Axel leaves their door open, is the thing. Roxas always closes his behind him when he wanders into other parts of the castle, tugging at the handle to make sure it clicks shut. So when he passes Axel's room it's almost impossible for him to not look inside; it's on the way to basically everywhere from Roxas's room. There's a white bed with white sheets against a big window and some photographs taped up on the wall. There's a dresser and the door to Axel's bathroom, and clothes all over the floor. There's a mirror propped up against the dresser, and scattered around it is what Roxas assumes is Axel's makeup.
Information is gained in flashes, glimpses, as he passes by, turning his head to look and whipping it back around. He and Axel share a lot, but their room feels too personal to know about without invitation. Roxas pretends he hasn't seen. For a place so lived in, Axel is never there when Roxas peeks.
It's got to be early. Roxas feels disoriented in bed, staring out his window at Kingdom Hearts, wondering if he expected it to be different. The lights from the city are blurry and ambient from here, suggestions of signs and dark holes where life maybe was, at some point. Today there's nothing. No missions that he knows of. No meetings to endure, no reports to finish. He'll probably find Xion and Axel in the common area or watch Demyx give up in the middle of a card game again. Maybe he'll stand outside the castle doors, or go somewhere with sunshine. Maybe Axel and Xion will come with him. He imagines a place he could wake up like this, dragging his thoughts for the day into order, where the sun would rise with him.
The mist over the city is fine today. The rain might never end.
He rolls out of bed and into his pants and shirt with the thought of food, something bitter, maybe. No boots today, no coat. He brushes his teeth and pats his hair down in the bathroom mirror, and doesn't notice the spot of toothpaste that lands on the collar of his black shirt, because he never notices those kinds of things until its too late to worry about them. He pulls a popsicle stick out of his pants pocket and drops it on the dresser with the rest of them on his way out of the room.
Xion, like him, keeps the door to her room shut. Roxas has been inside before, but it was empty then. He wonders if she collects pieces, like he does, like he suspects Axel does. He pauses outside her door and doesn't knock; just waits there for a while and wonders about her.
His pieces are clean. Bits of white copy paper with lines of text he can't derive meaning from, washed but stained slightly blue wooden popsicle sticks, and smooth pebbles. A ribbon he found, and a pressed flower, and the white binder under his shirt. None of the others have these pieces. Axel's pieces are potential: the visual noise of posters picked quickly from walls on missions, loud skirts and socks and headbands they wear around the castle. A yellow ceramic cat meant for munny but full of soda pull tabs and other trash Axel likes. Roxas doesn't know what else.
Today, unlike the other days, Axel is inside when Roxas passes. They're hunched over their dresser, elbows propped carefully, breath fogging the glass and hands full of clear-handled and black-handled brushes. Roxas thinks maybe he can pretend he hasn't been peeking in for months, for the last half a second, but—
"Hey," Axel says, making eye contact over their shoulder in the mirror. They're applying an acid green powder to their eyelids with the pad of their finger, and carefully pause to look at Roxas. "You're up early."
Roxas freezes in the doorway. "Am I," he says, stalling. Axel smiles as they turn to him, blinking extra eye shadow off their lashes. "Are you always up this early?"
"Something like that, yeah."
"Sorry," Roxas blurts, and grimaces. Axel drops most of the brushes and wipes their finger on the edge of the dresser, leaving a green stripe down the side, neighbor to a rainbow of fingerprints. They come to meet him at the doorway, enormous tee shirt hanging off one shoulder and crossed ankles beneath the hem of what looks like an easter sunday dress for someone's grandma, powder blue with soft tulips printed on the hem.
"Don't worry about it," Axel says, winking their less made-up eye. "I can't get mad about interruptions if my door is open, can I?"
"Not that," Roxas says. "I've. Looked."
