A/N: This story will alternate POV between Axel and Roxas (i.e., next chapter will be Roxas).
We find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve.
- Maxwell Maltz
It was probably weird, walking around in the rain when you didn't even like it. But Axel really hated the smell of shampoo, especially guy shampoo since it smelled like tiger musk (which he knew for a confirmed fucking fact, once he'd worked up the nerve to go up to the cage in a zoo in Scotland). And rain got rid of shampoo-smell.
It wasn't that bad, the rain. He just didn't…like it.
Apparently it rained in London a fucking lot, because the circus had only been there for fifteen days and it'd basically been alternating between drizzling and pouring for ten of them.
He was walking around some urban district, he didn't bother remembering which, with his big spiky hair tied back in a loose ponytail and his very thin glasses on. People always seemed so surprised when they found out he had slightly faulty vision. He didn't usually wear glasses. He didn't even usually wear contacts; all it meant was he couldn't read letters that were really far away. And when you were on a trapeze you didn't really need to read letters really far away.
But Axel was a tall guy, and had flaming red hair, and when he was walking around in shady urban districts alone wearing a black coat people tended to assume that he was a criminal. He found that a ponytail and his glasses just made him look fucking artsy, instead, and he got a kick out of how different everyone acted around an artsy guy.
Besides, walking helped him think. He stuck his hands in his pockets, felt the smooth shape of an iPod in one and his cell phone in the other.
London was fucking depressing. Streets were cobblestone, and rain ran through the grooves in the rock and pooled in the middle of the road. He could see his own breath in front of him, fogging up his glasses.
A car passed by, rumble-rumble-rumble down the cobblestone lane, right through a puddle that narrowly avoided splashing Axel. It was raining harder; his hair was soaked, just like his pants, and water drops were running down his nose to hang off the pointed tip. Each droplet dangled for a few hopeless seconds before dropping or collecting in the curve of his upper lip, where he absently licked it off. He didn't see anybody else on the road and was glad for it.
He noticed, watching his feet on the sidewalk, clunk-clunk-clunk, lots of worms pointing their little pink ends all over the place. Why was it worms came
up when it rained? They didn't want to drown, or something? It was something stupid like that.
If that was why they came up, then he'd found an exceptionally dumb worm, because it was flailing around in one of the pools that collected in a dip in the sidewalk.
Axel took some amount of pity on it, bending down to pluck it out of the water and dumping it unceremoniously down on the flatter, if just as wet, part of the sidewalk. It probably didn't matter, anyways. It was going to get stepped on by somebody. He shrugged, standing up again. Didn't really matter. Plenty of other worms.
He wiped his hand on the side of his coat (which just made it wet instead of slimy) and leaned against the wet brick wall behind him.
London was fucking depressing, and now his hand was all wet. He fucking hated water.
His phone rang suddenly, buzz-buzz-buzzing against his thigh like a bug. "Crap!"
He grunted and felt around with his wet hand in his pocket for the stupid thing. Of course, as soon as he flipped it open raindrops started to fall on the screen, magnifying colors like big PCP rainbows.
Phone call from: Demyx (0–208–123–5877)
"…the fuck does he want?" Axel muttered to himself, trying to wipe off the screen with his wet thumb and failing miserably, streaking it with rainbow smudges. "Hello?" he grumbled.
"Hey-ho, dairy-o!"
"Dem, what the Hell."
There was the static crackle of laughter and the clang of a pot somewhere on the other end. "Um, where are you right now?"
"Dunno. Downtown London near Crystal Palace, I guess."
"That's specific."
"I got what I got, angel."
A couple of kids on the other side of the street ran by, hoods over their heads and jeans dragging in the puddles. Behind them was a young guy with a dyed-orange Mohawk, walking real calm and real slow.
Axel chuckled. Fake red heads were kind of flattering and kind of sad.
"Psh. Whatever. Saïx just dropped by and he says we're leaving in half an hour, which I assumes means with or without you – "
Axel rolled his eyes. A sad little spike of red hair drooped down in front of his face like a wet puppy.
"Yeah," he groused. "I get it. I'll be there in – what time is it now?" It was too dark outside to check his watch, even though technically the sun was only just setting. Rain kind of ate light. He wiped a drop of water off his chin.
