Promises
A/N: I wrote this over a year ago but I've been too busy to post anything new for Akuroku day. Plus I won't be on here tomorrow so have it a day early~ So... enjoy~!
Promises. Promises, promises, promises. A yellow house by the beach. A promise to stop drinking. A promise to be home more, but when he was home he was always agitated and had to have a drink in his hand. He was a firefighter. The man with fire red hair was a firefighter, and the best at it. He could read where the flames were going, and he had seen more than one person die in those flames that were hauntingly beautiful. He found the bodies when they walked through to find survivors. There were kids, burned to a crisp, and others covering their mouths, dead from the smoke before the flames had gotten to them and cooked their flesh. Others started fires deliberately to kill themselves.
"Roxas," Axel's voice cracked and he slurred the name. The redhead was working on being a detective for these sorts of things – determining if the fire had been foul play. Maybe he'd stop drinking and wasting hard earned money on the liquid courage that only made his mind numb so he could talk about things with the blond. "She – this woman – didn't know we were there. Sh-She jumped out the window with her baby so they wouldn't be killed by the flames. I watched them hit the ground." They lived in something that wasn't just suburbs or the city. The buildings didn't end abruptly, but the size trickled down to the size of small apartment buildings and houses. A yellow house by the beach. It was their dream, but both of their jobs required they be in or near the city at all times, so the dream wouldn't come true for years unless they retired.
Axel finished off the can and crunched it in his hands before throwing it in the recycle, tossing it across the room and missing it by quite a bit. That hadn't been his first beer, and it showed with the amount of cans littering around the recycle bin, the silver cans getting farther away the worse his perception got, but he always thought he got it and let out a small yes under his breath. "I love you." He aimed to kiss Roxas's lips but ended up kissing the corner of his eye instead. "I'm going to bed." And he stumbled up the stairs.
Roxas wouldn't admit it, but he was worried. He had asked Axel to stop drinking during the beginning of it all, but when he saw Axel that first week without a can in the other's hand and how he reacted, Roxas couldn't stand it and actually walked up to Axel one day to give the redhead a beer. It was pathetic and it tore at Roxas's heart strings. The blond only had to deal with the after math and that's why he didn't fall into using the depressant like his life partner. Roxas only had to deal with them when their hearts were stopped and bodies cold, a bullet in their bodies, or drugs in their systems, or old age having destroyed their bodies – anything. He couldn't imagine how it was to see them die in front of his eyes, so he didn't keep Axel from his drinking anymore. "Remember the promise." Roxas mumbled under his breath as he heard Axel flop onto the mattress heavily, his soft, drunk snores trickling out of the door that the redhead forgot to close to their shared bedroom.
The promise. Axel forgot at times. A yellow house by the beach. A happy color with the relaxing sound of waves and children laughing as they built sandcastles. Them begging their parents for money as the sound of the ice cream truck came closer. The sight of the dolphins jumping and bobbing when the beach was quiet and it was near sunset. A promise. It was hope. It was hope that they'd make it through their tough jobs and finally be able to focus on something other than death. A promise that pulled them through all of the hard times.