Yeah, another oneshot. I'm pretty much over my sickness, which means I am once again a horrible insomniac. So you're getting this at two in the morning and I'm pretty sure you'll think it's insane. That's okay. This was influenced by Reflections of a Prisoner, which is why you may find similarities if you've read Reflections (which you don't have to do). The title really reflects the piece; don't expect something nicely pieced together and hospital-cornered. It's supposed to be, well, disjointed. Please enjoy.

Once upon a time, there lived a girl named Zheyne who didn't own Kingdom Hearts. The end. (Duly disclaimed.)


"I want you to fuck me," he says, watching with satisfaction the way his soft words affect his companion. He knows he shouldn't enjoy the control he has like this, shouldn't exploit it like this. But he doesn't care.

"Rox-"

"Stop."

The redhead falls silent before he can even finish Roxas' name. The blond holds back a smile. "I want you to do it – just this once. But first, I'm going to ask you a question, and you're going to answer honestly."

Axel frowns at him, probably confused, and obviously wary. Roxas knows he's playing with fire – Axel is the master of mind games – but it's so delicious to get burned that he isn't too concerned. Axel may be good, but he's not in control. He never was.

"Do you love me?"

"That's not fair, Roxas." Axel is scowling now, a slight turning-down of the lips and a slight narrowing of the eyes. It really is a shame that hard look only works on people who don't actually know him.

"I think it's perfectly fair. This is important to me. I need to know before we do this."

"You've had no problem fucking me," retorts the redhead, narrowing his eyes further. He probably thinks he's caught onto the game, but he hasn't. Roxas doesn't even understand the play, and he's the one who started it.

"But this time, I want you. And I want to know if I can trust you."

Axel stays silent, but his eyes go wide and he has to bite his lip to stay that way when Roxas begins to work magic on sensitive parts of his anatomy. Roxas sighs, but doesn't stop. "Pity. I was so looking forward to­-"

"I don't." Axel's voice suddenly rises in pitch, so he's almost yelling in the blond's face. "I don't love you. And you know that, you-"

Roxas silences him again, this time by biting the redhead's lips harshly. When he tastes blood, he smiles. "I'm glad you're being honest with me."

He leans back, pulling off his traveling cloak. Conveniently, he's 'forgotten' to put anything on underneath, so Axel can see just how much he's wanted. Lowering his lids, he breathes, "Fuck me, Axel."

He knows he shouldn't enjoy the power he has, shouldn't exploit it.

But he doesn't care.


They met on a trolley, which isn't so very interesting out of context. Plenty of people meet on trolleys. But context matters, because they met at midnight; they'd both had the same idea, to sleep in the broken one for the night. It was cold, and they weren't the people they were running from.

But that isn't a significant point in his mind any more. Axel only remembers that night sleeping on the barely-padded bench, because it's the only time they were ever innocent when they slept together. He wishes they could have done it again, even just once, so he can remember the way it felt to think Roxas was innocent at all. His big blue eyes seemed to call out for help, attention, anything, and the way his body shivered and jerked only completed the picture. He looked, to the skeletons in the dusty corners of Axel's once-poetic mind, like a fallen angel.

Axel was brutally wrenched from that fantasy when Roxas woke up and asked if he wanted to come to the Usual Spot.


Roxas remembers seeing Axel around before they actually met. He was so fascinating; he seemed to hold himself in higher esteem than anyone else around him. Many would simply call it arrogance and move on, but Roxas knew better. Axel held himself in higher esteem because he was better than the others living in the back alley.

Roxas still can't remember a time he wasn't good at hiding in the shadows, so he knew Axel hadn't seen him before they slept on the bench together. Axel had been running away from the Draftsmen, the ones looking for able bodies to destroy in the name of peace.

Roxas had been running away from the Force, who would hand him over to the Draftsmen. Or kill him.

He shouldn't have gone back. But still, a need is a need and a fix is a fix, so he had to go to the Usual Spot and he really just wanted Axel along because he was fascinating.


Axel doesn't like the noises Roxas makes when he's being filled. He's so seductive, so sensual, when it's the other way around; but right now he just sounds like a cheap whore doing him a favor. He tries to wonder if being turned on by it anyway makes him pathetic, but it's very hard to concentrate while he's trying to please them both.

He tries to wonder how Roxas does it, but he can't do that either.

