Title: A Promise in Salt
Author: unwinding fantasy
Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts ain't mine.
Rating: K+
Pairing: Axel x Roxas; secondary Riku x Sora.
Cover Image: opaldelight at tumblr.

The world stops twice on a Friday morning, the tube uncommonly packed for the end of the week. Ordinarily, the amount of passengers steadily declines as the week progresses, each day grinding down the working man's resistance with paperwork and pen-pushing or packing and planting until by the fifth he's calling in sick, coughing into the receiver like his life depends on it. Equally miraculous is his recovery, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for the weekend though you wouldn't know it from the way he trudges in on Monday, black circles under red eyes, smelling faintly of shampoo and decay. This is true for Axel and his ilk anyway, the dirty workers who spend their days doing the miscellaneous crap nobody else wants to do. He doubts the Blues ever come to work smelling like anything other than French cologne.

Axel only lives four stops from the end of the line so a handful of dull silver seats are still unoccupied when he steps aboard. The thought doesn't crossed his mind though - best left for Blues - and he picks a position by the doorway where he leans against the side of the tube in relative comfort, watching the stainless steel city blur past, headphones thrumming the electric pulse of go-to-work into his ears. The beat keeps pace with each click of the tube against the tracks, even when it slows ever-so-slightly as its path starts angling left or right, an impossibility that he's long since stopped regarding. The tube sways as it moves, a silver snake wriggling into the hive of the city, and more people pile on. Long fiery hair falling into his face, Axel's head sways too: from the tube's movement, from the commuters who jostle him as they squeeze past.

Eventually the 8:30 AM crowd obscures the city-facing windows, not that he cares 'cos he's sick of staring at that hunk of metal crouched low on the grey horizon anyway, so he looks down the carriage at the rows of Blues studying their morning papers or sipping coffee or tapping on their notebooks or zoning. These last make him feel vaguely uncomfortable, eyes glazed over, rolled back so far in their heads that only the whites show. Axel wonders why you never see the insides of your head when you zone then thinks if anything, you're more likely to cop an eyeful of the back of your skull and what kind of view would that be? He wonders if the Blues hear the same mindless drone to which the Reds are subjected.

The doors hiss open. More people push their way in. Now Axel is shoulder-to-shoulder with a bunch of Blues and Reds, the former with tight expressions on their faces. Rinse and repeat at the next stop and the next until people are forced to move down the aisles to get some breathing space. Axel resolutely stands fast, unwilling to relinquish his floor space, his own little slice of tube hell, even if it is unpleasantly warm trapped between these passengers, pressed against the tube until he can feel the noisebox beneath his skin. It's a worse morning than usual but he tolerates the proximity to Blues because go-to-work is playing in his head and really, there's no other option.

Once again, the tube slows to a crawl. Grinds to a halt. Beeps as its doors slide apart, letting in a whiff of chill air, a spattering of rain, a person. Another tone sounds. The doors are a finger's breadth from closed, Axel's turning to lean against them and then there's this frantic pull at his jacket and, "Fuck!" Axel starts, looks down at his jacket fisted in a hand that isn't his. The hand is joined by another followed by a pair of slender arms and a face with teeth bared to the gums that wouldn't be so comical if said face looked a little more weathered, a little older than sixteen. The doors protest but grudgingly grant entry to the boy and Axel starts mentally lamenting the fact that he's got another 20 minutes in this 8th circle of hell and now this school kid's backpack's gonna be smacking him in the face at every turn.

That's when the boy speaks and Axel's world stops.

Or maybe "freezes" is a better way to describe it because the kid's fury is cold, no, glacial. What he says isn't sugary or a proclamation of undying love or even halfway to polite but damn, that voice. That voice dislodges the buzzing in his brain, overrides go-to-work in favour of look-at-me, fills his ears with something like music. Axel's 99% certain love stories don't begin with, "Thanks for holding it, asshole," and when a drop of rain sneaks down the boy's forehead and over the bridge of his nose and he swipes at it, making a sound like spitting, Axel concentrates real hard on ignoring that 1%. He tries not to laugh, tells himself honestly, he'd rough up the kid, witnesses or no, if he didn't look so goddamn funny - a pissed off kitten or something. Even his fucking hair is like a cat's, bristling like a nail brush, pointing in a thousand different directions like a particularly confusing street sign despite the fact that it's raining so shouldn't it be drooping?