"Uh, just around six-thirty, I guess."
"'Kay, I'll be there in twenty minutes, fairy-face."
"Wh- screw you! Owning one pink shirt does not make me g– "
Axel hung up and started running in the direction he'd just come from. His heart pounded faster as he picked up speed, hearing his heavy breathing in his ears and relishing the cold shower of running against the rain. Somewhere behind him, he heard shouting; he didn't care. He could run damn fast, even if his body was beginning to sweat underneath his coat, and even if his shirt was sticking to his back and his hair was dripping water and his glasses were bouncing up and down. All he could see were little rain droplets on glass and London fog. And, if he looked down, dead worms.
XXX
Even though the rain was sort of letting up, the wet wasn't. As Axel slowed to a jog in the field his big-ass boots went squelch, squelch, squelch in the mud.
He didn't know why the circus always had to be set up in fucking fields, anyways. What was the harm in the occasional stadium? Football field during the off-season? Come on. Something they didn't have to put up and take down.
The big red-and-yellow striped tent had already been packed up that morning. Any goers-by right now would just think that it was a well-decorated trailer park.
Xemnas insisted that even the residential trailers be red-and-gold themed, at least. He had old-fashioned circus advertisements painted on each like big, muscular men with handlebar mustaches and leopard-print tunics whipping lions.
They didn't have lions.
The closest they had was William, the performing dog. And he rolled over for anybody.
But, Xemnas insisted. He said it was in keeping with the grand tradition of the performing arts, and that when people went to see a circus, they expected a show anywhere they went – even if it was the trailers parked to the side.
So they were painted red and gold with weird drawings.
Axel headed instinctively for the front of the line of trailers, where they kept the real talent. The original shit. None of these dancers who could stand on their heads or people who sold tickets or clowns.
Axel and Demyx's trailer had a man with red and gold stripes all down his body, even his face and hair, and he was holding onto one end of a rope. The other end of the rope was holding onto a tired-looking lion. Surprisingly, Axel really liked it. He thought it was the only good one, anyways.
A contortionist went by, wearing only striped tights and a bright red leotard, walking on her hands. Show-off.
Axel rolled his eyes and sighed; that was the circus for you. Everyone was a competitive jerk. Everyone wanted to have the best act. That was why he was glad he shared a trailer with one of the musicians. There were four musicians, and they were all so fucking mellow it was like being friends with weed without the brain damage. Demyx was pretty tidy, too, for a dude.
He stepped onto the outside step of the trailer and knocked loudly on the window. Things were beginning to be moved, and he wanted to be inside when they started to get pulled. He could see, somewhere ahead, one of the acrobats coming along and hooking all the trailers and cars and stuff to each other.
"Dem!" he shouted.
"Coming, coming!" came the muffled voice from inside, just before the man swung the door open. His eyebrows were furrowed, his hands on his hips, a frown on his lips.
"What?" Axel asked, shoving his way inside.
"Six fifty-seven," Demyx said, pointing to the clock on the microwave oven. "Cutting it kind of close there, aren't ya?"
"Yeah, yeah," he grumbled, hanging his jacket – heavy with water – on one of the pegs by the door. His shirt, unfortunately, also seemed soaked through and through. He sighed, sitting in one of the two chipped wooden kitchen chairs and kicking his feet up on the table. He leaned his head back so that his hair dripped onto the floor.
Demyx rolled his eyes. "Shoes off," he commanded, kicking Axel in the knee. "And for God's sake take off that shirt before you get like, pneumonia or something," he added, heading for the end of the trailer with a tiny little half-a-stovetop.
It was a very small trailer, as far as trailers went. The door was at one end with the kitchen table, and then there was a counter that stretched along one side underneath a big window with tacky curtains. Cabinets theoretically hung above the counter, but there wasn't anything in them since the doors didn't even stay closed. It was a problem in a moving vehicle.
They used one of the cabinets for a very small number of books. They kept the door closed at any given time with a length of silver duct tape, which they had to replace every time they wanted to get a book out.
There was a sort of doorless doorway that led to a fold-out bed which Axel and Demyx had to share. But they were usually so tired at the end of the day they didn't have much trouble with that arrangement.
