Title: This Frenzied State [7/?]
Rating: M
Genre: Drama/romance
Pairing: Axel/Roxas (AU)
Warnings: Abuse of miscellaneous Final Fantasy characters. Seriously. Any mischaracterization is obviously all my fault.
Summary: When Roxas stands on the edges of buildings, he tries to see into some eternity. When Axel stands on the edges of buildings, he tries to see how he'd survive a fourteen floor fall.

Author’s Notes: I fail at life, yes. Warning for this chapter: there is light…er.. light smut. Very light. Pants still on. Consider yourself warned… or delighted, I don’t know. I’ve been writing a vampire!KH fic, which sort of took fire away from this. Also been trying to revive zombie!KH fic, but both of those aren’t going well at all. My life, my life.

This has sort of been in a posting schedule of every two weeks now, instead of the one week I wanted, so I’ll try to now keep that two week schedule. Hopefully it’ll work. Still no beta, so all errors are mine. Feel free to point them out. Not finished yet, but almost. Word count has gone down a little, since I end up cutting a ton more out than I put in. About 79k now. This one is actually the longest part out of the entire thing so far. If anyone cares. Carry on!


Axel didn’t think that the kid liked him. In fact, he looked positively distressed when Axel awkwardly extended his hand for a shake. He took it like it was diseased and then Axel remembered the whole “stalker” fiasco that Demyx had mentioned earlier. He frowned. First of all, the kid was short. If Axel had learned anything from his entire twenty two years of wisdom on this earth, it was that if you looked like you were twelve and below five foot nothing, then well, your chances at procreating were dramatically decreased. It wasn’t that Axel cared. He had a good shot at least, but the question really was of why this kid thought he’d had a crazy psycho stalker. Maybe he had a stunning personality to offset it.

The look of disbelief hadn’t left his mouth as he sat on the couch opposite of Axel, sitting almost stiffly and looking at the beer Demyx had shoved into his hand like it was a grenade. Axel was still fuzzy and feeling good, so he swung his upper half forward near him; Roxas recoiled on mere sight and Axel frowned, though not deeply and not too perturbed that he’d scared the boy.

“You going to drink that or just look at it?”

Roxas blinked and Axel could have been a little more sensitive, hell, maybe the kid was one of those psycho crazy kids who didn’t drink or have sex or do drugs because they believed their souls were going to hell. Maybe that’s the type of kid he was and sitting here holding a cold bottle of beer in his hand wasn’t the best idea in the world and he had been peer pressured by Demyx into coming and maybe, just maybe, he wanted to go home and play video games all day instead of being forced into this increasingly awkward situation where he was being forced to play nice with someone who he had, up until recently, thought was a crazy psycho stalker obsessed with his five foot nothing body.

Aha! A sip, and a half hearted glare. Perhaps not a crazy super religious kid after all. Axel could work with this.

“I’m getting there,” he replied crossly, taking another small sip from the bottle.

“You should already be there,” Axel suggested, sagely, tilting more down his own throat, even if his stomach was just about starting to suggest that maybe he should cool it and take a pill before it decided to run south on him, something Axel was quite familiar with but still didn’t particularly fear. He wanted a cigarette, but his stomach was, again, suggesting maybe he shouldn’t move for a tick. No, drinking should soon cease, but he couldn’t leave this poor Mormon kid to go ahead and take some long swallows of this lime stuff by himself. He was merely being a gentleman at that.

Somewhere in the back of his mind Axel realized he was quite drunk.

“Whatever,” Roxas replied, looking away like he was trying to focus on anything but Axel at the moment. There was a lull in conversation, before he glared up at Demyx and said, “So. How do you know Mr. Stone here?”

“Axel,” Axel responded full heartedly. “Name’s Axel, got it memorized?”

No response back from either of them on that account, but Demyx started recounting the story that he’d recounted to Xigbar earlier. “And so I get this call right and it’s crazy and this guy just starts talking! About a funeral and the weather and just everything but what I needed from him! I mean normally I’m as annoyed as the next guy but we got to talking because I saw that he was in New York and we had a nice chat and I completely forgot all about him being your crazy stalker until tonight when he was here! No hard feelings Rox, I wouldn’t have invited your crazy stalker if I had remembered it. If it had been more memorable like that one time that one girl came and gave you two dozen roses and I still don’t remember her name even if—“

“Olette,” Roxas said, though what sounded like gritted teeth. “Her name’s Olette.”

“Oh, and she works in finance, I remember now! Yes, one time, Axel, she got Rox over here roses, a shit ton of just plain roses and it was the greatest thing I’d ever seen! Roxas was blushing and embarrassed and just completely going like, oh hey, thanks, but uh, I don’t like you, at least not like that.” Demyx winked in a very over exaggerated fashion at Axel but Axel caught on and gave him a big, very conspicuous thumbs up sign while Roxas rolled his eyes and blushed some more. “But she took the hint and I guess they’re good friends now, right?”

Roxas was glaring at him. Curtly. Without remorse. Axel felt the chill on the couch where he sat and resolutely put the beer down, edging it away from him as far as it could go. It was sort of difficult and he’d always have that problem it seemed. Some people had drinking problems because they wanted to drown their sorrows in beer and liquor. Axel didn’t have a drinking problem but he figured that if his life ever became that bleak, it would be damn easy because he couldn’t put his glass far away enough to not reach it. He cursed his father and that entire side of his family because they were all tall.

