I'm not sure if this is inspiration or experience. Don't own Kingdom Hearts or Jack's Mannequin.
"I could use a hero right now
You could use someone to save
Someone like me
Someone who's not brave
Someone who's not free"
He's smiling, bright sunshine shattering through his teeth and setting his nerves on end. He's grinding his shark tooth grin, maybe his molars will splinter like crushed light bulbs. Friction between his incisors exploding fireworks behind the privacy of his lips. Nothing can dim that smile, like a black hole, sucks the pink from his cheeks, the light from his eyes. Behind those pointed pearl barricades, the words are compressed and he can't speak for fear of the truth bleeding from his lips.
He says, 'It's not about what my mouth says'.
The veins in his hands pump blue blood, thick wires of pastel hues beneath the surface of his skin. His heart hammering violently against the bleach bone fingers of his ribcage. The beat a little too fast, catching the breath in his throat.
Relax, relax, relax, and suddenly he's longing for the half-moon carvings of fingernails in his temples.
'It's never about what my mouth says'.
His secrets are written in fine body language along the lines of tension between them now. Eyes too wide to focus, skimming strangers' faces through crowds. Always looking for the next person to fall in love with. Always looking for an escape route. He throws that bright smile around like rice at a wedding, like some fucking celebration, not salvation.
Not the bleak rescue operation it represents.
Always trailing citrus stained fingertips along the cuffs of jackets, catching nylon and wool in his fingernails, always waiting for someone to snatch his hand, to steal him away, to hide him in something genuine, where Axel won't recognise him for the honest smile he wears. They brush his grasping hands away, press fingers over their lips and wage whisper wars about him. Spin fantastical tales in golden threads of his history.
Their backstreet psychology, two minutes of mental analytical bullshit disclosed to anyone standing within a two foot radius that happens to possess ears bigger than their brains. And no one notices how this boy's smile stretches, a billboard grin, teeth glinting in the sunlight like the edge of a blade.
Axel's the kind of guy who walks like the world owes him something, like each footstep is another grudge. He wears that expert frown, the clever curl of lips to cover, quickly erase the suggestion of easy laugh lines. Each morning presses his tinted powders beneath his eyes, off-red shades of insomnia. A bruise coloured hue emphasising the shallow dips of his cheeks, the stark white of his skin in contrast.
But it's bullshit.
Make-up to add to his theatrics.
He imagines these illnesses as masks, faux horrors advertising ever changing symptoms for fear of someone recognising the root of his problems. That underneath everything, tear through those many masks, pass the fucking parcel and rip all those pretty layers of patterned paper away, 'I love you, I hate you. Hug me hurt me', he is so fucking average, and that's what's really killing him.
Roxas says, 'our illnesses define us'. Roxas with his brilliant mind, always ticking over a little faster than his words can capture. Roxas, nurturing those little fairies behind his eyes, blinding him with their glitter, fooling him into his open honesty. Roxas who'd scrawl his little secrets in pencil across the doors of bathroom cubicles because once upon a time, he couldn't bare the idea of lying.
No one ever threatened him, never pressed his cheek against a wall of his darkest ambitions sketched out in lead lines for the world to see, because secretly, people just craved for a little of that fairy dust flickering along his eyelashes.
Everyone wants to tell the truth just once.
Axel read Roxas' misshaped letters and half-formed words like gospel, and suddenly he was another of those fucking sparkle-dust addicts.
Roxas, Roxas, Roxas.
But he can't recall when it became about himself. When he developed such a knack for self-absorption. Can't remember when he kidnapped Roxas from the little wonderland inside his mind and held him hostage in reality.
And for what?
Some psychological experiment, pushing this kid against invisible boundaries, gauging reactions and using them to better mould the faux face pulled tight over his hopeless normality. Somewhere along the line, he'd say he got addicted, Roxas would say he fell in love.
Roxas the reckless romantic. They'll carve that in his headstone.
In their first few days together, Roxas was in love, while Axel was observing. Erratic, impulsive, irrational love, it made him smile, made him compassionate and warm. But those flickering fairies hiding behind his eyes, they got jealous.