And everything was this sort of pea-colored-puke green color with very tired wood floors and furniture. There was barely room for a tiny antenna TV and their two laptops.
But hey, it was home.
Axel laughed and pulled his shirt off without even standing up, dropping it on the floor next to him.
"Ax-el!" Demyx complained, stooping down to scoop up the wet puddle of shirt. "Man, Mansex would kill you if he knew you did this," he said, dropping it in the sink.
"Yeah," Axel grinned, lacing his hands behind his head, "I lo-ove you, Dem-dem," he cooed.
"One of these days, I'm gonna snap and either kill you or just rape you," Demyx said darkly from the other end of the trailer.
"What?"
"Nothing." He looked up and smiled brightly at his redheaded roommate.
"Che," Axel snorted, resting his chin on his chest and looking down at his chest. He was very pale and very skinny. He knew for a fact that hips didn't normally jut out that far (on guys), and that he was way underweight for his height, but it was the physique that came with being a trapeze artist. He wasn't allowed to be fire-swallower. Xemnas said he couldn't be trusted.
Asswipe.
But as he watched his skinny, pale and damp chest rise and fall with breaths and felt oddly disconnected from it, he mused that while he generally didn't have a problem with having girl hips and a girl waist, he didn't really have as much hair as he'd hoped for. It stood to reason that he would be a very hairy person there since he certainly was at the top of his head, but apparently his body spent all its hair-making energy up there instead.
Wasn't coffee supposed to put hair on your chest, or something?
"Hey Demyx," he said offhandedly. "Do we have instant coffee or anything?"
Demyx ran a hand through his faux-hawk and looked in the small box of junk food they kept in case of emergency (which transferred to all the time). It was mostly just chips and Cup Noodles and a few candy bars from Saynesbury's.
"Uh," he said, "We have herbal tea." He lifted up a very lonely-looking box with a drawing of lemons on the front. "I don't think it has an expiration date, so…want some?"
Axel sighed and stared up at the ceiling, leaning his neck against the back of the chair. "Yeah, okay," he said.
It was one of those shit days where everything hurt. Even breathing. Like air hurt his sore lungs. Two shows in one day took something out of you. He closed one eye, then opened it and closed the other. He kept himself amused noticing how his perspective just barely changed when he did this.
"Ax, your hair's dripping all over the floor. Can't you like, get a towel or something to put under it?" Demyx asked, exasperated, setting a tea pot on the stove.
"Mmf," Axel grunted. "I will once we start moving."
Demyx tutted. It was hard to tell if he was being sarcastic. "Yeah, okay," he said.
"Where're we going now, anyways?"
"Liverpool for about a month, I think." Demyx shrugged and got out a couple of paper cups, humming some incessant tune.
"'Zat far from here?"
"It's like a four-hour drive, so it's probably at least double that for us–" the trailer shook. Shikka-shikka-shikka, said the door. Trees began to scroll by outside, very slowly, and their house began to rattle cabinet doors and any loose objects lying around. It became a soothing sound after a while. Axel liked to be moving.
"Hey Axel," Demyx said, poking him in the cheek, "Guess what."
"Uh-huh," said Axel, closing both of his eyes. He didn't feel like moving.
"Doofus!" his friend accused, tugging on a spike of Axel-hair. "At least take your glasses off; you look weird."
Axel pulled the glasses of his nose, trying to wipe off the water with his thumbs and putting them on the table next to his bare feet.
He laced his fingers over his chest and sighed. A loose pen or something was making this incessant tick-tick sound, like an out-of-time clock as it rolled against a wall or a box or a piece of furniture.
He rubbed one hand over his eye and yawned; Demyx was staring. He had his elbows resting on the table, his head perched between both of his palms and a cherubic smile in between them. His eyes twinkled.
"Demyx, please stop smiling at me like that," he grumbled.
"What?" Demyx sat up, frowning. "What's wrong with how I smile?"
"'M tired, Dem, go read a book or something," he said, pinching the brow of his nose. You know what he missed, he missed videogames. He hadn't played a videogame since he was nineteen.
"I don't wanna," Demyx said. "I don't feel like being alone."
