Title adapted from Eugene O'Neill's brilliant play The Iceman Cometh (read it!), story inspired by this gorgeously poignant fanart Betsu na Sekai: deviantartDOTcom/deviation/33198128/
Much thanks to spiralheaven, one of the best betas I've ever had the good fortune to come across. :)
Notes:
This is not an aimless piece of AU fluff. This is actually part of what should be a one-shot, which I split up into several chapters due to length. The story has a point, but you're going to have to stick with me to find out what that is (and I really hope you do, because I believe this chapter functions best in the context of the whole). Till then, comments, criticism and guesses as to the plot direction are very much welcome! Hope to see you next chapter. :D
The Ice Cream Man Cometh
alt. A Different World
Beginning
'In a different world, the sky will be less black and more blue.'
It was the last week of the summer holidays and the world was a sketchbook etched in with marker colours of blue and red and green...but most of all gold, bold, dazzling gold.
Roxas glared lengthily at the sun.
"It's too hot," he complained, stretching out his legs and kicking a little petulantly at the grass. He squinted at the brilliantly sparkling expanse of water before him. "I wish there were some way to cool down before the ice cream man comes."
"Go dunk yourself in the lake then," Axel said irritably, shredding a blade of grass into miniscule pieces and watching it join a pile of its dead comrades on the ground.
"Har, har," Roxas said humourlessly. "That'd be a great suggestion, if only it were realistic."
Axel shrugged. "Hey, you asked, I answered."
Roxas glared at him. "You know as well as I do that the lake is out of bounds to anyone who values their life. I mean, thinking about it already gives me the shivers."
"Success!" Axel crowed, throwing a bunch of leaf bits in the air for effect. "And you are cooled again."
Roxas rolled his eyes. "Seriously, think of all those horror stories of people who went in and never surfaced again. It's funny, considering how entirely normal this town is otherwise."
Axel shrugged. "Every town has its urban legend, I guess. Anyway, all the disappearance stories happened way before we were born; I'm surprised that no one has even dared to touch the water after all these years."
He grinned wickedly at Roxas. "About time you dispelled the myth…or proved it."
Roxas gave him a look. "No thanks, I like my life the way it is. You go ahead."
"It's okay, I'm with you on that first statement."
There was silence for a while, and Roxas found himself staring in fascination at the growing mound of shredded grass. He sighed in pity for their poor dead souls, cruelly felled in their salad days (or golden years, or whatever, he couldn't really tell the ages of grass now, could he?). He sighed in pity for his poor soul, practically killed by the brutally scorching sun…
"Stop sighing, will you?" Axel said irritably, snapping off another blade of grass.
…and a brutally unsympathetic friend.
Roxas glanced at Axel. His face was covered in a sheen of perspiration, and he was starting to look very moody (an understatement, really). Roxas grinned hugely.
"Told you you would die of heat in that outfit," Roxas said none too smugly. "Seriously, no one sane wears all black in summer."
Axel paused from his grass-murdering to glare at Roxas. "My pants are grey," he amended with a scowl. "And you know very well that the only things that match my hair are dark colours."
"You're much too vain," Roxas said, rolling his eyes. "You're a guy, you should be above this sort of things!"
Axel bristled. "Well, at least I'm taller and look cooler than you, shortie!"
Roxas gaped. "That's low!" he exclaimed. "Anyway, I can fight better than you," he added.
"Oh yeah, big deal, like that's going to get you anywhere in this town," Axel scoffed. "Learn a real talent, dude."
"Yeah what, like spending two hours every morning spiking your hair straight, Mister Vain?"
"I do not spend-"
"Alright, alright, I was just joking!" Roxas said, cutting into Axel's heated reply. "Don't get so emo."
"I am not-"
"Man, this is so boring," Roxas interrupted once more, lying down on his back and stretching his feet out, smoothing out the grass stems poking the back of his head. "There's absolutely nothing to do except argue with you."