Axel stares at him, and Roxas stares back. The proximity is always too much, with Axel. He feels hot and disorderly. Axel being in their room makes all the difference. With Axel in their room, the potential of the color is alive and vibrant, so that they might be in a place where the sun rises, or trees really grow. A look of comprehension finally crosses Axel's face, and they lean down so their face is just level with Roxas's.
"It's fine," Axel says. "Don't worry about it; make it up to me."
Roxas is about to ask how, but Axel already has his wrist in their hand and is fumbling for the door handle, swinging it shut behind both of them for possibly the first time in months. For all Roxas knows, Axel sleeps with the door open.
They pull him over to the bed and abandon him there, then go to the dresser and sweep the entire topography of stacked pots and little flat cases, brushes and pads and palettes, onto their shirt, which they use to transfer the business to their bed. Roxas watches this in confusion. He watches a container of purple powder roll across the bed and leave a stripe of pigment on the sheets, wonders if he should maybe grab it and stack the pots by color, and is flexing his hands in preparation for this when Axel touches his arm again.
"Here," they say, handing him a headband. "Wear this for me."
Roxas does. "Are you going to make me look like a freak?"
"I might, if you don't show some respect."
He smiles at Axel, only feeling mildly anxious as Axel prods him towards the bed. "No chairs," Axel mutters, their ears pinking. Roxas feels his own face heating, but he crosses his legs and pulls his bare feet up under his knees, pushing the pots that roll towards him onto a more level part of the bed.
Axel looks at him for a minute, then mutters "Whatever," and climbs up next to him. Over their shoulder, Roxas can see the top half of his face in the dresser mirror.
"Close your eyes," Axel says. "I'm gonna make you very, very pretty."
Roxas complies, and it feels like an eon, magnified. He can feel every dip in the mattress and hear Axel fumbling with the makeup, the pots clicking together as they roll around and are thrown back into piles. He jumps a little bit when Axel touches him the first time, smearing something around his eyes and chin, and hums at Axel's whispered apology.
There's the tickle of a brush and the drag of a foam pad down his nose, and Axel gives instructions like "Ok, now, tilt your chin down, but raise your eyebrows, like, no, higher, more—yeah," before carefully lining his eyes. He wonders what his face will look like when Axel is done with it. Axel's makeup is frequently weird and transformative, but it's part of them, and Roxas feels like the things Axel puts on their face are natural and expressive. Maybe they don't have hearts, but they have "feelings."
Maybe Axel is transforming Roxas's face, or enhancing it, or improving it. Roxas can't tell. He can feel the cool swipe of a brush along his eyelashes, Axel's thumb pulling his eyebrows up and their breath too, too close. Something is smeared on his lips with a brush, and then, briefly, with the pad of a finger, and it's too much for him like this. Axel murmurs another apology and Roxas can feel them shifting their weight on the bed.
"Fuck," Axel says at some point, and then, "no, keep them shut!" when Roxas starts to open his eyes and ask if they're okay. He reacts by squeezing his eyes tight and listening. He hears Axel get off the bed and go into the bathroom; hears running water and a swish of hands, maybe. There's more clattering and more swearing. Roxas can't tell how much time is passing with his eyes shut.
Not that he could with them open.
Axel returns eventually, heralded by, "O-K-A-Y, sorry!" as their weight deepens the hole Roxas's creates. He realizes too late that Axel can probably feel the outlet of breath, his sigh of relief at their return. Their wrist must be an inch from his face, and after a pause, they hum, and start painting something onto Roxas's lips.
"D'you wanna know why I do my makeup like this," Axel asks, but they're holding Roxas's chin to paint the upper corners of his lips.
Roxas can't help it; he opens his eyes to look at Axel, unable to communicate any other way. Today with the red eyeliner and the biting green on their brows that matches their eyes, white on the inside of their nose, yellow coming off their winged eyeliner like flames, Axel is beautiful.
"Aw, come on," Axel says, throwing their arm out dramatically and rolling their eyes. "I was almost done, Roxas!"
