Title: Fragile Future
Rating: M
Pairings, if any: AxelRoxasAxel
Summary: Those who sit on the highest pedestal always fall the furthest and hardest.
Word Count: 3545
Warnings: Porn. Axel/Roxas/Axel.
A/N: This is for A Spot Of Bother, as both a thank you for putting up with me on AIM and being utterly awesome at writing/leaving lovely reviews, and because I really, really suck at making her icons.

-

They all return from missions okay, sometimes, and then there are other times when they return to the Castle bruised and broken, each dealing with it in their own way. Marluxia won't talk to anyone when he comes back from a mission in less than stellar condition; he goes to his garden and pushes his anger and his leftover adrenaline into his plants, feeding them energy and then sinking back into the ground. Axel has found him there on numerous occasions when he went searching; the blue-eyed Nobody sitting in the middle of his garden with his hands tangled in the vines.

Larxene, if a mission doesn't go according to plan, throws her energy at anything or anyone that she comes across, kunai hitting any available object as she wears herself out and then goes into her room and does it all over again until she feels better.

Demyx goes straight to his room and plays his sitar, the gentle noise humming through to Axel's room and half the time he just wants to strangle the musician because, honestly, the other two deal with a bad mission in a much more amusing and less irritating way. The other half of the time he sprawls out on his bed and just listens because there's not much else to do in that godforsaken place.

Axel comes back from a mission where things went awry and he knows exactly where to go. Depending on how pissed off he is, he either walks in to XIII's room using the door or he teleports in. Roxas gets irritated in return, both of his Keyblades snapping into his hands as he glares up at the redhead and purses his lips.

"Fucking knock sometimes," he always growls though they both know that he never will. Axel summons both his chakram and swings, knowing that Roxas will block, which is why he doesn't bother to slow or soften his strikes. Roxas' room has barely anything in it, only a bed and a closet for his clothes, so when Axel gets thrown into a wall, nothing gets broken.

Roxas glares at him and jerks back when Axel sweeps his leg out, catching the boy by surprise and he falls hard onto the ground while Axel stands up. He pushes himself up on his elbows, blue eyes narrowed as he clenches his Keyblades hard enough that his hands start to ache.

"Blizzard," he bites out, smug when Axel's eyes widen almost comically and he barely has time to summon a shield of heat to deflect the attack. Roxas pushes himself to his feet and slams the other Nobody into the ground, Keyblade pressed to a pale neck.

He grins up at Roxas, because this does make him feel better, just like the garden, the thunder, and the music do for the others. His muscles are sore, he's got bruises on his chest and shoulders, and he's exhausted, but all he can think is that XIII looks fucking hot when he stands above him like that, holding both of his Keyblades out and staring him down with bright blue eyes and cheeks flushed from a fight.

Roxas comes back from missions all the time and Axel has yet to see a scratch on the Superior's golden boy up until this point. He doesn't bother with the door, finding it too much trouble to waste the time and knock if there's a chance that Roxas will just tell him to go away. Stepping in, he glances about and then frowns when he sees blood on the floor and a torn Organization coat on the ground. Eyes narrowing, he starts toward the bathroom and looks in to find Roxas half-naked and bleeding all over the floor, clasping a strip of cloth to a ragged wound just over his heart.

"Shit," Axel whistles and draws Roxas' attention away from trying to bandage himself up, over to Axel himself. "Nice mess you got yourself into there, blondie. How'd you manage that?"

Roxas glares at him like he could make him disappear if he tried hard enough and so Axel only steps closer and pushes his hands out of the way. Another long whistle at all the bruises that scatter across pale skin and from the awkward lump at one point, Axel realizes that there's a broken bone of some kind and that's what's making Roxas breath in that kind of ragged, wet, choked way.

"Shit," he says again for emphasis and briefly wonders if he should ask what the hell kind of mission Roxas was on to get himself that beat up. Instead, he digs around in one of the cabinets and tries to find at least one of the hi-potions that each member had in their rooms in case of situations like this. There are at least ten, he realizes, and then remembers that he hadn't seen Roxas lose a fight yet so it makes sense that there would be a surplus of the glittering solutions.

The blond makes a small noise and kind of stumbles back, sitting hard on the porcelain toilet seat, his eyes big and blue and glassy as he watches Axel uncork one of the bottles with his teeth and then grab another one.

"Looks worse than it is," Roxas says, proud that his words only slur a little bit instead of how much he was afraid they would. Blood is sliding down his chest as he tries to reach for the cloth to staunch it again. Axel doesn't say anything, he only works on unzipping his coat and letting it drop to the floor in a heap, leaving him in his gloves, pants and shirt. A mocking little smile curls Roxas' lips when Axel shoves the potion at him and then the redhead pauses, squinting at him curiously.

