Title: Come and Rest Your Bones (With Me)
Pairing: Axel/Roxas
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: language, mentions of sex, futuristic settings
A/N: This has been stewing in my brain for a little bit, so here we have a drabble/minific for AkuRoku Day! Enjoy!
Disclaimer: Title is taken from Sunday Morning by Maroon 5, Firefly and its 'verse belongs to the brilliant mind of Joss Whedon and Fox, and I claim no ownership of Kingdom Hearts or its characters.
Summary: When the flailing body of a lanky redhead leapt out of a crowd and knocked him over in the middle of the street, Roxas didn't think he'd spend the next years of his life being his lover and copilot – and yet here he was, running from the Alliance at breakneck speed with his hand firmly clasped in that of a former Alliance assassin.
It was a strange, brand new universe after the Alliance was crippled by the Reynolds transmission; the transmission sent shockwaves throughout the universe, all the way to the outer rim and even in the core planets, shaking the foundations of its power – but not destroying it. The Alliance reasserted his power and conducted damage control like their public relations agents were born to do, but in some parts of the universe their version of events was not exactly appeasing.
Roxas watched the Reynolds transmission with wide, horrified eyes and a slack jaw over and over again, until he realized hot, wet tears were streaming from his eyes. He remembered seeing officials and commanders squirm in their chairs, seeing their faces turn pale and green with disgust as they watched the decade-old recording play out until its gruesome end. Many stood their ground, and reset their jaws in determination to stay, and keep working like it was business as usual and Reynolds was a liar who'd concocted the whole thing.
Roxas couldn't take it. He ran, stowing himself away on a ship bound for wilder planets as soon as he possibly could. From their he moved from world to world, searching for a place that made him feel at home enough that he'd be comfortable staying a little while. He rarely ever learned their names unless he stayed more than a few weeks, making his way fixing ship engines and offering to cook, which he figured were his two primary skills. The adventure of it all really kept him moving from one place to another; Roxas loved landing in a brand new place and being able to start from scratch if he wanted. He figured the Alliance wasn't that interested in him anymore – it wasn't as if he was one of their prized soldiers on whom they'd spent millions of credits training, anyway. How much value did they place on a single engineer? Probably not much.
Then Roxas found himself in one of the middle planets, a place that had been colonized by people who'd lived in some place called Italia when the Earth was still viable; they spoke a peculiar tongue beyond the usual Modified Mandarin and Common, which were still spoken though in more formal settings, which made them slightly more difficult to understand. But nevertheless Roxas arrived just as an enormous festival was being prepared – it was a tradition, according to the locals he spoke with, one that transcended lifetimes and terraforming and outer-space travel. The Carnival, as they called it, was to be a singularly joyous and energetic occasion, wherein people from all across the world gathered in their cities dressed up in elaborate costumes as well as jester and dragon masks, and danced the hours away. Roxas convinced someone to lend him a simple clown outfit and joined the fray, buying fried octopus and cheese and dancing until his feet were sore.
This was where Roxas met Axel.
Rather, it should be said that this is where Axel leapt out of a crowd and knocked Roxas onto his ass, his limbs flailing and eyes widening as he realized he'd actually hit someone. He looked different then, with his long red hair tied back in a sleek tail and an unmarked face – Roxas thought at the time that he might have been military, with his polished clothes and boots, but when the redhead grasped his hand and pulled him along, away from the troops advancing on them, but he realized he didn't really care.
That was more than five years ago, though, and Axel and Roxas had been running ever since. They bought a ship off a retiring pilot on Hera and left for good, meaning to skim the outskirts of the 'verse for as long as they could stand each other – which turned out to be quite a while. The ship wasn't the best, but Roxas was able to retrofit a better engine scavenged from a Firefly and that made it run quite a bit smoother. The years turned them both a little wild, with Axel's hair flowing in long, free red spikes, black tattoos across his cheeks; Roxas had grown his hair out too, so now it stuck up in curls that made it appear he'd just rolled out of their shared bunk – which was probably exactly what it appeared.
Axel, he learned eventually, was running for a very, very good reason. He was an Operative, one of those highly-trained, expensive assassins who had no names, no records, and left no survivors – and he was running from the very people he'd been raised and trained by. Roxas discovered this pretty quickly, when Axel asked for his help in removing the ID and communication chips installed in his neck and wrists; the redhead admitted those details when Roxas was slicing open his flesh to take out the microchips, not even flinching in pain as the blond cut him. Axel, he learned, was not his real name but rather one he saw in a book and thought it looked cool, so he took it for his own when he renounced the life of an Operative. Roxas never asked what his real name was; he didn't think it mattered much. He wasn't even sure Axel remembered what his original name was to begin with. The Alliance probably wiped it from his memory during training.
None of that mattered now as they cruised around galaxies and camped out beneath the stars when they stopped to refuel, curled up together on blankets while they watched meteor showers you just couldn't see higher up. They still had to be mindful of the core worlds and those within the Alliance's reach, because they really didn't take kindly to turncoat Operatives; they knew too much about what went on inside the Alliance, and even though Axel had not spoken a word in relation to his years as an assassin Roxas knew they'd shoot them both on sight. It was too risky not to keep a watchful eye out for agents of the Alliance, even far out on the border worlds where government officials rarely tread, as Roxas had to admit he'd become rather quite fond of his irascible and sharp-tongued redhead.