He made a face at the cheerfully iridescent clouds. "I wish my life were more exciting."
"And what were you saying a while ago about liking your life the way it is?" Axel asked, arching an eyebrow.
"This and that are completely different," Roxas said in a patronising manner.
Axel rolled his eyes. It was too hot for him to argue with someone who made as little sense as Roxas. "Well, I wish the damn ice cream man would come now," Axel said. "It's past one already; he's late today. If I'd known I'd have left my house later, maybe I could have conserved two litres of perspiration."
"Don't go blaming the ice cream man," Roxas said. "You're the one who insists on coming out to the park every day of the summer hols just to get a popsicle. I don't even understand why I follow you."
"But it's a tradition! We've done this every summer since we were ten. Okay, since I was ten and you were eight. That's practically forever!"
"Axel, you're ridiculously sentimental," Roxas laughed, lifting a lazy hand to punch Axel's shoulder.
"I am not sentimental," Axel said heatedly, tossing the grass bits he was shredding into Roxas's face. "Ha," he added in a gloating way as Roxas sputtered and sat up, swatting the green bits off his face and clothes.
"Come on, there's no need to get violent," Roxas said in a wounded manner, patting his hair to make sure that it was free of grass bits. He realised lying on the grass had compressed his spiked hair into an awkwardly flattened mess. Shit, he thought, glaring at the back of Axel's immaculately waxed (and spiky) hair.
"Roxas, does coming to the park just to get ice cream every day bother you very much?" Axel asked, staring straight ahead.
"Hn?" Roxas said absently, trying to ruffle a more normal shape out of the back of his head.
"I…well I dunno, I always thought it was fun to eat sea-salt popsicles while sitting in front of the lake with the…even though the sun is blazing killing, but that, that kinda makes it…nice." Axel ended abruptly, rubbing his nose vigorously with one hand.
Roxas snorted, grinning. "How in the world do you make something so nice sound so lame?"
Axel ground his teeth in an irritable manner and began rubbing the other side of his nose.
"But you know," Roxas continued, "No matter how bland you make our popsicle picnics sound (there was a small sputter from his right at that phrase), I wouldn't exchange it for the world."
Axel hmmphed, gazing intently at the cottony clouds dipping into the lake, as if he could care less about Roxas' view on popsicle picnics. As if on cue, a distant tinkling sound heralded the arrival of the ice cream man, turning their heads in sync.
"Saved by the bell!" Roxas said brightly, winking at Axel as he got up.
"Saved from what?" Axel said indignantly as he stood up in a measured, lackadaisical manner, like he'd just decided to get up for no reason whatsoever, the ice cream man not having anything to do with it, of course. "I don't need to be saved from the likes of you!"
"Aw gosh you're so soppy but you don't want to admit it!" Roxas teased, noting how Axel's hands were fingering the spare coins in his pocket as he gazed in abject fascination in a direction opposite from the ice cream man.
Anticipating Axel's angry sputter of a reply, Roxas began running up the hillock, heading to the unused stone birdbath where they always waited for the ice cream man to pass by.
"I am not!" Axel yelled very unconvincingly at his back, setting up the grassy slope in a more controlled manner and arriving on the footpath just as Roxas was retrieving two popsicles from the ice cream man.
Axel glared daggers at Roxas' pitiably vulnerable back (except for the unfortunate fact that the daggers were purely metaphysical) as he passed his prepared coins into the hands of the smiling ice cream man, twitching the sides of his mouth weakly in an attempt to match the old man's enthusiasm.
Roxas stifled a snort of mirth as he passed Axel one of the turquoise-blue popsicles he was holding. "Bye uncle!" he said. "See you tomorrow!"
"Aye, boys," the uncle said, the wrinkling grin never leaving his face as he carried on pushing the trundling cart down the path.
"I am NOT soppy," Axel said as soon as they were out of earshot, walking slowly back to the grassy depression they had been resting in.