And then he remembered that he’d buried his father yesterday.

Well he hadn’t. Reno could attest more to that than he could. He figured the pallbearers had a say in that one. More than he did in any case. He’d just sat there while they carried that thing to the ground. The crane even had more of a say than he did. At least the crane had existed longer than he did, in most people’s eyes.

“Demyx said you got fired,” he blurted out suddenly, eyes focused back on Roxas.

Roxas glared at him, then at Demyx until Demyx cowered where he was, and then he glared at Axel once more. “Oh did he?” he said, with a bonus dirty look up in Demyx’s general direction, where the taller blonde cowered again and started looking around the room, as though he was looking for his big man dog who could fight Roxas off should Roxas decide to get catty about the entire affair.

“Yea,” Axel said, then looked around like he had heard his own voice. Oh wait. He was talking. He spared a glance for the bottle pushed to the other side of the table. There were really only two options at this point in time sitting on this couch as he currently was: toss the beer off the table or finish it. Axel contemplated a long moment, and then pushed it off table. It landed on the carpet and then when nothing went crash, Axel realized that it was empty and he’d already drank it all. Maybe he was an alcoholic already. Blackouts common. Alcohol poisoning immediate. He might as well get his will ready tomorrow.

When he realized that Roxas was still glaring at him, Axel looked vaguely in his direction. “What?” he said, still staring down at the bottle sitting unharmed on the carpet. “I was just asking.” I mean, hey, it’s for the best right?” He clumsily raised his fist in some method that could have been considered with either a cheer or a blatant disregard for humanity, because the blonde girl, the one that Xigbar had called Larxene, had caught sight of his clumsy motions and flipped him off. A true peach, that one.

Roxas looked a little perplexed at the statement and without answering, downed the rest of what left in his bottle and immediately started looking for another one. His face was flushed, hair all falling around his ears in messy patterns, and Axel realized how blue his eyes were for the first time. Still short, but at least he had the eyes and the hair going for him. Axel was of the opinion that a few things could save you from the doom of being left out by natural selection and being able to reproduce and continue on the human species with your obviously less than superior genes: a brain, a set of eyes, and some hair. Roxas had two of the three so far; right now all his brain seemed to have a penchant for doing was focusing those pretty eyes into an intense glare and his lips into an eternal sneer. Couldn’t win them all, he guessed.

“For the best?” He was answering the question now it appeared, those same blue eyes that could save him from not continuing his proud family name, whatever that might be, a little bit fiery. “Do explain how losing my job when I have rent due next week is for the best?”

It didn’t rain cats or dogs every day, but Roxas sure seemed like he pouted every day he’d graced this earth and Axel took a wild stab and pegged him at nineteen or eighteen. Not old enough to know any better, at least not yet. Axel would know a lot about that. He apparently wasn’t quite at that stage yet either.

“You have a chance to try new things!” He tried to get enthused about the subject material but it was hard because Demyx had suddenly gotten up, disappeared, and reappeared with two beers in his hands, that each went either of them but neither of them was touching it at the moment, just holding it by the neck and fingering the cap wistfully. “Just think, you can go work somewhere else! I know it’s awkward, trust me, oh do I know, but come on now, did you really want to work there for like, the rest of your life? Imagine being a young, vibrant individual stuck in some job you don’t like. What kind of existence is that?”

Roxas chose to answer grabbing the bottle opener from the table and cracking his open. He tossed it across the way to Axel, who snatched it clumsily from the air and set about a few extra moments trying to get his fingers to operate the thing because for some reason they were having the hardest time doing what he wanted them to be doing right now.

“This kind of existence apparently,” Roxas was saying, with a tone was composed of both bittersweet and ironic shades as he downed half the bottle in one gulp. Axel followed suit because he couldn’t look like a little weakling in front of the kid, after all. That was just plain cruel and wrong. Roxas made a face at his bottle, and then those frosty eyes rose back up to meet Axel’s. “So Mr. Stone,” he said, in a voice that was not so much mocking as so much it was exceptionally bitter, “what kind of job is it that you have?”

That was a challenge if Axel ever heard one, and he sort of smirked as he raised the bottle to his lips and downed most of the rest of it. He could hardly taste it now, though he felt it hit the back of his throat and slide down ever so gently. With a little bit of a sigh he said, “Oh, you know, I make graphics. Draw some shit here and there. Apparently people pay for it. You know. I’m one of those people.”

Roxas appeared nonplussed by what Axel was saying, because he sort of smirked back, tilting his head and taking a long sip from the bottle. “So you mean you’re an artist and some people pay you for what you do? Let me guess, stick figures?”

“That’s not nice,” Demyx said drowsily from somewhere on the other side of Axel.

“No, it’s not, is it,” Axel said casually, sipping more slowly from the bottle now. “He’s not a very nice boy it seems like.”

Roxas’s eyes flashed. “At least I’m not a psycho stalker,” he nearly hissed, downing the rest of his bottle and setting it down on the table next to his couch hard with a loud crack. Next to Axel, Demyx started up from his semi asleep state.

