Love Song for No One
Crossroads. That's where they were at. The crossroads. And between the three of them, they weren't sure if they could go any further. (Axel, Roxas, Demyx)
Author's Note: Wow. I'm on a writing spree. I had to get this one out of my system. It got stuck in my head and refused to get out. It's a pretty short one-shot. And it's angsty. You could say that it sort of revolves around the lives of three friends who've messed up in one way or another.
Anyway, I dedicate this to all my readers. Yeah, this means you.
He takes an insignificant, tentative step towards the bathroom, stops midway, thinks better of it. Fists clench by his sides, nails dig into palms. He runs a dry tongue over swollen lips, bruised and bitten and red, so awfully familiar the morning after. He faces it for all but twenty-nine seconds. The light sounds of running water and the white wisps of steam wafts out from behind the grey-painted door. Sighing, he grabs his coat, turns on his heel and walks out of the bedroom and out of the vaguely familiar apartment instead. There was something here, and there was nothing here. He could've stayed. He doesn't think he wants to. After all, he never does. It's always nothing more than a one night stand anyways. No strings attached. Just the sex, that's it.
He glances at his watch – he's not surprised he's kept it on all night whilst they'd been fucking under the sheets – it's noon. Well, shit. He has a half hour to get down to Roxas' place. Shit. Where the fuck did the time go?
There's blood everywhere. Everywhere. Something like fire burns all down his wrists. He doesn't care. The blade clatters to the floor and he counts to ten, thirteen, twenty, before he blindly gropes for the towel on the kitchen bench and holds it against his wrist. Red droplets dribble down the length of his arm. His eyes are shut and he presses the cloth deep into his skin. An inaudible hiss escapes him, but he welcomes the throbbing hurt. His shirt is smeared with miniscule stains of crimson, like many of the shirts on the ground in his laundry room.
A minute later, he feels nothing but numb deadness and scowls deeply. He lets loose a low growl of dissatisfaction at the lack of sensation buzzing through his nerves and wonders if it would be worth it to draw another line of dark red down his arm with the knife. He looks down and toes the blade with his foot. The smell of copper and raw meat assaults him. The towel is now soaked with blood. He swears. He would have to throw it out. He's already disposed of seven of them.
His hazy eyes travel to the clock mounted on the microwave oven. He swears again. Twenty minutes. Twenty fucking minutes. He bends down and retrieves the knife and throws it into the sink. Twenty fucking minutes to clean the mess and hide the fucking shirt tainted with his blood. Twenty fucking minutes to find a way to cover up the deep slash marks. Twenty fucking minutes to defrost the three-quarts of pizza in his freezer.
He flings his guitar into the wall with all the strength he can muster. It snaps into two with a loud crash. The only things holding the two varnished wooden pieces together are the strings of thin steel. Something like a thousand tears have poured down his face and his room is littered with ripped up manuscripts and shredded music books. He screams and he cries and he doesn't know what to do, so he curls up into a ball at the foot of his bed and hugs his knees close, rocks back and forth and sobs. His entire body trembles and quivers uncontrollably. He mentally curses his inability to say the right thing. Say the right thing, say the right thing. His phone lies still on the ground where he'd dropped it almost an hour ago. He replays the very last conversation in his mind just one more time. Just one more time, just one more time in a million.
He's dead, you know? He's dead. Zex is dead.
Why the hell would I care? He never loved me. He fucking turned me down for that abusive prick.
Demyx, he got run over by his lover. He died on the spot.
Fuck that. Serves him right. He never loved me, Larx. And I never loved him.
He rocks back and forth, head resting against his knees. He whimpers hysterically, feels another wave of wetness slide past his lashes and down his cheeks. It was a lie, he assures himself desperately. A slip of the tongue. It was a lie. Because he did love him. He still does. Even though he's dead now.
The phone screams at him out of the blue. And he recalls that he put in a reminder the day before. The day before. He sits there, smirking wryly to himself. The day before. And he's unsure as to why he's smirking to himself in the first place. He wonders if he hasn't already gone insane. It's still screaming at him. He reaches out, rereads the reminder, shuts it up. Then he throws it against his white-washed wall, where it lands atop the jumble and chaos of the shattered guitar. Ten minutes. He has ten minutes.
He gets up from the ground shakily, his mind oddly anaesthetized and empty, apart from the words of the reminder that seems to now be branded into his memory.
12:30PM. Roxas' place for lunch.
