This is just a series of oneshots and drabbles based on the music I listen to. I wrote this first one as a sort of practice and it's just sort of branched from there and now that I have like 6 of these written I thought there is no point in me keeping them to myself. For the most part they are all going to be completely separate stories unless I decide I want to continue in a specific au or if you guys want to know more about one. Sequels/prequels won't necessarily have their own song.
Disclaimer for the whole story because I am too lazy and forgetful to do one each chapter: I do not own any of the characters or the songs. If somewhere along the way I do in fact own them, I'll let you know...
Lazy Afternoons (this one is specifically based on the piano cover by kylelandry on youtube.)
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Axel loved the days that Roxas would play the piano. He loved to watch his finger dance across the keys, sometimes flying down the line in a quick, joyful tune that would put a spring in your step and would simply beg to be whistled or hummed during the most mundane activities of your afternoons, and sometimes slowly plunking down the keys, drawing out a melancholy piece that would sink into your soul and rest there for the remainder of the day.
He loved to hear a story spelled out in the few letters that shouldn't be able to put even a simple sentence together, yet they could tell you the life story of some long forgotten hero who died at the foot of the tower, flames consuming the heart he hoped to gift the beautiful princess with.
More than anything he loved to see the boy, who had once told him he couldn't feel his own heart beating in his chest, feel something. The boy who was so numb to the world he didn't know how to smile, who had spent all of his existence till the age of 18 slaving away to simply survive the trials the world had thrown his way. To see that boy pour the emotions he was only just now learning he even had into the keys of a piano was something that was so overwhelming Axel sometimes wondered if his heart wouldn't just explode from the gravity of it all.
That was exactly what that lost boy was doing now, sitting at the used and abused old baby grand piano, with faded letters that spelled out a company that no longer existed and had scratches along the side that Axel himself had done when he was too young to understand what carving his name – misspelled as "Axl" in the unpracticed scrawl of a child – into the old piano really meant. The sunlight shone in through the windows that said piano was once carefully brought through when Axel discovered Roxas's interest in the instrument with hidden strings and keys that seemed to create beautiful noise from nothingness.
Roxas's fingers drifted over the keys in a tune that brought memories of ice cream after school with his friends back to Axel; memories of "accidentally" setting evil old Mrs. Park's desk on fire after she failed the whole class on a test they were never supposed to take in the first place; memories of losing all of his lunch money for the week playing cards with Luxord behind the school while they should have been taking notes on the Russian Revolution. But there was something beneath those memories of high school that could be heard in the way Roxas's fingers plunked along the keys; a bitterness that was slowly turning to sorrow as his fingers grew heavier and heavier on the frail keys and the sounds echoed through the room, sending shivers down Axel's spine. And when his fingers played the tune so lightly, so filled with deep emotion Axel felt his heart wrench at the sorrow played out on keys he once used to butcher Mary Had a Little Lamb with, before growing heavy again, so heavy Axel could feel the weight pressing down on his thin shoulders and he feared he would collapse there listening to what could only be the most beautiful thing those worn keys had produced.
As the last notes rang through the room, clinging to the withering flowers in that vase on the table, Roxas slowly took his fingers off the keys once he was sure he had milked all the sound from each one and pulled the pencil from behind his ear to jot notes on the sheet music before him.
"That was beautiful Roxas," Axel said once he was able to pull himself out from under the crushing weight of what he had just listened to. "Is it new?"
Roxas nodded as he quickly finished writing down the last few changes he wanted to make on his newest piece. "Yeah, this was the first time I've played it all the way through. I think I finally got the chords right."
"Does it have a name yet?" Axel always asked that when Roxas finished a new piece, for sometimes it was the only window into Roxas's thoughts he would get before Roxas felt he was ready to share what he was thinking.
"Lazy Afternoons." He replied, tucking the pencil behind his ear, finally satisfied, and turning to look out the large windows into the garden below that Roxas had started to help take care of since Axel's friend Marluxia could no longer come by every day after moving into his own home.
Axel nodded, coming over to sit beside Roxas on the old piano bench. That fit the nostalgia that overtook Axel when Roxas had first started the piece, but… "Why did it sound so… sad? Aren't lazy afternoons supposed to be happy, where you waste away the time doing nothing with your friends?"
And that was when Roxas turned to Axel for the first time since Axel had entered the room, his electric blue eyes reflecting the sorrow that was crushing Axel not moments ago. "I never had a lazy afternoon."
