Into the sea
(And, though I was a soul in pain, my pain I could not feel.)
X
It starts in an ice dream parlor on a stifling summer day in the tiny city of Twilight Town. The sun is hanging high over head, burning down, down, down as Axel walks into the small shop, sweat leaking from every pore on his thin and lanky body. He runs a hand raggedly through locks spun with fiery red, taking in a deep breath of air conditioned oxygen, and glances about. Roxas is behind the counter, just like he always is, when they make eye contact for the very first time-
-or maybe it's just the first time in a long time.
Axel blinks emerald eyes in mild surprise, steps over to the counter, opens his mouth, but Roxas cuts him off. "Sea salt ice cream." He says, and Axel looks at him, bright red eyebrows coming together in confusion, and god what if Roxas has said the wrong thing? "Right?" The blonde inquires nervously. And he's so relieved when Axel just nods wordlessly, shocked. Roxas doesn't know how he knows, doesn't know why he remembers that. He disappears into the back where they keep the special ice cream and comes back with the pale blue bar in hand, passes it over the counter, accepts the three dollars and fifty cents that Axel hands him.
Green meets blue meets green, and they stare at one another for a long - torturously long -moment. Memories come flooding back in an instant. They both feel it, they both feel the pain flowing and meshing into their veins, replacing the blood that should be there. Then, without a single word, the redhead vanishes back out of the parlor into the heat awaiting him outside, leaving Roxas standing there, heart hammering wildly in his chest as he collapses onto the floor in a heap of limbs behind the counter, striking blue eyes wide.
"Axel." He chokes out - he can't believe he still remembers - because it's been a while, hasn't it?
xxx
"I met this guy." Xion looks up at Roxas through her bangs, hand relaxing its hold on the marker she'd been using to scrawl some cliché onto the white poster board for some silly project due the next day. "Well, I didn't really meet him per se. But he came into the shop."
"What's his name?" The girl asks, blinking her eyes and smiling. "Is he cute? He must be if you're talking about him, huh?" For a second, Roxas refuses to meet her eyes. He doesn't know why, but he just can't.
"Axel. His name is Axel."
Xion drops the marker.
xxx
The smell of weed is heavy in the air, all mixed together with the scent of sweat as the bodies all press against each other in a wave of dancing and grinding. Axel isn't sure who's house this even is, probably one of Larxene's friends since she's the one that dragged him out, since she's the one with her lips attached to his neck right now, sucking and blowing and kissing like it's her fucking job, her fucking purpose in life. Normally this might be all well and nice, he might even kind of like it if it were any other day, but right now all he can think about is spiky blonde hair, brilliant blue hues staring at him in shock and confusion.
He remembers the clock tower. He remembers ice cream, sunsets, feelings that weren't quite feelings. Hot kisses pressed to a cold neck, groping hands searching for more, more, more, bodies in desperate need of friction. Friendship. Love that couldn't be.
Axel shoves Larxene off of himself, ignores the cold glare and the menacing hiss, and just stalks off. It's funny how, even in an entirely new life, Roxas still makes him feel.
xxx
Axel goes back into the shop the following Wednesday. Roxas is there again.
His back is turned to the door, he has a broom in his hand, sweeping something that Axel doesn't know is shattered glass from a bowl the blonde had dropped. The redhead watches, takes the boy in, feels a rush of memories and feelings and affections - and turns, flees from the shop in a hurry.
He's half way down the street when Roxas glances up from the pile of broken glass, feeling cheated out of something.
xxx
Roxas has always had a fear of heights, so he's really not sure what makes him go up to the clock tower at the center of the city, has no clue why he climbs the winding staircase to get to the top. But the second he gets up there, sees the view - what a familiar view, he thinks, it's almost like he's been here before - he feels the breath jerked right out of him. His lungs, his head, his heart, every cell in his body is filled with memories and memories and memories-
why does the sun set red?
do you think i could love somebody if i had a heart?
i'll always be there to bring you back!
we don't belong.
no one would miss me.
i'd miss you.
they'll kill you.
looks like my summer vacation is...over.
Roxas drops to his knees on that ledge, overcome with things that just don't make sense, and cries until he feels like he can't breathe anymore.
xxx
Axel is standing beside Demyx, back pressed against the stone wall of the club, bass thumping and loud, reverberating to the very core of his bones, cigarette clenched between two of his slender fingers. "Do you ever think that maybe we've lived before this?" He asks, hoping that his friend can hear him over the obnoxious music.