"What the fuck happened, Roxas?" Axel growled, gripping Roxas' chin and forcing his thumb into the bruised flesh of Roxas' jaw to get him to open his mouth. "This wasn't a normal mission, was it?"

"Who am I? Who was I?" He asks tiredly instead and nods when Axel freezes up, green eyes dark. Lifting one hand he holds the glass and then downs the potion with a face, slumping back against the wall.

"Yeah." Roxas presses a hand to his aching head and sighs when he can feel the throbbing through his entire body die down as the potion works its magic. "You aren't going to tell me, I know. I was out trying to find out. That's where I was."

Axel doesn't say anything for a long moment, simply watching the slender blond slumped against the wall, and he uncorks another potion with a quick flick of his fingers. The cork falls to the ground and rolls against the marble, but neither of them pay any attention to it. Axel presses the potion to Roxas' lips hard enough that it clinks against his teeth but he only glares and threatens to do it again if Roxas doesn't just swallow it already.

A second swallow of the disgusting liquid, followed by a third made the cut knit together and the majority of the nasty purple-blue bruises fade into smaller, less nasty looking ones. One hand over the broken rib, Axel is relieved to find that it was sliding back into place. Roxas' eyes are still unfocused slightly and suspiciously Axel puts a hand to the back of the blond's head and finds it tacky with blood as well. He's probably got a concussion, he thinks with disgust.

"Up. Come on," Axel tugs at the boy's arms once the potion is done and starts to work on getting the shower ready. "You look like shit, kid. You went against that brat that's been sneaking around there, didn't you?"

Roxas does not say anything, instead choosing to slip out of his clothes one by one, uncaring about his nakedness as he reaches in to test the water of the shower. A final glance and then an "I'm fine. Stop worrying about it." He steps in and jerks the curtain closed while Axel rolls his eyes and mutters something under his breath, not bothering to pick up the blood-stained clothes; instead, he just kicks them out to where there seems to be a small pile of dirty clothes. Good enough.

Heading over to the window, he stares out at the glowing mockery of the moon and slouches against the wall, taking in the flashes of light and the low rumble of thunder as a storm rolls in. How long he stands there he's not sure, but finally he hears the shower putter off and then a few minutes later an exhausted, wet Roxas steps out of the bathroom and looks a little surprised to find VIII still there.

"Good shower, blondie?" Axel asks, not bothering to hide how he watches Roxas towel-dry his body with brisk, efficient moves and then goes digging for something to wear. The red-brown tint from the blood is gone from his hair, thankfully, leaving it a mass of soft, dripping blond half-hidden by the towel. "Who was it?"

"Who am I?" Roxas asks in return, pulling on comfortable clothes and then padding back to where Axel was still leaning against the window, his attention still turned out to the murky sky once more. Sighing, Roxas drags the towel through his hair one more time and then tosses it in the general direction of the pile of laundry. On the other side of the window, Roxas presses his forehead to the glass and just looks up at the floating, fake moon that represents what they all want and he turns his attention back down to the depths of the castle he would (would if he could but he can't) love and hate.

"Lovely weather we're having," Axel drawls sarcastically and then moves closer so he's standing behind Roxas, just far enough away where he knows Roxas can feel the heat of the his body, but they're not yet touching. "Riku?" He says it with such nonchalance that Roxas doesn't quite understand the significance of the name until it hits him. Roxas jerks around, ice-blue eyes wide with shocked, and then he scowls with realization.

"You know who he is," he says with disgust. VIII shrugs elegantly, pressing Roxas against the window and holding his hands on either side of Roxas' head. "I'm going to find out, even if you won't tell me. I'll find out and-" he trails off and turns his attention to the ground. "You know why he's here, too, don't you?"

"Does it matter?" Axel spreads his hands out and shrugs. "He's here to save someone he cares for and he's willing to do whatever it takes for him to do that. He doesn't even seem to care that he's likely to become a martyr for what he wants. The single-minded determination is admirable perhaps, but so stupid."

Roxas tilts his head back against Axel's bony shoulder and decides not to comment on Riku anymore. "I'm not staying here."

Instead of the fiery protest that XIII expects, he gets a soft noise and a nod. "I figured," Axel says indifferently, kisses the top of Roxas' head and Roxas finds his eyes closing because the humanity in that gesture makes his chest burn in a way that Riku breaking his ribs couldn't do. "Look at me."