"Sorry," he tries to mumble, but Axel is back to aggressively dabbing at his lips with the brush, less than a foot away from Roxas's face. He keeps his eyes open, now, and wonders how someone with so many other parts, so many small translucent hairs on their forehead, so many creases below their eyelid and so many eyelashes stuck together and going in slightly the wrong direction, could not have a heart.
"Okay." Axel releases Roxas's jaw, hand sliding a little down his neck before they retract it and scratch at their nape. "I'm done. You're done."
"Can I look?" Roxas is already leaning around Axel, one hand braced on their knee, to look in the mirror on the dresser.
"No."
Roxas stops and stares at them. "It's your fault I opened my eyes!"
At that, Axel grins. "Go on, look at your hot face. Don't get used to the special treatment, though. I charge by the minute."
"Yeah, yeah," Roxas says, sliding off the bed and adjusting his binder a little through his shirt. "Whatever, Axel."
"I shouldn't have taught you all these mean words," Axel laments, unfolding themself and looming behind him. "I should've known someday you'd use them against me."
Roxas makes a disbelieving noise in his throat, but he's leaning against the edge of the dresser and inspecting Axel's work. He's speechless. His eyelids are sunsets, his temples have stars. His lips are sunrise. Axel has even shaded out a broader chin, like they know Roxas feels weird about the shape of his face. He looks over his shoulder in the mirror, and is surprised by how close Axel has gotten, leant over with their arms folded, chin hovering just behind Roxas's shoulder.
"What do you think?" They look anxious, a little, like they do sometimes when they joke with Roxas and Xion about being best friends. Roxas turns to face them.
"It's nice," he says, and when Axel raises an eyebrow at him, "I don't know if I'm gonna wear it to an Organizational meeting anytime soon, but I like it."
"Well," Axel says, rocking on their heels, ears turning pink as they smile at him. "The sun rose early this morning."
Roxas rolls his eyes, but he says, "Wanna go to the beach today?"
"I dunno, do you wanna go to the beach today?"
He wonders at the swell of diluted irritation and warmth in him, watching Axel affect the doofy smile they use to bait him every day of their existence. He thinks: he, too, has many pieces and parts. Axel reaches for his hair and Roxas shoots the elastic headband at them, ducking down and darting to the side. They both laugh, stumbling around the room and throwing bits of trash and clothing at each other, and when Axel gets their hands in his hair, Roxas remembers that the door is closed, for the first time in memory.
"I kind of want to kiss you," Axel admits, one of their thumbs tracing Roxas's hairline, and Roxas wonders if this is also one of his pieces.
"You should," Roxas advises. "It's nice. I like that, too."
"Later," Axel says. "First you have to ruin your makeup eating ice cream and getting owned at beach volleyball."
"And if I don't?"
"I'll ruin it for you."
At the beach Xion buys cheap sunglasses and a postcard, and Roxas never sees either of them again. Two against one, Axel obliterates them at beach volleyball, and Roxas and Xion drag them into the ocean by their long, long arms, where they emerge spluttering salt water with their grandma skirt stuck to their legs. Xion grabs their hand when they slip, and Roxas grabs their other. The last of his makeup comes off when they all three remember that, soulless evil minions they may be, they are still susceptible to harmful UV rays, and slather sunblock on each others' bare parts. It's too late, Axel points out, both Roxas and Xion already pink on the nose and cheeks, but they put it on anyway.
The ice cream comes later, and when the sun sets they follow Axel through the Darkness back to the castle. Xion smiles at them both and disappears into her room, and Roxas is left to wonder if Axel remembers the early, early morning. As it turns out, they do.
"You ready?" they ask, and Roxas grins.
The kiss is cooler than Roxas thought it might be when he imagined it in the morning, and it's gentler. Axel clasps their hands at the dip of his back, and Roxas cards his fingers through their salt-stiffened hair. It makes Roxas feel slow and sleepy. They taste like salt and sunblock and ice cream.
Roxas teeters, lightheaded, and Axel pulls him into his room.
They shut the door behind them.