“You need more beer?” he said blearily, looking at them with red, tired eyes. Axel found the clock and it was only ten thirty. What lightweights they all were. Well, they’d been at it for a few hours now. Maybe he shouldn’t feel too bad. Was a school night after all. Not that Axel was much into the whole school thing right now. But maybe others were. Didn’t look like Roxas was, because he nodded curtly at Demyx, who seemed to not be looking him but looking into the empty space on the couch next to him and frowning at it deeply.

“See a ghost?’ Axel asked, finishing up the rest of his bottle.

“A ghost? Where?”

Axel laughed and Roxas looked annoyed, so Axel answered, “Another beer would be fabulous. I can go get them if you tell me where. I’ll even get one for Roxas over there.”

Roxas glowered, but Demyx said in a slurred sort of voice, “No, don’t worry, I’m hosting, you’re both my pals! Even you Axel, even though I don’t even know you really, you’re still my pal! You’re cool! And you too Roxas, even if you’re a jerk most of the time, here, don’t worry, I’ll be right back, don’t you two go anywhere!” He took off in one direction and nearly tripped over the edge of the sofa but managed to upright himself enough before he hit the wall, where he slid a couple of feet and then walked away resolutely toward the kitchen.

“He says you’re a jerk,” Axel said breezily, fingering his bottle. “Is that true?”

“What’s it matter to you?” Roxas shot back, his cheeks redder than they had been awhile ago. And those eyes were still there. And still awfully blue. Axel had heard a story before, about someone who had blue eyes and a gold crown on his head and had stared into the water until his reflection had come out and eaten him alive. Or well, maybe that wasn’t it. But eyes that blue really shouldn’t be allowed.

“I’m just making conversation.”

“Impolite conversation.”

“You should drink some more.”

“You should stop drinking.”

“You know, I was trying to be nice today when I let you listen to my MP3.”

“You didn’t have to be.”

“But I was.”

“That was your choice.”

“You could at least act appreciative.”

Roxas’s eyes were hard. “That was this morning. This is now. Get it? I’m not appreciative after two. You’re making it hard to be any type of appreciative. Nobody would be appreciative after what’s happened. I’m finding it hard to be appreciative right now even before two.”

“You’re drunk.”

Roxas gaped. “I’ve had two beers, I’m not drunk.”

“You said appreciative four times in the same breath. You’re drunk.”

“You should talk.”

“I am. I can increase the pace if you want though. I’m pretty good at that.”

“I know. You got me fired.”

“Oh, I thought that was Demyx.”

“You started it! I was being impatient with you first!

“Well then maybe you shouldn’t be so impatient,” Axel said, noticing that Demyx was already on the way back with the two beers, tripping over things and running into people. Xigbar wasn’t far off and was keeping a close eye on the blonde, and an eye—literally—on them as well. He saw Axel staring and smiled widely, giving him a big thumbs up sign and some sort of roar that Axel couldn’t hear over the loud nose of the people. He gave an acknowledging nod, frowning out at the crowd that had gathered. He hadn’t noticed when it had gotten busy around here. Apparently they were both well connected, Demyx and Xigbar both. Well, that meant one thing at least. This many people, some of them had to be more friendly than his wayward travel agent who seemed determined to somehow duke it out with him through words.

“I have the right to be impatient with people who don’t answer the questions they’re asked when I’m trying to do my job,” Roxas shot back, almost petulantly.

“Well for that I’m truly sorry,” Axel murmured. “Next time my father dies, I’ll try to be the best gentleman I can.”

There was silence as Demyx finally stumbled his way over and dropped onto the couch, handing out the beers blearily. Axel took them both since he was closer, cracked them both open, and handed one to Roxas, who took it with very suspicious eyes. Axel let him look like that and then raised the bottle. “To your plummeting career,” he said, with a half little grin on his face as he held the bottle up.

Again with the suspicious look, and then Roxas hesitantly raised the bottle to clink it slightly against Axel’s and then said, “To your father.”

That was more than enough remorse in both of their sentences and again they each nearly downed their bottles in more than one swallow. Axel sat back against the couch, rubbing the top of the glass and hearing it squeak slightly underneath the pad of his thumb. Roxas was silent as well, while the party, or gathering, or whatever the fuck it was went on around them. Demyx sat on the side, dosing and every now and again surging up and yelling stuff like, “No, your mom!” and “No, no, fuck you, and do it in your own backseat, please.” Axel didn’t know him very well but he could tell from the nonchalance that Roxas looked at him with that it really wasn’t anything important. Axel would hope not. He checked his phone and saw that no, his aunt still had not returned his call. Probably in Africa. Oh that fucking bitch.

“So how was the funeral?”

Roxas’s voice was very unexpected and very soft and Axel looked over in surprise. Roxas was looking at him while not looking at him at the same time; those pristine eyes would rest on him for a few moments and then shift away and then shift back and then the entire process would repeat, though Axel wasn’t sure where one ended and where one process started. He was sort of looking off into the distance when Axel chose to answer, after thinking about what to say very carefully and the alcohol inside his brain was subsided, as were the urges to simply yell about his brother with it.

