Disclaimer: I don't own Kingdom Hearts.

A/N: Wow. Just wow.

I failed massively at condensing this into what it was supposed to be, but whatever. That means more writing for me and longer chapters for you. So, another year, huh? I always try to keep up with this day but it gets harder and harder to every year.

Pft. Anyway. This year, I'm forgoing the typical oneshot in favor of a longer multichapter. Probs gonna be like three or four chapters long... possibly longer. I don't know. I've changed my mind so much with this story, nothing is really solidified—(as always with me)—but I hope you enjoy it either way. Because, you know. These are my boys. I've been writing them for so long I'm just kinda like… 'well, what else is there for me to do with them?' … but I always think of something in the end.

…Kinda.

-x-

Gutter Kid

Prologue: Use Your Head

-x-

It was 3:18AM on a humid night in the middle of August.

The only reason I remember this is because I'd just gotten through watching Hayner and Pence choke down a particularly disgusting meal at the IHOP down the street. I hadn't even eaten anything and I could feel my stomach lurching at the thought of the greasy food. Shitty choices for shitty people. At least, that's what Hayner had said before he threw up beer, eggs and hash browns all over the god damn table. Pence just laughed as Hayner slammed money down on top of his vomit and muttered that it was time to leave.

While Pence and Hayner disappeared back into Brooklyn via the L train, I walked the few sketchy blocks back to my apartment building in Alphabet City. There weren't many people out at that time of night. You had your usual college age drunks and the occasional begging bum.

My mom used to worry about a boy my… age …walking around the city at night by myself. Honestly, it really had nothing to do with my age, just the fact that I was gay and dressed a little too loudly for her personal taste. She'd always go on about, "Pero, Roxas…" and then lapse into some long and convoluted lecture in Spanish about hate crimes, as I was trying to leave the house so I wasn't late meeting up with my friends again. I always kissed her cheek before I left. That always kept her quiet long enough until I reached our front door.

"Nice to know you're walking around at this time of night, ghost boy."

A familiar, raspy voice stopped me in my tracks and I was genuinely surprised when I saw Axel directly below me. He was lying on his back on the dirty ass sidewalk with a dark stain under his head and the fly to his shorts wide open. There were shards of a broken beer bottle lying near his hand and he was missing his shoes. I stalled for a minute to stare down at him, eyes surveying the scene and then shrugged. Someone would have just called him another drunk. You see this type of thing a lot in this city. Hell, I've even seen people passed out in banks when it's late enough.

"Axel." I kneeled down by his head and pressed my knuckles against the dirty and gritty concrete to stabilize myself, "What do you think you're doing?"

"What's it look like, Roxas? I got knocked out." Axel opened his eyes so he could look at me, "Tell me am I still wearing my shoes?"

"Uh..." I glanced at his feet and frowned when I saw that they were bare. What the fuck? "That's gonna be a no, Axel."

"Fuck."

"…I'd give you mine to wear if I could, but you know."

"Like I'd wear your freak show chucks even if they fit my feet, the fuck. Ugh…" He sat up and gripped his face in his hands. I leaned back and observed the back of his bandana. It was dark and I couldn't place what type of liquid might had stained it, so I assumed it was blood.

"I think you should go to the hospital." I said as I stood up, "…You're bleeding from the back of your head. Might wanna get that checked out and make sure you didn't lose anymore brain cells when your skull cracked the pavement. Not like there's much substance to your brain matter to begin with."

Axel got to his feet and stumbled as the world became upright again. He pat the back of his bandana and turned up his nose, "Shit man, that's not blood. That's piss."

"You into golden showers now?" I asked.

"Fuck off, Roxas." He looked down at his hand and sucked his teeth, "And he drank my beer. Ain't this a bitch."

"Let me guess… Xigbar?"

"Ding, ding, fucking ding." Axel zipped up his pants and cursed loudly, "Damn, man. I'm gonna fuck him up. Just wait until I see that scarred up, fucked up looking gnarly over cooked bacon faced asshole."

"…You could paint poetry with your words, Axel."

"And you can fuck off, too. You're lucky I can't punch you." Axel turned around and started off in the direction of our apartment building, "Not like it'd make me look any less crazy."

"Punching the air would only have further the case that you're a certified psycho."

He pat his Bermuda shorts down, "And he stole my box of cigs. Roxas, I'mma kill him. I'mma set his entire fucking club on fire."

"You're not going to kill anyone, remember? You know what the deal is."

"Tch." Axel jammed his hands into his pockets and rolled his eyes at me, "Yeah, yeah. I know. I want you out of my hair as much as you want me out of yours." We paused at the corner of the sidewalk as we waited for the light to change. A group of girls in high heels that were likely to induce ankle fractures by the end of the night made it a point to huddle closer together as they passed by Axel. He seemed to have not noticed. "…So, what did you do tonight? Spend all day watching your mom and sis again?"