The door creaks open. Roxas knows he's left it unlocked. The other two knows he usually does this. It's Demyx who walks in first. Demyx is always the early one. He lives a block away. It never takes him very long to get to Roxas'. His sea-green eyes are still puffy and swollen and tinged red from crying. Roxas sees the thin trails of dry tears. But he doesn't ask. He knows that the man will tell him everything. Eventually. He beckons for the musician to take a seat at the lounge, but he takes care not to look him directly in the eye. Demyx doesn't ask why Roxas is wearing a black jumper with the sleeves rolled down in his apartment when it's the middle of summer. Demyx doesn't think he wants to know. Demyx notices how he avoids eye contact.
Demyx smells blood.
Two seconds later, there's a knock at the door. The two blonds both wonder at the same time how and when the redhead had finally learnt the mannerisms of politeness. Axel walks in after that without confirmation and they dismiss their momentary speculations in unison.
He looks tired. His red spikes are drooping around his ears and falling into his eyes. He looks as if he's just stepped off the streets after living a vagabond's life. Roxas sniffs disdainfully and shakes his head, knowing full well that the man had been at it again. His usual business. Sleeping around.
"Sit the fuck down," he snaps, eyes flashing wildly.
Axel only nods, driving his fingers through his hair, and joins Demyx.
And Roxas all but leaves his two older companions in the living room while he grabs the leftover pizza from the oven.
"I hope you assholes like Hawaiian."
Two minutes into lunch and Roxas feels faint and dizzy. The sunlight streaming through the windows seem a lot brighter to him. His retinas burn with fire.
Three minutes into lunch and Demyx has stopped talking altogether, retreating into himself ascetically like the world has ended.
Four minutes into lunch and Axel starts yelling at them to say something, anything please because even though he's sitting among his two best friends, he is starting to feel so goddamn fucking lonely.
Five minutes into lunch and Roxas slumps forward, slips off the chair and passes out.
And then everything gets out of hand. Demyx screams in terror and dread as something like unwanted déjà vu hits him like a bus, and Axel calls the ambulance and hollers into the phone at the stupid lady to hurry the fuck up, and Roxas just lies there on the floor, unconscious.
They find the sloppily-dressed cuts on the underside of his arms, bandages peeling and soaked through with darkened cherry-red blood, and they tell him that they're keeping him in hospital overnight. He argues with them, says he's fine and that he doesn't need any goddamn anti-depressants because he's not goddamn fucking depressed. Axel and Demyx realise then how bad a liar Roxas can be.
They tell him he's lost a lot of blood and that it's best to stay where they can keep an eye on him. He starts a row with the hospital staff and threatens them with a court order for false imprisonment. Axel and Demyx tells him he should just shut the hell up and sleep. Roxas doesn't know why they're siding with them. Weren't they his friends?
He listens to them anyway, and shuts up and drifts off to sleep.
Demyx has nothing else to worry about now apart from Roxas. He doesn't think about lost love, doesn't wallow in deep self-pity and angst. He thinks about his friend. The only thing plaguing his mind is the fact that Roxas had been so close to dying today. That fact is all that's on his mind right now.
Axel doesn't go home that night to pick up tramps along the way to screw around with. He stays with Roxas. Stays by his bedside and watches him through his acid green eyes.
Roxas doesn't have to wonder why he's finding it so hard to fall asleep in the pale darkness.
He knows Axel will be up all night, just watching him with his burning eyes.
The next day, after Roxas is discharged from hospital, they sit together at a small round table under the blue-and-white striped sails of a rundown café.
"What the fuck is wrong with you?"
It's Axel who confronts Roxas first. He's managed to say nothing to the blond all night. There's only so much silence he's willing to take.
It's Roxas who glares back.
"Me? What the fuck is wrong with you?"
Axel wants to strangle the blond. Demyx speaks up for the first time in hours.
"Hey, guys? I think we've all established that we've all got something wrong with us."
That night, back in Roxas' apartment, all three confess the nature of the discord in their lives.
Demyx is the first to declare out loud that he doesn't much care anymore. He tells them it's over. And that it's time to move on.
Axel doesn't even understand his own problem. He admits that he's starting to get tired of pointless one night stands and meaningless sex. But he doesn't understand why. Why the hell is he finding a problem with it? He really doesn't understand.
Roxas wonders whether it was worth cutting his own arm up for someone who didn't even understand his own problem.
He tells Axel to get the fuck out of his apartment.
Demyx stays the night with Roxas in his arms, whispering into his ear over and over again that he understands. He understands. He understands.
Five days later, Demyx attends Zexion's funeral. He feels nothing but an emptiness in his chest.