The kid turns his back on Axel. Not somebody who is easily ignored, Axel is suddenly worried he'll die of laughter because he's been dismissed by a pissy, pint-sized boy-cat, been dismissed in a carriage that's chock-a-block, a handspan between them. The absence of a backpack surprises him. He wonders how old the kid is, what kind of music is playing in his headphones to generate that liquid nitrogen scowl. Maybe the Feds got it wrong when they installed this kid's noisebox - beneath his still exterior, he certainly doesn't look calm. That much is clear from the way his jaw jumps when he spins away, from the rigid set of his shoulders.

That's when Axel's world stops for the second time. This second stopping is not like rounding a corner and colliding with someone. It is a slow awareness, similar to the sensation you get when stretching out a limb full of pins and needles. It is what happens when Axel stops thinking about the voice and starts thinking about the face. Arctic eyes and butterblond hair with a hint of French cologne. This boy is a Blue and that is the wrong primary colour. With this realization, go-to-work ceases whining loudly and returns to its usual insidious buzz. Axel scratches at the base of his spine, wishing the thing would just shut up.

The boy is too short to reach the roof of the carriage but he balances just fine, leaning into each lurch with feline grace and if it wasn't for the clumsy people surrounding him, lost in their zones, he wouldn't fall against Axel every so often. The first time it happens, the boy jerks away fast. The second time, he jerks away faster. He disembarks at Museum, carrying a hoverboard Axel hadn't noticed before, bumping hands with another boy on the platform and - Axel could swear he's losing it; they look so alike - and the cat casts him a (curious?) glance over his shoulder just before he disappears through the turnstile, the only person heading that way. His friend hops on the train. The noisebox seems to vibrate a warning against Axel's tailbone when he pokes his head out to watch the quickly vanishing Blue. That, more than anything, decides him.

Before the doors fully close, Axel is wriggling through like a butterfly from a chrysalis. Even though Reds customarily work in the field, Axel's been indoors on the assembly line for a while now and the light fall of rain against his cheeks makes him gasp for a moment, just a moment of awe before he recollects himself. He wonders how the Blue kid is taking it so easily.

He follows his quarry to the collection of statues outside the Museum of Natural History, great looming granite behemoths in the likeness of something or nothing, tall and proud like heroes of a forgotten age. Adjoining the Museum and hanging over the stone monuments to the past is the clocktower, stretching up to the heavens like a man crying out to God for absolution, disappearing under low-hanging rainclouds. It is here the Blue, as if struck by some presentient knowledge, turns to stare him down across the otherwise vacant courtyard and Axel feels the rainwater freeze to his clothes. Stalker, he thinks, suddenly aware of how fucking stupid he must look, of the insistent thrum of electronic signals beneath his skin, in his veins. What are you, Humbert Humbert? His noisebox is beating swift-retreat, swift-retreat.

"You're following me." The effect is immediate - his noisebox subsides in the face of such melodic sounds.

This is a Blue and he should show respect but Axel's mouth's always worked faster than his brain. "You're wagging. Shouldn't you be in school, little boy blue?" he leers, wondering if the laws for school are the same for work, if lots of students call in sick and ditch class on Friday.

The kid makes that spitting sound again ("Tch.") and swings one-handed atop a griffin, carrying his hoverboard with him. He peers out over the monochrome landscape as the rain starts falling harder, streaming down his perfect cheekbones, looking for all the world like a grey sea captain and Axel wonders if there's a statue of a kraken here. He's only visited the Museum once and that was what, ten years ago? Back when you had to hold your buddy's hand so neither of you would get lost, that was the only time "natural" was worth paying attention to. He can still remember the faux volcano in there, erupting every hour on the hour, the way a wave of lava would swell every time a pyroclastic rock hit the molten flow. He'd picked up a clump of obsidian, cut his middle finger and in a fury, almost threw it away. Smooth and cool in his hand, it convinced him not to and not knowing what to do with it, he'd pocketed the stupid thing. Over the years, the scar it left became a neverending source of intrigue ("I made a deal with a handless god, said it could borrow it to finger Aphrodite." "I lost it wrestling an alligator but I cut open its belly, fished it out and reattached it with its intestines.") and the perfect excuse to flip someone the bird until the day he decided he didn't need an excuse anymore.

Hands jammed in his pockets, he feels the reassuring weight of the stone against his skin. The stone too seems to block out the sound of his noisebox though not to the extent of this kid's voice. "I'm Axel," he finds himself saying and when the kid replies, the soundwaves thrum through him, into his bones, reverberating against the obsidian.