Axel blinked; his eyes stung and his mouth tasted like fuzz. He blinked sad. His face felt…funny and his eyes felt…funny and his head was tingling all wrong. He'd had two shows today and each of them required spinning around in midair for a good fifteen minutes watched by hundreds of people and catching other people who were spinning around in midair. And he had to be artsy while he was doing it. And then he had to help other people out and he was so tiredsad.
"Go play with your guitar or your trumpet or something," he replied. "Do that…that song that starts with L, the one with the coronet or whatever."
"'Leaving the City?'"
"Sure. Whatever." Demyx shrugged at him. The teapot started to whistle high-high-high like a scream. Demyx got up to go get it and Axel tilted his head to the side, just barely able to see out the window from the angle he was at. Dark things were going by very quickly, trees and sometimes cars, and the moon was only sort-of out. It was a dull spot of shiny white fuzz in the clouds.
"Here," Demyx said cheerfully, handing Axel a paper cup with a teabag floating in the hot water. Little curls of red floated in the water column like drops of food coloring. Axel swirled the cup with one hand to try and mix it around. He sniffed it.
"Thanks," he said, already feeling cold in every part of his body except the hand holding the cup. "Do we have sugar or anything for it?"
"We have…cocoa powder."
"I'll pass," Axel said sarcastically, grabbing the tag of the teabag and plopping it up and down. "What kind of tea did you say this was?" Everything seemed very quiet in the moving home. Subdued, and colored with a grayish-brown tint like even the air was sort of sick of it. Things kept rattling, rattle-rattle-rattle, and the trees sighed like krssh.
Demyx looked at the box on the kitchen counter. "'Boosey and Hawkes Tea Corporation Lemon'…'Zinger,'" he said, sounding somewhat concerned.
"Lemon Zinger?"
"That's what the box says."
"'Boosey and Hawkes' is a fucking retarded name for a tea company. They should be doing beer or…falconry."
Demyx snorted and started to make faces at his reflection in the toaster-that-didn't-work.
Axel just kept swirling the cup around with his hand and watching the little red curls dissipate into the water, almost like blood but less…morbid. It smelled nice, but he really just didn't want anything going in his mouth at the moment.
"You know," he said, "I'll pass, actually. You can have it." He put the cup on the table, pushing it towards Demyx (who looked highly offended) and headed for the tiny almost-a-bathroom with a sort-of-sink. "I'm going to bed."
He brushed his teeth until his gums started bleeding and fell asleep sprawled out across the entire top half of the bed.
XXX
Axel Turner hated the snake dream because he always woke up feeling fucking bipolar and with bad grammar.
It always broke his stupid heart, the snake dream, and he kept having it.
It was a forest, surrounded by but not made up of evergreens, which was a distinction his brain always made without his mind actually knowing why. It was always daytime, but it was the dark sort of daytime with sunlight the color of melted butter; dark and thick and coming down like raindrops of light through branches.
He walked through it step-by-step, with very slow crunches. It was funny; he never saw any branches on the trees, but there were shadows on the ground. Like he was surrounded by poles.
Hsssss!
"Shit!" Axel jumped backwards without moving at all. There was an anaconda on the ground, very sly-like with its head just by Axel's feet.
A bright red cat came up behind it, sitting on the meatier part of the snake's body and twitching its tail back and forth. That hadn't been there before.
(This dream used to be strange, used to have the dream-quality of dreams where things that shouldn't make sense made sense and he was overwhelmed by funniness. But now he noticed everything.)
The snake raised its head all of a sudden, staring at Axel with sheep-eyes. Its pupils were horizontal slits, which wasn't right, because snakes didn't have sheep eyes. They had snake eyes. Snakes couldn't look sad.
There was a spike driven through its body, straight down to the ground with torn pinky-grey snake flesh around it and black blood pooling on the ground.
"Are you in pain?" asked the snake quietly. It looked back to the stake. "I am," it said sad.
Axel was sitting down on a log in front of it.
"A man came," the snake said sad, "And he kicked me three whole times in my belly."
"Oh," said Axel, nodding understandingly.
"And he put this stick in me," said the snake, letting its head fall back to the ground.