“A pretty thing,” he said, trying to sound casual, like it was a typical conversation to just be sprouting up and talking about funerals, especially about relatives who were supposed to be close to you, you know, like your father. Odd topic of conversation. They could have talked about the flight, or the ground plane (or the bus ride to Roxas still, probably, Axel was quite sure his new hip slang hadn’t yet caught on, no matter how big the internet was these days), or they could even have started talking about Demyx since he was starting to sound like a choked hyena snoring, but no, Roxas had chosen to bring up the funeral. “You know, typical funeral. A big church. Lots of black and crying.”

Roxas nodded and there was an awkward silence, like he expected Axel to continue on. What else could he talk about? The grave stone? How the paintings in the church had seemed so lifelike and yet so dead at the same time? How he had contemplated burning the church to the ground with the candles at the altar that he and Aerith had talked about? Could he talk about that?

“My brother gave the eulogy,” he continued, haltingly, still a little more than confused about where the direction of this conversation should be going. “The priest made everyone cry like he was about to molest them. But.. other than that you know.. the weather was kind of shitty for a funeral, if you know what I mean. It was very bright outside. Like the sky just wanted to be a bitch for a day and be like, ‘haha bitches, you want to mourn, too bad, have some fucking sun’ and then we’re supposed to go out and gaily celebrate his life, you know.. that kind of shitty weather. I was actually supposed to go ahead and celebrate his life but I decided he’d want me to go to school. You know, rah rah school, so that’s why I called and changed my ticket, get it? Wasn’t trying to stalk you..or anything… heaven knows where you got that idea.”

“Hey,” Roxas interrupted, as though he wanted to start an argument about it, “you’d think the same thing if you got the same crazy guy call back in two days and get you. I mean, that’s just virtually unheard of around here. It’s crazy.” Roxas’s eyes narrowed. “Are you sure you don’t have my extension and this is just some clever way to get around it?”

Axel blinked at the seriousness in Roxas’s tone and then he laughed loud enough that people were probably staring at him. He wanted to tell them to fuck off, fuckers, he was fucking drunk, he’d laugh as loud as he wanted and when and what the hell were they going to do about it? Their host was currently passed out on the couch snoring and now mumbling something about music notes should not dance around him in such an orderly fashion, they should instead be wild and free, and so he was currently indisposed and could not help them out in their plight and time of need. Xigbar was nowhere to be seen, but a general muttering had convened and decided he’d gone on a beer run, which was nice of him. But seriously, what the fuck were they going to do? Kill him? He’d just like to see them try.

“No, Roxas,” he said, trying to sound reassuring and amused all at the same time, though he probably just sounded like he was making fun of the kid, “trust me, no. I did not try to stalk you.” He leaned his long torso forward and then extended a long arm and slapped Roxas’s knee in a friendly, companionable way. Roxas didn’t try to move away from the slapping but his eyes were still narrowed and a bit suspicious. “If I had wanted to stalk you, you would have known.” He smirked a lazy, lopsided smirk. “Oh baby, you’d know.”

The kid snorted, which somehow drew more attention than Axel’s explosive laughter, and he wondered if maybe making this kid laugh was some kind of miracle, up there with turning water into wine and proving that the moon landing was real, maybe that’s the type of people he was dealing with around here. The kid snorted once more as his eyes finally landed on Axel and he said, “Right. Well. That solves that problem. Guess I won’t be needing to change my extension after all.”

“Good,” Axel declared, watching those pretty blue eyes dip below and the corners of his mouth turn up in a slight grin, “because I have your number now, oh baby, oh baby. I don’t have enough money to bribe anyone anymore to get your extension. You want me to stalk you then, you’re going to have to cough up it up.”

“I don’t think so,” Roxas said, easily, “I like you lot to go distances for me, you understand. It’s just a test of devotion. Something like a test of trust and loyalty.”

“Designed by monkeys with fortified sticks,” Axel muttered, though Roxas didn’t seem to hear him and proceeded to ramble on about love and how people would not stop for the depths of any hell, man made or demon spawn, and that if Axel was that type, then he better get a better target, because Roxas was immune to stalkers and serial killers it seemed, but Axel tuned him out after the first few rambling sentences about faux hearts and the weird jokes about old ladies, just like he’d turned Reno off during the great funeral of the year. It was a gift, and it was funny, because it seemed to be a polar opposite of what he considered to be his natural gift, or curse, as most of those he was around a lot called it; he could either talk a lot and scream his intentions or he could just tune people out completely. Such a double edged sword was not far, apparently, but Axel didn’t care too much about the whole listening to what others think segment of anything anyway. That was for squares, not fiery redheads like himself.

There was a sudden drop onto the couch as Xigbar heaved his weight next to Demyx, who squealed at the sudden intrusion and was all flailing arms and dead weight for a second before he realized that it was Xigbar next to him and then made a happy little whine that so much unlike the previous squeak as he curled up next to him, resting his head on his arm. Axel didn’t know those two, but he thought they were an odd pair. Demyx was apparently some artist who was attempting to hit it big and worked with Roxas during the day; Xigbar apparently owned some type of hippie skate and surf shop because apparently sometime during his life he’d once lived in Hawaii and been a surfing champion and thus saw it fit to then move all away across the country and sell surf boards to people who would then have to travel all the other way across the country to use them. That was a novel idea but Xigbar had insisted his business was great and he was more in the selling of custom boards, vintage boards, boards people would never use but would hang up on their walls as tokens of remembrance to glory days in the past. Axel had pointed out that since the boards that Xigbar sold weren’t actually their boards, then how could they think there was glory in buying someone else’s board and saying it was theirs and then entertaining crowds and lying about the entire affair? Xigbar had shrugged, said that yuppies were a strange breed of people he had no idea about, and then continued promptly on to saying that the people in this town were all crazy and sheep and that he’d only moved here because of the food.

