Title: Nourishment
Author: Akane Arihyoshi
Disclaimer: The fact that Sora is the main character in Kingdom Hearts pretty much means I DON'T OWN IT. If I did, do you really think he would be alive? No. Not in a million years. He'd be dead, and Roxas would be running around with a heart. Everyone in the Organization would. And the Organization would have a new goal, hunting down all the annoying disney characters and destoying them until Kingdom Hearts was pure and un-disney-fied. Especially Donald, Goofy, and Mickey. They are so throughly annoying I can't see straight.
"I'm not crazy. I'm terminally insane."
Roxas turned and stared. Axel looked over his shoulder at the smaller boy, grinning. "What?" he asked. "We all are. I mean, we're a bunch of people who technically don't exist, trying to find the meaning of our existence when there is no meaning. Someone said once that insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Isn't that what we've been doing? It didn't work the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth time, let's try it again! Good ol' Xemnas."
Roxas shook his head lightly. "You're such an idiot, Axel."
"I know. It's my favorite part of myself."
"Your idiocy?"
"…I prefer to call it creativity," said Axel, snapping his fingers to create a small flame in the palm of his hand. He stared at this for a moment, then turned back to Roxas, holding out his burning hand. "Lookit, Roxy! Isn't this pretty?"
Roxas sighed. "Great. You're an idiot with fire. And ADD. What happened there, was your Other prone to running head-first into walls, or something?"
Axel thought for a moment, tossing the little ball of flames into the air and watching as it was cruelly snuffed out by the overflow of oxygen it received. "He probably was," Axel stated calmly, as if discussing the clumsiness of his Other was an everyday occurrence for him. Roxas sighed again.
The redhead stood from where he had been sitting on the wide parapet on the castle's rooftop and jumped down onto the rough surface of the roof. "Roxas?" he asked suddenly. Roxas stood and walked over to him, watching Axel's face suspiciously, not bothering to protest as his hand was grasped tightly in the older male's. Axel paused, then looked down at the blond. "I'm feeling surprisingly sad."
"You can't feel, Axel. You're a nobody," Roxas replied boredly, having had this conversation with Axel far too many times.
"If I could feel, I would feel sad," Axel compromised, pouting at Roxas.
"So what do you want me to do about it?"
Axel thought for a moment. "Let's go make someone's life a living hell," he chirped happily, gripping Roxas' hand tighter and dragging him through a newly-opened portal.
-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-
Roxas, against his better judgment, was rather enjoying the mischievous look on Axel's face. He knew it always led to a brilliant prank on one of the Organization members. These tricks were probably some of the only things that Axel put effort into. He was a genius, but chose to never show it. Roxas guessed that they were Axel's outlet.
The redhead had taken them to a small, glass room, filled to the brim with exotic flowers and plants. Marluxia's greenhouse. Roxas watched coolly as Axel searched around for something, slapping away some of the more ferocious plants as they crept closer with hardly any thought. Serving punishment for a prank doing gardening in Marluxia's greenhouse for three days would get you pretty used to the plants. Apparently it wasn't enough, though, as Axel still hadn't found what he was looking for.
A few more minutes of searching, before, "Aha!"
Roxas looked up from where he was watching a smallish plant turn different colors. "Yeah, Axel? Found it?"
"No, Roxy, I just like screaming 'aha' at random intervals," Axel said, rolling his eyes. "Of course I found it. Damn plant food was under the carnivorous plants' table."
"…You were looking for plant food?"
"Yes."
"…Why?"
"You'll see," said Axel, tucking the bag under one arm, and grabbing Roxas' hand again. He turned slightly to find an open space, then created another portal and stepped through it, transporting them to the eleventh floor of the castle.
Axel pressed his ear to the door in front of them, which proudly sported a silver number eleven towards the top. Hearing nothing, he pushed the door open quietly, walking in while dragging Roxas behind him.