He does.
Demyx turns to him, the glow necklace around his neck illuminating the soft features of his face; he's quiet for a while as he watches his friend. "No." He says finally, turning back to stare at the throng of bouncing people on the dance floor. "Because you can't call what we were doing living."
Silence passes between them, a mutual understanding and agreement. Axel speaks. "Yeah. You're right."
xxx
The third time that Axel walks into the shop, Roxas isn't there. Instead there's a girl with short black hair that dances around her pretty face whenever she moves behind the counter.
And he remembers her, too.
She doesn't look up immediately, but when she does, when she sees Axel there standing in front of the door, the greeting half formed dies on her lips.
"Where's Roxas?" The redhead asks. Xion stares, mouth moving silently, words catching at the back of her throat in a clumped up mess.
When she does work up the nerve to speak again, all she can force out is a quiet, "You came back." It makes Axel smile. Of all the promises he'd made in their past life, at least he'd been able to keep this one.
"I promised, didn't I?" The girl is tossing her arms around his neck and squeezing the breath out of him in the blink of an eye, breath hitching as she sobs into the front of his t-shirt.
Xion tells Axel that Roxas doesn't have work today and is at home. Axel asks for the blonde's address and the girl is almost hesitant to give it to him, but she figures that seeing Axel, talking to him for real, it'll be good for her tiny friend. So she scribbles the address of his apartment onto a scrap of paper, passes it to Axel. He thanks her, says that he'll be back soon, that he'll keep in touch. And just like that, he's gone.
Xion watches as he leaves and for some odd, unidentifiable reason feels the need to call after him, to tell him to stay. She doesn't, though. And for the rest of the day she feels like she's committed an incredible injustice.
xxx
No one ever came to Roxas' house except for Xion. He doesn't like people very much, actually. Keeping to himself has always been a heck of a lot easier than getting to know people. Xion is the only person that he's ever let in - and it's only because when he had first met her, in the ninth grade when they had been going through those horribly awkward teenage body changes, he'd felt... something that he couldn't quite place his finger on. A connection that was finally beginning to make sense, with the passing weeks.
So when there's a knock on his door, on his day off no less, he blinks, fingers poised over the keyboard of his laptop, he's shocked. When he gets up, unlocks the deadbolt, pulls the door open expecting to see some kind of salesman, sees Axel instead - his heart literally comes to a total standstill. The man is made up of long limbs and lithe figure, and so familiar and has been haunting his dreams for weeks now, and all Roxas can do is stare, enraptured as the air fills his heaving lungs to the brim in a gasp.
"What're you-"
"I think we both know the answer to that question," Axel says before Roxas' words can even be fully articulated, continues as the blonde's eyebrows bunch together, "Xion gave me your address."
Roxas' mouth tightens into a thin line as his unasked question is answered. He wonders if maybe Xion remembers Axel, too. Apparently Axel is a mind reader in this life.
"She remembers me. But..." He trails off, emerald eyes seeking out cerulean and when they meet Roxas can see the uncertainty there. The lingering words gone unsaid. Do you remember, though? And, oh, does Roxas remember. Every single thing is so vivid that he could recite to the redhead exact moments in time, still recalls all the words that make Axel squirm and writhe and scared.
Black coats. Cold chests. Empty eyes. It's so fresh in his mind that he almost feels like it had all happened just seconds previously.
Roxas knows that he should close the door. He understands that he should be scared, that none of this even makes sense. He should be running from this situation and denying its existence because this cannot fathomably end well - but instead he smiles and speaks; he needs this. "I've been waiting."
And that's all the consolation Axel needs to yank the shorter man forward into a bone crushing embrace that conveys every single swirling emotion that he hadn't been able to express before.
Somewhere in the bowels of the earth, all the demons in hell are rejoicing.
xxx
It's a scalding hot day and the air conditioning in Axel's house is busted. Fate, he thinks, is a cruel bitch sometimes. He and Roxas are sprawled out on the cold tile of the redhead's kitchen separated by a fraction of space, hands clasped between their sweating bodies. Roxas had initially protested that it was too freaking hot in the damn house for affections, but Axel knew better than that and was fully aware that what his blonde companion actually meant washold my hand, douchebag. And so there they were, sweaty fingers twined, eyes fixed on the ceiling of the room.