Roxas pretends he's found someone special to take the place of the other whom he hasn't spoken to in five days. She isn't even all that pretty. But at least she has red hair. But damn those crystal blue eyes.
Axel doesn't know why Roxas isn't speaking to him. Axel doesn't know why Demyx doesn't want him to go anywhere near Roxas. Axel hasn't left his own house in five days.
Three weeks and Roxas wonders where the hell Demyx is. They hadn't seen each other in all that time.
Three weeks and Roxas wonders where the hell Axel is. But it's not like he wants to see him.
Three weeks and Roxas is dumped by his girl.
Three weeks and Roxas wonders what he's doing wrong.
Five weeks later, early in the morning, he gets a call. It's Axel.
"Rox… Demyx is dead."
Drug overdose, the redhead tells him.
And despite this, Roxas still has the mind to tell himself that after all this time, he really misses Axel's voice.
And then he grabs the coffee mug he'd been drinking from and smashes it against a wall. And he breaks down crying.
All things considered, the only thing really holding him together at this point in time is Axel's voice over the phone.
That night, it's nothing like any other night. Nothing like every other night. They meet on the rooftops of Roxas' apartment building, stars overhead, wind billowing through their hair and snaring their coats. Roxas gets there first, Axel only arrives fifteen minutes late. Roxas hears him approach but doesn't turn to look at the redhead, just continues leaning against the edge of the low balustrade, looking over the city lights down below.
The blond doesn't even react when he feels Axel wrap his arms around him from behind. Blood red hair brushes against his neck and Roxas hears the quiet whisper in his ear, low and gentle.
"You okay?"
"No. You?"
Axel tightens his hold on Roxas almost protectively before replying.
"No."
Roxas sighs, blows a strand of his blond hair out of his eyes. "… Well," he thinks for a moment, but his mind draws a blank. "Fuck."
"Can't."
The blond frowns, not understanding the reply. "What?"
"Can't," Axel repeats. "Tired of fucking."
"Oh."
They remain like that on the rooftop for a long while, Roxas staring out at the stream of twinkling lights of the metropolis, and Axel draped over Roxas as though he believes the blond would jump over the edge and kill himself if he let go.
They say nothing. Until Roxas moves and Axel has no choice but to step back. Roxas heads back towards the stairwell. He wants to head back to his apartment. He wants to drown himself in hot chocolate and ice cream and curl up in front of the television and fall asleep and not think about suicide and drugs and Demyx.
"Wait, Roxas. Don't go. Please."
Roxas doesn't stop. He doesn't stop for the sake of Axel.
"Roxas. Demyx told me. About you."
This time, Roxas does stop.
Axel continues quickly. "Before he died, he spoke to me and told me about you. About why you did what you did two months ago. The cutting. I… I think I understand now."
Roxas shuts his eyes resignedly. "That was a long time ago, Axel." His voice isn't hard or rigid. It's just tired. Jaded.
"I know."
Roxas turns and regards the redhead warily. He frowns when he isn't able to read the expression on the face of his once-friend. Axel sounded desperate. Roxas doesn't understand why Axel sounded so desperate.
"I know," Axel says again. "But I'm wondering if… if you would let me… try. Let me try to rewind the… the… times I…" He hesitates for a few seconds, exhales in frustration, tries again. This time, his voice is barely audible.
"Could you give me one last chance, Roxas? Please?"
Roxas doesn't know what to say. So he just stares at the redhead blankly.
Something like a minute passes between them. Axel's face falls.
"I guess that's a no," he mutters. "Never mind then. Never expected you to forgive me. I'm real sorry. I guess. You're right not to give me another chance. I was a complete selfish bastard. I mean, I must've been fucking blind not to see… Not to… God, I think… I think I'll just go home now… I'm sorry, Rox… I really am. But don't forgive me. I don't deserve—"
"Axel?" Roxas sighs. "Shut the fuck up. I'm freezing out here. So if you don't hurry the fuck up, I'm leaving. And you won't get to stay over."
Axel shuts the fuck up. He looks into Roxas' eyes for the first time that night. There's something like absolution in those pools of blue. He glances down and realises that the blond is beckoning for him to follow. And so, he accompanies Roxas back to his apartment. He never once expected the invitation, but it doesn't matter now.
He doesn't need to ask to know that Roxas has forgiven him.
Author's Note: That was perhaps one of the most oddly-styled one-shots I've ever written. Character death much? :( Zexion and Demyx both! Jeez. Life is cruel.
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