"Nah, I tailed after Hayner and Pence." I said, "…I watched Hayner get shut down three times, had a drink thrown in his face and get hauled out of a bar by a bouncer all in one night. I just got through watching him throw up the entire contents of his stomach all over a table at the IHOP down the street."

"I will never understand how a gay little twink like you had such a bro for a best friend." Axel scoffed, "What a moron."

"Look who's talking." I said, "Shouldn't you be above this kind of stupidity? You're twenty seven for Christ's sake."

"I'm getting lectured by a twenty year old figment of my imagination." Axel said, "So, I guess I'm not."

"You know I'm real." He seemed intent on losing me as we turned down Avenue B.

"Yeah and for some sick reason, I'm the only one that has the pleasure of seeing ya." Axel removed his keys from his pocket and unlocked the heavy metal door to the front of the building, "As if I'm not crazy enough already."

I shrugged as we walked past some guy that was passed out by the mailboxes and Axel pressed the up botton on the elevator, "Is Saïx gonna eat his left testicle when he sees you? Or … smells you for that matter? You look like you smell pretty rank." I said as we stepped onto the elevator and onto our floor, "It's been awhile since you've done something this stupid."

"He's not going to do anything but shut the fuck up." Axel said as he leaned against the railing in the elevator and let his head slowly tilt back so it hit the wall, "Thank God he didn't take my keys or I would have been extra fucked."

I shrugged, "I could have gone in and made a racket. You know. Do some spooky ghost shit and have Demyx piss his bed for the third time in a week?"

"You really need to stop messing with him, Rox. Demyx is harmless." Axel said, "You know he asked me if I was a warlock the other morning? Said that weird stuff only happens when I'm around. I wonder why."

"That's why I like fucking with him."

Axel sighed in exasperation and the elevator chimed as we finally hit our floor. We walked to the end of the hall to his apartment, Axel turned his key into the bottom lock and pushed up against the old rickety front door of his apartment so it budged and he could push it open.

The apartment was dark and the lights from across the street cascaded in through the half closed blinds of the living room. I wish I still had a sense of smell, because I always loved how Axel's apartment smelled. It was kinda musty, sort of like the mildew that gathered on the top of his bathroom ceiling because the plumbing in our building was piss poor and shit was always leaking. Not like the landlord was in any hurry to fix it.

But there was a sweet aroma that always flowed from an incense burner that his roommate Demyx kept lit at all times of the day in the entryway of the apartment. And the kitchen… the kitchen reminded of my mother who I knew was asleep in her bedroom just next door. I prayed she hadn't cried herself to sleep for once.

Axel was the only one who really cooked in the house. Saïx was gone at his job in Midtown from dawn until late at night and Demyx was more of a 'let's order out' type of guy. But, Axel… was a product of the Caribbean through and through. Garlic, pepper and saffron. Maybe a little thyme here and there. The smells lingered within the peeling wallpaper of his molded kitchen walls. And I knew I was probably inhaling some incurable disease into my lungs every time I came over to sample some of Axel's cooking, but the smell was intoxicating. And I could never get enough of it.

Axel dropped his keys down into a dish by the door and I could hear police sirens wailing down on some street below. Home always feels like home by the end of the night. "Rough night?" I asked, knowing what a complete and utter dick I was being.

"I hate this city." Axel muttered as he walked away from me and headed in the direction of his room, "I fucking hate it. I should have never moved down to Manhattan. I should have just stayed in Queens."

"Yes, Axel. A couple of stops on the N and Q lines. Super far away." I replied, "What do you tell people? I moved closer to the city because I wanted to become a ramen chef? Such big dreams, such high hopes. You couldn't have said you wanted to be a writer or … or an actor like everyone else that comes here?" I chuckled, "You could have just fucked around in Flushing if that's the only reason you moved into Manhattan."

"Fuck you, Roxas." He shook his button up shirt off and then removed his wife beater and threw it on the floor.

"I'd like to, but we can't. See?" I moved my arm through his bed as if for added emphasis, "You gonna take that bandana off? Or are you just gonna let your hair marinate in piss? I'm so glad I lost my sense of smell after I died. You look like you probably slept in a dumpster with eighty dead cats."

"I so wish I could punch your stupid face in right now."

The door to Axel's bedroom opened and I turned around to see death incarnate standing in the archway. Axel cursed under his breath as Saïx's eyes turned to look in my direction and then slowly surveyed the room until he ended with Axel who was in the process of pulling his shorts down.

"…Why are you home so late?"

"Got held up." Axel replied as he kicked his shorts off and they landed by Saïx's feet.

"You look awful." Saïx's eyes roamed over Axel's current state of dress in his boxers and bandana and turned up his nose, "Were you fighting again?"

"No." Axel walked over to his closet and fiddled with something on the floor.

Saïx looked in my direction again and it almost felt like he could see me. "…That presence is here again."

"Man, what the fuck. Get out of here."

"I think it's time we call in a healer to purify this place." Saïx said, "Whatever Demyx has been doing isn't working. I didn't trust his botched hippie mess to work in the first place."