"We should run away. Get out of town. Just for a little while. I don't think I can take much more of this place." Roxas says suddenly. Axel turns his head, cheek meeting cold tile and, oh, that's such a relief and Axel isn't really focused on words so much as he is on the coolness of his skin, so he nods and breathes out a "yeah", eyes roaming over the slight body next to him. God, Roxas is so beautiful. He's never seen anything more stunning and breathtaking in his entire life and he's jealous that the boy can still maintain such an ethereal beauty while sweating from every pore in his pale skin. Roxas turns his head to meet Axel's eyes.
"I don't want to be trapped this time. I want to get out and live the life I never had the chance to have before." His eyes are so full of excitement and life and - something that Axel can't place, but that's okay, because it's not important right now, is it? Roxas is real and Roxas is here and that's all that matters. Axel would follow this boy to the ends of the earth and back again if it meant getting to wake up every single day and gaze into those gorgeous blue gems. "You'll come with me, won't you?" The boy shifts, releases Axel's hand and crawls onto the redhead, straddling his hips and leaning forward so that their noses are touching, tip to tip, breath mingling between them, and what happened to it being too hot for affections? Axel is so captivated that he can only barely manage a curt nod. Roxas smiles.
"You love me, don't you?"
Of course he does. He loves him more than anything he's ever loved in all of his existence, this one and the last. His eyes soften as he replies. "That's a ridiculous question. You know that I do." That dazzling smile on Roxas' face widens, touching his eyes and melting into them like liquid perfection.
"We can run and never look back." There's a brief meeting of lips. "Just you and me. No restrictions." Deft fingers move and tangle into blazing red hair as Roxas kisses Axel more insistently whispering words against those lips that chill Axel's core - but he ignores it, of course, because Roxas can do no wrong, right?
"No one will miss us."
xxx
They leave on a Monday that is exactly three months and six days after their reunion. They load up Axel's car on that hot - but when isn't it hot in this accursed place? - day and hop into his 2007 Mustang and start heading north. Roxas convinces Axel not to say anything to anyone. "Goodbyes will just make things difficult," he insists, beautiful face lit up by a strange grin. "We'll just leave. No one needs to know." Axel can't help but feel unsettled, but he feels ridiculous doubting his lover so he just agrees with Roxas and they leave. Axel doesn't stop the car until Twilight Town is so far in the distance that he can't even see the clock tower from his rearview mirror any longer.
The two drive for three days with limited breaks, until Roxas tells Axel to stop in Hollow Bastion on the evening of the third day. The city is a glowing place of illumination at night, people every where. The place pulses with a sense of life and excitement and Roxas tells Axel that this is it. So they find a hotel that will allow them to stay until they can find a more permanent residency.
Axel almost feels like things are going to be okay; Roxas is by his side, smiling and laughing and just making everything in this world right. Oh, how wrong he is.
xxx
Things take a turn for the worse during their third week of living in Hollow Bastion when Xion decides to call. Roxas isn't paying attention to the caller ID on his phone so he just answers with a happy, "Hello, Roxas Strife speaking."
"Where are you?" Dread fills him when he realizes that it's Xion. He'd wanted so terribly to avoid confrontation.
"Hollow Bastion." He says, voice tight as he frowns.
"What?" The girl asks hysterically. She's quiet for a fraction of a second. "Roxas, what on earth are you doing there?"
Dumb question, he thinks. "What I didn't get the chance to do last time." Is his curt response. He doesn't want this interference. He's got everything under control and he doesn't need Xion sticking her nose into his business.
"This isn't a good idea. You know that, Roxas. Come back home." It's almost like she knows what she's talking about even when she can't possibly have any real idea. But her voice is laced with worry every time she opens her mouth, and Roxas can practically imagine his friend sitting in her room on the edge of her bed phone clutched tightly in her small hand, normally cute face all scrunched up and lined with worried wrinkles.
"My home is here. With Axel." Roxas says coldly, simply, like it's the most obvious thing that he's ever said.
Her reply really, really pisses him off. "You're messing him up."
"No, I'm not." The words come out clipped and sharp and full of anger. "Look, just stay out of my business."
"Yes you are. You're pressuring him, Roxas." Her breathing wavers. Maybe she's crying. "Why're you doing this? Why're you running away from your friends and your family? This isn't like you, Roxas. Something is wrong."
