After sex, they lie on that bed together like the world is put on hold just for them. Roxas turned away so he can only look at the wall, blank and empty like his eyes. Potential, it's potential Axel is always talking about. White space has all the potential in the world.
Roxas just doesn't see it.
He knows his heart is on his sleeve when Axel says it softly, so softly his lungs constrict. So quietly it shouldn't even be counted, Roxas thinks. But still, the fact remains that he said it. Those little words are like a poison spider crawling up from the base of his spine.
"I.." Axel begins again. He thinks Roxas didn't hear the first time.
"Shut up." Roxas says sharply because he doesn't fucking need to hear it again. Then, softer, " I know." It's only after the weight has left the mattress, and after the door has been closed that Roxas lets himself fall apart.
.------
He's together again twenty minutes later, in the kitchen where Axel's cereal bowl sits on the table, soggy cheerios in a lukewarm pool of milk. Roxas doesn't want to move anything so he falls into the chair he knows Axel sat in, because it isn't perfectly tucked into the table, edges folded.
Roxas doesn't like cheerios. That's the whole problem.
He wants sheets to magically wash themselves, the fingerprints to miraculously disappear. He's sick of scouring the house for condom wrappers and liquor bottles, sick of feeling like his entire life is a fucking lie whispered in his ear.
------
Before sex, they sit on that couch like they're old friends, just a couple of joes watching reruns of Seinfeld and drinking beer from bottles tinted butterscotch. Roxas stares at the television like it'll be his salvation; like somehow all those colourful people will absorb into the whites of his eyes. He'll be done with all the fucking potential. He'll be one of them instead of being himself.
It's always when he least expects it. Fingers brush across his own, resting precariously like a butterfly on a sunflower.
Across the couch, Axel breathes out.
Roxas knows his heart is on his sleeve when Axel reaches for him, kisses his neck like he's made of glass. And maybe he is, and Axel is the scotch tape that keeps him together.
Most nights, he lies alone, naked and forlorn, an island in and of himself. That's when only his thoughts curl up beside him, repeating to him those little words that make his lungs deflate. Only then does Roxas let himself fall apart.
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Standard Disclaimers