudden, overwhelming yearning, far more painful than any injury he sustained in their fight. It isn’t his to feel yet he feels it anyway, tight in his heart, welling up inside him until he feels so full of it that he can’t bear anymore, and all that comes out of him for it is a tear that rolls down his cheek. The force of it scares him more than being kissed by a murderous Nobody. He would let Roxas out to give that answer, if he could. Maybe he could if he tried, but not without sacrificing something in return, something he just can’t afford to give. There’s no easy switch to flip.
He finds himself following the lead of that feeling anyway. Movements that aren’t his, either, hands coming to grip Axel’s arms less like an anchor and more like a lifeline. (Memories that aren’t his, ones he can’t quite grasp that slip through his fingers like water, of this fire and these bodies. Thoughts that aren’t his, one that rises up loud at the front: hey! Don’t go kissing other guys right in front of me!) He lets this force press back into Axel’s kiss. It’s like something else uses his body to reciprocate, and he lets it.
This is what Axel was looking for, and he accepts it eagerly. He can feel Roxas; even if some of the details are not quite right, he could never forget how this feels. It’s his, what’s underneath him, and he takes it forcefully, with heat radiating off of his body. To Hell with Organizaion 13. Nothing ever mattered except for Roxas anyway. There was never another who understood him. The others were no fun, besides. The only thing Axel has ever cared about has always been, and will always be, Roxas, until the day that he is no more. His tongue shoves its way into Sora’s mouth. His grip tightens viciously with both hands.
Sora gasps and moans, shuddering in Axel’s grasp. The feeling is new and electric, jolting through his body from every point of contact. It is like nothing he’s ever known, yet it is at once as familiar to him as breathing, the spark of tongue against tongue, the bruising grip of those sure hands. He can’t help the way he arches and twists in their hold. It’s like holding onto a live wire. It’s overwhelming, it’s everything. Nothing else feels like it exists anymore, just Axel’s burning, all—consuming need, and the need of the person inside him crying out to meet him. He is left to hang on for the ride, by no means in control of his own movements as he releases Axel’s arms to throw his own around the Nobody’s neck. In his own head, he begs Roxas to slow down what’s happening. (But even if he could stop what’s happening, would he? He understands nothing, nothing at all, except what it means to miss someone. Suddenly he is the conduit of reunion, and there can be nothing more dear than that.)
Axel doesn’t question Sora’s reciprocation — he doesn’t factor Sora or his consenting participation into this at all. All he knows is how badly he needed to be with Roxas again, and kissing him, and knowing the electricity of their tongues in reunion coursing through his body. Tingling. He can barely handle the connection as he feverishly attacks Sora’s mouth with his own.
It’s so much more than anything Sora’s ever felt. It’s like he’s drowning, only in smoke rather than water, getting oxygen only through someone else’s lungs. Roxas inside him frankly seems to care little for Sora’s part in this, either — but he is Sora, but he isn’t — that part of him rising up in him like the tide, pushing harder and farther. Axel’s fire under his skin consumes everything, but Roxas meets it in kind, the only thing preventing Sora from being reduced to ash. He can’t handle it, as much as he wants to let Axel and Roxas both have their way — (he would do the same thing if the person he loved like this was inside Axel, wouldn’t he? How can he deny them?) Yet the heat of the body boxing him in, the sense that he’s losing control, it’s more than even he can take anymore. Fighting hard to take himself back (to a pang of deep regret and outrage), he jerks his head to the side, his face hot, his breathing heavy. He doesn’t attempt to otherwise withdraw. “— Axel ...”
Axel continues to disregard him, his breath like steam in the air between them. They are bound together. This is destiny. He is reaching into Sora to take what is his, grasp it and draw it out. He is filled with passion to pour into his captive. “You get it.” Not meant for Sora.
