a/n: AkuRoku shorts for AkuRoku Day, August 13 (8/13). They're not really meant to have a point or even be particularly shippy.

These lovelies are, unfortunately, not mine. If they were, neither of them would have disappeared and they would be living happily ever after in Twilight Town. Spoilers for 358/2 Days. Some dialogue from Days and KH2. (The Days dialogue is from the novel, not the game. That's why it's different.)

Axel tends towards Metaphorgotten and Buffy Speak. He also tends towards the cheesy. It was a bit difficult to stay in past tense and not slip into present…

If you like my KH writing, might I recommend checking out my chaptered fic Dark Over Moon? It's AU and will be pretty long, eventually. Saïx, the poor boy, is the main character. Also, there may be occasional bits of Riku acting like an asshat. Please also check out It's Time I Said My Last Goodbye, which is also AU, with Isa and Lea. It's quite sad, really. Please excuse my shameless self-promotion.

Art of a pineapple with Roxas's eyes and hair, anybody? It'd be a simple photoshop job.

Feedback is greatly appreciated, but not required.

Roxas was like a pineapple, Axel decided. At first glance, first poke, he was tough and prickly and unappetizing. Once you got past the outside, though, he was sweet, juicy, and a pretty yellow color. Except he wasn't juicy. Or yellow. But he was still pretty.

When Axel had tried to explain this to Roxas, the shorter Nobody had raised a skeptical eyebrow and, very calmly, asked Axel if he'd been within a twenty-foot radius of Marluxia's conservatory or Vexen's lab recently. When Axel had answered in the negative, Roxas had sighed and assumed that the redhead was just high on unlife as usual.

Axel loved storms, Roxas discovered one night. He had been sleeping peacefully when a crash of thunder woke him. Curious about this new sound—he had never seen a storm before—Roxas padded over to the window and looked out.

And blinked, confused. He threw the window open.

"Axel, what the hell are you doing?" he yelled down.

Axel looked up at him and grinned. "Dancing in the rain!" he called back. "What does it look like?"

"It looks like you, being an idiot as usual!" Roxas replied. "Come inside; you'll freeze out there!"

Axel shook his head and Roxas noticed that, even waterlogged, his hair stuck out like a hedgehog in a bad mood. "I can keep myself warm! Come on down, Roxas!" he invited. "It's great!"

Rolling his eyes and sighing, Roxas shut the window and turned to go back to bed. He paused. What the heck, he decided, and went to join Axel in the wind and the rain.

He nearly froze to death, but Axel was like an oven, so he sneezed and huddled closer, ignoring Axel's snickering.

"Idiot," he muttered through chattering teeth.

Axel just laughed. "Pineapple," he teased.

Of course, Roxas had to smack him for that.

Roxas thought Axel's catchphrase was stupid.

Axel knew that Roxas was just jealous of his amazingness.

"Axel? What is happiness?"

Axel leaned back to stare up at the sunset-lit sky and consider the question. It was another day, after they had finished their missions, and they were sitting at the top of the clock tower in Twilight Town, eating sea-salt ice cream. "Well…" he began. "It's like—you know balloons, like from that tournament?"

Roxas nodded and took a bite of his ice cream.

"It's like that." Axel made a sweeping gesture with his stick of ice cream. "It's like there's a balloon in your chest, and it's swelling and swelling and you feel like you could explode, but—it's a good kind of almost-explosion. Like…you could just float off into the sky and leave the worlds behind. There's a stupid grin on your face and you know you look like an idiot, but that doesn't matter—nothing does. It's just…wonderful."

Roxas blinked, processing Axel's speech. "Don't you always look like an idiot, Axel?" he finally managed.

Axel laughed and ruffled his hair. "Cute, Roxas."

Roxas ignored him.

When Roxas left the Organization, he didn't want to look back. He wanted to leave without a trace, and Axel was making this very difficult for him.

"No one would be sad," he asserted, and tried to ignore Axel's reply. It still rung in his ears like his footsteps as he walked away from everything he had ever known.

"I'm…sad."

"Let's meet again in the next life."

"Yeah. I'll be waiting."