What food he’ been talking about they’d not gone around to, because Demyx was being needy at the time, but Axel had jotted a mental note down to go ahead and remember to ask him about it later, because he needed somewhere to eat tomorrow and if this place was famous for its food and he couldn’t get a hold of his aunt, then well, it would have justified the entire trip anyway.

Xigbar let Demyx pull up to his arm and start snuggling with a patient look on his face as he extended two beers toward them. Again Axel took them and cracked them both open, quite like a gentleman, and handed Roxas one. Roxas had drawn his knees up on the couch so he looked like he was about twelve, with his chin resting on them and toying with the beer again instead of drinking it. Axel swallowed, pointed it out, and then Roxas glared at him before drinking too. At this point they were both going to be heaving in the bathroom before the night was over.

“It’s only like eleven o’ clock dudes,” Xigbar said, frowning deeply at the man against him. “And he’s already passed out. He ruins my fun.”

“Just put him to bed,” Axel suggested, gesturing toward one direction like it might be the bedroom, but he didn’t really know because he’d never seen it (and god forbid he ever do because heaven knew what the hell was in it) but it seemed to emphasize the gesture he was trying to accomplish.

“But he’s so fun when he’s a little less drunk than he is now,” Xigbar said, still with that deep frown on his face. “I mean, we could probably put him in a dress when he’s less drunk and he’d be entirely out of it and completely all prancing around in it and trying to make us laugh, which I assure you, we would be doing since he’d probably look like an idiot but still. We have pictures of that before. I’ll show you later. But now if we put him in a dress he’d just fall asleep in it which is his own brand of fun, I assure you too, but not as fun as when he prances around in it.”

“Maybe you should try,” Roxas said, quietly from his side of the couch, “and put him in one now and that way, by the time you get it on, he’d be a little sobered up.”

“And then he’d probably be terrified and wondering who had raped him,” Xigbar said sagely, ruffling the nearly unconscious man’s hair. “It would be sort of funny though.”

“Where do you get dresses anyway?”

“The store, duh dude.”

“And the store has never said anything about why two men would be buying dresses?”

“Hey Red, just because you might be living in a closet doesn’t mean we are.”

Axel was flabbergasted at what Xigbar had just said and he couldn’t think of a response fast enough to stop Roxas from practically spitting out his beer in laughter. Xigbar grinned at him and Axel felt a little foolish, but the question had some validity to it after all.

“My closet’s not big enough to hide me,” he said, after he’d recovered and glared a second at Roxas, who was still chortling and snorting into his bottle, arms now wrapped around his legs.

“Sure it’s not,” he said now, almost lazily.

“I see you got out of yours a long time ago.”

Roxas didn’t seem offended by the remark as he tried his own hand at a smirk, though he failed at that in a very epic fashion. “Naw, still hanging out on the inside,” he said, running a hand through those blonde locks of his.

“We’re just a bunch of hippie gay dudes,” Xigbar confirmed, with a little bit of a sigh as he suddenly got up, as Demyx squeaked in offense and fell over onto his side without the support to keep him up and afloat. “But yea. Don’t let us stop you. Axel, like I said, you’re more than welcome to that spare bedroom we have. If your aunt hasn’t called you back yet.”

Axel nodded gratefully. “Thanks a lot dude. That really helps.”

“Don’t worry about it. Don’t want you to get arrested for drunk walking around anyway.” Xigbar bent down, scooping up Demyx who at first started to fight and kick but stilled when Xigbar elbowed him in the face. It seemed to be some sort of bizarre, painful love gesture because he immediately quieted with a content little sigh on his face. “And you know you’re always welcomed around here Rox. I’d rather you stay here. So you’re not drunk riding on your skateboard and get caught by the cops and get a shit ton of awkward questions because you’re a baby.”

“I’m not a baby!” Roxas protested hotly, his ears going pink at the supposed insult.

“Well, you’re underage in any case, and you don’t need that right now. Stay on the couch if you want. And drink some more if you’re both going to end up staying here anyway. Why waste a perfectly good night?”

Axel raised his bottle to that as Xigbar started to go away. He stood up and started swaying on his feet a little, but the world righted itself a second later. Okay, he could do this. He could so totally do this. He looked down at Roxas, who had been looking up in alarm as though Axel was going to fall but then quickly averted his gaze when Axel looked down at him. “You smoke?” he asked, “Or are you too young for that too?” There was that smirk back on his face.

“No!” Again with the pink tipped ears as he got slightly embarrassed. It was cute.

“To what, the underage or the smoking part?”

Roxas looked beyond annoyed as he got up and nearly stumbled himself. “No to both, but I’ll keep you company anyway. I guess.”