Sora shivers, still breathing hard. His eyes turn to Axel’s. It’s like he’s being spoken through — he can hardly wrap his head around it, being a vessel for the person that’s really being addressed. He feels more connected to his body than he did, but he’s still not in control of it. It’s not him looking up at Axel, not really. It’s not him that breathlessly nods. He would like to get out from under Axel, actually. The thought makes something in him kick like a sleep twitch. Him but not him. Feeling somebody else’s deep passion for the man on top of him. (These are not the feelings of a being with no heart.)
“Can you... slow down? This is...”
Axel doesn’t want to slow down, but more than that, he can’t. He just wants to be made whole again. That’s the only thing that any Nobody wants. It is the modus operandi of their entire Organization. Here, Axel has sweetest relief right at his fingertips. All he has to do is seize it. He releases his grip on Sora only to grasp his face instead, looking, staring hungrily into his eyes. If he can only get into them deep enough, he is convinced, he will find Roxas, and he can claim him. “I need you back.”
Sora licks his lips, looking between those eyes, like he’s trying to find something, too. He doesn’t know what, exactly, except that it’s there — there in the depth of what he just felt pass through him, there in this Nobody’s desperation to find a person in him that he doesn’t have the means to give. Breathless, he feels Roxas so very close to the surface, feeling more like a separate, fully realized person than ever, far more than just a mere part of Sora. It’s wrong to dismiss him as just a piece of a whole. If they can know love, don’t they deserve to exist? He remembers being told Nobodies can only fake emotions, but there’s no faking what he just felt. That was real. He’s at a loss for words. He feels all the ones Roxas wants to say biting at his tongue.
“He misses you but doesn’t want to admit it,” he says suddenly, a culmination of all the words both of them chew up in his mouth. “— You love him, don’t you?”
“Fuck off,” Axel spits, snarling at the guy who is not Roxas. He doesn’t like that. He doesn’t like that one bit. No fucking way. This was supposed to wake him up. Well, now what the hell is he supposed to do? He gave everything he had into that kiss. Goddamn, if that didn’t work, then what if nothing else does? Even killing him? Would that do nothing other than erase Sora? No, that contradicts everything Axel knows. That’s just doubt talking. Because, that was supposed to work. “Give him back, asshole.”
Sora chews his lip. What just happened is as close as he can get to giving him back.
(At least, he thinks it is. But the hope in his heart is the piercing kind, the kind that glows even when nothing is left to give it reason to. He believes in things like existing. In things like love. Because that really didn’t feel like the kiss of a guy who can’t feel. And the straining in his chest isn’t the answer of a part of him that has no emotion.)
The yearning he feels looking up into those green eyes isn’t his to feel. He lets it take him over again, blossom under his skin until he feels that sensation of being more a passenger than a party in his own body. His arms are even still around the Nobody’s neck.
“This is the best I can do right now,” he says softly, and the person in control of his body uses it to kiss Axel again.
Axel does not understand what Sora is doing or why. It’s all he can do to return the second kiss when it comes, taking too much, too eagerly. Feverish and impassioned, he will have all he can get of this nearness to his lost stolen Roxas. Chest tight and yet full, as though it might soon burst. He’s sick with it as he fiercely kisses Sora with his mouth, his tongue, his teeth, and his nothingness.
And it is all Sora can do to hold on, the world empty except the nothing to which he clings. Roxas uses his body fiercely, embracing the way Axel makes everything hot with fire, sparks across his skin, every hair on end. It is more than he has ever felt all at once; it hurts, even, so all—consuming that it’s hard to breathe. He’s trembling, but his other uses his mouth such that there must surely be no question who is in control now. His back arches. He is once more reduced to a conduit for an exchange he isn’t a part of. His voice, his mouth gasps Axel’s name into the man’s fierce teeth, swallowed up again as quickly by that feverish kiss.
Good, that’s right, you stay down, and let Roxas out to have and be had by Axel. Fire burns on the skin as the bodies merge into one and Axel savagely takes his fill from Sora’s mouth, and grips him in his hands, and reaches into him spiritually for Roxas.