"Axel?" asked the blond suspiciously, "Why are we in Marluxia's room?"
"See that?" the redhead replied, pointing to a small cupboard to their right. Roxas nodded. "That's where Marluxia keeps his food. I dunno why he doesn't use the kitchen, but he's always been kind of weird, so we just let it pass. Well, we're about to give him something more nutritious and better for him. Especially him," said Axel, shaking the bag of plant food. Roxas grinned.
-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-
About an hour later, they stood back and surveyed their work. Everything in the cupboard looked absolutely normal, put back into their proper places. Marluxia wouldn't know what hit him. They were about to sneak back out into the hallway and just walk the two floors up to Roxas' room, before they heard a portal being opened on the other side of the door, and scurried into a portal of their own just before a disgruntled Marluxia opened the door.
The pink-haired man sighed, throwing back his hood as he walked through the doorway. His mission had been terrible, and now all he wanted to do was eat, and sleep. After a quick argument with himself over the merits of doing the latter first, his growling stomach informed him that there would be quite a lot of pain is he chose slumber, and so he made his way over to the cupboard where he stored his food, opening its door. Pulling out a box of something, he pulled it open and blindly shook a handful out into his mouth and chewed lazily.
Marluxia abruptly lost all thoughts of sleep, as his mind processed a more important detail. There was no way in hell that these were Cheesy Crackers.
He spit out his mouthful into his hand. It didn't look right. Even fully chewed Cheesy Crackers looked better than that. He smelled it, and quickly discovered what it truly was. Throwing the cracker box to the side, Marluxia dug deeper into his cupboard, searching every box until he was absolutely sure that everything (down to the cans of soda he had on the back of the top shelf) had been replaced with some type of plant food or another. Digging deeper, his hand brushed against something that he knew hadn't been there before. Pulling the offending object out, he discovered that it was a note, addressed to him.
It wasn't very long, explaining that whoever had done this had replaced his food with the plant food from his greenhouse (this infuriated Marluxia more than the original trick had done), and that they sincerely hoped that he would find his diet slightly more fulfilling from now on. The signature was sloppy, 'your secret admirer' had been crossed out to the point that it was barely readable, and replaced with 'your worst enemy', only to have that crossed out too and 'cheerfully not yours, your worst nightmare of a secret non-admirer' put in its place.
Marluxia stared at this signature for a moment, and then crumpled the note as his hand curled into a fist. Flowers erupted up both his arms and grew to enormous sizes in his sheer fury, before wilting in a spectacular display of raw power. And he knew that only one person would ever have signed a note like that, such a cheerful way of reminding him that their relationship only existed on a physical level, with their hate for each other blatantly clear.
"VEXEN!"
-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-
Axel snickered, falling onto Roxas' bed and dragging the blond into his lap. As he moved his arms around the smaller boy, Axel kissed him quickly, quieting Roxas when the poor boy tried to ask what the hell was going on. He began to count silently down from ten, until, pulling his face away from Roxas, he began to count out loud.
"Three…two…one…"
"VEXEN!" they heard Marluxia screech from two floors away. Axel looked slightly shocked.
"Vexen? Vexen?! But how can it be Vexen? I thought for sure it was someone else…" Axel said bewilderedly, blinking rapidly to clear his head. Roxas frowned.
"Axel, are you going to tell me what you're talking about?"
"Yeah, sorry. Remember when I was writing that note that I wouldn't let you see?"
"Yeah…"
(Flashback to…half an hour ago. Yeah.)
As Roxas absently filled yet another box with the plant food, he glanced over at Axel, who was supposed to be replacing the boxes into their cupboard. Except he wasn't. Abandoning the box at his hands, Roxas walked over to the fiery redhead, leaning over his shoulder to observe the piece of paper that he was writing on so diligently. "Axel?"
Axel quickly moved his hand to cover up whatever it was that he was writing. "It's nothing, Roxas," he said casually. "Just my little note to Marluxia, that's all."