“Thanks babe, really appreciate it,” Axel said, already going toward the front door. The room was very crowded and he passed that Larxene girl, who glared at them. Glaring was obviously par for the course because once they had escaped the crowd and were standing in the rather chilly night air, he felt a lot more relieved than he had been standing inside. He shook out his cigarettes and took one out and offered one to Roxas, even though he’d just said he didn’t smoke. Roxas hesitated a lot longer than he should have, as though wrestling with himself, and then took one.

“Thought you didn’t smoke,” Axel said, leisurely as he lit his own and then held it up. Roxas scowled at him before leaning forward and pushing the tip of his onto the tip of Axel’s and then moving back quickly.

“Not like you. Only when I’m drunk.”

“Oh, so you’re drunk. Lightweight.”

“You’re drunk too!”

“But I’ve been here for like four hours. You just go here and here you are, stumbling over yourself. Now what fun is that?” He coughed a little as the smoke his lungs and then he blew it out, away from Roxas as a courtesy, though the breeze caught it and carried it back into his face anyway.

“Yea well, I’m not some six foot monster like you.”

Axel was used to the jokes about his height, so he wisely said nothing about Roxas’s own because he didn’t know if that was a tender spot with him or what. He was quiet for a second, taking a pause, and then said, “Sorry about your job man. That must really suck.”

The sincerity in his voice and the sudden talk about it seemed to surprise Roxas, because he looked up for a second and then away. “Yea. It does. Sorry about your dad dude. That must really suck too.”

Without a skip of a beat, Axel laughed, a mix between ironic and bitter, the best brew in the entire world when it came to him. “Yea. I guess it sucks.”

Roxas looked up at him.

Axel smirked, then gave a little half, sort of apologetic smile. “I have a complicated family history, you would say. The funeral was interesting.”

The kid looked like he didn’t know about whether to sympathetic or whether he should say something like he was interested.

“I mean, there weren’t any fights over the open grave or anything—though I would have paid damn good money to see that—but it was still intense.”

“I never got the whole fight over the grave thing. I mean, obviously you have a lot of emotions, but generally I thought most people were able to control themselves.”

Axel frowned. “You don’t seem like a very passionate person, Rox.”

“I am.” Though it was dark, Axel would have bet his ears had gone pink. “But I mean, honestly, fighting over a grave with a dead person inside…. And all those flowers around the casket.”

Axel shook his head at that, the smoke coming out of his mouth going in all directions and again blowing into Roxas’s face. “Naw, my father’s funeral was much more dramatic than that. Get this, my dad’s gravestone? Probably cost forty thousand dollars.”

Before he could continue Roxas sputtered out some smoke. “You’re serious?”

“Dead serious. My stepmom’s a work of art, I tell you what. And so, you know, we’re following the hearse and shit and we get there and they unload it and all of them, those guys with the white gloves, the pallbearers, they’re like, oh, ok, cool, and they put it right there and this crane grabs it and puts it in. I tell you what, they all started sobbing hysterically. A ton of birds wouldn’t have made so much racket.”

Roxas murmured something sympathetically. “It sounds like a good show. For being a funeral.”

“Eh. I got out of there as soon as I could. Wasn’t worth sticking around for I guess.”

There was a vague nod in the dark.

“So,” Axel said, switching tracks, “so what exactly did you do to get fired?” He tried to take a step to lean against the wall, ended up tripping over his own feet, and then hit it with his shoulder instead. Great. Lovely. Just all sorts of fucked up. Just like me, he thought with a wise flourish of his arms.

There was a derisive snort. “What haven’t I done to get fired?”

That piqued Axel’s interest so he looked a little more closely at the dark blur a few feet away from him. “I don’t know, you tell me.”

“I’m not exactly the best call center material,” the kid said, and in the darkness Axel could see his face turned in the opposite direction. “When I started I used to do two things, requisitions and talking to the platinum members, which is a smaller customer base, so I had time to do both and well… I was fine at the requisitions but the plat guys, they’re the ones who you have to kiss ass for and I’m not very good at that. I’m not exactly the most patient person in the world.”

“I could tell,” Axel murmured.

“And that’s about it. Customer service skills are lacking and we’re supposed to be this great entity in airline service or whatever, so we’re constantly monitored and of course I get constantly crabby so I mean, it was bound to happen. That little thing with Demyx was probably the worst.” Roxas sighed. “Maybe it’s better this way, who knows. Now I can start… I don’t know, focusing on other things.”

“Like what?”

There was a quick shrug and then Axel saw in the darkness his head tilt up to the roof, like he was speaking directly to it. “Oh, just things. Getting another job. Going back to school. Picking up a hobby here and there. Things like that.”

“You must have a pretty boring life with no hobby.”

The head that was speaking quite reverently to the roof came down sharply. “Oh? What do you do that’s so fun?”

“A lot of things Rox, a lot of things,” Axel said, as mysteriously as he could muster before dropping the finished cigarette to the ground and stepping on it. There were other discarded cigarettes on the ground so he figured it would be okay, as far as littering was concerned. Who knew? Roxas dropped his a second later and they stood in the quiet dark, as though contemplating certain things about stars of their own. Axel suggested they go back inside and make good on what Xigbar had said. Roxas agreed and they stepped back into the noisy, well lit party and went to the kitchen. They both drank another beer, and this time they talked about Axel’s plane trip, and how not very smooth it had gone and how Roxas had left his own music player with his mother in her hospital and how he was pissed. They talked about how Axel lived in Brooklyn and Roxas’s mom lived in Brooklyn and about how Axel should just pick up the music player from the hospital before bad things went awry.