He isn't running. He's not. There's nothing to run from - because Axel is all that matters. Being with Axel, having Axel, keeping Axel.
"I haven't made him do anything that he hasn't wanted to." Pause. "Fate isn't going to keep us away from each other this time, Xion. I'll do everything in my power to make sure that he stays mine."
"Roxas, don't-"
And because the conversation is beginning to bore him, he cuts her off, "Not even death is going to be able to tear us apart. You'll see. You'll all see." And then he hangs up without hesitation, a single thought resounding in his head and echoing throughout his bones.
Not even death.
xxx
Axel notices a slight change in Roxas during the fourth week. The blonde is more clingy than usual, always begging for attention and hanging off of him in a way that most might consider annoying. But because it's Axel and because it's Roxas it doesn't matter. The redhead can't see anything out of the norm. It's just Roxas trying to keep a grip on the one he loves, which is understandable when one takes into consideration their past.
That point of view changes the night that Axel gets home late from work.
He opens the door and Roxas is in the kitchen of the small apartment that they share, perched on a wooden chair at the table, hands folded and eyes vacantly staring at the tabletop. Blue hues jerk up when Axel walks in, and the boy is on him in an instant, yanking him down to his level by the collar.
"Where the fuck have you been?" Roxas hisses, spit spraying onto Axel's face. "Who were you with? Why the fuck have you been out so late?"
Axel blinks at all of this, shocked and a whole awful lot taken aback by this outburst. "Whoa, whoa, Rox, chill. I was at work." He says calmly as his slender fingers move to pry the ones latched onto his collar.
"Like hell!" Roxas shoves Axel back and he hits the door. He's so shocked that he barely has time to register as the blonde moves over to the table and snatches something up, though Axel doesn't know what it is - until it's pressed to the flesh of his neck. A fucking knife. Roxas is pressing a knife to his fucking neck. His breath hitches and he can feel the fear washing over him, chilling his skin.
"Don't lie to me, Axel. Don't fucking lie to me." The knife is pressed harder. Axel's legs shake.
"I'm not," He breathes out, "I swear I'm not." Roxas doesn't move at all. The cool metal stays where it is. Silence.
"Tell me you love me." Is the demanding phrase that breaks the fearful quiet. Axel can only think to comply as he stares into cold and sinister blue eyes.
"I love you. I do, so much." And it's true. Even with that knife digging into his supple flesh and his shaking voice, he loves Roxas. Maybe he's insane. Maybe Roxas is insane. Maybe they're both just insane.
The knife is pulled away. Dropped to the floor. Lips meet lips. Things are normal. But not really.
xxx
Splashes of the sea meet and commingle with the tips of his toes as Roxas drops to the dock, legs hanging over the edge. The water is blue below him, swirling with the wind of an approaching storm that can't be far off from the way the sky is a field of gray depression above him. The car he had borrowed from Axel is parked a little ways down in the beach parking lot, lights on and shining through a fog that is settling over the town of god only knows where.
Cerulean eyes look out over the stormy waters blankly. His head is spinning with thoughts because everyone is trying to take Axel away from him and they can't do that because Roxas needs him. Axel has to belong to him forever, until they run out of lives and their souls fade into black nothingness and not a single thing or memory remains of them. He isn't obsessed. That's not what this is at all. Roxas is just in love and concerned and it's okay. But nothing is going at all like he hoped. He and Axel are supposed to both be so happy and at peace with one another, and Roxas is anything but.
He doubles over, head resting against his legs as he wonders if maybe this isn't the right life for them. Maybe that's why there are so many interferences. Maybe that's why Xion has been calling repeatedly and leaving messages on his phone, perhaps that's why Axel is always out so late at "work", it could be the reason why Demyx has been texting the redhead so frequently. This isn't their proper life. And that's how Roxas realizes what he has to do, dastardly smile spreading onto his face like a disease, laughter boiling in his stomach and streaming from his delicate lips in strands of relief. Demons are scratching at his back and whispering into his ear and he lets them. The insanity rolls in. There's a storm coming.
xxx
"This is, quite possibly, the worst storm the area has seen in years..."
The tv is a quiet backdrop to the dinner Roxas and Axel are eating while outside a storm is raging. Neither of them are speaking. They've been estranged since Roxas' episode nearly a week previously. The redhead can literally feel his lover's eyes on him though he tries so desperately to simply ignore it. Roxas has been watching him for a while, since he got back from wherever in the hell he had stolen the car to go to; i's the kind of staring and watching that makes Axel's skin crawl. There's a sudden clattering of silverware.
