Title: Temporary.
Genre: Kingdom Hearts
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Axel/Demyx, indicated Axel/Roxas
Characters: Roxas, Axel, Demyx.
Spoilers: Slight.
Summary: Axel calls him 'temporary'. Aukdem. Drabble
Author Note: Pretty low key, implied sexytimes. This (for any of my followers suddenly freaking out about activity from me) is actually a really old drabble I wrote forever ago, that I just stumbled upon on my computer and realized I didn't have up here.
Axel calls him 'temporary'.
Even before Roxas, before everyone started to drop like flies, Axel called him temporary.
Demyx thinks that this is ridiculous because he doesn't feel temporary, and the way he feels for Axel isn't temporary- but he doesn't voice his opinions because Axel would just laugh.
It's hard to feel less than temporary without a heart, after all.
Demyx also thinks that Axel's a liar, because the way he smiles at him when he thinks Demyx isn't looking doesn't look emotionless. And emotionless is how Axel is supposed to be- how they're all supposed to be- because you can't feel without a heart.
Demyx thinks that maybe he's just in denial.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
But Demyx doesn't ever get a chance to flush the truth out of Axel because, within a breath, they've become Organization Thirteen. Not eleven, not twelve; Thirteen, and Demyx is amazed at how displaced and awkward Axel becomes around the silent blonde boy with big blue eyes. If Demyx didn't know any better, he'd think Axel was infatuated. In love, even, but loving was impossible without a heart and Demyx did know better.
The next night is the first in weeks that the Nocturne finds himself alone in his bedroom, and he's cruelly reminded of how big and cold and empty his bed can be. Axel doesn't come the night after that either.
The next morning, Demyx sits at the long dining table with his chin in the palm of his hand and observes the way Axel's eyes brighten when he manages to pull a smile to Thirteen's lips.
They're cute, Demyx thinks to distract himself from noticing how his empty chest aches.
That night he lays in bed alone again, not sleeping but just sort of dully staring at the ceiling. Wrapped in the silence, he smiles bitterly and think think thinks about anything other than Axel and Roxas and the way that Roxas has the Flurry wrapped around his finger.
It goes on like this for awhile (he's stopped counting the nights he sleeps alone now) and Demyx eventually sort of kind of gets over it. He seeks solace with Zexion and Xigbar- anyone that isn't Eight or Thirteen, and spends most of his sleepless nights writing songs on his sitar. Anything to keep his mind off of it.
This new way of living had been going well for Demyx up until he was awoken at four in the morning to a distraught Axel perched on the edge of his bed. It's not very often that he sees Axel's barriers broken down far enough to show such a vulnerable emotion like grief, and Demyx isn't quite sure what to do.
Eventually, Axel talks.
Roxas is gone, leaving the pyro behind like he were less of a best friend and more of an unwanted, broken old toy. Axel grieves and Demyx sits with him despite his weeks of avoiding the red head in some vain attempt to better himself.
He doesn't point out how, according to Axel's beliefs, the emotion he's feeling right now is impossible. Demyx could never bring himself to be that… heartless.
Sitting there in the dark with his fingers woven together in his lap, Demyx is caught off-guard by the kiss. He knows very well that he should push the pryo with his tear-stained cheeks away because deep down inside Axel doesn't want him, and he's already done enough to prove that.
But Demyx can't.
Instead, he weaves his fingers through those unruly spikes, leaning back into the comforters all piled up on his bed with Eight over-top of him. He tries not to think, with Axel's lips ghosting along his collar-bone, that the ache in his chest has increased.
In the morning, it's like nothing had ever happened. They didn't mention Roxas, and Demyx could almost fool himself that Thirteen had never happened if he didn't notice how dull Axel's toxic eyes had become.
Time passed by slowly, and Axel became more and more withdrawn. It wasn't unusual for Demyx to catch him staring off into space with a strange, somber expression on his face, and Demyx eventually realized exactly what – or who – Axel was thinking about whenever he did that.
As Axel disappeared within himself more and more, he would begin to frequently vanish for days at a time, leaving Demyx behind to wring his hands and worry. Every time he returned in one piece, the Nocturne would release a breath of air he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
Mocking deja-vu, they sat late one night on Demyx's bed. The same scenario as before with the alarm clock flashing blue block lettering reading '3:43', except this time there wasn't sex. Demyx wasn't sure if it hurt more or less without it. Instead, there was Demyx fiddling with the hem line of his sweater nervously, as Axel finally broke the silence and announced to the dead room, "I've found him."
Demyx froze, his shoulders stiffening, aqua eyes stopping to stare off at nothing in particular. Just as quietly, he countered, "You're going to be terminated, Axel."
And Axel laughed, this twisted bitter thing that made Demyx shudder to himself. "I need him."
Demyx twisted the fabric tighter, closing his eyes. As the bed shifted, as Axel got up, he blurted, "But you have me."
Axel didn't respond right away. He made his way over to the door, and paused with one hand on the handle, before sort of chuckling. "Yeah, but you're just temporary."
That time, when he left, Axel didn't come back, and Demyx knew who he was chasing after.
Later on, when Demyx was summoned to the Superior and instructed to engage the Keyblade Master in a fight, Demyx didn't whine. He didn't beg for a different mission, even though the foreign, almost nice way Xemnas spoke to him shot up all sorts of warnings in his mind.
Demyx just nodded, just conjured up a portal and stepped through with his sitar clasped in one hand – like he wasn't marching to his own death.
It was three days later when Axel finally accepted that Roxas was gone- that his best friend, that his love, wasn't the same person anymore. That he had forgot.
For some strange reason, the concept didn't bother him nearly as much as he figured it would, and after some brief reflecting on the subject, he came to the conclusion that it was because Roxas wasn't 'the one'.
Roxas may had been his best friend, but if he was truly the one, then he wouldn't have continuously ran away. Or at least, this is what Axel concluded. And standing there in the middle of The Usual Place, frowning down at the ground, Axel suddenly realized that there was someone who didn't run.
"Fuck."
Demyx. Demyx. Demyx.
As quickly as he possibly could, the Flurry pulled open a portal and stepped through it, and out into the Castle that Never Was. Since he was, after all, well known for his traitorous acts by this point in time, he decided that appearing in the middle of a hallway would be a bad decision, and instead stepped out into the Proof of Existence.
Half-way across the room and to the door on the other side, Axel froze. He turned, and dropped his gaze to the grave stones that littered the room, scanning down numerically.
His anti-freeze green eyes came to a stop on Eight's statue, and his throat tightened up.
Demyx was dead.
And in the back of his mind, Axel remembered that the last thing he had said to the sitarist… was that he was temporary. That he didn't matter.
It was a little sickening how irony could be some times.