Axel agreed and Roxas did too, enthusiastically, and Axel knew that the kid was punch drunk, because Roxas didn’t seem like the sort who was willing to let an absolute stranger just up and pick up his music player from his mother in a hospital who didn’t even know him. The rate they were going though, neither of them were going to remember anything in the morning anyway. Somewhere awhile later—Axel wasn’t sure, because his mind was clearly quite hazy—Xigbar showed back up, without Demyx in a dress, but still in good spirits and Axel clearly thought that they had been doing something quite dirty and naughty in the bedroom. Xigbar had laughed but not said no, but he did suggest they do a shot, just the three of them. Roxas disagreed, saying he was done, but Xigbar and Axel kept at him until he succumbed to their peer pressure and agreed if he could have a chaser. Xigbar rolled his eyes at him but found some strong punch in the fridge and gave him a little pink cup full of it. They retrieved the shot glasses, cleaned them out, and poured in the liquor—tequila, because Xigbar was a man and men drank tequila. Axel could hardly taste it when it went down his throat, though Roxas was clearly quite affected by it as he gagged and went tumbling to the sink to drink the punch, as though he might spit it all out at any second. Xigbar and Axel both laughed at him and Roxas glared, but his cheeks were flushed deep red and his ears were pink and his eyes were actually smiling, not just his mouth, and Axel thought about how blue his eyes were again.

Xigbar retired soon after for good, the party was winding down finally, and Axel tried to stumble to the bedroom but ended up in the bathroom nearly in the shower before Roxas found him, shaking his head helplessly at the taller man and leading him to the spare bedroom. They went inside and Roxas seemed to realize that he wasn’t sleeping here, because he apologized profusely and said oh, wait, usually I sleep here but you can dude, you’re the guest, really, I’ve slept on the couch before. Axel disagreed intently, saying he’d put Roxas through hell and that Roxas deserved it. Roxas countered with the entire, it’s my job, let me live, stop telling me what to do crap, and so they stood in the middle of the room and argued a lot for a second, actually a few minutes that included animated arm movements and hand jerks and a lot of things that nobody liked to admit they did when they were drunk and arguing animatedly. Somewhere in the middle of it, Axel leaned too much forward, Roxas pushed his head up in defiance, and somewhere in the middle of all that, they started to kiss each other.

Roxas tasted like salt, and desperation. There was an urgency in the way he pressed up against Axel and Axel, already off balance and now more than distracted, stumbled back, hitting the wall with a bang that shook the picture on the wall but they both paid no attention to it. Axel crooked his knees a little, so that he was more on Roxas’s level, as Roxas gripped his hips now, his lips pressing against Axel’s harshly.

“Your mouth,” he muttered, voice nearly lost in Axel’s own breath, “open your mouth.”

Axel listened and did and Roxas’s tongue slipped inside, scraping along the inside of Axel’s cheek, and Axel might have moaned then, electrified, and that would have made sense, the noise coming from him, because it was some sort of indicator of what he was doing, because the next thing he knew, he was crouching above Roxas on the bed, nipping and biting at his neck, while Roxas convulsed underneath him, all breathless nothings and words composed entirely of electricity.

There was more desperation in the way that Roxas kicked off his shoes, and shifted underneath him, leaning up, so now he was the one with his mouth buried in Axel’s neck, biting and bruising, tugging on his ear with his teeth while his hands went back to Axel’s hips, fingers digging through the denim there to grip the skin. Axel shuddered when Roxas bit him especially hard, and he felt Roxas’s toes touching his ankles, straining at the shoes there, and Axel leaned back, hearing Roxas whine as he did, long arms reaching around to blindly grope at his sneakers.

Roxas levered himself up, one hand dipping into the mattress to support his weight while the other pushed Axel’s shirt up, his fingers spreading over the skin, blunt fingernails dragging across the sides of his body, over his ribs, lowering his mouth to lick and follow the path his fingers were following, slow and at the same time nothing but. Axel moaned again, finally freeing himself of both his shoes, and Roxas braced his palms against Axel’s chest, pushing him back now, so that it was Axel on the mattress, Roxas crouching over him, still with his shirt up into his neck as Roxas bit and lapped at his chest.

He couldn’t stop the noises from his throat as he fisted his hands in Roxas’s hair, back arching when Roxas bit him, bit him hard enough to hurt, but he could feel the tension now as he ran his hands lower, across Roxas’s shoulders, spreading his palms against the skin protected by a thin layer of cotton, tracing his own fingertips across the surface to feel Roxas shivering at his touch. Roxas was trailing lower now, biting the flesh on his navel, and then slithering back up, past his rolled up shirt, to bite at his lips again.

He raised himself on his elbows now, so that he had better access, and this time the kiss was slower, less violent, but still urgent, still desperate, and Axel wondered for a second why it was desperate, why they were doing this, and if maybe the past few days were starting to catch up to him, that maybe he needed this as much as Roxas seemed like he needed it, and that thought was the one he had in mind when he rocked his hips upward into Roxas’s, suddenly, without warning, and mostly without thinking.