It really is scary, but Sora has got to follow his heart, and as far as Sora’s heart is concerned, he has got to let this happen, owes it to both Nobodies. It’s not his fault Roxas is within him, but to unlock him isn’t as simple as unlocking Kairi was. (Simple! Isn’t that what made Roxas exist?)
Roxas by no means heeds Sora’s repeated requests to slow down, either; if anything, as he wrests more control of the body they share, he becomes more and more urgent, gripping Axel’s clothes, tilting his head to press as deep into the kiss as he’s able. Fire that feels like it would destroy Sora isn’t close to enough for Roxas, who drinks it in like he needs it to survive.
“Needy,” his voice quips when he takes enough room to draw in air, definitely not of his volition. (Roxas is one to talk, of course.)
Axel can’t refute it; asshole, of course he’s going to say something so smarmy. That’s Roxas. That has always been Roxas, and Axel knew that going in; hello, there’s a reason he liked him best. Fire needs a spark, and that was Roxas. The spark, the kindling, the hand that strikes the match. Of course, it’s true that Roxas does need him just as much, and his enthusiasm easily matches Axel’s — it makes a smirk appear on the handsome face, which brings to mind a jungle cat.
He grips Sora’s hair again, harshly. It elicits a moan, deep and low, half pleasure but also half pain. Sora is still a factor in this, a fact which Roxas happily forgets — hey, you’re the Somebody, it won’t kill you to let me drive for awhile. He feels the movements but has no part in them as he tilts along with the touch, jerking his head to the side to graze teeth along Axel’s jaw.
“Are you gonna burn me or what?” Please don’t set our body on fire, Sora pleads silently. We need that. There’s a soothing, hushing feeling that rises briefly in response in his chest.
Fire is, indeed, spreading over them. The more Roxas taunts him, the more strongly Axel burns. Yet the fire doesn’t appear to be searing the flesh even as it does; Axel seems to have some restraint. At least he is exercising it, whatever his reason. He would reduce that Somebody to ash if he wanted it.
(The only, very compelling reason he isn’t torching Sora is probably just that there’s no guarantee of what would happen to Roxas if he did. But the Somebody would like to think that what he’s doing is appreciated in some way, even if that’s probably not true.)
“Don’t tease me — you’re mine, don’t you forget it,” Axel growls. The manner of Organization XIII is thick in his words, but the sentiment is purely his own. They don’t have feelings.
Roxas laughs. It comes from Sora’s mouth with Sora’s voice sounding very different from Sora’s laugh. The hold of reality on the both of them feels deeply tenuous. “Then how come you’re the one chasing me around like a lost puppy?”
“Because you’re not getting away from me that easily,” Axel replies, readily rising to meet Roxas’ challenge. Hadn’t he made that clear? Emphasizing the fact that Roxas is his, that he isn’t getting away, that there is no one that gets to stand between them. Not the Organization, nor even his Somebody. Axel bites down on Sora’s throat.
Voice rises high, a pitch outside of what Roxas would make if Sora didn’t have a part in it. Sora twists, arches, but doesn’t try to pull away or wrest back control, even with face flushed deep red and heart racing. Between the unfamiliar shock and the wave of pleasure from Roxas, he’s back to trembling. Roxas grips Axel’s hair, pressing up into him encouragingly. When he’d had his own body he might have said the other would find somebody else if he weren’t so stubborn. But now that the prospect is a real one, the idea of Axel chasing after anybody else makes him taste bile. (Really wish we didn’t have a third for this. The silent sentiment irritates Sora sharply, given how little he wants to be party to this himself.) “You’re a hothead. You miss me?”
Axel responds with a second bite, sharper than the first, if less surprising. It means more than would a verbal answer; it’s such a deliciously vicious way of reminding Roxas just who is in charge here. He is pulling Sora’s jacket out of the way, affording himself better access to tender throat. The taste is unfamiliar but it is satisfying nonetheless. They are all three of them playing with fire, and somebody is soon going to get burned. That doesn’t stop Axel.