"Yeah, and maybe they can do something about your brain while they're at it." Axel threw a shirt and boxers onto his bed, "Now are you done? Can you take your paranoid ass to bed so I can go take a shower and wash this filth off of me?"

Saïx sniffed the air and I stifled my laughter with the back of my hand. As if anyone but Axel could hear me, "…I thought you smelled repugnant. Did you piss yourself?"

"Saïx, would you get out of here and go the fuck to sleep, man? That presence bullshit is all in your head." Axel finally snapped as he paused in the middle of his room, "Don't you have important charts and shit to talk over with the suits in the morning?"

Saix held Axel's gaze for a moment before silently turning on his heel and left the room. I moved across the room to sit—(more like float)—on Axel's bed and crossed my legs, "He's getting closer, huh? I might have to start messing with him instead of Demyx."

"You really need to lay low. He was looking right at you tonight."

"Pft." I scoffed, "What is Saïx going to do? Work some berserker lunar voodoo on me and cleanse your soul of my demonic presence? If you ask me, he's the demon in this equation."

"I don't have time for this." Axel looked over his shoulder to glance at his docking station. It was just after 4AM. "The sun's going to be up in less than two hours and I've got to be at the shop in six. I don't have time to talk about demons and shamans with my psychotic roommate and the midget ghost boy he's convinced is some monstrous demon after my mortal soul."

"I'm not a midget."

"You're barely five foot seven, that's midget enough for me." Axel said, "Now, if you're done wasting my time, I've got to go wash the piss out of my hair. Thanks."

He left without another word and I sighed as I was left alone in his room. I rolled over onto my back to stare at his ceiling. A few seconds later I could hear the rushing of water coming from beyond the half opened door of his bedroom, as the bathroom was right across the hall from his room. I closed my eyes, listening to the water slapping against the misplaced claw foot bathtub—(some peculiar old lady used to own the place)—and Axel sighing ever so often.

The city was always quiet in these hours, and if I had the ability to do so; I would have probably drifted off to sleep. But that's impossible for the dead to do, especially souls such as mine who were lingering in the balance of purgatory.

I sat up and walked over to Axel's window to gaze out onto the streets below. You always know the day is starting up again once you hear the rumble of a distant bus accompanied by the steady honking of a taxi or car. I could see shadows running along the pavement, chasing after one another in the cool dampness of a summer's morning. There's something weird about growing up in a city as crowded and vibrant as this. You don't notice these things as a kid … but they become more apparent to you as you grow up.

My mother was raised in some backwoods part of Argentina and she came to the city while she was still pregnant with my older sister, Xion, to escape whatever poverty she had lived through for the majority of her life. I remember going back there once or twice as a young child and finding myself disturbed by the solitude and silence of the countryside. It wasn't like back home where you heard noise from every corner of the earth. You find yourself unable to exist without the noise, because it's comforting. It's home.

That's part of the reason why I'm still stuck on this earth and haven't gone on to whatever afterlife waited for me. Something was holding me here and I knew what it was, but I didn't know how to go about solving it. All I knew was that it had to do with Axel. But, I didn't know what.

Axel reentered the room and hit the lights before I had a chance to say anything to him. His bed moaned and creaked under his weight as he sighed and flopped down face first into his pillow. He turned to the side to look at me and then rolled over on his side so that his back was to me and he was facing the wall. I climbed onto the bed, laid down and turned away from him. When I was still alive we would sleep like this. Axel facing the wall with me on the outside, his shoulders pressed against mine. I think he still did it so things still felt normal.

Axel almost fell asleep in a matter of seconds; I think he'd grown strangely accustomed to occupying his bed with a ghost. I sighed and tilted my head back so I could look up at the rising sun. It wasn't like I could go to sleep, but I could pretend if only for a little while.

"I know you're running out of time and we need to figure this out, Roxas." I hated how nasally his voice became when he was half awake.

"I have enough time."

"…You have another month and a half." Axel said, "And then it's…"

"I know what it is." I said, crossing my legs tightly and bowing my head into my knees, "Go to sleep, Axel."

He turned away without another word and heaved a heavy sigh. I heard more honking, more chatter and felt everything getting brighter. I could close my eyes, but never feel fatigue. I could see red behind my eyelids, but I couldn't feel the warmth of sunlight. I could hear and see the world in a completely different way, but I could no longer smell earthly delights or touch another being outside of this astral plane. It was isolating and liberating all at the same time. This was death, where everything seemed completely normal, but wholly fucked up all at the same time.

Everyone always wonders what it's like to die. You wonder how your final moments are going to play out. Where are you going to be? What are you going to be doing? Who are you with? What's going to happen? But the thing is… I can't remember how I died. And according to Axel, they don't even know where my body is. That's why I haven't moved on yet. That's why I can't move on.

So, I'm here now with Axel. Trying to find some way to retrace my footsteps and figure out the who and the what and the when and the how of the circumstances of my death. But, it's almost been half a year now and we haven't come any closer to figuring shit out.

And it's only a matter of time before I'm slapped with a permanent lights out.