They first time they fucked, Roxas hit him. The kid had come back to the apartment half out of his mind, his breath a toxic mix of vodka and perfume, smelling every bit like the underage girl at the club. The one with those wide red eyes, her skirt hiked up around her thighs just willing herself to grow up under those flaring firework lights.
The girl who's about to make the biggest mistake of her life.
His lips are chapped, a flaking mess streaked bloody under the dim lighting. He says in that drifting faraway voice, like someone's suffocating him, catching his words in fairy jars, that maybe he was out watching traffic, maybe he was holding someone's hand.
He's saying, 'I don't remember', he's saying, 'don't fucking touch me', he's asking, 'why did you let me go out alone?' and every word is slurred and twisted, and there's heavy undertones of accusations.
'You're supposed to love me'.
And Axel can't figure whether it's the ethanol choking this boy's bloodstream, or those wild fairies with their baby's breath voices shouting words of warning, filling his ears with their bullshit propaganda. He hears fingernails catching in zippers, Roxas' uneven breathing, his fingers fumbling with buttons and buckles. He sees the playing card flutter from the boy's sleeve, its glossy surface shimmering and reflecting, stealing his attention.
The king of hearts, how fucking ironic. Luxord and his golden sense of humour.
Roxas had stumbled upon the gamblers haunt earlier that evening, while the sun was still a stretch of blood red violence along the horizon. He was an insect to those neon lights, pressing fingertips against the flickering bulbs spelling words he can barely decipher, and suddenly Luxord is there, his newsprint hand wrapped tight around Roxas' wrist, hard skin and friction along the bone finally caching the young boy's attentions. Blue eyes like cut glass watching him closely and suddenly Roxas is blinking through the darkness of what lay beyond the neon, this dank little cave Luxord chooses to hide in.
And he's pissed, and dizzy, anxiety hopping off the walls of his stomach, like maybe he's in love, like maybe he's still looking.
'How's Axel?' Luxord's saying, his eyes skimming bottle labels lined like target practise just beyond the counters, his fingers pressing familiar against the playing cards in his palm. And those fairies, lingering just beyond Roxas' reach, are cackling and giggling, their sudden motion stirring their whirlwinds of glitter, and he's squeezing his eyes shut against invisible flickering shards, and suddenly Luxord's voice is pressing heavy on his ears again. 'Everything okay?' (in there? Out here?)
He is an absolute gentleman, but an even better actor.
It sounds like concern. But only sounds like it.
He's wrapping up his indifference in magic, make believe, in flare and falseness. He allows people to interpret as they will. Luxord with his quick wit, even quicker hands, the cards in his palm a quick flash of red and black.
He says, 'there's no such thing as magic,' and Roxas is nodding along, agreeing whole-heartedly, hazy-eyed and soft, but Luxord's words are soon lost in translation and he's hearing , 'there's no such thing as love'. And he's ready to fight for it, piling the words up like ammunition behind a bitter grin. He's ready to fuck for it, but Luxord is pushing his hands away, patting his shoulder, his lips moving to form shapes of words composed entirely of vowels.
And Roxas can hear the wild laughter of those fairies in his mind, their razorblade lips stinging behind his eyes, but he's not crying. He reasons with them, forms his argument as best he can with a palpable stench of cheap vodka on his breath. He's saying there's no such thing as love. He's deliberating how much he Can't. Fucking. Stand. Axel.
He's wondering why he always goes back.
And Luxord's reading that vacant stare like the fucking funny pages, some self-important snigger escaping him as those swift hands quick-draw, the playing card already folded and lodged in the boy's cuff.
The King of Hearts.
The Suicide king.
Roxas, Roxas, Roxas.
The boy crash lands somewhere far beyond his comfort zone, he's got that dopey grin like he should say thanks, like he should wonder aloud what they achieved here other than ensuring more sleepless nights on the blonde's part. He's peeling himself from the barstool, and those neon lights shine more confusion on a face to young to belong to this bullshit. The night almost cradles him as he steps out towards it, his knees knocking, stupid smile still cemented solid. And Luxord's congratulating himself on a game well played, flexing fast fingers and ordering 'whatever that guy's having'.