Sora would have to. And yeah, he’s realizing that. He should have already, but the problem with him is that it breaks his heart to think he’s the one responsible for tearing two people apart when their connection is something that feels like this. Not just raw, hot, visceral — but profound, so deep as to reach into Sora and pull out his Nobody. He has felt this, if never on such a physical level. This is love.
Roxas wouldn’t be the one to bring a stop to this, either, if not made to. He knows he should, and that they are being given far more than his Somebody owes them, but he’s as desperate for Axel as the other way around, and just a little more would become making love here on the ground if he could only remove Sora from the picture. A twinge of the chest. The pull of his clothes is enough for Sora to return to at least enough of his senses to remind Roxas that the time they can do this is short. Roxas can’t stay afloat as an entirely separate person in Sora’s body forever, anyway; it just doesn’t work that way. They are separate, but they are one.
Roxas groans, but pulls himself free of that bite anyway, lowering his hands to take Axel by the jaw on either side, seeking his attention. “Hey. Hothead. I don’t have a lot of time.”
Axel pushes himself up abruptly to look at Roxas’ face — at Sora’s face. His jade eyes seem to glow, or maybe they do. The fire that still flickers along the edges of his skin begins to pick up and dance dangerously. This will not do. This will not do at all. He was meant to have Roxas back. This was meant to be where he gets his own happy ending. That’s what this has always been about. Even if he is a Nobody. He decided he would rip happiness bloody out of the jaws of Destiny. He would die for the chance to feel it just once, but he thinks he has now.
“The fuck you mean?”
The heat is getting to be enough to sting. It’s a sweet sting to Roxas, but not so much to Sora, whose body they are really in. But he doesn’t contest his Nobody’s control right now.
“Hey, don’t burn my Somebody up,” says the person controlling Sora, grip of Axel’s jaw holding firm. “I can’t exactly burst fully formed out of his chest. You know that, right?”
Roxas isn’t happy about it, either. The ache of having Axel again only to lose him once more is a deep and profound one, one that runs so deep that Sora feels it constricting his chest and throat.
“So take control! This is your body now, your Somebody! Why shouldn’t you take it over?” Axel demands, almost pleading. He looks to be on a very thin wire between rage and grief — neither thing he can feel. It’s redness in the face, wideness of the eyes, he is wild. This is how animals express themselves. His fire is still rising all the while!
Don’t think it hasn’t crossed his mind, Axel. How to explain it, even to himself? There’s only one Roxas. He’s nobody else — not even Sora. The heart in his chest isn’t his own. This isn’t what he’s after; not really. (Besides... he’s holding this knowledge close, doing his best to keep it back from even the Somebody in whose heart he resides, but he doesn’t think that’s a fight he would win. He feels Sora’s discomfort at Axel’s words, and he feels the thoughts that go through his mind, and he knows that nobody is stealing the heart away from him.)
He presses his forehead to Axel’s. “I’ll find a way back to you. You’re just going to have to trust me.”
Axel resists like a bronco, baring his teeth like he could fight this. Shaking, forehead to forehead. This isn’t something he can burn away. Anything he can do is not enough. No matter how much he does, it is not enough. If he tore Sora apart, it still... still... “You had better not leave me, you son of a bitch.”
Roxas presses in, still closer, tilting his head just so. With borrowed hands he caresses Axel’s cheeks; with borrowed mouth he ghosts Axel’s lips. “Are you not listening or what? I’m coming back. You’ve gotta stick with my Other ’til I do. Got it memorized?” (Sora shivers. Hey, he’s already got enough people following him around; what’s one more? Still, Axel is a powerful enemy. It would be nice if he... weren’t.)