The snake pushed its head underneath some of the leaves and shook it back and forth, squeezing its eyes shut.
"He came and he kicked me and he put a stick in my belly, and now I'm lost and I don't know where any of my friends are."
XXX
Axel opened his eyes.
They'd stopped moving, mostly, and he could hear the sounds of slamming trailer doors and big swathes of cloth being shaken out, of contortionists contorting in the most inconvenient places they could find and of clowns making whistling noises and doing funny things with their hands. Some of the other musicians were making noises, too, things with accordions and a clarinet. Something about the circus always sounded brassy and old. It was depressing, but it wasn't as depressing as a year of college twenty kilometers from the house where you grew up, so Axel stayed.
Demyx was asleep on the other half of the bed, curled up halfway underneath the covers wearing only his boxer shorts.
"Hey," Axel said, toeing him in the back. "Wake up."
"Huh? I'm, I'm up, I'm already up," Demyx said. "I was trying to sleep but you kept kicking me in the leg."
Axel yawned and sat up, peeling away the curtains from the window. It was still a few hours before the sun would be fully out.
He turned back to Demyx, "Would you put some clothes on? I don't know why you always sleep shirtless."
Demyx rolled his eyes. "Pot calling the…jeez."
"Huh?" Axel looked down and promptly realized that he was, in fact, also not wearing a shirt. "Oh, this is so fucking gay!"
Demyx rolled his eyes and got out of the bed, going over to the pile of clothing they kept in one corner. "I don't know why you talk like that," he muttered. "You're a perfectly nice guy."
"Sure," Axel said scathingly, rubbing his eyes with his hands. "I'm a freaking saint compared to Hitler. Hey, can you toss me a shirt from the clean-clothes pile?"
"Yup," Demyx threw something black and made of cloth at Axel that wasn't pants.
"Thanks," Axel said, pulling it over his head and tugging it down over his hips. "D'you know if Mansex already checked in?"
"Duh, no." Xemnas always came around to all the trailers as soon as they'd stopped somewhere new, making people help to set up. If you were asleep, though, – and not faking, because that freaky bastard could tell – then he'd let you sleep, because he was careful not to overwork people. Overworked people led to stressed people, which led to quitting, which led to a big hassle for him.
"No you don't know or no he hasn't?"
"I don't know, I fell asleep while we were on a motorway. Just woke up."
Axel sighed and leaned up against the trailer door. "Shi-it," he groaned, "We have to go help now, don't we?"
And Dem sighed and nodded at him, grabbing a candy bar and heading outside.
XXX
Xemnas wouldn't let them leave until everything had been set up, even the things they weren't doing, like a teacher refusing to let his students out until every single one had pushed his or her chair in. So Demyx and Axel were lounging on the set-up half of the bleachers along with a few other people.
Axel counted: Luxord, Marluxia, Vexen, Xigbar, Saïx, Xaldin, Larxene, Lex, Zexion. Eleven people, lounging around lazily, watching the grunt workers grunt.
"Hey Zex," Demyx said, leaning back and tilting his head up so he could just see Zexion, sitting a row above him, "What's up?"
Zexion was fiddling with one of his retractable wands. He was the magician.
"From where I'm sitting, not much," he said, glancing at the red-and-yellow cloth ceiling.
"Gee, original," Demyx said, snorting and smiling.
"A cliché, no matter how contrived, is usually based on something universally true."
Demyx sighed and looked at Axel. "Intellectuals," he said. "Can't live with 'em, can't live without em."
Zexion laughed (but it was a very quiet, Zexion sort of laugh) and shook his head.
Axel sometimes suspected Zexion and Demyx of being secret best friends.
He envied them for it.
But instead of saying anything he sighed, and leaned back on the bleachers and watched someone drag in part of the ring. It was a big hunking piece of metal, slightly curved, and each section (there were eight of them) took two men to carry it. Right behind one of the burly guys came a very much house-sized cat, orange in color and just a little wide-faced, angry like a pug. Its ears were flattened against the side of its head and Axel watched as it hissed at somebody lugging a landing mat in from the other side of the tent. It headed for them.