"You're late for work," the other says pointedly and Axel wishes he'd keep talking and he doesn't and that is that.

He goes to work the next day along with every other Blue and Red, disembarks with the rest of the world at Central, spilling from the door of the tube that reminds him of the maw of some serpentine beast and the people spewing out are last night's dinner, colourful vomit. He stands at the production line performing the same pick up/put down task he performs every day while against his will he dreams of a melodious pitch like the fall of rain against granite.

It's a Saturday the next time Axel shows up, beaten skateboard he's digged out of the closet tucked under a thin arm, shit-eating grin on his face. He's excited when he picks out the cat-boy with his spiky blond hair noiselessly gliding along the pavement like an assassin from a feudal age gone by, launching himself off a dragon's tail and taking advantage of the hoverboard's extended flight-time to turn a myriad of mid-air tricks. He never makes a sound, face fixed in concentration. He lands on his feet every time.

Axel claps lazily at the conclusion of a (one, two, three rotations, holy shit!) 1080 indy. The kid looks up and Axel sees it in his eyes, sees the moment the intense stare breaks and the ground's rushing up to meet him and he bails. He bails on a hoverboard, for Chrissake. The urge to laugh in the kid's face is really hard to shove down this time. "Nice trick," he calls instead.

"Fuck off," the Blue bites in return. A lightning strike runs down Axel's spine and he thinks it's a good thing his hair's mental as is and he doesn't have to worry about static electricity.

"This guy giving you trouble, Rox?" Another voice. The hostility makes Axel's noisebox start humming swift-retreat as a group of kids emerge from behind a pillar at the base of the clocktower. The one who'd threatened him in that vague guy-looking-out-for-his-buddy way has dirty blond hair and is standing a couple of paces in front of the others, fists opening and closing at his sides in a way that reminds Axel of two fish gasping for air. A hothead but nothing Axel can't handle. His friends, a fat kid and a boy with hedgehog hair, look equally unremarkable. Axel thinks, Reds. I guess it's not a crime, and his heart jumps a little because if Blue Boy is friends with these commoners then maybe he has a shot, even if such affiliations are quietly discouraged.

"We're just talking," Axel says, doing his best to ignore the incessant buzz. Sometimes he wonders if the Feds got his noisepack wrong too because isn't it meant to placate him instead of setting him on edge? "I met Rox on the tube, thought it'd be cool to tear up some pavement together. He didn't mention he'd bring his buddies. Been looking for guys to skate with for, like, forever." Gesturing at his board, he tries for a winning smile, starts walking towards the group.

Before he can finish extending his arm for a handshake, cat-boy's interceding and they're almost chest to chest, Axel's arm stretched around the Blue in the beginnings of an awkward hug. "Roxas," the kid grates with an obligatory scowl, "and this place belongs to us."

"So what, I gotta ask permission from a puny eighth grader who rides around on a hoverboard? Think I'll pass." He's not thinking he'll pass, not really. He's thinking he'll say anything to keep this guy talking, to keep hearing that soft-as-daggers cadence that somehow overrides the noisebox's interference.

Roxas' eyes flash dangerously. "I'm at uni and I'd like to see you try, Axel." The words are bitten off, sharp as icicles.

Immediately, he seems to realize that was wrong, wrong, wrong, giving Axel an opening and the redhead grins with the knowledge that Roxas regrets the hasty words. He plucks the hoverboard from cat-boy's nail-bitten fingers - unusually imperfect for a Blue - and after five minutes of wobbling his way to familiarity he's still got their attention, by ten he's really got their attention and soon he's turning a 360, 720, 1080… he loses count because the hedgehog-haired kid woops loudly and the hoverboard, in all its technological glory, proves so much easier than your run-of-the-mill skateboard. Axel is sure hedeghog boy's the kid Roxas met on the platform earlier that week. He makes a mental note to ask if they're twins or something because they do kinda resemble each other, at least as much as a mortal can hope to resemble a god.

The lack of fingernails is the first thing Axel discovers is NQR about the Blue boy. The sun is reaching its zenith, warming Axel's skin and that heat penetrates to his core when he looks over at Roxas, the vague outlines of an impressed expression sketched on his visage, butterblond hair turned golden beneath rays of light.