Roxas looked skeptical. "You're gonna write him a note saying that we did it? That's kind of…not like you. That's more of a Demyx thing to do."
"No, Roxas, I'm not quite that stupid. I'm just writing him a nice little note explaining what we did, without telling him that it was us. It's up to him to figure out what the signature means, and I assure you, he won't think it's us…"
Roxas still looked distrusting. "I don't know, Axel…"
Axel reached up and pulled Roxas' face down, kissing him lightly before pushing him off in the direction of the rest of the boxes. "Finish filling those up, okay?"
(End flashback of…not very long ago.)
"Well, like I said, I signed the note with a code."
"And what was the code?"
Axel frowned. "I was curious as to who Marluxia's lover was. He's been hinting that he has one, and I decided to find out who it is. But…I don't think the code was interpreted right, exactly…"
Now Roxas was blinking in confusion also. "Vexen? Not…number four? The creepy scientist Vexen? But those two can't stand each other!"
"I know. This doesn't make any sense to me…"
"A lot of things don't make sense to you, Axel."
"Touché."
-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-.:.-
Somewhere, deep in the basement of the Castle Oblivion, Vexen was conducting an important experiment. If this experiment succeeded, Sora would die altogether along with all the heartless, and they would be able to seize Kingdom Hearts in less than a week. Just one more drop of this chemical into the beaker, and their efforts would finally pay off. One more drop…
Just as he lifted the test tube and tilted it for that final part, the door slammed open, an irate Marluxia standing in the doorway, flowers blooming up his arms and down his torso in pure anger. "VEXEN! YOU'RE DEAD!"
Vexen, hardly being used to this kind of interruption, felt his hand slip a moment too late, and watched helplessly as an extra drop of liquid was added into the chemical compound. The explosion was miraculous from a distance, but the poor scientist and the furious botanist had rather a different view of it. Painful.
The flowers on Marluxia's arms and body wilted and the ice that had sprung up in Vexen's defense melted just as pitifully. The pain was short-lived, but only succeeded in raising the temper of both men.
"VEXEN YOU IDIOT!"
Vexen, having been threatened with death, burned by the failure of an important experiment, and insulted, was understandably pissed. "What the hell do you want, Marluxia?" he demanded.
Marluxia then proceeded to inform him of the prank, going into great detail, with hidden insults being hurled at random intervals. Vexen listened, growling, and then burst out laughing at the conclusion of Marluxia's explanation.
"No, you idiot," he snarled. "It wasn't me. But I owe whoever did that to you."
This quickly escalated into a full-blown fist-fight. Neither knew who threw the first punch, or if they both hit each other at the exact same time. The next thing their minds processed was that they were on the floor in considerable pain, with only a general idea of how they had gotten there. And then suddenly, their fighting took on a whole new style, punches turning into desperate hands pulling each other closer, bites turned into lips meshed together in a different kind of duel.
And they were confident in the fact that no one would ever know.
Author's Note: Oh god, I've managed to fit both AkuRoku and MarlyVex into one story…applause, people. This was more than I ever thought I could write.
This story was spawned from boredom, because my internet was refusing to work. I originally wanted to fit something similar to the line "I'm not crazy, I'm just a little unwell" from Matchbox Twenty's "Unwell" into a story, and the first line of this story was my…Axel version of it. XD Then, after that, I decided I wanted to try and do some cute non-angst AkuRoku, and I remembered the only funny part of another story I wrote (until I decided that I really didn't like that story all that much, and stopped writing it) which was the pranking Marluxia thing…and so I re-wrote it, and threw in some Marluxia/Vexen for no reason. Other than the fact that I love the pairing…
Review. Two great pairings in one oneshot. A miraculous thing for me. I could hardly even write chaste kissing before, and now look at what I've done…the last bit even smells a bit like citrus…oh no, what's happened to me?
Akane