And then, Roxas comes back.
Silhouetted in the doorway that Axel fought to keep him going through, he leans as if exhausted. Axel steps out of the shadows he was waiting in, steps towards him, eyes wide and disbelieving. Roxas looks up then, and something like a smirk tugs at the edges of his mouth.
"You're still here," he says.
Closer, now, Axel can see he's not a hallucination, not a desperate wish made form. He stands in the doorway Axel should've never let him walk through, and he stands, covered in blood. "Roxas," Axel says. "What did you do?"
Roxas is covered in blood, splattered thick across his face and hair, soaked through his shirt and jacket, sticking to the skin of his chest. "I," he says, and then he doesn't say any more. This close, Axel can smell it, iron and copper and life. He knows, it's Sora's blood – but maybe that makes it Roxas' too?
He reaches out and presses one gloved hand to Roxas' chest, where there used to be nothing, and now, there's a fluttering, nervous beat thudding against the previously empty ribcage.
"Oh," he says, pulling his hand away, sticky with blood. He rubs his thumb and finger together, feeling it slide, thick. "What did you do, Roxas." But he doesn't really care, because Roxas came back. Roxas didn't disappear, didn't die. Roxas came back, and Roxas is here.
He curves his hand around the back of Roxas' head, pulls him forward and leans down and presses his mouth over his cheekbone, tongue flitting and mouth sucking, cleaning the blood off of Roxas' pale skin. Roxas' hands press against his chest for a moment, before sliding to the zipper and pulling it down roughly, parting the coat over his shoulders and pushing it to the floor. "Axel," he says, and Axel's hand curls tighter against his hair, stained amber, copper, bronze by blood.
He strips Roxas off, pulls his soaked jacket and shirt away from his skin, clean underneath. His hands are still smeared with the blood, and he brings them to his mouth, sucking each finger into his mouth and pulling them out, clean and slick with saliva. "Axel," Roxas says again, and he's tugging his pants down and kicking them off, pushing Axel back until he relents and lies down, hands going easy and familiar to Roxas' hips as he climbs down and straddles him.
He watches as Roxas reaches back and stretches himself, fingers sliding smooth with blood and spit, thigh muscles tensed and taut as he rides his fingers. Axel wraps a hand around his cock, thick and hard, jutting out smoothly against his stomach, and Roxas makes a desperate groaning sound. Axel can hear his heartbeat, thundering, getting faster and harder, pounding in the fragile shell of his chest. Roxas gasps with each slick pull Axel gives his cock, pulls his fingers out of himself and claws at Axel's shoulders, thrusting into Axel's fist and smearing blood over Axel's chest and neck.
"Now," he says, jerking at the zipper of Axel's pants, getting it open and pushing his hand inside, wrapping it around Axel's cock and pumping, smearing pre-come and blood, messy. Axel grits his teeth and pulls at Roxas' hips until he finally gets the idea and lines himself up, bracing himself against Axel's shoulders and pushing down, opening up smooth and hot around Axel's cock as his mouth falls open, chest heaving tight, as if the heart inside is too heavy.
Sora's blood is smeared over both of them, over the floor, and Axel knows, knows knows knows this cannot end well; the Keyblade Master dead and Roxas free and whole and his, and he won't take him back to the Organisation, won't let the old man or Riku take him. Roxas came back. Roxas is his. But it won't end well, can never end well, not for them. They are continually destined for tragedy, and he aches from it, somewhere in his lungs, in his stomach, he aches.
Roxas rides him like he used to, before, hands clenched tight on his shoulders and neck, thighs framing his hips, straining and slick with sweat. His cock slides against Axel's stomach, hard and leaking pre-come, and Axel wraps his hand around it, pumping in time with Roxas' thrusts. He can smell the blood, the copper-iron metallic taint of it hanging thick in the air; can hear Roxas' heart, thumping and pounding, louder now, erratic. He wonders if it'll burst, flood Roxas' chest with this same blood painted over them.
Roxas arches sharply, shooting spunk over Axel's stomach and chest in thick pulses, body tightening around him until instinct takes him over and he thrusts mindlessly, three, four times, before yanking Roxas' hips down hard against his own and coming deep inside him.
And then, Roxas' body is curved in, hunched painfully like an animal over him, bloody hands clutching at his chest. "Axel," he says, eyes wide and something like pain, fear in them. "What did I do?"
Axel presses his hand over Roxas' own, feels the organ beneath them; such a simple thing, a valve, a pump of flesh, flooded with blood and then empty, filling again. He presses his face into Roxas' neck, the blood in his hair drying and flaking like powder. "I think," he says. "You did what you had to."
