Sea Salt Ice Cream
The tendrils of darkness dissipated the same way and as smoothly as they had appeared, leaving behind the wiry figure with what was probably the usual wry grin that just grated on every last nerve of everyone in sight. An item of suspect consistency and color was clutched precariously in one gloved hand, blue and milky drips of what was quickly ascertained to be ice cream pock-marking the leather. The free hand reached back to gently maneuver a heavy hood off of fire engine red spikes, and there it was, just as expected: that grin that never faded, never lost that brilliance that made the other members of the Organization, politely put, pissed off.
Roxas resisted the urge to squint at the brilliance of that smile, the one that said Axel was feeling particularly smug about one of his accomplishments today, the one that said he'd never hear the end of the red-head's bragging if he didn't do something to allay the inevitable purging of words. Roxas opened his mouth as though to interrupt before Axel had even begun, but...
Maybe it was the sudden determination that filled Axel's eyes at the challenge, or maybe it was the sight of what were now clearly two ice cream bars that made Roxas stop short of expelling air from his lungs to make sounds. In either case, Roxas was hungry and Axel was better company that most of the members of the Organization, like Xaldin or Saix when they decided to get, as Demyx called it, "stabby."
"Thought you might like to try some," Axel explained when he'd drawn close enough to Roxas to hand off one of the ice cream bars.
"Try what?" Roxas responded, trying not to wonder what flavor was blue and what ingredient made the stuff look so damn creamy.
"Ice cream."
Roxas resisted the urge to call up a keyblade and hammer it between Axel's teeth, maybe lock his mouth up for a while and finally have some much needed peace and quiet. Instead, he just clenched at the stick of his own ice cream and snapped it clean in two, the cold treat itself taking a perilous journey that ended in a sucking splat on the tile floor, right in the middle of one of those far-too-common Organization XIII symbols. Axel gave him a look that said, in no uncertain terms, "hurting innocent popsicle sticks won't make you feel better, Rox." In fact, Roxas could hear Axel's voice in his head just saying it, a little laugh mixed into his name to make everything just that more awkward.
"It's sea salt ice cream," Axel amended in appeasement, bending down as though to pick up the fallen dessert. "It's pretty good. You want this one?" He made the motion as though to put the treat in Roxas' mouth himself without even straightening back up or looking over his shoulder, but the blonde valiantly fended him off, crossing his arms and turning his back.
"C'mon, Rox, live a littl- oof!" There was, Axel realized a bit belatedly, a heavy object now sitting on his back, somewhere in that boney region between shoulder blades and pelvis that was practically half of Axel's height minus the hair.
"Live a little?" Roxas muttered in a voice that was the polar opposite of his previous tone, one that had gone from angry to depressed, and Axel felt the words in the vibrations they sent through Roxas' body and his own.
"Rox, not again... I didn't mean it like tha-"
"We're Nobodies, VIII... how can we call that living?"
Axel was used to Roxas' sullen moods, had acclimated himself to the younger boy's ability to go from hot (well, maybe lukewarm at best) to cold in the blink of an eye, but he wasn't prepared for the shift from the congeniality of "Axel" to the formality of "VIII". The redhead frowned.
"My name's Axel. A-X-E-L. Got it memorized? Or barring that, Flurry of Dancing Flames. Not VIII. Never VIII."
Roxas grimaced behind Axel's back at the statement, at the demand to be recognized by a name, one that gave the illusion of being Somebody. Axel, in response to the silent shaking he felt along his spine, drew his eyebrows together over the ice cream he picked up, half of it still melted to the floor, the other forgotten in his other hand.
"Roxas-"
"XIII."
"..."
"..."
"Roxas." Axel insisted, shifting so that he pushed the smaller boy up a little closer to standing on his own two feet, making damn well sure he knew that this was serious. "It doesn't matter if we don't have hearts. It doesn't matter if we're only Dusks and Dancers in a different form. It doesn't matter, because you can't exist and be Nobody, and everybody's a Somebody even if nobody notices. 'Cuz nobody can be a Nobody if they can get so frustrated over wondering if anybody really knows what anybody is, or if nobody knows what a Nobody is."
Axel let go of the two ice cream bars and watched them make identical splotches of pale blue across an even paler Organization symbol, two splotches to the symmetry that ruled everything in the World the Never Was. Roxas gave what could have been a shudder, a laugh, a sob, or all three at once, and although he couldn't see it, Axel could imagine that determined smile that he knew at once was Sora's on Roxas' lips. Roxas stood, taking from Axel the heat that he was just beginning to get used to.
"I think... I think I'm gonna leave here, soon."
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A/N: A very blah title, I realize, but for my first real fanfiction in a while, I do feel rather accomplished. I realize that if either of them knew about sea salt ice cream before Organization times, it probably would have been Roxas, but for my purposes here, that has been disregarded. Hope you enjoyed!