They'd been lucky for those five years, skirting along the peripheral vision of the Alliance and taking jobs when they could to keep food on the table and fuel in the engine. For the most part they ran supplies from one moon to another, just the two of them, no need for more in their crew. Axel was pretty broadly mistrustful of anyone who wasn't Roxas for some reason, though during their dealings he seemed quite genial to their various contractors. It wasn't until after they'd boarded the goods and were out of that moon's atmosphere that he hissed about some comment the bastard had made and relaxed in Roxas' presence. It was comfortable with just the two of them, Axel in the cockpit and Roxas making adjustments and soothing their fickle Firefly engine when it sputtered and faltered; when it was smooth sailing, Roxas came up and sat beside Axel in the cockpit, watching the stars float past as they glided through the sky.
There were a couple separate cabins on the ship, but rarely were any of them used par for one; the ship originally was meant to accommodate at least a large family emigrating to another terraformed world, but most of the bedrooms became storage closets after they acquired the ship. When Axel turned the autopilot on and Roxas felt the warm touch of the redhead's long fingers against the bare skin on his arm, they either stayed right in the cockpit or made their way to Axel's cabin a few feet away on the main bridge. The cockpit was Roxas' favorite, and not just for the interesting possibilities it offered as far as sex went – but when they were both sated and satisfied, panting heavily against sweat-tacky skin, they could lay back against the long couch and curl up together to watch the stars and supernovas surrounding them. While Axel's cabin had its own perks, it did not have the spectacular view the cockpit did.
They were relaxing after a particularly mind-blowing bought of sex, drifting on autopilot around a white sun, when Axel suddenly fell silent and looked contemplative. When Roxas asked him what was wrong, the redhead cleared his throat and settled so he was peering down at Roxas, reclining and leaning on his elbow.
"You realize we've been traveling together for about five years now, right?"
"Fuck, has it really been that long?" Roxas frowned slightly. He was not in the habit of keeping track of their days together, and he'd been under the impression Axel wasn't either. "And the Alliance still hasn't managed to catch up with you, huh."
"I know," Axel chuckled uncomfortably. "They just can't get their shit together." Then Axel fell silent again, looking down and away from Roxas' curious gaze. After a long pause, during which the redhead trailed mindless figures and characters across Roxas' bare flesh, Axel spoke again, though in a much softer tone. "I know their secrets, you know. That's why they marked me."
Roxas shrugged. He'd known that for a long time, even though Axel never said it; he'd figured Axel had learned a great deal about the untold stories of the Alliance, especially being an Operative. None of that mattered to him though.
"I don't care," Roxas muttered, meeting Axel's intense gaze. "I never cared about any of their secrets."
"I know you don't, but they'll keep looking for me. They don't take kindly to traitors, especially people like me."
"Operatives," Roxas supplied unnecessarily.
"Do you ever wonder why a person like me ran?"
"I always figured it was the same reason as me – the Reynolds transmission. Am I wrong?"
"You're not wrong. I'd never questioned before," Axel said quietly. "I did what I had to do because it had to be done, and that was what I was supposed to do. You do the job, wipe your sword off, and move on. Simple. When I saw that transmission . . . I couldn't function. There were like two months before I left that I spent just trying to work things out in my head, that I spent asking myself questions I hadn't thought about since I was little. I ran because I couldn't take not knowing anymore, because I wanted to know what the truth was."
"Have you found that yet?"
Axel shook his head after a moment. "I'm still working that out. But . . . I can tell you one thing I figured out."
"Yeah?"
"You are very important to me," Axel responded with a soft grin. "That's all truth. I know you don't have to put up with me, but you do, and I love you even more because of it."
"Well I can't very well boot you off the ship, I'm no good at flying it," Roxas teased, his chest expanding at Axel's unprompted, loving words as he tilted his head up and captured the redhead's mouth in a slow kiss, relaying his own emotions through the movement until Axel pulled away again.
"There's something else, too. I remembered my name," Axel whispered, his chin and lower lip wavering slightly. "It was Lea."
Roxas tested the name on his tongue. "How'd you remember?"
It was Axel's turn to shrug. "I don't know, it just came to me. Memories come back here and there too. I wanted you to know that, though. My name. I don't think even the Alliance has that on record."
"I'll keep it for you, then," Roxas promised, nuzzling into Axel's broad chest and sighing as Axel's arm slipped around his side comfortably, muttering soft words in Mandarin.
There were unspoken words that passed between them, but they'd been together for so long neither felt the need to say them. Below them the worlds turned, slowly making their way around the white sun; on the other side of the 'verse, a special task force searched in vain for a man who'd literally fallen right off the grid. Even if they never gave up on the search, Roxas figured they'd never ever get tired of running. They were in each other's blood and soul and heart now, and there wasn't any turning back; they had a whole sky and 'verse to explore, anyway.