A/N: Yes, I will eventually finish The Thin Man, but it takes awhile, darn it! So here's another chapter series for you. The Looking Glass Wars is another Kingdom Hearts fic by my sister A Spot of Bother. Much as I love the story, she has yet to finish it.

Axel paused in his typing and leaned back in his chair, sighing as he felt his back crack. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes before settling the glasses back onto his face and glaring at his laptop screen. His fingers settled back onto the keyboard, ready to fly at a moment's notice as soon as the words came. But the words didn't come. The red-head let out an angry snort before picking up the phone and dialing the only seven digits he ever bothered to memorize.

Roxas woke slowly, his eyes taking a moment to focus on the red smudges of his digital clock. 3:16 AM. He was going to kill whoever was on the other end of his phone line.

"What?" he snapped irritably. To hell with polite greetings, it was three-thirty in the morning and the blond knew there was only one person suicidal enough to call him before seven.

"I need you," Axel stated, unperturbed by Roxas' less than pleasant greeting.

"Axel, I swear to God, if you are calling me drunk again..." The man in question sighed and Roxas could hear him rolling his eyes.

"No, Rox, listen. This ending bit isn't sitting right and I need your help."

"My work hours are nine to five, Axel, as I've told you before. Now leave me alone. If I have to deal with you, I need all the sleep I can get so I don't murder you."

"Roxas," Axel whined. "I need you now, before I forget my ideas. And if I forget my ideas, I'll blow my deadline and if I do that, you know your boss will want an explanation as to why I'm late, and I'll tell him -"

"Shut up," Roxas interrupted as he sat up and scrubbed his face with his free hand. "If I have to deal with you when sleep deprived, you damn well better have a shit ton of coffee and breakfast ready when I get there."

For all the shit the two gave each other, Axel refused to work with anyone else. And Roxas would never admit it, but he's pretty sure he'd bodily hurt anyone who tried. How the two managed to work together was a mystery because it seemed like all they did was bicker. On top of all of that, the two of them came from entirely different backgrounds.

Roxas was the youngest of two sons from a working middle class family. He had gotten good grades, earned a scholarship and worked his way through college, eventually earning a degree in English. Axel, on the other hand, had come from money. And he had only made more of it since he began his writing career at the age of twenty-two. That same year - and at the same age - Roxas had been hired by XIII, a well-known publishing company and had had the rough-draft of Axel Lea's first novel thrust into his hands.

The blond could not say that he and Axel had immediately become friends. The smug red-head had irritated Roxas to no end. A simple visit to solidify who the dedication would be going to had taken six hours and had involved Axel pacing his loft and outlining his second novel. Roxas had found it particularly taxing when the red-head kept pausing to look at him and asking, "Got it memorized?" It was only after Axel had asked the blond to recall every last detail of his diatribe that Roxas realized - Axel really did not remember his ideas. How the hell did he focus long enough to write that first novel? Roxas wondered irritably after an eight hour session of writing down everything his new ward rambled at him. When he finally managed to get Axel's book published, he thought he had freed himself from insanity. He was wrong.

Roxas did have to give it to Xemnas. The older man had tried to find another editor to work with the pyromaniac, especially since Roxas was in the middle of another project by the time the red-head sent in a partial draft for his second novel. But none of them lasted. Larxene even claimed that their enigmatic protege had tried to set her on fire. Roxas wasn't sure if that story was true, but if it was...he really couldn't blame the man. By the time Axel had finally finished ranting and raving at Xemnas, Roxas found himself the sole keeper of XIII new star. He couldn't decided if he wanted to kill himself, or Xemnas for putting him in this position. He was an editor, not a baby-sitter, dammit! Roxas was sure that one of them would be dead within a month.

But here they were, five years later and both of them still alive. At least for the moment, Roxas thought darkly as he trekked across the penthouse lobby. He wasn't really all that angry. He would have been visiting the pyromaniac today anyway, Axel had a nasty habit of scheduling unplanned getaways to Hollow Bastion or the Land of Dragons if Roxas didn't stop by every other day. Roxas grinned tiredly as the elevator made the trip to the top floor. He'd never forget when he went on vacation without telling the red-head. He had received a very lengthy voice-mail from Xemnas, telling him to cut his trip short and to collect his ward from Port Royal. He had really reamed the pyromaniac out but the stupid idiot had just sat there and beamed at him. Roxas wound up rolling his eyes and muttering about stupid writers and how grown men in their twenties should fucking well act like grown men in their twenties and not go gallivanting off to other worlds because their editor took a vacation.

"Bout time you got here, blondie. Just about gave it up for a lost cause." Axel greeted, pulling the door open before Roxas even had the chance to lift his hand to knock.

"Shut up." Roxas replied, shoving his way past the taller man. "What did you order for breakfast?" he asked, yawning as he made his way to the sofa.

"Eggs over easy, but I told them to cook them longer. I know you have a fear of runny yolks." Axel teased, smirk on his face.

"Sue me for not wanting salmonella. God only knows what you'd get up to if I were in the hospital for food poisoning." He sprawled on the couch. "Alright, if we're hashing out your story I need coffee." Axel chuckled, but handed the weary blond a full mug. "So, what's the problem?"

"The problem is this: I was struck by inspiration for the ending before I had managed to figure out how the story was going to get there. I'm trying to write this story backwards, and it's not working." Roxas took a long sip of coffee, trying to get his brain to catch up to the pace that Axel obviously wanted to move at.

"Uh, right. Where did you leave off and where did you start the ending from?" By late afternoon the two men had managed to hash out the ending to The Looking Glass Wars and Axel was immensely pleased with himself for managing to finish a book ahead of deadline. Roxas would have been amused by Axel's child-like delight, but he was passed out on the couch and not even a freak hurricane would have enticed him to move. When he finally woke around six o'clock that night, a sticky note was on the table and the red-head was nowhere to be found.

Roxas, out for a walk. Feel free to stay for dinner. I want to talk to you about a new idea for a book. I'm thinking, since we have other worlds we can travel to, what if in some alternate universe the people didn't know about other worlds? And them some day, something happened and a group of them were thrown out into the universe and they had to like, go from world to world to save it? Can you get me information on our worlds and how people travel back and forth?

Roxas huffed in amusement. Leave it to Axel to wait until the last minute to finish his book, but once it was over he was already on to the next thing. The blond liberated a pen from between the cushions of the couch and left his own note.

Axel, sleeping in the guest bedroom. The new idea sounds intriguing but wake me up to hash out the details and DIE.

Confident that he would be ignored, Roxas shuffled his way to the guest bedroom and decided to catch as much sleep as he could before Axel was off on another adrenaline fueled writing spree.

~Review~