The use of his own oft—used phrase against him smacks Axel like an open handed slap across the face. He would have recoiled had it not been for the hands on his own face and the stunning look on Sora’s. It’s a look meant only for him. Axel’s fire begins to burn low, and his shoulders slope. It hurts. If Sora beat him to a pulp with the Keyblade it wouldn’t have hurt this much.
“I don’t want to risk never seeing you again.” Heat is gone from his voice as well.
Sora has never known either of them so soft. It makes him shiver. He isn’t meant to be party to this, yet it can only transpire with him at the center. Like many things.
Borrowed lips, borrowed mouth, brush against Axel’s soothingly, slowly up to the rise of his cheekbone. Borrowed hands slide softly down either side of the fiery man’s neck. The face might be Sora’s, but that expression of fierce adoration is all Roxas. “My Somebody will help. You wouldn’t believe how he’s feeling right now.”
“Can’t imagine.” It’s not just a figure of speech. Perks of having no heart. Then again, this is a unique situation — the hearted probably couldn’t fathom what Sora is going through presently. Not that Axel is all that sympathetic. Don’t hold it against him; it can’t be helped. “Why would he want to? You can’t exist together at the same time...”
Roxas shrugs with those borrowed shoulders. Beats him. Maybe it’s more than he’d do for somebody else, too. But Sora is a hell of a Somebody — even now he is allowing Roxas to use his body in spite of his many reservations. Of course, Roxas isn’t all that focused on Sora’s part in this either, but it’s easier for him to appreciate it, feeling as he does every beat of that stalwart heart he so covets. “He’s not fighting me right now, you know. He seems soft.” (Hey! Shhh.) “Anyway... do you really think it’s impossible? When did you get to be the quitting type?”
Axel’s nose wrinkles. No, he has never been a quitter, and he does not intend to start now. That doesn’t make this any easier to swallow. If anything, it makes all of this so much harder. “I’m not quitting. I’m being realistic about this. I know what it means to be Somebody.”
It means you lose the Nobody. It means you aren’t mine anymore. The loss of control deepens the helplessness of seeing Roxas slipping away from him. If he were to reach out to him, he expects he would feel nothing there — even with Sora’s hands on his face.
“Okay, then when did you get to be the realistic type?” Because it’s the same difference, really. Realism, defeatism. Roxas is prone to neither; one trait he does share with his sappy Somebody is tenacity. He’s never let go of a thing in his entire non—life, least of all his identity. He’s not Sora. He’s him. He can’t just be a piece of a Somebody’s something. He never has been, not since he sprang into being. As long as that’s true, he’s never going to disappear completely — and the person who makes that true is burning bright on top of him right now. “If you stop holding onto me, that’s when I’m gonna be gone. When you give up on me, I’ll really start being nothing. Do you get it? I need you to lose this notion you’ve got right now. I need you to hold onto me even when you don’t see me there.”
Axel’s eyes focus, fixed catlike on Sora’s. He is coiled, pinning the Keyblade master down, with his coat draped over them and his body pressing down.
“It sucks without you. I told you I wouldn’t let you go.” He’s all but pouting. It’s awful having to be without Roxas. He is sure the other Nobody knows that. It’s way deeper than just having to live without hearts and feelings.
The closeness sends another shiver down Sora’s spine. They are all too close. It feels wrong to him. But Roxas welcomes it, pressing up into Axel’s body, hands trailing up to make loose fists in the flaming red hair. Not once looking away from jade eyes. A sense of oneness, of unity; he is more a part of Axel than of Sora. That is the body he would sooner share.
“Good. So don’t.”
He closes the gap to kiss Axel again, just as needy but far slower, pouring into it everything he can’t say — everything a Nobody like him can’t really feel. Feelings borrowed from Sora, perhaps. He feels them all the same. Axel is not prepared to be the recipient of such powerful emotions, and he is subdued by the force of that kiss. He pours himself into it, and lets Roxas take every last drop. He doesn’t know how to love. He just sort of fell into it. Nobodies are not made for things that are so powerful. That’s why they can’t beat Sora, not really.