There's no such thing as magic, there's no such thing as love. They're words, a few letters slapped into a dictionary, words used to describe how life tricks those odd smiles onto our lips. And Luxord, with all his skills, a well-developed knowledge of his card games, all picked up from behind the bike sheds of some finishing school hidden away in the mountains, he knows when to fold. Knows when to throw his hands up in surrender.
Life is the biggest fucking player there is. And everyday it's tricking them to see something else, to feel something different. He says, 'Magic? Love? They're techniques. Life's distractions'.
But Luxord also knows when he's playing a good game.
And while life herself may be a little beyond his skill level, Roxas, with a head twisted up full of fantasy, is easy pickings.
He plays, he tricks, that little wonder-child into returning to the wolves layer.
Axel's going to rip him to shreds.
And he's smiling into some piss-water beer, 'cause tonight he played just to prove he could fucking win.
And win he did.
And Axel's reading over that playing card again and again. Messy words scrawled over the face, the ink blotting and blurring on the glossy paper.
'Sort your shit out with Axel, kid'.
And that's all. Luxord's gospel. His commandment.
And Roxas will only read it backwards along the line of his wrist the following morning, the blotchy ink transfer. At least until Axel tacks it to the wall a few weeks from tonight, the words framed by the king's indifferent face, among all the post-it notes of 'I still don't love you'. But for now, Axel's shoving it in the drawer of the bedside counter. And some part of him is trying to control his temper, biting back on misdirected anger, and he can't seem to figure out why this is wrong, why this feels off? His blatant creative streak is screaming inside his head, 'This is perfect. Pout more. Clench your fists. Show me some fucking rage'.
The addict for dramatics.
And while he's baring teeth, studying Roxas with eyes that spit fountain fire like the surface of the sun, somewhere inside his head he hears, 'Just tilt your head, a little to the left. This light will never do, I can still see how happy you are'.
One big fucking act.
Roxas' shirt is tangled around his wrists, smudging Luxord's written words of warning, streaks of pale blue ink mirroring the veins tangled just beneath his skin. And while skin is enough of a temptation in itself, the image is ruptured by those smudges of biro, a constant reminder of how Luxord believes this can be solved with words. Insistent advice that maybe he could just give it a shot. Axel sucks a deep breath through his teeth, figures there's nothing to lose.
Roxas is to far gone to even bother remembering this.
"Where were you?" he asks, not intruding, not prying or prodding, just passing conversation, and he's trying to look disinterested, shuffling through fast food menus stacked in the drawers, the playing card pressed among them, his fingers still tracing along the lines of the king of hearts. The same suicide king who's standing half naked and half insane across the room, with eyes the colour of storm clouds, reading carefully through responses in his cotton wool mind. And he can see disaster before it strikes, the kind of black-grey that looms on the horizon and promises devastation.
If Axel is ready to try his hand at negotiating, Roxas figures he could test out a lie or two.
"Just out," he whispers breathily, and he's standing still, but his heart is thumping like a fucking jackhammer along his temples.
He's drunk, and all he's got left is stupidity, but for some reason, it seems to fit him too well tonight.
He can feel it in the way his fingertips lose feeling; his mouth feeling like someone's kissed his lips to sleep.
Axel does well not to tense, not to glance up, not to use Roxas as his verbal target practise, fucking around with words sharper than knives.
"With Luxord?" Play it cool, boy, Play it cool.
Roxas forgets how to breathe, and those fairies are choking on satisfaction, their hysterical cackling bubbling and blinding, and his mouth is hanging open and he figures maybe this lie thing is a little harder than Axel lets on.
The tendons of his throat pulled taut, thick like telephone cables, his electricity pulse dulled by the soft safety of the alcohol in his system. But it's in the way the light catches the sheen of sweat along his cheekbones, how wide eyes blink blue-black, pupils distorted, swallowed in shadow.
It's in the way he stands, he's confident because it's how Luxord told him to be.
But beneath it, tearing down below how Roxas thinks he should be, he's still a genius; his mind is still worthy of gilded gold frames and galleries.
Axel never has to remind himself, in these moments, why he insists on Roxas' company. Average Axel who's destroyed himself physically just to feel those eyes on him, hush hush conversations of the rainbow-coloured boy, he's all metal and red, but still reads like a children's book.