He can't visit him every day. Not because it'd be intrusive and weird - Axel is both these and more - but because he actually does have a job, even if it's as interesting as observing a minute hand make slow circles around a watch-face, a pastime Axel increasingly finds himself preoccupied with. He watches his watch at lunchtime, at work when the production line runs empty for the last 10 minutes of every day, on the tube instead of staring out the windows. He never zones, never lets the techno waves drag him deep under until he's calm and primed for a day of mindlessness. He hates the feeling because yes, there is a tranquility but it's underscored by this nagging sensation of wrongness, this faint unrest that claws beneath his skin trying to burst free. He fancies he can see himself in that state, slouched against a wall or against the tube, pupil-less, bone-white eyes vibrating in his eye sockets, wanting to escape, to see. Axel doesn't know how people can ignore that feeling of Wrong, how they need to be zoning in every single free moment they scavenge as if they're addicts afraid of their own thoughts or the quiet of their own minds. People nowadays are so self-absorbed.

He visits on weekends and the itch under his skin where the noisebox lurks dissipates. They always meet there and they don't always board. Sometimes they break each other's knuckles playing air hockey down at the arcade or dare each other to chug the gin Hayner swiped from his dad's study or climb the clocktower with a bunch of sea salt icecreams. The first time Axel tries teaching Roxas how to skateboard, the blond winds up on his back. The board's slipping from beneath him like a bullet from a gun as soon as he places both sneakered feet on its shiny surface, which displays an image of a burly topless guy, epic beard hanging halfway down his chest, tying a serpent in a knot. It goes flying through the air before landing heavily, with a dull thunk!, square on Roxas' head. "Fuck!" the exclamation tears from Roxas' lips and he curses again as the board tumbles onto his fingers. And "Shut the hell up!" he goes on, threatening to bruise Axel so bad his hair'll turn purple if he doesn't stop that retarded barking laughter. Despite being flattened by an eight pound skateboard travelling faster than the tube (which wasn't actually that fast; the tube's always so damn slow), his miracle hair still pokes up at all the usual odd angles. He jams his abused fingers in his mouth, lapping away at the blood pooling beneath the snow skin, looking so much like a kitten that Axel's overwhelmed by laughter again.

Occasionally they catch the tube all the way to the end of the line, to the ocean, and watch the sunset, fending off seagulls from their fish and chips until hedgehog-headed Sora feels sorry for them and throws them bits of potato cake and chubby Pence laments the loss. The murmur of waves against sand coupled with the lilt of Roxas' voice as he breaks into a song about catching fire is enough to drown out the buzz of the noisebox. These are the times Axel likes best. The only thing that comes close are the times he and Roxas, smashed three ways to Sunday, sneak into the Museum and lay in the grass of the Indoor Forest, gazing up through the plastifilm roof that curves around each tree, perfectly accommodating their growth. They often stumble that way after a night of debauchery - stealing Coke from vending machines, drawing lewd images on the emotionless steel city skyscrapers - and collapse in the forest like a native tribe returning from a successful raid on the invaders, sometimes wrestling for the remainder of the tequila. They always calm down quickly though. The forest holds a quiet hush that the noisebox never could emulate, the chirping of crickets linking with the beat of Axel's heart as they tell each other things they'd only dared tell the empty corridors of their minds. Roxas learns yes, that's Axel's natural hair colour and he'd got the tattoos because he liked being different. Axel didn't want to leave his mark on the world - people had already done enough of that - but he wanted to leave a mark on himself, to be important to somebody, to rip the damn noisebox out from under his skin at times like this when he yearned for the peace and quiet. Axel learns Roxas is afraid of being forgotten, he doesn't like zoning and he hates things without colour. He likes Axel with his hair like flames and his eyes like endless green fields. Beneath the French cologne, Roxas smells like waves breaking on the sand.

Their ventures are nothing extravagant but they are full of life and when they are together, fire and ice, they are some force of nature that drives away the mechanical drone of the noisebox.

Axel gives him the obsidian stone, tells him it was older than the university and the steel city and the entire human race, tells him it was born from deep within the Earth through pressure strong enough to make diamonds, through fire hot enough to melt steel, through smoke more mysterious than the furry green stuff growing on the pizza in Axel's fridge. Roxas laughs and keeps it, turning it over and over in his fingers, an awed expression on his face. Axel also regales him with the story about his scarred finger but for once in his life, he tells the non-embellished version.

One day near the end of summer, Axel remembers to ask about Roxas and Sora. Sora laughs because, "Everyone thinks that, man," and tells him no, it's just some spooky trick of fate that they look so alike. Another day, Axel sees Sora on the tube and something in the boy's manner, hands flittering like nervous butterflies caught in a whirlwind, drives the redhead's questions into interrogation territory until the brunet firmly tells him to drop it, just drop it already. They spend an uncomfortable 15 minutes trying to avoid one another's eyes but their gazes inevitably keep clashing like they always do when you're doing your best not to stare, two like-charged magnets forced together then springing apart again.