That’s just a dream.
This isn’t.
Slow and deep and profound, Roxas pours himself into Axel and spreads out and fills him, offering everything he has to be sacrificed on the altar of that fire. Yet it will not burn him, even as he submerges himself into it. He trusts this and so it is; he is Axel’s, and Axel is his. It cannot be any other way. Bond forged by flame, as it were. Two nothings who found something in each other. He takes all Axel gives in return readily, letting it fill borrowed chest and mark the part of Sora that is him, undeniably Roxas. As long as he’s branded by that touch, he can’t stop existing, can’t fade back into a mere piece of his Somebody. This kiss will keep him alive as long as Axel is there to keep it.
And Axel will be there, as long as there is hope of recovering Roxas. That’s the only thing still keeping him going now (when did you get so selfless?). He has one passion, one drive. There is so much that he can’t express except to reciprocate that kiss with everything in him, the meeting of their individual selves blending away all gap between them. It’s cleansing in a way that Nobodies can’t be clean, but he feels it purify him nonetheless. Fire dancing across his back expresses his needs as he whines softly into Roxas’ mouth.
Sora’s.
Roxas softly hushes Axel with Sora’s mouth, I know, I know, soothing words that are more felt than heard. It’s all mutual — what greater reason does he have to stay separate from his Somebody than to come back to this man, the Nobody that’s his? They’ve made themselves one; that’s something that can’t be undone. He has to find his way back. He has to.
He wishes for more. But there is a limit to what he can take with Sora’s body. (Axel certainly wouldn’t have stopped — and that would have been an awful thing to do to Sora. Maybe one day he would have the empathy necessary to recognize that, but that day is not today. He only cares about what’s his. He only cares about the one that he and Roxas have become.)
Hungrily, Axel pushes his tongue against Sora’s mouth. He’s rough, fierce. He doesn’t ever want to let go of Roxas, no, not ever. He won’t have to find him again if he never goes away. Sora’s mouth readily opens to Axel’s demands, molding to the shape of the lips and teeth and tongue like Roxas has got them engraved in his mind. He’s got this memorized, that’s for sure — he could never forget, not for an instant.
It is so much that it overwhelms Sora, witness to the sacred exchange taking place through his own body, keeper of every secret told through the holy burn of touches and kisses that aren’t his to feel. If he tried to fight it, he would be reduced to ash. He shivers, and breathes hard, and holds on. The heat is intense, and it is not meant for him. He doesn’t know this mouth, nor even the movements of his own. Unlike Axel, he is overcome with almost nothing but empathy, a rise of feeling for the star—crossed lovers that hurts just as much or more than anything that’s happened physically. It is difficult for him to keep a rein on it; the force of Roxas’s passion alone is almost more than he can handle, let alone bring a stop to.
It’s for this reason that he’s got to, before it gets more out of hand. He wrests back control enough to break their kiss. Face hot. Trembling again.
Axel stares at him, mouth still open as he pants like a dog. The heat on his body is steady and feverish, radiating under the coat and being trapped there. It’s toasty in there. Just how they like it. Like Axel and Roxas... hm.
He doesn’t know that scared look that Sora is giving him right now. It’s uncomfortable. That makes him want to hurt him.
Sora is just trying to catch his breath. All of this has gotten out of his control, and naïve boy is not so foolish that he fails to realize he has put himself in a deeply precarious position by allowing this to happen. It’s him that looks up at Axel like he’s just realized he’s under a hungry wild animal. His hands trail down to rest on Axel’s arms, a little more unsteady than he would ever admit if pressed. The heat that is so deliciously welcome to Roxas is painful and frightening to the Somebody who’s allowed all this to happen. Suddenly he is more in control of himself than he has been since this started. And he isn’t totally sure Axel was listening when Roxas said to stick with him and that he would help.
Neither Nobody nor Somebody is saying anything.
