There's not much he likes about Axel.

But Roxas likes the way that cigarettes hang from his lips; he likes the way he talks with his hands and how spider-like his fingers are. The part of him that talks big and walks tall likes how no one else likes Axel – at least no one at school. Axel's friends from the college are a bunch of freaks, but maybe Roxas likes that too.

He'd always been without a cause, but this was a surprise that none of them had seen coming. Roxas didn't care about what people thought or his image because he cared about his image. He hates people, and hates to need people, and sometimes he thinks people are holding him down, holding him back. Mom, Dad, Sora. He grows more selfish as the days go by, and he realizes this, and he hates himself.

Axel sees this, sees this and smirks in a way that makes Roxas want to hit him, and leans over the blonde's shoulder, pale pale moon spider fingers gripping and catching at his jacket. He's skinny, a skeleton with eyes that transcend life and death and the lot behind the local Target where Roxas works. The plaid doesn't help – makes him paler – and look like a hobo. Or a disenfranchised punk, but not mainstream. The genuine article. And maybe Roxas likes that too, but still thinks his fingers are ugly and wonderful. They hypnotize, catch twilight eyes and he's not dizzy but feels like throwing up, and he inhales the voice at his ear like petrol emissions and it steadies his nerves better than the nicotine ever has. So much false courage, it builds up in the corners of his lips, and yet he still can't reply when Axel whispers "Breathe, baby, nice 'n' easy" because he knows he's stolen more than just his breath.

"What're you doing here, kid?"

It's like an out-of-body experience, or maybe his imagination is just running away from him, but he can see the look on Axel's face when he ducks under his hands and pulls away. Spider silk hangs from the shoulders of his work vest. Even if he's not looking at him, he can still see him, see those fingers untangling the web and readying the lasso again.

Roxas wants to crush him, smash him up against a wall and see all the blood Axel has ever sucked on his fingers, pull his legs off one-by-one. All eight of them.

That's when the crude-oil courage hits his brain and he can shut off his morbid interest and he's so proud at how uncaring he sounds. Just like Axel, but without the edge.

It's easy now to turn and raise an eyebrow, to appear disgruntled. "I work here, I'm on my break." There's a beat, and he winces at how damn feminine he sounds. "And I'm not your baby."

"Oh, dear, a capitalist, commercial money-baby, who, oppressed by omnipresent parental units and morals of the communal norm, applies for a job and stashes money under his mattress at night in hopes that one day he'd be able to fly away. And maybe ditch his fake ID and grow some balls and smoke a cig in the living room without double parental homicide. The weapon? Shock at the sight of their baby angel breathing in the world." The redhead says all this in a breath and Roxas catches himself staring and it's too late to look away, so he doesn't. But he knows Axel knows Roxas knows Axel has hit the mark perfectly. So when after standing silently for a heartbeat Axel holds out a cigarette carton, Roxas takes one and the offered lighter.

He's never done this before, but doesn't choke as he inhales and his eyes water as he welcomes the planet into his lungs.

They smoke in silence, Roxas sucking it down to the filter as he thinks and only coughs once, and the devil on his shoulder is trying to strangle the angel with its own halo.

"I'm not into guys," he says, letting the cigarette drop from his fingers, and he grinds it into the asphalt with the heel of his shoe, "And I don't even know you."

At first he'd thought cat, then maybe snake, but no, a spider through and through. It was a good thing spiders don't smile, but if they did it would be just like the one growing on Axel's face. And he's almost surprised to see it reach his eyes. "You're a good liar, kid."

"Stop calling me kid, and I've gotta get back to work."

"I'll see you at the end of your shift, around eight o'clock, right?"

Hand on the knob of the door leading back into the store, Roxas freezes and turns back to look at him. He could ask the obvious: could ask how Axel knows his schedule, ask if he's stalked him since Axel had graduated, when Roxas still wore shorts and ran around the lawn and flew through the sprinklers, that summer between the 8th and the 9th grade. He could, but he doesn't.

He doesn't wonder aloud whether or not Axel was there watching when the boys in gym had called him a fag when they had noticed his legs were practically hairless, and that he still wore shorts around in the 9th grade, in high school. He doesn't wonder if Axel knows he's refused to wear shorts since then, no matter how warm it gets, and that that night was the first night he ever got drunk, and had no idea what he was doing. And for just an instance he frowns, and cobwebs start forming in his memories, dusty and long forgotten, because a new web is being woven in the present. Silk wraps and winds around the arms and legs of his mind and spreads him a la Vesuvian Man with a cry of surprise, and da Vinci would be proud. It's sharp, like strings of spittle and moonshine and powdered glass; he can feel it sinking into his wrists. White and bright and red, like candy canes, like Christmas, and suddenly it's forcing his way past his teeth and tearing up his throat.

He thinks he tastes blood. Blood or bile.

So when Axel grabs his arm and holds him upright and there are the contents of his stomach splattered across the back lot, he's not surprised or scared. There's no sudden epiphany. He's known this all along, like sitting in a room with a corpse and knowing it's a corpse and seeing the blood and smelling the rot. Every now and then the wind blows and stirs the blanket draped over it, and for just a second you're exposed once more and it hits you all over again. Roxas is sitting in a room with his own corpse, and Axel has just lifted the blanket, leaving it laying there cold and stark white in its nakedness, and wrapped it around Roxas's shoulders. There's no point looking away. It's like a twisted mirror.

He wipes his mouth off on the back of his hand and murmurs appreciation for the bottle of water Axel has procured from somewhere, swishing it around in a mouth that tastes of Sour Skittles and cigarettes. It's not any easier to meet Axel's gaze now, but he does so anyway, eyes overbright, "D'you want a slurpee? I get them for free."

And he grins, reckless, and can still feel the world bunched and poisonous in his chest.