There is something beautiful, decisive, about the touch.
Roxas is sitting on the sidewalk with his bare feet in the driveway, tossing small rocks and watching them skitter across the gravel. It's cold, a little bit, and it smells like winter; all he has to protect him is a grey hoodie that's ragged and thin. The air is sharp, crisp. He contemplates going inside, knows he should, but instead lays back and thinks about the alignment of stars, striking green eyes, and why the world is round.
Some time later, he catches the scent of spent matches and mentholated cigarettes. Because he knows the smell, because he's smelled it a thousand times before and he understands it better than he understands himself (which is not at all, really), he opens his eyes.
"Hey, kid." Axel says. He sits down next to him and flicks him playfully on the nose. "It's kinda cold. That jacket keeping you warm enough?"
"Yeah. Fine." He shifts and lays his cheek against Axel's thigh, which is covered in black denim. It's not unusual to find Roxas like this - on his back in their front yard with flushed cheeks and glass eyes. Axel takes care of Roxas because he's known him for, God, fucking forever, and he knows things about Roxas, the boy who is twenty one and feels like forgotten dreams.
.x.
Roxas had dreamed of being an artist.
Axel, who liked to consider himself a professional slacker, hadn't dreamed of being anything - except he liked to play guitar a little but he didn't think that would get him very far. He'd always been a drifter. But Roxas had passion. Roxas was smart and beautiful in the classic ways, and he was good enough for the both of them. He made sure Axel got to class on time and did all his homework and studied with him.
They'd met in art class in seventh grade. Axel was taking it for the easy A (he sheepishly scraped out a B, and that was only because of Roxas and fuck, there was no reason art should be hard) and Roxas because, well – and it was kind of history after that in an easy, lucky way.
Axel had spent many days and nights perched in increasingly awkward positions on his best friend's bed because, as Roxas told him time after time, his long and narrow proportions made him the perfect model. He didn't see it, but he had this weakness for giving Roxas whatever he wanted. So for the first time in his life he shut up and did what he was told.
They were always together. There were late nights, whispered secrets, popcorn fights; French toast and a mutual love for the Beatles. Like they were the same person.
Except they weren't, something Axel was reminded of every time Roxas created something beautiful, every time he looked at him with passionate blue eyes and asked him to pose - please - yes, just like that - and he'd hold it, listening to the scratch of pencil against paper, watching those eyes focus and fly.
Watching Roxas make art was like watching God create the world.
.x.
A crack rings through the night.
Roxas startles. His muscles twitch and vibrate in fear.
"It's just a firework, Rox. Everything's okay." In truth, he's not sure whether it was or not. It's hard to tell in their neighborhood. But the way Roxas snuggles against him, pretty glass eyes filled with relief and trust, makes it worth it. He plays absently with the frayed fabric of the hoodie.
"Ax…"
"Yeah?"
He makes a small, wounded noise, so Axel rubs his back lightly. He thinks, it's so fucked up what happened. He knows he deserved it but Roxas, Roxas never did anything, Roxas was perfect and whole and unblemished…
.x.
They were walking barefoot on the railroad tracks that formed a vein through the city and served as a quick, if unwise, shortcut between downtown and the projects. It was the Fourth of July. They were sixteen and the homemade fireworks exploding in the sky above them seemed to be celebrating their youth, their freedom; the way life was free even when it was hard, and the world belonged to them.
They passed a dented beer can back and forth and smoked from the pack of cigarettes Axel had convinced (though Roxas maintained it was probably more like blackmailed) his older brother into buying him.
"It's good, isn't it?" Roxas asked. Axel, who was used to these random and somewhat cryptic statements, smiled.
"Yeah, Rox. Everything's good."
"Stop."
"What?"
"Stop just like that. Don't move." He took off his pack and whipped out his sketchbook, which he always had on his person at any given time – he kept in a drawstring bag which he never left the house without. He pulled the pencil from behind his pierced ear and Axel wanted to laugh. Roxas was so cute when he was enthusiastic. But he was afraid to change his expression even a modicum and ruin whatever Rox was trying to do, so he stayed still. The cigarette hanging from his lips gathered ash.
The pencil scratched and erased, a tan blur. Sometimes, Axel swore Roxas drew too fast for his eyes to keep up with.
The boy focused intensely.
"You can talk now." He muttered. And Axel did. He talked about everything and nothing, talked because he liked to and because Roxas hated the sound of silence.
"Am I really such a great model?" He asked after a while.
"Don't be a dumbass. How many times do I have to tell you? Of course you are."
"But –
"You're beautiful, Axel."
.x.
Axel picks Roxas up and cradles him to his chest. Though Axel is the thinner (Roxas had admitted that he'd thought him anorexic at first, that is, until he saw the ridiculous amount of food Axel could consume in one day), he can lift Roxas easily, and the boy seems small curled against him.
He understand that the situation is heavy and broken, but he loves -
"The weight of the world is love." Roxas mutters into Axel's black cloak. "Ginsberg wrote that. Do you think it's true? I think it is."
The world around him is spinning, stretching, sinking, strange; but Axel is holding him and Axel is constant.
"Yeah. Me too. You ready to go inside?"
"Uh." He protests softly. "I want to watch the sunrise."
"I'll get you a blanket at least."
Roxas nods. He feels Axel put him down, hears him trudging across the laughably small patch of grass that constitutes their lawn. The screen door opens, closes. He listens because silence is deafening and he is addicted to every sound Axel makes, especially the meaningless ones.
Before long he feels a light, fuzzy weight envelop him, and then Axel, who is also light but significantly less fuzzy, excepting his hair. Axel holds him and they are swaddled together, watching the world wake up.
.x.