Axel stares down at his captive, trying to decide what he’s meant to do about the position in which he now finds himself. The wildness in his eyes hasn’t changed. Nothing about him has. Everything about him has. It’s frustrating. All these pseudo emotions, façades of what a whole person ought to feel, and the things that a heart should have provided him. He wants to scream, hit, bite. He just stares down at Sora. Drool drips down his chin onto the teen’s face. It’s like he’s just been snapped out of a trance.
All of that just happened... right?
Sora swallows hard, but he doesn’t flinch. He feels the differences in the man on top of him and the air around them. The hot feeling under his skin hasn’t faded at all, but no longer is Roxas taking the brunt of it; instead there is just him, boxed in beneath this man’s much larger body, his mouth electric with every inch of Axel’s. He tastes unfamiliar saliva. There is the persistent pain of everything. If he hadn’t felt it for himself, he’d say he must be crazy, coming up with wild ideas about his Nobody to justify whatever he and Axel just did. But he knows what’s real. (Usually.)
His grip of Axel’s arms tightens slightly.
“I’m —” His voice is weaker than expected. Feels like it was eaten up. “— I’m me again.”
Pretty unnecessary announcement. But he feels like he has to state it, to make that dividing line between what was and what is — and to acknowledge what was in the first place. He wasn’t him. He was somebody else.
Axel does not get off of him. He narrows his feline eyes at him, disdainful of the fact of his being Sora. Not right that he should be Sora. Too cruel, that Roxas should have gone away so quickly.
He needed more time.
“You’re you.” Axel sounds hurt, and angry, but he doesn’t feel. He has no heart. He has nothing at all.
Sora’s lips make a line, and his grip of Axel’s arms tightens just so. He doesn’t know what’s true, or what to believe, but he knows what’s real — and that was real. Even the likes of Ansem and Yen Sid can be wrong. At length, he nods.
“I’ll help you,” he says. Not because the man on top of him is big and scary; fear has never been much of a motivator for Sora, and it couldn’t guide him to make a promise like that. No, what drives him is far more powerful. “I’m sure there’s a way.”
Axel sneers at him suspiciously. There is no altruism in his world. You look out for the Organization first, and then yourself, and that is all. You don’t concern yourself with anybody else — much less a known enemy. Even Sora must want something. He has to... or else Axel has been getting a lot wrong.
“What do you get out of it?” He demands, staying put where he is. Embers dance in the air around them.
The youth’s brow furrows, and he looks almost... sad. For Axel. He shakes his head. Seems even members of the great Organization XIII can miss the obvious, he thinks. The brief moment during which he was truly afraid has passed; the fire doesn’t make him falter. Underneath this powerful enemy, who could easily hurt him even worse than he already has, he just remains flat on his back on the ground.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? C’mon, nobody’s that selfless,” Axel retorts, shaking his head and rolling his eyes exaggeratedly. (He projects himself. It’s the best he can do.) “So get real!”
He sits up suddenly, his legs still on either side of his captive. Arms cross haughtily. There is no patience for this.
The extra space is a relief to Sora. He lets his arms fall to either side of himself, flat on the ground for a moment before he draws himself up on his elbows.
“You’re the one who needs to get real. You think just because you wouldn’t help somebody who needs it, nobody would.” He shakes his head again, more forceful this time. “Was there anything in it for me just now?”
Axel huffs. Loath as he is to admit it, Sora really does have a point. Stupid Somebody sure has gotten arrogant lately. “No, but so what? Roxas might have just won that one. What makes you want to help me?”
“Hey, he told you I wasn’t fighting him. I was there for all that, y’know!” Indignant. He hadn’t especially enjoyed it either, pinned to the ground by an enemy and wash with heat and pain and pleasure and fear, only half of which was even his to feel and not the nicer half at that. He’s sure Axel is a handsome guy, if you’re into that, but he wouldn’t have chosen to get that close to him in this lifetime. “And that’s why I want to help you, too. I was there for that. I know what it means to miss someone. And even if you didn’t answer, I know I’m right: you love him.”