"Peanut Butter!" Axel said happily when it bounded up the bleachers for the whole group. The weird-names. The eleven of them (and Xemnas) all had stage names with Xs. Just an anagram of your real name, with an X. Most of them liked it because they had pretty lame normal names. Demyx, for example, was actually Myde Lipson. That was a pretty fucking awful name. Axel was, of course, Alex, and refused to have two Xs in a five-letter name, because that was ridiculous.
The cat headed for Axel's lap, which, while boniest, was also warmest.
"Don't call him Peanut Butter," Marluxia whined. "His name isn't Peanut Butter!" Marluxia was, unfortunately enough, also a trapeze artist. And probably really gay. Like, really really gay. At least, maybe not in terms of sexual preference, but in every other way he was homosexual.
"But everyone calls him that," Axel retorted, scratching the cat behind the ears. "Don't they, Peanut Butter? Huh? Abooga-" and proceeded to make awful nonsense noises at it.
"You do know that his name is Pangur Ban," Zexion said coolly. Ienzo was actually a pretty cool name. It sounded like, Italian or something.
"Yeah," Xigbar said, "But that such a lame name it's like…ugh, just whatever." Braig just sounded butch, Axel got why Xigbar stuck with the change. Xigbar did the daredevil-y crap.
"Why? Because it has a historical connotation?"
"You're such a fucking prick."
"Xemnas named that cat for a reason," Lexaeus said, backing up his friend. "He likes that poem." Lexaeus was the dog trainer.
"It's not a very good poem," Luxord mumbled. "It barely even rhymes." Luxord was also a musician.
"I shudder to think where it is that you come from that poems have to rhyme," Zexion said, and Demyx laughed.
"Maybe he just liked the name," Axel said, "Maybe he didn't mean that Peanut Butter is like some eighth century monk's cat from a poem, or something, maybe…" he sighed. "Maybe he just liked the name, okay? Jesus, guys, drop it."
A bubbly silence rose up and propagated itself like a wet stain on a paper towel. Sometimes Axel did things like that, said things that ended conversations without really meaning to. He wasn't a big fan of totally pointless conversations like that – at least, not ones he didn't have a personal stake in.
Axel was pretty much aimless. He had no goals. He thought about that sometimes. He wasn't a loner, of course, but he didn't have much in the way of goals. He planned to work in the circus until he got too old, and maybe like, own a pet store or something. He didn't know. He sorta liked animals. He sorta liked a lot of things. He sorta liked circuses. Hm. There was a phrase or something like that, wasn't there? "Jack of all trades and master of none."
Axel sneezed. He had a very mild dust allergy. "Hey," he said, "D'you think we can leave? I kind of want to…um…do something."
"You want to walk around with your glasses and your creepy black coat like a creepy cult dude, dontcha?" Xigbar grinned.
"I want to take a walk, yeah. And I am a creepy cult dude. You are too."
"How do you figure?" Zexion spoke again, adjusting the glasses on his nose.
"Um," Axel said, "Organization XIII is pretty much the most cultish name for a circus, um, ever. We have rank numbers for the first twelve people and a set of rules and practices. That qualifies as a cult for me."
Some asshole messing around with the light pillars swung one around and shined it directly in their eyes. Larxene yelled some obscenity and it was swung off in a few confused seconds.
"Yeah," Demyx said, "Maybe he just liked the name…it's a nice name…"
"You're real slow, huh Dem?" Xigbar cackled.
"No," Demyx said simply. Zexion smiled, very secretly under his glasses.
Axel suspected them of being secret best friends. He was kind of jealous.
XXX
Of course he didn't get to just go off on his own and be that guy in coffee shops who drinks his coffee silently, reads a book and leaves without looking at anybody. He almost was, but at the last moment Xemnas caught him and handed him about twenty inconveniently large posters for the circus.
He was in a coffee shop, of course (and it was raining outside), but he had to ask the girl behind the counter if he could put up a poster. Then he had to wait for her to get some tape, and when he got the tape discovered that it was very difficult to get the poster to stick to the wall. He sighed and pressed another corner on. It peeled off. He'd been trying to use bubbles of tape (where you loop it around and attach it to itself, sticky-side-out) because those weren't visible. Maybe just putting tape right on the corners would be better.
