Disclaimer: I disclaim.
Summary: The beautiful things in life never stay with someone trying to find himself.
Warning: Yaoi, depressing subjects. Yeah.
Pairing: AxelxRoxas, RoxasxNaminé friendship.
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Modern Chemistry
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One.
Roxas smiles, shyly at first until he takes his seat. The front row.
A new start. He's not just the lame kid that sits in the back anymore. This is college, he can start over. His brother, Sora, runs in after him, as messy and unorganized as always. Sora will never change.
They are twins, and Roxas is sick of being half another person.
So Sora doesn't meet his eyes, and darts to the very back, plopping down beside a boy with incredibly brilliant silver hair. Roxas doesn't look back, he just stares ahead at his professor.
Pressure is applied to his forearm and he jumps, turning wide eyes to the small girl beside him. She grins at him and waves slightly, her teeth are so white they almost blind.
Roxas mouthes a quick hi as the instructor begins the very first day of his new life.
The rest of his life.
The girl - her name is Naminé and she is anemic. She has two cats, and has been on her own his the beginning of junior high. Her hair is bleached and she hates summer.
Carefully, Roxas laughs at the right times when she tries to make a joke. He smiles and grins. He remembers not to crawl back into his shell. When class is over, she stands, and he barely notices the holes decorating the sides. Her skin is sickly pale.
"Do you want to get coffee?" Her teeth, so bright it hurts. Her hair against the white of her dress.
Roxas nods.
Two.
Naminé isn't someone Roxas would have ever considered a friend. He has never really had any, besides Sora, but he used to pick out the people that he'd want to be friends with. He couldn't gather any courage to talk to them, though.
Her long hands shake around the coffee cup.
Roxas wants to ask what's wrong with her - everything about her soft exterior is off.
"I hate coffee," Naminé admits quietly, looking down with a watery smile.
All Roxas says is "oh," and nurses is root beer. "So does my brother. I used to drink it to stay awake during Finals, and just the smell would make him want to vomit."
"Does he do that a lot?"
Slowly, "Vomit?"
Naminé giggles, and her bony arm reaches out, and Roxas will not twitch and holds onto him. She is very frail. She tilts her bleached blonde head to the side, a tiny grin playing on her thin, chapped lips.
"You know, I like you Roxas. You should meet my brother."
"Is he as weird as you?"
Something glints in Naminé's Sharp eyes.
"Weirder."
Three.
Roxas looks into the mirror in his bathroom, contemplating his appearance.
He wants a change. Drastically. The only thing separating Sora and himself is his blond hair, sticking up in every direction just like his and he hates it.
The label reads in bold letters permanent.
Blue is a good color. He grins to himself as he applies it, the dye dripping onto the sink.
It comes out faded blue streaked into his blond, and some of the blue is smeared on his forehead, his ears. He laughs and scrubs, but it doesn't come off.
He spends the next three hours scrubbing until his skin is swollen red and in pain.
When Sora comes home from God knows where, he stops and takes a long look at Roxas sitting on the couch, red faced and tired, and snickers on his way to his room.
Roxas throws the remote at the wall.
Four.
Roxas decides to meet Naminé's brother. He walks with her, the wind blowing her knitted scarf gently, her coarse hair following. His eyes burn when a few strands get him in the eye, and he doesn't get as close again.
"You're really going to love him, Roxas."
He responds half-heartedly. "Do you think I'm gay?"
She doesn't even have the audacity to pause. "Yes."
Roxas shrugs, and the house they stop at can't be Naminé's. It's large and white. The doors are French, and there are trees planted along her driveway.
She takes his hand, her nails chipped to the meat, and leads him inside.
Immediately the hair catches Roxas off guard. It's shock red. Obviously dyed. Like his. The boy is sitting on the couch, his listless eyes not really watching the screen on the wall. The green is faded, pupils just a little dilated. Roxas frowns and tells himself to not be afraid.
"Axel," Naminé calls softly. And those eyes are on him, staring through him. Digging into his soul. They are sharp just like Naminé's.
The sluggish voice is scratchy. Like static.
"Who's that?"
Five.
