Disclaimers: Kingdom Hearts is not mine and this was totally fun to do. :D

As a challenge by Musical Hallucinations (HI! :3), this was... interesting to do. Hope you enjoy and please review!

Doomed On Arrival

It wasn't exactly the most orthodox meeting. But then again, we weren't exactly the most orthodox people. It was impossible to be in the zombie apocalypse, I guess. Either way, Axel and I had still managed to keep ourselves alive through the four years we had known each other anyway.

Except for now with the monsters clawing away at our makeshift barrier over the door.

Glancing over at him, I could feel Axel's overbearing presence from across the room. His emerald eyes just keep staring at me, almost like he wanted to pick me up again and charge out of the room. A devilish smirk appears on his lips when he realizes that I was looking at him.

I twitch.

"Sorry about the zombies," Axel said instead of whatever perverted thing that I actually expected him to say. The smile had somehow died away in the few seconds it had taken him to say it. I blinked at him for a moment before just shrugging and looking out the window. He makes a noise in the back of his throat before speaking again. "No, really, I mean it, I didn't know they were here, Xion!"

Ugh… I should have known better than to trust this idiot. But... even so...

I lean against the wall, shaking my head at him. "Axel, it's fine. Seriously," I told him but he just frowns at me and glances over at the door instead.

"It's a really bad date when you and your not-girlfriend end up being chased by zombies, you know!" He snapped before running his fingers through his dark red hair. As if confirming his comment, a sudden loud and room-shaking thud emerges from the other side of the door as one of the zombies throws themselves against it.

In unison, we stand up and move to the opposite side of the room from the door.

The same images flash through our minds: clawing, rotting fingers tearing through the wood and ripping our flesh apart. If Roxas didn't come by in the next ten minutes, like the rapid reply to our text message for help said, this would be our fate.

Axel was right; this wasn't romantic in the least. But as we stood there, waiting to see if the planks would hold, I suddenly feel his fingers thread through mine.

His skin's warm, even boiling against mine.

"Same deal as before, Poppet," Axel murmurs as he reaches for something in his back pocket

I couldn't help but smile at that, despite the possible me getting eaten in the near future thing. It was a reference to the first time we'd met. It had been a night very similar to today that we had meet each other, zombies included. Except for us having baseball bats.

Back then, he had sworn to me that he would protect me, as long as I had his back.

My hand tightens around the bat. "You got it, Axel."

He flashes me his usual cocky smirk before strolling casually to the door. As if sensing his presence, the pounding on the door increased, the pattern getting more and more erratic with every step he took. They're hitting it harder and faster, knowing that he's coming.

If it was scent or just the quiet noise of his footsteps that set them off, we don't know. All I know is that Axel is taking one step closer to being eaten alive.

Dammit, he better be careful.

When he reaches the door, my heart is pounding just as hard as the zombies on the door. One wrong move and that idiot pyro was going to end up as nothing more than a snack.

"Xion, I swear to God, you keep thinking that and I'm going to get nervous," Axel says over his shoulder, making me jump and glare at him. How he kept reading my mind, I would never know. But as I watch him reach up and touch the door, I could see him shaking slightly.

He's just as scared as I am. As stupid as he could be sometimes, Axel doesn't want to die either.

C'mon, baby, just a little more.

One Mississippi. Two Mississippi.

Three- !

Axel leaps backwards just as the first rotting hand manages to bash through the wood and reach out for him. With a high-pitched girlie scream that would have made me die laughing if I wasn't ten feet away from a horde of flesh-eaters, he scrambles to the other end of the room and blocks my body with his.

He glances back down at me, coughs and rubs his throat. "Uh, out the window?" He asks, sheepishly giving me a grin that made me know that he was praying I wouldn't comment on the scream.

I smirk. "Out the window, Axella," I agree before turning around and popping said window out of its frame. I could feel Axel's glare on my back as I crawled out change into something much more perverted but right now wasn't the time to be throwing him out of the building.

"Uh… Xi… on? You're… That's… uh… that is a very short dress." He says in what I think was a very appreciative tone, like he was about to wolf-whistle.

"Not the time, Axel." I tell him as I scramble to make as much room as possible for him to climb out from.

"R-right, I'll look away now." He agrees.

He then chuckles and climbs out after me, following me onto the ledge of the building. We both look down at the four story drop, look back at each other, and simultaneously agree to fuck that. After a moment or two of looking into the abyss of death, Axel looks up and curses.

"Dammit! Now how the hell are we supposed to have our picnic?" He demands. I look over at him and watch as he very visibly pouts over the fact that our date was ruined and that we wouldn't to eat. I start to open my mouth, ready to tell him that it was a very sweet idea but Axel quickly jumps back in. "First off, Naminé and Roxas helped me so don't you start saying that we would have gotten food poisoning." He snaps.

I cover my mouth and sit down on the ledge, hiding my giggles as my not-boyfriend continued cursing out the zombies for ruining our date.

After a moment, he just stops and looks over at me again. With a soft sigh, Axel sits down next to me and wraps his arm around my shoulder, lazily pulling me into his chest as we watch the sun set in the distance. The glow of the setting celestial body baths us in gold and the warmth of its rays is enough to make us not worry about being eaten for just a little bit longer.

Before I even realize what I'm doing, my hand is already on Axel's and playing with his fingers idly. The expression on his face is briefly startled before shifting into a quiet sort of pleasure, like he was really enjoying the attention. Axel leans his head onto mine and we sit there for a little while longer, enjoying the sunset and steadily ignoring those damn zombies growling at us.

And maybe, just this was enough.

At least until Roxas came by and saved our asses.