He's very careful, when he finishes, to not tell Roxas those three words, not to be honest. Because Roxas takes the words of their superior very seriously, even now that they're on the run.

You can't love. You can't feel.

Axel wishes – as Roxas finishes beautifully and the sound sickens him – that were true. It would make pretending a hell of a lot easier.


They're running from the Force, but that's nothing new. They're always on the run. It's only a matter of time before they're caught again. Roxas knows this, but he still runs. Still holds Axel's hand – Axel is pathetically skinny and has no significant muscle mass, but he's fast and that's what counts in situations like these.

They stop to rest in Hollow Bastion Chapel because even now, even when the New Order is stomping on everyone and stripping people of their hearts for the Greater Good, churches are sanctuaries. The Force can't come into the church looking for a fight.

Luckily there's a safe hatch by the backdoor. They lift the green circle from the floor and slide into the basement, pulling the circle back into place and laughing giddily because adrenaline is leaving them and it really is funny, that no one has ever wondered what the circle is at all.


Axel never knew his mother. He lived with her for fifteen years, but he never knew her. He knew the smell of her cheap perfume and he knew her favorite customers and he knew the sounds she made when she had sex, but those things were really things he didn't want to know.

When he was fourteen years old she made him watch. Every night for an entire month she made him watch while she worked. He wanted to cover his eyes and his ears and pretend it was all a bad dream, but he didn't because the man promised to pay extra if he could learn enough to please him.

He hadn't understood at first. But at the end of the month, on his birthday, his mother gave him a dress and a pair of high heels and told him that with his figure, he'd be much more popular with the men than she could ever be.

He kicked her old customer in the balls with those high heeled shoes when he came that night, and he didn't look back. He doesn't know if his mother is alive or dead and sometimes he feels bad about that, but only during the times when he isn't running. Sometimes he still puts on the dress, but only when he has to escape quickly and Roxas isn't around so he can't fight them off.

It's ironic that the Force never wonders who the redheaded woman is, even though they all know who Axel is and what Axel looks like. Betrayal isn't tolerated in the Order, and running away is definitely betrayal.

Roxas runs for his own personal reasons, but Axel runs with him because sometimes, when he's wearing that dress, Roxas pulls him somewhere safe and treats him like those men treated his mother. He likes it because if he hurts – if he's feeling the pain, feeling the pleasure, feeling Roxas moving mercilessly inside of him – then he knows the Process really was incomplete.

They didn't steal everything. He has a feeling Roxas will do that, eventually, but really, that's the point.


The first time he ever got high was an accident. He was ten, and accidentally overdosed on the medicine his older sister had to take for her throat. His mother had left him home alone when he caught a cold, and he'd thought – logically – that if one teaspoonful would make her cough go away for a while, then more would make his go away for longer.

When he was fourteen he decided it would be much easier to live in that state than to live with the guilt of accidentally killing Xion when she came back for some clothes. So he went in search of better, longer-lasting trips. In rare moments of honesty, he can admit that he was also looking for a way to die. But no one's ever around during those honest times so he can pretend it isn't so.

He sometimes wishes he could tell Axel this. Maybe it would make him see why it was better for them to lose their emotions to the Draft before they escaped. After all, during that time he lost his addiction too. If he'd only lost that, he would have lost something much bigger. His life.

It was either the Process, or suicide, and Roxas didn't really want to die.


When Roxas is asleep, Axel is free to hate. He hates the Draft. He hates the Order. He hates anything having to do with 'peace' and their government, though he's not really an anarchist. He hates his life. He hates himself.

And he really, truly hates Roxas.

But when Roxas is awake, all of that goes away. One look is all it takes – one seductive look, one inquisitive look, one glance – and Axel is entranced once again. He does and says things he would never otherwise because he wants Roxas much more than he wants honesty, which at this point isn't too much in the first place.


He doesn't understand why Axel isn't asking for another go.

Axel is usually a fairly dominant personality, and honestly he doesn't know why he had to practically order his partner – ex partner, he supposes, now that they're fugitives – to do what he has to have wanted all this time. He doesn't know why Axel never even tried.

He doesn't understand why there are times when the redhead just wants to hold him close.

He doesn't understand why Axel still bothers to kiss him.

He doesn't understand why, when Axel says he doesn't love him, it's the best kind of not being able to breathe.