He just wants to be fascinating.
Axel whose mom still sends his allowance by post, Axel whose dad still calls every second night wondering 'how's Red doin'?' in that patronizing way that parents play into so well. The same Axel who could never push himself to hate his parents, to morally crucify them for the sake of something to tell a stranger.
He's got Roxas now, the perfect accessory to bad posture and black eyes.
Roxas is pressing bare-skin footprints along the floorboards, smile like a shooting star, picture-perfect and temporary. His hands still tangled behind his back in his cotton restraints, sharp shoulder blades throwing shadows like fucking angel wings along the walls. And it's not ironic, it's just fact.
Roxas Roxas Roxas, the suicidal king of hearts, and here he comes with loaded lips, skin lined with heroine.
"C'mon, Axel," and it sounds like, 'stop me', sounds like 'save me'. It's his attempt at negotiations and he's wrapping it up in that pretty smile, in the smell of skin and empty hands. And Axel can't remember where this tension is bleeding from, can't recall what they were fighting about, and Roxas' running his tongue along the line of his teeth as everything fades to spot lights and calls of 'quiet on set'.
There's phantom fingers pressing spiral along his jaw, whispered words of 'tilt this way', conflicting sounds of broad and slender, 'love' and 'hate'. His artistic side applauding, declaring Roxas' name in repetitive admiration, saying, 'this boy's gonna make you a star'. And Axel's sneering, mentally skimming through his biography, knowing the only words worthwhile are the ones describing how Roxas ruined him. And from the back of his mind, beyond the barriers of his private movie set, he hears Demyx, choking on his language and punctuating each syllable with a fit of giggles, 'Everyone knows you gotta suffer for your art. You gotta be completely broken to be completely open, y'know?'
Demyx who believes creativity is inspired by the more extremes of human nature. Love, loss. He says it only takes one to write your name in flash bulbs.
Suddenly the movie playing in his mind flickers to black and white, scratches and cigarette burns. Demyx' kitchen, all monochrome and white, modern and beyond him, the blonde is sitting centre screen, flannel and patch jeans, framed by marble countertops and espresso cups. Blinking flaxen strands into wide eyes, the sweep of dark eyelashes a welcome distraction from how tightly pressed his lips are.
The sound of silence is almost fucking deafening and Axel's never felt so victimised.
Demyx' breathing sounding like police sirens and gunshot wounds. All this waiting and watching sounds like warning, And Demyx is throwing his hands in the air, sighing into slouching, words bleeding into his heavy breathing, 'How long have you been with this guy?', he's hearing, 'I thought you were 'in love''.
His fingers trail over strings and camel bone, unpractised, clumsy movements. He says it's all about falling in love, falling out of love. A pencil in one hand poised above manuscripts, the pressure he's applying paling his knuckles to match the décor.
Untrained, impractical Demyx, he's got his hands all over someone else's artwork. Sheet music and sitar strings, and he can't read a single note, plays even less. He's got a voice that sounds like how petrol smells, overpowering and addictive, spend too long absorbing it and it's dizzying, nauseating, because he's scratching on nerves.
It's about what he's not singing, all those minor notes he expertly skips over, all those words he neglects to say.
He's singing about plastic toys and late night train stations because he won't expose himself to the heartbreak that comes with both love and loss. Says there's no point, considering Axel indulges so willingly. So frequently. Says he's waiting for Axel to do something fucking amazing, something fucking stupid, something to inspire him to play an instrument he has no idea how to use.
Suddenly Axel's ringing him at four in the morning, sounding like insomnia and late-night television, saying that maybe he's in love. But only maybe.
But Demyx' fingertips still sound strange and awkward along the strings, and Axel's wondering if falling in love isn't enough to inspire Demyx, or maybe he was just lying when he made the phone call.
Demyx has those blue green eyes set on Axel, expecting, depending, and he's saying, 'Go home. Figure this out. Gimme something I can work with'. Axel's head is spinning problems from the past, and his eyes so blind with cobwebs; he doesn't register the defeat, the exhaustion on the blonde's face.