That Fourth of July, which felt like the first one in the whole word, Axel kissed Roxas on the railroad tracks and Roxas kissed him back while fireworks exploded gloriously overhead. Roxas' lips were soft and so were the hairs at the nape of his neck where Axel had put his hand, and his pale cheeks flushed lightly. It was the moment where Axel's mind confirmed the words that his heart had known for years.
They kissed for a long time and it didn't feel long enough.
They walked back to their crumbling neighborhood with arms wrapped around each other's waists, laughing conspiratorially, stealing kisses and shot gunning puffs of smoke until they arrived back at the small flat Roxas shared with his single mother.
She opened the screen door and slipped out, smiling, a tray of strawberry snacks in her hand. Roxas loved strawberries, and with some whipped cream and blue sprinkles they became very patriotic looking.
"How was the show?" She asked.
The bullets sounded like small fireworks as they exploded from the window of a rusty car, which had slammed around the corner going much too fast. It happened quickly. All Axel could think to do was throw Roxas to the ground, try to protect him, but that was -
It took exactly six bullets for Roxas to stop making art.
.x.
They are four streets over from the place where their blood is still stained into the dirty pavement.
It is said that we never really remember pain. Axel thinks that's complete and utter bullshit. He remembers the pain clearly, a white fire that burst from his shoulder and side and spread all over until, blissfully, he felt nothing at all, numb with shock. What he also remembers is the way Roxas keened like a dying bird, and how he'd whispered even though he could hardly feel his own mouth, trying to comfort him, and the strawberries were lying all over the yard…
That pain, Roxas' pain, is what he remembers most vividly.
Roxas is watching the dawn and listening to the sound of Axel's heartbeat. He thinks about things he shouldn't, like screaming and weeping and the taste of something heavy and soothing on his tongue – this thing which soothes his heavy heart and makes him think of art and stars.
As the sun begins to emerge from it's sleep, Roxas begins to feel tired. The world is waking up, birds crying as the line between night and day becomes blurred, and the dawn is beautiful enough to break his heart. He can't sleep before that kind of beauty. Not anymore.
Axel strokes his feather-soft hair and stares into the sky. Roxas sings quietly and drowsily with the birds as the sky turns pink and orange. And maybe, Axel thinks, this is the closest to perfection they'll ever get.
.x.
He woke up in the hospital.
For a long time, he was disoriented. The lights above him were so bright and glaring, nothing like the light of the stars. He didn't think about anything except blocking out the light. Everything was loose around the edges, as if his mind had come unhinged, and he wondered if he'd smoked a little too much weed and passed out somewhere, here, this bright place with the lights. Usually, in instances like this, illicit substances were to blame.
Then, suddenly, he remembered.
And Roxas' name became like a pulse in his mind, matched to the beat of his heart.
He realized that he was in the hospital and the looseness around the edges of his mind was most likely the result of painkillers, and he checked to make sure that he was in tact. He was, save for the skin where the bullets had gone in; later, the doctor explained to him just how lucky he had been that the bullets had missed anything vital.
Roxas' mother, he learned, had not been so lucky, and had died instantly.
His mother and brother were sitting around his hospital bed, crying, and when he woke up they gingerly threw their arms around him and asked him how this happened. He told them he didn't know, because he didn't. Except he thought it was some kind of karmic retribution. But he kept silent on that account.
He didn't think the bullets had been meant for them, but he wasn't sure.
"Where's Roxas?" He asked, as if he didn't care about anything else. "Where's Rox?"
Axel was released the next day, and he ignored his family's requests . As if they were actually a family to begin with. His mother worked constantly and Reno had his own life, just like Axel; he couldn't even remember the last time they'd sat down and had a dinner together. So he didn't go home with them.
Instead, he went to see Roxas.
.x.
It's the same old song and dance.
Roxas, who works at a gas station, hates his job and sometimes (often) occasionally (all the time) forgets to come home, though it's less like forgetting and more like willful ignorance. He'll wander off to some seedy club or shady corner or the passenger seat of a stranger's car, and Axel, who is an insomniac with a two pack a day habit, will inevitably find him laying in their yard at three in the morning trying to count stars with the bitter tang of a pill coursing through his veins.
These days, Roxas doesn't think about anything anymore. He used to keep them both on schedule and on track, but he's derailed like a child's toy train, and left all the thinking to Axel. Unfortunately, because thinking was never Axel's strong suit and Roxas was always the voice of logic. Which now was mute.
.x.
When Axel offered Roxas his sketchpad, the boy refused.
He told him to burn it. It had been three months (three god awful months of physical therapy and watching Roxas learn to walk again, and fuck, he couldn't take it, and tried to help however he could, but Roxas was a broken bird...only keening differently, now…) but Roxas still wouldn't draw, Roxas cursed him out, Roxas' blue eyes burned with anger and hatred for the world he once had loved.
Axel hadn't burned it. He'd stored every single sketch Roxas ever made in a box, and even now he prays that one day Roxas will create again.
That night he had walked into a tattoo parlor and gotten those marks that vaguely resembled teardrops under his eyes, because somewhere he'd heard that people got them when they had watched someone be killed.
He felt, strongly, and with every fiber of his being, that he had witnessed Roxas' murder.
.x.
Roxas wakes up at three in the afternoon.
"Don't go to work today, Rox." Axel asks, and blue eyes stare in confusion. "You hate it there, right? So stay home with me, come on."
He looks at Roxas, who is full of nothing anymore, and he loves him and thinks that he's watched God fall.
"Okay." Roxas says.
Maybe one day Roxas will draw again, and maybe Axel will get better with his guitar and sing somewhere for enough money to make them set for life, and maybe one day they'll kiss on the railroad tracks and God will rise to his station again.
Maybe, Axel thinks, will have to be good enough.