Axel rolls his eyes again, and gets up off of Sora. Neither apology nor a hand up will be offered, only the sneer of an embittered Nobody. Sora didn’t expect a hand up, but he still finds an annoyed scowl crossing his face as he climbs quickly to his feet.
“Idiot. Nobodies don’t have hearts, remember?” Axel is prowling away as he talks. “I can’t love. Just because I miss him doesn’t mean that’s changed.”
“You didn’t feel that? You don’t think Roxas loves you? You think any of that came from me?” Sora slashes a hand through the air as if the idea was ridiculous. “You miss him. That comes from somewhere, even if you don’t have a heart. And I’m going to help even if you don’t want to accept it.”
“Hmph. You’re just as ridiculously sentimental as ever, Sora,” Axel remarks derisively, lifting his chin as he looks back at Sora. Brazen little pest. He’s luckier than he knows to have always been under Axel’s watch. There wouldn’t be a lot left of him otherwise, now would there be? “You won’t back down, will you?”
“Of course I won’t. If not for you, than for Roxas. If you really want me to have a reason, you can say I owe it to him.” And it isn’t Sora’s reason, but he does feel he owes it to him. He made him exist. He gave him a life, and then he snatched that life away. That he had no say in it, did it completely unknowingly and unintentionally, doesn’t change that. “Okay?”
Reluctantly, Axel will take it. He purses his lips, narrowed eyes that make him look so feline with the lines that accent his long, defined face. His lips press into a line. At length, he sighs.
“... Fine. You win. No surprise there, huh?” It’s not bitter, but it is a little dry. There’s a fact that he simply has to accept.
Sora’s determined look softens somewhat into a smile. Genuine, both pleased and relieved. He seems to have bounced back quick enough from what just transpired — at least, he doesn’t appear to have suffered any lasting harm. Holy conduit has not lost his conviction before, and this will not be the thing that causes him to.
“Good,” he says proudly. “You’ll be glad in the end.”
Axel crosses his arms in an effort to steel himself against that smile. He’s filthy, but he can’t regret it yet. He doesn’t have the heart to. However much he’s done to harm the shining light. “We’ll see. I’d need a heart for that, you remember.”
Sora doesn’t argue. He’s got lots of new notions about the things a Nobody can and cannot do or feel based on what just transpired — most of them would get dismissed with a scoff or outright laughed out of the room by people learned on the subject, but he knows what he just experienced.
“Yeah. You’d need one to miss somebody, too.” A little quip nonetheless, knowing, content. Not to be deterred by even the Nobody before him.
They suddenly hear the telltale blundering of Donald and Goofy looking for Sora not far off. Suddenly flushed, he begins to tidy his disheveled appearance as best he can. At the same time, Axel looks up towards the source of the noise like a wild animal hearing a twig snap in the woods. Yet despite the degree of his concern, he returns to a cool demeanor just as swiftly.
“Guess that’s my cue.” On this, he makes a gesture with two fingers like a mock salute. There is nothing for him here now, and to have to confront Sora’s friends, well... that would just be awkward. So, on that note, he makes to disappear into the twisting blackness that opens beside him.
Sora wants, inexplicably, to call Axel back. He doesn’t want to see him leave. Maybe that’s the part of him that’s Roxas, but he doesn’t think that’s the only thing, not really. He is, after all, a person who puts value into every person. But there is no good reason for him to stop him, and nothing he could probably say here to summon the Nobody back to him. For now, it’s got to be enough that the firestarter is unlikely to torch him next time they meet.
Instead, he offers, “see you, Axel.”
Axel pauses, glancing back. There’s the temptation to just leave without saying anything else, but that just wouldn’t be Axel. He smirks.
“See you, Sora.”
Then, into darkness, he vanishes.