He stood on his tiptoes to try and affix the corner as best he could, pressing very hard and making a face. It was just past ten in the morning on a Saturday, so the only people there were teenagers coming in for breakfast or chatting obnoxiously on cell phones. Not a decent body in the place.
Damn, he'd known he shouldn't have worn his high school football shirt. It was too short. Every time he stretched his arms up part of his stomach was visible. That was sexy on girls, yeah, but on a guy it was kind of weird. Not sexy.
He sighed and blew air out of his lips so that they vibrated like rubber, making a sort of horse noise. He coughed.
"Hey," said a voice behind him.
Axel nearly jumped at hearing somebody address him, and for a moment was entirely sure that whoever it was couldn't have possibly meant him. He turned around.
Kid couldn't have been more than fifteen, sixteen at the most. He was short for his age, and his hair projected from his head in a little wave, like a little blond rooster. He was staring at Axel with baby blues the size of fucking cannonballs.
"What?" Axel asked gruffly.
"What are you doing?" the kid asked him, sticking one hand in his sweatshirt pocket.
"Working," Axel replied, and returned to doing so. The posters he'd been given were a little bit shady, for sure. It was a picture of Zexion, with his hair even messier than usual and covering one of his eyes, one gloved hand holding up a couple of cards which had those old sort of circus drawings like on their trailers. One card's picture was of Larxene, a contortionist, all packaged up neatly in a glass box, and the other had Axel hanging upside-down on a trapeze bar. All you could see was like most of Zexion's face and the hand with the cards; everything else was in shadows. It was a really, seriously dumb idea, and Axel was kind of embarrassed to be seen taping them up. But if you were into that sort of thing, it looked pretty cool. Zexion could look like an intensely mysterious fucker when he wanted.
"What are those posters for?" the kid asked him, taking a step closer.
Damn. He'd forgotten about that guy. He looked back at him again. Axel stepped back so the blondie could see the text underneath the picture about the circus and their performance times.
"A c- " the boy paused and moved his lips strangely, like he was trying to find words in his mouth. "Er, cirque?"
"Uh, sure," Axel said. He didn't know why this guy couldn't just call it a "circus" like normal people. Maybe it was a trend to use random French words when you could. Made you sound more…intellectual or something. Well, fuck that, he'd had a French roommate in college and that guy had been a dumbass.
The boy fell silent, but didn't leave. Didn't he have friends to get back to? Axel sighed and turned around again. He didn't really want to be seen speaking to a teenage pretty boy. Kid was jailbait waiting to happen, seriously. Axel wasn't gay or anything, and hell if he found a little boy attractive, but he'd heard the stories about pervy gym teachers.
He ripped another piece of tape off the roll and stuck a corner down. This was taking way too long.
"Do you…work at the circus?" the kid asked him quietly. Axel didn't reply. He was almost done taping this poster up and then he could head to that snooty bookshop a couple of blocks down that he'd seen. Carrying the stupid fucking embarrassing posters the whole way. Greeeat. All he'd wanted to do was go on a walk, but no-o.
That sounded way too whiny and adolescent for his comfort. Axel shook his head.
"You don't?"
"What?"
"You don't work at the circus?" the boy asked. He sounded disappointed.
"Wh – no, I do, uh…" Why the shit was this kid even talking to him? Seriously! Didn't his parents ever tell him not to talk to strangers?
"Oh!" he sounded very happy. "You do! That's…" he trailed off. "Good."
O-kay. Clearly this kid's first language could not have been English.
"What do you do in the circus?" he asked Axel. He was smiling.
"…trapeze artist."
The kid screwed his eyebrows together and mouthed the word to himself. "Trapeze…trapeze…trapeze…"
Axel raised his eyebrows and coughed. Now, he was never much of a one for awkward social encounters, and he usually felt obligated to speak up and make conversation, but if this kid wanted to talk so bad, let him. Axel wasn't about to jump in and help.
"That's…good," he said again, and smiled up at Axel. Cannonball-sized eyes. God.
Axel made a clearing-his-throat noise and nodded. "…thanks," he said awkwardly.
"I like the circuses," the boy offered, and stopped smiling. He seemed to be waiting for Axel to say something.