Demyx who's fallen in love with music, Demyx who loses a little dignity each and every time he runs fingers along the strings of his instrument, each time he runs his eyes along the lines of music, the lines of space he can't understand. Demyx who knows love and loss all to well, who doesn't understand how perfect he is for all of this, except, he does. He's insistent on reducing Axel to this, exposing him to hopelessness and cataloguing the red head attempts in some vocal rendition he'll sing when he's half to hell, alcohol roaring in his ears, his voice the only sound, instruments laying useless about him, silent in their mocking.
Demyx who says, 'It's not about playing the instruments. It's about playing the people'.
Now Roxas holds him hostage, mouth on his throat and his lips feel like he's been kissing broken glass, the skin splitting, cracked and bleeding, faint red lines like prison bars across his honesty.
He's tracing teeth along Axel's pulse, it feels - it sounds like war against his tongue, cannon fire and battle-cries. Each kiss a strike through another treaty they've set between them and Roxas' butterfly mouth is a threat to the peace.
Axel's thinking tonight they fix this, hide and seek, tall tales to be spun, eggshells to be staggered across. Lips like needles still prickling the skin of his collar. Vicious hands, calloused and cut, singed fingerprints pressing promise along Roxas' arms.
Axel's shoving him away before realising he wants him closer.
"What is fucking wrong with you?" Roxas' yelling, sounds like a fire drill, irritating, pointless, and Axel is thinking these fucking walls will burn around him eventually. Roxas can sing his fucking warnings to the stars.
He's talking with his hands, there's drunken prayer on his lips. Bare skin stomping along carpet floors, Roxas losing his temper, Roxas losing his mind. And Axel almost smiles, knows he should say something romantic, poetic, hopelessly teenage and maybe trivialise their situations. Spin stupid verses of Roxas and his petulance, his feet mutilated by the thin ice he contents himself to stumble across. Roxas kicking up a fucking riot because he's lonely, because maybe he wants to be lonely. Bullshit fantasy words of Roxas breaking his heart, tearing him to shreds from the inside out.
He feels the weight of a blue eyed haze bearing down on his patience. This has nothing to do with hearts. He's thinking that love is just another word for fear, a word to describe being overshadowed by something so fucking amazing, it's almost terrifying.
Roxas has train crash potential.
He's a self contained nuclear blast, blue-green fog and horror on his face and Axel can't take his fucking eyes off the sight. Roxas with his ethanol veins, eyes bruised mauve from late nights and explosive fights. He's already got the word on his lips, and Axel feels the threat again, knows the blonde only uses these words 'cause he finds them in the bottom of vodka shots and petrol.
"Do you love me?" and there's a window, a lapse in sense, in defence, in arrogance and insolence and it's just Roxas, standing barefoot among the ruins of their possessions, fists falling limp at his sides. The tension slipping from his face, and Axel can't place the expression, only sees it in its extremities. It is 'absolute' it is 'intense', a combination of utter loss, of utter realization. Hope and promise and all the other bullshit fairytales Roxas used to believe in.
Axel can hear him breath over the faint din of city traffic, and discovers how much he hates the sound.
Misty eyes shine neon, wide and waiting. Wondering. And Axel is having a hard time chasing the boy's moods, he's pressing the playing card between his index and thumb, tracing and retracing Luxord's words with a critical eye and figuring this is hardly a conclusion to their almost psychotic mental abuse.
Roxas with his beautiful bones and his big blue eyes, his skin a fucking inferno between hands too eager to care.
Roxas can feel the dignity drain from his lips in those heavy breaths. He's not sure, everything's 'maybe'. Everything's positive and negative all at once, and he's only a little dizzy, but he's standing his ground. He wants both, he wants everything because he can commit to nothing. He wants Axel's admittance, he wants Axel's avoidance. He's counting the notches along the red-head's spine. Those fairies in their sing-song voices say, 'Bite your tongue, this feels consequential.'
"Well, Do you?'' he can't help but cringe at the desperation bleeding through his own curiosity. His voice cracking and shaking and Axel's maintaining his silence like he's crossed enemy lines.
There is no before and after, there's just now, and his head feels almost explosive with the weight of the thoughts inside.