The next day, Sora is all smiles and apologies because he, "just freaked out," and had to ask Roxas first anyway but it's okay now, he'll answer Axel's questions. And this is what Axel learns:

Pence and Hayner are Reds. They attend technical college, the kind Axel had attended, learning how to pack boxes, input data, press buttons and other equally talentless talents. They've only just started and they miss Roxas, whose quiet confidence solidifies them, makes them whole.

Roxas is a Blue. His parents are well-to-do, white collar workers who do a lot of looking important and a lot less in the way of looking after their son. Oh, Roxas knows they love him in their own detached way but they prefer zoning or checking the monthly marketing report to spending time getting to know him. He met Pence and Hayner when he wandered into the Museum one particularly dull Saturday afternoon and Hayner shoved a still-wrapped sea-salt icecream into his hands, told him to suck on it and dissolved into a raucous fit of giggles. An apologetic Pence, noting Roxas' status, begged his forgiveness and even offered him his icecream if he promised not to get them kicked out because they really wanted to see that "Sexuality and the Human Body" exhibit. Hayner'd always had a thing for messing with authority.

Sora is a Grey.

"Grey" is the informal term for those without a noisebox, those kids whose parents had refused having the device surgically inserted because it was against God or against Nature or against something else profound. It was tough to find a job without a noisebox: the implants - one at the base of the spine to hold the actual music, two in the ears for distribution - were meant to calm the subject, make the subject more pliable, more productive, less prone to bouts of daydreaming and what kind of employer wouldn't want that? The Feds let them exist because eventually humanity would agree that yes, the noisebox is the way of the future and in the meantime it was better not to force change, to leave the surface undisturbed rather than risk catalyzing a revolution. After all, they had willingly succumbed to the iPod. It was only a matter of time.

Sora's parents didn't want him getting hooked on zoning and had forgone the implant for fear he'd wind up like his great uncle, a crack addict with mushed peas for brains. And it was perfectly alright: Sora was a happy kid who helped out whenever needed, who liked rollicking in the surf and drinking starfruit smoothies.

There were "special" schools for Greys - Axel was just old enough to know they weren't special; they were the normal kind of school - and Sora attended one of these. At Kingdom College he studied Pythagoras' theorem and Punnett squares, learned to mould clay with his bare hands, cooked an apple pie. He read To Kill a Mockingbird in sophomore year and later, when he picked Literature as an elective, 1984 and The Great Gatsby. He liked the idea of a green light.

It was this last point that led him to skip school.

It had started harmlessly enough: he'd take the morning train all the way to Central instead of getting off at the previous stop and he'd follow the guy to his college. The guy with the porcelain skin and silver hair, real silver, not the muted grey of the city, this silver shone. The guy with the brilliant green eyes.

Roxas helped him out. Roxas, a Blue who goes to the same university as Riku, didn't mind trading places every once in a while because it was actually kind of fun sitting through classes he knew inside-out, classes he could teach. The hardest part had been getting his agreement on dyeing his hair brown - Axel's sure his bottom jaw connects with the ground here - and to laugh a little more whenever he's in Sora Mode. Of course Sora's friend Kairi, who he's known forever, is in on it - hell, most of the school is because everybody loves Sora and those who for some freakish reason don't, they still love pulling the wool over the teachers' eyes - and willingly gives Roxas free lessons in Sora Impersonation, covers if he ever makes a blunder. The dye comes out with a chemical treatment and yes, that means Roxas has to lie in bed all night with a showercap on his head, laugh it up, asshole. Axel finds himself wondering what Roxas would look like as a brunet, says, "You mean all this time you've been living a double life, Goldiloxas?" and gets punched in the arm and told to be serious for once for his troubles. Of course, Sora didn't need to undergo a similar treatment. University Blues just showed up when they felt like it. Their parents were paying for it, after all. The teachers didn't give a damn who materialised in class at 1:30 PM on a Friday and who chose to take a long weekend instead.

Sora has never so acutely felt the one year difference in their ages. He spends every second Sunday meeting Riku, dreads having to explain why he's hardly ever at lecture. It was one of the first questions Riku ever asked, an inquisitive light that Sora found hypnotizing dancing in his eyes but Sora declined, said he couldn't explain. It was better than lying, right? The Blue was gracious and didn't press his companion though sometimes Sora would catch him staring, this thirsty gleam in his eyes, hungry for knowledge.