Axel tells Roxas he dropped out of college three years ago. He does odd jobs here and there, you know, he's not lazy. Not a moocher. He's HIV positive and he hates waiting in line at the DMV. You know. Yeah. He can eat tacos like a man possessed, and he is sick of watching reruns of South Park.
They're outside on a wooden swing set still perfectly intact from Naminé's childhood. Axel has his arm casually draped across Roxas's shoulder, and Roxas has no idea why he doesn't care. He met Axel yesterday, but it feels like forever. Roxas feels like Axel is someone he has known beyond this life.
Suddenly, Axel looks up into the mounds of clouds floating in the intense blue of the sky. He turns to Roxas with a shit eating grin. "Today is a beautiful day, Roxas."
"What's it like," Roxas blurts out before he can stop himself. "Having HIV?"
"Like breathing. You deal." Axel takes his hand and squeezes. "You just get used to it. You know?" Axel's teeth are tinted yellow and a little crooked. Roxas thinks he likes Axel's better than Naminé's shock white.
"Are you afraid of dying?" Roxas asks, quietly. His voice fades with the gust of wind that blows his hair. His blue streaks that bleed into the natural blond.
"I'm not afraid of anything," Axel chuckles, but his jaw shakes.
"Sorry."
"Naw."
"Axel?"
Roxas smiles, and it's not forced. It hasn't been for a while now.
"What?"
"It's a beautiful day."
Six.
Axel takes his hand and makes a heart, grinning to himself. Roxas shakes his head with a slight laugh, their fingers lacing together.
The sun shines on their faces, a change from the gray clouds that populate the fall. The grass is like a soft blanket under their skin, and Axel runs chilly hands under his shirt, finger tips drifting across the flat planes of his stomach like butterfly wings.
Axel likes to touch.
"I like you, Roxas." Axel smiles, not like before, not like his usual smiles. This one is quieter, gentler. Not the Axel Roxas has come to know at all.
Roxas remember the words Naminé spoke to him in the café the day he met her.
"I like you, Roxas."
He smiles warmly, bathing in the sun rays.
"Naminé said that to me once. I haven't seen her in a while."
"She wanted to find me a friend," Axel says, a strange expression crossing his face. Roxas blinks, and laughs, loud and clear and so different from the laugh-behind-the-hand-method he was always taught. "Before I met you all I could think about was having HIV. I was a pity train, you know? All I could think about was myself, and dying and stupid shit. Like that. I'd want her to stay at home and cry with me instead of living her life. She made the right choices, I didn't."
"Don't say that," Roxas's murmurs, tracing Axel's triangle tattoos under his jade eyes. The hand on his hip squeezes.
"It's true," Axel whispers back, kissing the side of Roxas's mouth. Roxas doesn't bat an eyelash anymore. His eyes lower to slits. Sleep is threatening to take him. "But now I have someone important to me."
"And HIV doesn't seem so important anymore."
Axel's kisses taste like cranberry juice and sea salt ice cream.
Seven.
It's funny. Roxas sits against a tree, Sora holding his hand like some inconsolable child. On the bark of the tree, there are carvings in curvy writing. Sloppy cursive.
The wind doesn't blow. Roxas can only feel the coldness of a winter day. The sun is behind the clouds, closing away all the warmness.
"I don't understand Sora."
The blue in Roxas's hair has washed out, despite the bottle label's bold letters. Washed away and forgotten like a leaf on a tree. No one remembers a single leaf on a tree out of many.
"You can't predict the future Roxas. You can only learn from the past."
Naminé leans on his other side, a slight smile gracing her thin, worn lips. Her all-bones hand his grasping his hand for dear life.
"Being sad is apart of life Roxas."
Roxas shakes his head, and his frown will never go away.
"I have lost myself again."
There is quiet laughter. Sora stands and brushes himself off. "Well, we'll just have to find you again. I'm going to order pizza. D'you want some Naminé?"
He already knows her answer as he heads inside.
Only when Sora is gone does Roxas start. There is one and then the tide rolls in and he can't control it. Naminé tries to console him. Tries and fails with her frailty. "He's really gone."
Her bitten fingers wipe away the traces on his face. She smiles, slowly, and hugs him tightly.
"Axel left you all of himself. Remember him with all of your heart Roxas."
"You were what he always wanted."
There is a crack of sunlight seeping in.