A/N: I have started a new obsession, basically just trying to keep myself sane through final assignments and exams. (Read: Procrastination is a bitch)

Warnings: Fluffy descriptions, mentions of illness, slight mention of sexy goings-on, etc.

Aftermath

His bare feet were cold as they stepped in the wet grass, the hems of his jeans soaked through and heavy. He raised his arms over his head and stretched hard, chest out and chin up. His straining fingers brushed leaves, which rained down like stars in the sunlight, a galaxy sprinkled in honey blond hair. An intake of breath, barely heard, made Roxas turn with a smirk pulling at his lips. He lifted a golden brow, teasingly, questioningly - but all Axel could see was the sunshine filtering through the clouds and into that hair, lighting it up like a halo around the boy's head, water droplets shimmering. "Axel, if you don't shut your mouth, the rain's going to fall again and you'll be drowned like a turkey on Thanksgiving." Roxas' voice was low, dry, sarcastic; it echoed through the air and made the moisture glisten. Against the green of the foliage surrounding them, with the yellow sunlight bursting through gray clouds and peek-a-boos of blue sky, Roxas looked like a god.

Albeit a god wearing jeans and a plain white shirt, but a god none the less.

Axel tried to smile - he would swear he did - but it was weak, a lift of the corners of his lips before dissipating again. He was in awe, struck still by the ephemeral vision of such a beautiful boy standing in the clearing after the rain.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and it mattered not to Axel whether it was the storm that was leaving or another coming. He was still, not wanting to enter the scene lest he destroy it with his tampering, his mere presence.

Roxas turned again, his lips curling upward and lifting his face towards the sunlight, warming his skin in the glory of nature. Axel's skin itched, he wanted, he wanted that sun kissed skin under his own pale torso; wanted his hands in that hair, those eyes trained on his own and half shut and begging for him. He wanted those full lips parting, breath coming hard and chest heaving and he wanted, he needed...

"Ax, if you don't stop staring, I'm going to think you're going mushy on me. After a storm really isn't that picturesque."

'Yes, yes it is, Roxas, oh, God, Rox, what you do to me...Don't deserve you, not like this, not looking like a god in the sunlight, not ever, not good enough...Rox, Roxas, mine, mine, always always always...' Axel's thoughts tangled and tripped over themselves, his eyes roving the blond's body, focusing on the strip of skin peeking out as he raised his arms above his head again, stretched again, not noticing him smirking again...

Axel was too far gone to notice the blond walking slowly towards him, he immersed himself in the way his hips moved, the way the damp white shirt clung to his taut stomach and strong shoulders and gave the barest hint to tight, pink nipples. The redhead snapped his head up to look in Roxas' eyes as the blond lay muscled arms across his shoulders, one hand against the back of his neck and one in his hair. Axel pulled his legs up, cradling the blond on his knees, straddled over Axel's legs, both on the wet, cool grass.

Axel fell into those blue eyes and drowned; he died a million deaths in that cerulean embrace and never once felt it, never once wanted out, because to die in Roxas was to be close to him, closer than ever...

"Axel. What the hell are you doing?" Roxas asked, brows beginning to furrow, a grimace forming on such a lovely face. Axel buried his face into the blond's sternum, arms laced around his waist and pulling, squeezing Roxas' body into his own.

'Maybe if I hold tight enough, we can become one person, and I'll never have to worry about leaving.' Roxas stroked his hair, ignoring the strands that slowly slid out and the patches of bare scalp.

"Don't look at me like that, Rox. I don't think I can handle it," Axel whispered against his chest, lips twitching forward and kissing over and over, the t-shirt fabric the only thing between his lips and tanned skin. Roxas laid his cheek atop Axel's head, and the redhead immediately started kissing the thick column of his throat, his defined collarbones.

Roxas pulled away, sitting on the redhead's raised knees and just staring. Slowly, he touched the other's sharp chin and angular cheekbones, traced dark purple tattoos and the delicate skin of his eyelids. That face he'd already memorized had been whittled away, until he was a specter, skin stretched tight against the bone. But that pale skin seemed translucent under the bright, after-storm sunlight, seemed to shimmer and shift in the light until the redhead was glowing, an earth-bound angel; it gave him a beauty that he had lost since the treatment started.

The green grass around them was littered with impossibly red strands, the difference in colour making it impossible not to notice. Sinewy, sun-loved hands traveled to Axel's thin, pale chest; his dark t-shirt, once fitted to a leanly muscled torso, now fell in folds around the slip of a man. Roxas could feel his ribs jutting sharply under his skin, and the blond wondered how the other's skin didn't split and bleed. He brushed his nose along the redhead's, lightly brushed his lips against the other's pale, chapped mouth.

Axel caught his lips and cupped the blond's jaw with thin, cool hands. The redhead worshipped him, kissing him so tenderly and softly the blond thought he would break down and cry. Slowly, Roxas pushed Axel into the damp grass, deepening the kiss, pressing his strong body against the other's thin, breakable one.

Soft, gentle movements turned into something possessive and desperate and so terribly beautiful. Bony fingers fisted in white fabric, tendons in skinny wrists stood out from clenching and holding on like life depended on it. Roxas swallowed the lump in his throat that promised to choke tears out of him.

And there, in the aftermath of the storm, with the threat of illness and life and death over their heads, they reached out and found one another again.