"And that's why I like you so much, best friend," Roxas grinned, sucking his popsicle with relish. "You respond so wonderfully to my insults."
"I have no idea why I like you," Axel grumbled in response. "All you do is rib me. Must be some freak of nature."
"Oh…you freak!"
"What the hell? You're the freak!"
"Talk about mature!"
"Who started it!?"
"You said the first 'freak' sentence, ha!"
"With a completely different meaning!"
"How many freaking meanings can there be for one word, you freak?"
You just said it yourself, FREAK!"
"Dude, it was supposed to be funny. Laugh."
"Oh yeah, it's so funny I forgot to laugh! Oh wait I just remembered – HA, HA, HA!"
"Your ice-cream is melting."
"Oh yeah!?"
"Uh, yeah."
Axel looked down to see sea-salt droplets wobbling at the edges of his popsicle, held in place only by the tenuous physics of tension. Then he looked at Roxas, happily eating his popsicle.
"I haven't even taken a bite!" Axel raged, brandishing the popsicle threateningly at Roxas. A few droplets splattered onto the ground and his shirt in response.
Axel gaped at the evil popsicle for a while, then let out a choked cry and began frantically trying to brush the small blobs of ice cream off his shirt one-handed.
"You'll get your hand all sticky," Roxas commented as Axel removed his hand from his shirt, all sticky.
"Thanks for the heads up," Axel said dryly, glaring down at his shirt and licking the evil popsicle with some malevolence.
"Cheer up, your shirt's black anyway, no one can tell," Roxas said.
Axel blinked. "That's true," he said with more spirit, a smile on his face.
"Excuse me!?" Roxas gaped, then started laughing. "You've had a face blacker than that shirt all afternoon and now you're smiling because your precious shirt isn't stained?"
"Hey, it wasn't cheap, alright!" Axel defended, embarrassment widening his smile tentatively.
Roxas grinned, smacking Axel on the back approvingly and sending more turquoise droplets flying. "You're hilarious. There's never a dull moment with you around."
"Thanks for the compliment," Axel said acidly, elbowing Roxas out of the way as he dropped down to the grass. "Now that I've made your day, make mine too - let's just sit in blissful quiet for a while and finish our ice creams in peace, okay?"
Roxas finished up the last of his popsicle and tossed the stick away with a flourish. "You were saying?" he asked with an innocent look, flopping down beside him.
Axel glared. "Okay, how about let's just sit in blissful quiet for a while, enjoying each other's company while marvelling at the view?"
"What, like a couple?!" Roxas asked, up for another verbal spar.
"Like a couple of good friends," Axel said firmly. "Now shut up and let me enjoy the view."
Roxas sniffed in mock-anger but didn't say anything, leaning back onto the grass and staring into the sky. Now that he was still, he felt the heat of the summer sun cocoon him again, and he exhaled slowly, letting his body relax into the coolness of the grass. The lulling clouds trailed ponderously across the brilliantly blue heavens, fluttering his eyelids once, twice, another time, before finally shrouding his mind in sleep.
"What the hell do you think you're doing? Is this why he's been sleeping more and more everyday?"
When next his eyes opened it was already late afternoon, the air savouring with a twilight breeze that rippled the cobalt oceans of the lake and the world more bronze than gold. The clouds had melted into thin wisps of cotton, the edges seeping through the sky and turning it indigo. Roxas inclined his head slightly to the left to see Axel asleep beside him, the corners of his mouth crinkled upwards.
Roxas stifled an urge to laugh. He'd always thought it funny how Axel smiled in his sleep. Who seriously did that for the entire duration of sleep? It was just weird. Either Axel was having a monotonously happy dream, or he was just…weird. Definitely weird, Roxas decided with a grin.
Careful not to disturb Axel, he sat up and stretched lazily, watching with interest the beguiling repetitive movements of the distorted clouds on the lake's surface.
"Hey Roxas, the back of your hair is all squashed up."
"Shut up and let me enjoy the view."