"How's the soup?" Roxas asks. His voice is strange; Axel feels his stomach twist.
"I haven't tried it yet." The redhead replies skeptically, refusing to look up at the blonde. Something isn't right, he can feel it in his veins.
"Try it, then." Fingers tap that table. "I made it just for you." Axel looks up and almost feels sickened by the sweet smile on the other's cherub face. It looks so horrifically fake.
Out of fear, Axel dips his spoon into the soup, raises it to his lips, ignores the voice in his head screaming for him to fucking stop, tries to pretend Roxas isn't staring at him like he's up for sacrifice, and shoves the utensil into his mouth. It's bitter, he half wants to spit it out, but he doesn't because he's afraid of what Roxas might do. He swallows with a resounding gulp.
Roxas' smile widens significantly.
Abruptly, Axel feels drowsy. His limbs weaken and the spoon slips from his hand, landing on the table with a clatter. The last thing Axel is fully aware of is watching Roxas pick up his own spoon to return to his meal, that damn smile still in place.
xxx
When Axel next opens his eyes, he's blanketed by darkness and tied down to a cold surface. His wrists and ankles are bound by rope so tightly that he can't move them at all; there's thick cloth wrapped firmly around his torso, holding him in place, and he's completely naked.
"Shit," He hisses. Off to his side there's the sound of rustling and shifting. He attempts to look around but it's too damn dark - until a flame flickers to life, lighting up the angelic features of Roxas' face. The boy moves to stand by his side placing the candle onto the surface - table, the older realizes - Axel is fastened to. The blonde smiles and leans down to press a kiss to Axel's forehead, brushing sweaty locks out of his face.
"Morning, sleeping beauty." Roxas says with a chuckle. Axel feels like just punching him, and he definitely would if he could.
"Where the fuck are we?" He growls. "And why the hell am I tied down?"
Roxas tuts, moving away in a swift turn on his heel. "Watch it. I'd really hate for something bad to happen to that pretty little mouth of yours." Something is lifted off of a surface and -fuck. Fuck. Axel struggles to get up as realization crashes down onto him.
Roxas returns with a shining knife in his petite hand. "Did you know that the apartment building had a basement? I didn't. No one ever comes down here. Which is good for us." He hums softly, running his fingers along the sharp edge of his weapon. With frozen blood, Axel struggles harder. But he's tied down too tight. "Struggling isn't going to help, sweetheart."
The blonde crawls onto him much like he had that day on the floor of Axel's kitchen, the place where this mess had all began, smiling and holding his knife to his own brittle chest like one might with a prized possession.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Axel cries out, turning his head and frantically searching for something - anything - to get him free. There's nothing else in the room within reach. Roxas curls a hand around his lover's chin and forces the redhead to look at him.
"This wasn't our life, Axel. We have to try again." He shifts and position his knife over Axel's chest, over the heart beating and pounding so wildly that its audible even to Roxas. "But don't be scared. We'll get another chance. Next time they won't be able to take you away from me." And Axel doesn't love him, he hates him and he wishes he had never gone into that fucking ice cream parlor, and he wishes he hadn't gone after Roxas and-
Then there is pain. Pain so excruciating that Axel can only let out a screech that Roxas leans forward to catch with his own grinning lips. Blood bubbles up, pours from the cut Roxas is creating with his blade in the shape of a heart. He digs the knife deeper, deeper still, relishes in the way Axel cries into his mouth and sobs and writhes beneath him. He laughs at the wetness on the other's face and digs deeper.
"We'll get it right in the next life, baby."
With a final stab, dig, twist, the body he's poised over goes utterly still.
Roxas leans back, admires his work. Admires the heart shaped carving above the punctured artery. And he smiles.
"Wait for me." He whispers.
xxx
Lithe fingers wrap around the wine glass, raise it up in the air towards Axel's blood drenched body as Roxas breathes out, "Cheers," and presses the glass to his lips. The bleach goes down smoothly and rests in the pit of his stomach, the poison beginning to eat him from the inside out. Hell will be feasting tonight. Roxas just smiles.
Everything ends on a hot day at the apex of summer.
X
(The man had killed the thing he loved, and so he had to die.)