It's not a crime, no, but it is frowned upon. Colours aren't meant to mix. His noisebox warns him against it.

Axel isn't bothered that they're only telling him now. He knows what's real and what's not. He knows the way Roxas looks at him askance when he's telling a stupid story, long-fingered hands a-flurry, voice too loud as he gesticulates and exaggerates and contemplates the possibility. He does ask why he saw Roxas that rainy day at the Museum 'cos shouldn't he have been at Sora's school? But Roxas explains that the Greys were on holidays and the only reason he'd skipped class was to go enjoy the rain.

A week later, Sora's sitting beneath a statue that looks half demon, half angel. His head's in his hands and Axel can tell it's about Riku.

"He punched me," Sora weeps into his palms then when he's all out of tears, stares at the tiny droplets tracing along his lifeline. His bottom lip is split and his sky-blue eyes are watery, somehow making it seem like Sora's not completely there. "He didn't even say a word," Sora whispers, voice spent from too long letting grief control his vocal chords. He hangs his head like a defeated soldier while Axel thinks about the unfairness of a hardening class system and sits with Sora until sundown, talking about nothing to fill the empty space where Riku had been while his noisebox rejoices, told-you-so, told-you-so.

The stars are out by the time Roxas arrives. He exchanges a glance with Axel and Axel's heart cracks a little at the barely bridled pain he sees beneath the ice-calm exterior, a slight undercurrent of this-could-be-us that proves the blond is well aware of the Wrongness of the world. In one look, Axel has confirmation of everything a thousand conversations have taught him of Roxas' feelings for their world. The Red fixes a determined expression on his face, willing the noisebox to a whisper as he claps a hand on Roxas' shoulder and gives a reassuring squeeze. Roxas' sun-cracked lips quirk, a sign of acceptance, and he nods in agreement, at once the quietest and fiercest declaration of rebellion Axel's ever seen. Axel's noisebox is saying you-can't-win. Roxas' eyes are saying, "We'll try."

"Why did your folks do it?" Axel asks one day when it's just him and Roxas sitting atop the clocktower, watching the last blood orange streaks of light fade on the horizon. He can feel the noisebox shift within him if he leans against the structure but he has to focus, really focus, before it actually becomes an issue. His world is condensed to other things right now: the way the sunset scatters as it hits the chrome buildings in the distance, the rough sandstone under his equally rough fingertips, the salty residues of the icecream on his lips and the quiet broken intermittently by the faint clacking of the tube. Most of all though, his world is sitting beside him: his right-hand man in a city halfway to mad. If he glances at the kid from the corner of his eyes, his skin is luminescent, touched by fireflies in the dying light.

Roxas pulls the icecream from his mouth. They've been discussing Riku's reaction to finding out Sora's a Grey. Roxas is adamant he'll come around in time, says he knows how Riku looks at the hedgehog-haired boy and what it means. Those words sparked something deep in Axel's core. "Dunno. They wanted me to have it easy? Every parent wants their kid to have an easier time than them." Axel's eyes follow the dart of his tongue, quick pink appendage licking the sweet like a cat at a bowl of milk, and if the noisebox was saying anything Axel wonders if it'd be kiss-the-boy.

The redhead nods, pretending to think, secretly watching Roxas make quick work of the remainder of his icecream. Roxas' eyes, a melting glacier in the sun, slide to his. "What about yours?" he asks. Axel, who knows by now that Roxas is not one to mince words, is touched at this attempt at human connection.

Axel leans back, sighs. "I was 18 when they became fashionable. Old enough to choose. I… I didn't know what I was getting myself into, only that the older I got, the more I'd been feeling this kind of dissatisfaction with the world. They said the noisebox would help." Absently, he rubs at the bottom of his spine then the question strikes him, "Hey, Rox, what do you hear?"

"Huh?" Roxas, last of the icecream halfway to his mouth and god, Axel just wants to.

"When you listen to your noisebox. What do you hear?"

Roxas shifts on his knees, turns to face Axel head-on. His eyes are the exact shade of blue of the sky on the last day of winter. He says, "Nothing when I'm with you."

The noiselessness, the sensation of being alone together, the only ones in the world who matter, the inner peace - Axel knows exactly what he means. He leans forward and seals their lips together, a promise made in salt, and Roxas sighing into his mouth is the most beautiful music he's ever heard.