Axel kind of admired the bare-faced balls it took to go up to a perfect stranger at least seven or eight years older than you were and start talking to them. He knew he'd never have been willing to do that when he was a teenager. Hell, he wouldn't do that now.
"Cool," Axel said, "So do I."
The kid's eyebrows shot up, and he started mouthing that word, too. "Cool, cool, cool…trapeze…cool, cool…trapeze…" Yeah. Definitely not an Anglophone.
"Ehm," Axel guttered, "Well, I have to go put more of these up, so…"
"Oh!" the boy said, running a hand easily through his hair. Axel grinned at him and saluted the kid with his roll of posters and headed out the door. The kid grinned back.
On his way around the corner to the snooty bookshop, Axel started to smile to himself. He laughed. Maybe it was the upbeat (but still crap) song stuck in his head, or the lack of sleep, or maybe it really was that ballsy little kid in the coffee shop, but he was in one of those moods. Everything seemed funny, or beautiful. Even people. He laughed again.
(He still maintained, later, when he was older and swore less, that is was pure coincidence who he chose for the "volunteer from the audience" two nights later. Because of course, it wasn't like the kid made any sort of special impression on him the first time.)
XXX
The time during the show was always hectic. Even if you were only on for one or two acts, the constant rush of people going everywhere and adjusting costumes jingling bells beckoning dogs barking people muttering things juggling props. Was dizzying.
Demyx walked by, an accordion slung around his shoulders, warming up with these odd little face-paced noises. The kind of sound an accordion might make if it were jogging. Just beyond the thick red curtains, in the blooming dust the color of old leather shoes, Larxene was being very bendy on top of a thin metal pole, standing on one hand or crouched in a little ball or something. Axel could hear the audience, the low rumble of discussion and utterances of "wow!" and "look at that!" and "whoa!" and "ooh!". It was a sort of soft rolling thunder, like a thousand people humming as quietly as they could. One of the musicians howled wildly on a clarinet or an oboe or something.
"Axel!" Marluxia hissed, standing right in front of him.
"What?"
"Look at me! The makeup's getting smudged," he muttered, taking a small brush dipped in face paint and waving it around. "It's gonna look weird."
"Oh," Axel said, turning back from the sliver of crowd he could see through the curtains. He allowed Marluxia to grip his chin with callused hands to hold his head still. Marluxia began to fill in one of the inverted triangle shapes he'd drawn on each of Axel's cheeks. Stage makeup, Mansex said, drew more attention to you. And something like weird triangles made you seem mysterious? Shit if Axel knew. He'd done it once and Xemnas had told him to keep doing it.
The paint felt odd and cool as it dried on his cheek, and the brush was tickling him. He thought about the times he'd gotten his face painted at a carnival, or a state fair. Those had been more fun, somehow, walking away with a sub-par dragon or tiger face. But, still, it felt nice.
"'Kay," Marluxia said, taking a step back. "Good enough. Larxy's done in a minute or two."
Axel didn't reply, and Marluxia shrugged and started to put his hair into a low ponytail.
Axel leaned back against the large bird cage which was used in one of the clown acts, and let his head hit the bar with a little metallic clang. The cage vibrated behind him briefly. The air smelled like dust and leather polish and sweat, and he closed his eyes. Demyx walked by again with his irregular little pattern of accordion playing.
There was wild cheering outside, past the big red curtains, whoo-whoo-whoo and yeaaaaah! as Larxene got down from the pole and jogged back, but Axel didn't notice. His eyes were still closed.
"And now, ladies and gentlemen," came Xemnas's voice from the microphone, magnified and grand and low, "From the highest clouds, sky monkeys themselves, Axel – and – Marluxia!"
Marluxia grabbed his wrist and Axel jogged next to him –
Curtains peeled back –
He caught a glimpse of one of the clowns getting into a gorilla costume –
Dust –
Surrounded by people on all sides and climbing the ladder – up the ladder – chalk on your hands –
Bright lights and a whispered "good luck" from Marluxia – bright lights –
Jump.
A/N: I didn't know how to do that last bit. Sounds like a nonsense poem, doesn't it? Oh~ well.