The red-head doesn't move, the automatic expansion-contraction of his chest almost hypnotic.
Roxas can't remember when or how they got this far. Remembers vaguely an obsession with love, but this doesn't feel like flying, doesn't feel like falling. This almost feels claustrophobic, and he's ready to say, 'I think we should see other people', ready to plead, 'marry me?' in his dazed misinterpretation of the words.
Axel's offering insight without encouragement.
"I thought I found something about you, y'know? Something amazing, a real kick in the teeth …" and he surrenders so easily because neither of them can describe this situation. His words trail off leaving a bitter aftertaste along amber stained lips, heavy implications of rejection and resentment, and Roxas feels sobriety creep along his nerve endings, unprotected, paranoid and nauseous. Kissing bottle lips was his practised excuse for irrationality, but the buzz dwindles and it leaves him shaking and exposed.
"And did you? … Find something?" Roxas promises himself he'll kiss the stars on this one. Wide eyes set on a happy ending, overlooking naked skin and rough hands, and the horrible people they are beneath mask beneath mask beneath mask. He's overeager and naïve and his heart's saying, 'he loves me', his mind warning, 'he loves me not'. Internally berating himself for this fucking masterful display of stupidity and immaturity and an absolute dependence.
Everything's disjointed, the silence screaming, blood pumping echoing through his misty mind. Axel is still bent awkward over the cabinets, Roxas counts fifteen.
Fifteen times he opens his mouth to speak, fifteen times before he finally manages his half-baked answer.
Axel just buying time until he falls in love.
And he's so fucking sick of that word, it even hurts to think it.
"I'm still looking". Three little words, and they don't sound like 'I love you', but they're honest, and open and everything soft and gentle that sounds utterly vicious through Axel's lips. They sound like a beacon, the sound screeching over the faint flutter of stardust behind his eyes, that Axel is willing to give this another fucking run. Still content to search through the layers and layers of absolute distraction Roxas has built around himself, tear them apart with nicotine fingers, thick veins in his hands pumping diesel beneath the skin.
They're both on the line here, Roxas' belief balancing on a fine line between bullshit and brilliance, and Axel isn't as cold and calculating and absolutely riveted by Roxas' quirks as he should be, as is familiar.
Green eyes just watch him now, beyond noting habits, how he phrases his thoughts like drabbles slapped beside masterpieces, how he's absolutely destructive in his unquestionable devotion to being alive. And he can't phrase it as taking in 'how Roxas is' or 'who he is' because all those little behavioral flaws are integrated with everything Roxas.
But he never thought to just look at the boy. He's a little stunted, a hair colour vaguely reminiscent of Cheerio's or something, and he knows it's retarded, but hey, at least he's waking up to Roxas, even when he's not waking up to Roxas. And he's got these stupid wide eyes, makes him look like the scenes he sees are composed entirely of train wrecks and ghosts, lips always parted in that immature wonder where the words are always just beyond reach, but he's insistent on waiting for them regardless.
Axel's thinking, 'yeah yeah yeah, maybe I can try this' but Roxas' already looming in the doorway to the ensuite bathroom, with his hand splayed support across his stomach, the other blindly reaching for his toothbrush, brushing away the aftertaste of cheap vodka and Luxord's breath until the blood oozes out from between his teeth, streaking the stark white of the sink.
All this blood and porcelain, red and white, it's just a reminder that Axel still looms over his shoulder, watching and waiting, his fingernails splintering the wood of the bedside table.
Roxas is smiling all sharp angles, foam lining his lips tinted pink, looks crazy and carnivorous, like he's found some imagination, initiative, finally seeking out all the attention and the affection he wants (deserves?) in the form of the hearts he'll tear through skin to claim.
Roxas sees Axel as some teenage fucking idiot who's about to grow up and is just about ready to give this 'love' thing a whirl.
Axel sees in Roxas the same jaded punk he'd paint illness across in the mirror every morning. Roxas who's bitter and angry and he's only here 'cause he hasn't figured out why he should leave.
And for good measure, Roxas still foaming rapid at the mouth, spraying candy coloured droplets to the carpet with each heaving sigh, says, "Don't fucking touch me, or I will kick you in the teeth."