He saw Roxas’s eyes widen and then he moaned into Axel’s mouth, his back arching as Axel did it again, this time making them both moan and Roxas shudder. Axel felt his hands gripping the bed covers on either side of his head and Axel did it again, panting, making Roxas groan, more loudly than before, and that seemed to wake him up, because his half-lidded eyes suddenly sharpened and he moved his hands so that he was gripping Axel’s shirt, yanking them both off the bed and onto the floor again, as he pulled at Axel’s shirt, trying to get it off and over his head.

Axel pulled back, pulling his shirt off and throwing it on the floor, and then tugging at Roxas’s own shirt, but Roxas was already moving, hissing and practically throwing Axel into the wall, following him and starting to attack his neck again, biting and sucking, ignoring the wall shake and the picture again rattling.

“Take off your shirt,” Axel panted, fingers again buried in the fabric, but Roxas wasn’t paying attention, his hands roaming all over Axel’s now bare torso, fingers everywhere, in between his ribs, ghosting his spine and bare back, and then he was pushing his hips into Axel’s again, or as well as they could with the height difference, but he was rocking his hips now, so that they were both moaning, Axel’s hands gripping Roxas’s shoulders as Roxas arched into him desperately, biting his chest hard enough for Axel’s eyes to open wider than before. With a near savage noise he tightened his hold on Roxas’s shoulders and pushed him away, hearing Roxas whimper at the loss of contact, before Axel had shoved him bodily back to the wall, so that their positions were reversed, the wall rattling again.

“Take off your shirt,” Axel growled, biting Roxas’s neck and pulling the thin cotton up, bending at his knees slightly so he could now lick and suck at Roxas’s chest, like Roxas had been doing to him. Roxas’s breath hitched to Axel’s ears, and then he was obliging, pulling his shirt up and off, so that it joined Axel’s on the floor and Axel had access to the hot skin now, as he spread his hands across Roxas’s own ribs, dragging his fingernails up and down in lazy patterns.

“Ax-el,” he heard Roxas gasp, as he pushed his hips against Roxas’s again.

“What?” Axel murmured, moving up so that he could lick Roxas’s earlobe, tugging on it with his teeth, and Roxas’s hands held on tightly to his hair now, and his hips shoved forward again and oh, Roxas was driving him insane.

“N-nothing.”

“Sure?” Long fingers slid ever so precariously underneath Roxas’s pants, resting on the flesh of his thigh there, as Roxas whined in his throat. Axel’s mouth moved back to Roxas’s, and this time it was lusty and half lidded and sloppy and the desperation was there, so acute, so thick, that Roxas was holding onto him, holding onto him for almost dear life, and there was the salt taste there too, and Axel wondered briefly if it was because he needed to cry, or if because his entire constitution had always been like this, on the periphery of tears and neediness.

Roxas was moving again, flipping the tables on him again, pushing him against the other wall, so that it was him now doing the exploring, slipping his fingers to rest on Axel’s legs, him doing the pushing with his hips, and Axel’s eyes rolling up to the see the picture stop vibrating on the wall, shuddering as he felt Roxas’s tongue moving down, lower, and oh god, his hands were on Axel’s belt, holding it, resting there, teasingly, as Roxas leaned up on his toes to kiss again, and again it the salt and the loneliness and the desperate and the longing, and then—

“Hey! Axel? Axel, are you okay? What’s going on? What’s with the banging, dude?”

Axel’s eyes flew open and so did Roxas’s and they stared at each other in muteness as the knob on the door started to turn.

“Is it an earthquake?” came a second voice, slurred and squeaky.

They kept staring at each other, frozen in place, as the knob turned and Xigbar looked into the room.

He saw them and stared, and Axel couldn’t read the look on his face, as his eyes flickered from Axel down to Roxas, and then to their shirts on the floor together. Axel couldn’t move. Apparently Roxas couldn’t either.

His face was still expressionless as he retreated, closed the door, and then they heard his voice, “No, he’s fine. He’s asleep. No, Demyx, it’s not an earthquake, we live in New York. No! He’s fine! Demyx, if you go into that room I will not let you wear the dress.”

The whine and the voice moved away from the door.

Axel felt himself sag with the tension, and then Roxas moved away from him swiftly, so swiftly that Axel blinked, confused, and he looked, saw Roxas picking up his shirt and twisting it back right. Axel watched him wordlessly slip it back on and then go around the bed, to the door, hand resting on the knob.

“Roxas—“

“Please don’t talk to me.”

Roxas’s voice, all steel and resolve, so different from just a few moments ago, made Axel move, made him push himself off the wall and head around the bed. The skittish look in Roxas’s eyes made him stop at the foot of the bed, a good six feet away from where Roxas was at the door, hand still resting firmly on the knob.

“Roxas…”

Roxas wasn’t looking at him now, was looking at the knob, his body tense and rigid.

“You’re not… leaving, are you?”

That made the blonde look up sharply, questioningly.

“I think—“

Roxas turned the knob and was out the door.

Axel didn’t go after him.

__

This was a one story house.

And Roxas didn’t know where the attic was anyway.