Roxas does, slowly and then sighs when Axel ducks down and seals their lips together, biting at his bottom lip a little too hard but it only makes Roxas shift closer and kiss back with ragged little noises escaping both of them. Then they're stumbling back to the bed, Axel's hands slipping under his pants and cupping his bare ass, fingers sliding teasingly and Roxas jerks back with a bite to Axel's jaw. Grinning at the positively feral look in Roxas' eyes, Axel picks the slender boy up and tosses him gently onto the bed, knowing that after two hi-potions, he's not going to break with a little manhandling.

As he covers Roxas' body with his own, one hand palming the erection he felt against his thigh earlier and the other tangled in Roxas' still-damp hair, he grins when Roxas pulls back again.

"We're doing it like this," Roxas says breathlessly and rolls them over so he's the one on top. Breath catching, he makes a soft noise when Axel tugs on his hair just hard enough to sting at the same time as he curls bared fingers around his erection. "Shi- Axel."

Axel shifts his weight and rolls the blond, forcing him down and holding his hips tightly. "Are we, now?" Axel says in this delicious purr that makes Roxas moan in the back of his throat and scrape his blunt fingernails across Axel's shoulders as he tries to hold onto something. Slender, deft fingers start to work on his pants; he jerks them down and curls a hand around his erection.

When the redhead bends down and licks the tip, Roxas bites his lip and shifts his weight, kneeing Axel away and jerking him up for another kiss, hands tangled in blood-red hair. Axel goes with it, swiping his thumb over the head and laughing shortly when Roxas sends him onto his back once more, forcing him down for a final time and rolling his hips against Axel's.

"I am," he says and Axel doesn't look pissed; instead it's vague, pleased pride that curls his lips and makes his eyes go dark. Roxas bends down, nipping at Axel's throat and rolling his hips in a soft grind against VIII's cloth-covered cock and vaguely realizes that if he had a heart he might really miss doing this when he leaves. Until then, however, he thinks, he's going to enjoy every last second of this. From the look in Axel's poison-green eyes, it occurs to him that the redhead felt how soft touches suddenly morphed into a kind of desperation, fingers curling into skin, all heat and wet and right and Roxas is glad that Axel won't say anything about it.

-

It's rare that they both stay in bed after they fuck; normally one of them is restless enough where they go and take a shower and then are gone after but sometimes they simply lounge about in bed. Axel likes to touch him absently when it's times like this, a hand over Roxas' not-heart, or slender fingers simply sliding over sweat-damp skin, partly because he knows it irritates the blond and partly because he wants to. Roxas isn't sure he cares either way, usually just putting up an annoyed facade when really, he's simply content to let Axel do as he wishes for a while until one of them tires of it or they just fall asleep.

Distantly, he thinks he should still be at least a little angry with the fact that Axel won't say anything about Riku or his own Somebody, but he refuses to be too irritated with the fact as it only increases his desire to know and that's something that he needs to keeps his drive. Outside the storm starts to rumble to a stop, simple flashes of lightning illuminating the room and making the shadows more pronounced.

Axel seems especially pale when the room lights up, Roxas muses as he threads his fingers through blood-red hair. With each flash of thunder, half-lidded green eyes light up and the sharp lines of Axel's collarbone become even sharper and he can see the little marks he left on the smooth column of his throat. Sliding his fingers down, he ghosts a touch over the marks and only raises an eyebrow in challenge when Axel lifts his eyes to regard him with a sleepy expression. "What?"

"Nothing," Axel answers, bites his shoulder affectionately and then splays his fingers over Roxas' stomach.

Roxas sighs softly and lets it go, watching the flashing of the lightning make the shadows on his wall dance and then falls asleep.

--

The room of "Chairs That Actually Were" as Axel liked to call it in that acidic, mocking tone of his, was where meetings were held for all the members, up until they started falling one by one. The chairs are almost half-empty now, their numbers scattered and Roxas finds he really doesn't care. He held no attachment to the members that had fallen, and when he had found out about Axel's betrayal of IV, he had simply shrugged it off, knowing that it was simply Axel.

Axel comes up behind him, his hands almost painfully hot against Roxas' bare arms without the leather to mask it. VIII knows that but doesn't really care and does it anyway.

"What are you looking at?" He whispers, pulling away a moment later, taking a seat on IV's chair with a wicked look in his green eyes.

Roxas sends him a dry look, not missing the wide, jagged smile like broken glass that's spread across the other man's lips. "The room," he said. "You're really quite smug after having killed IV."

Axel shrugs elegantly, sweeping his arms out and propping his legs up on the arms of the stone chair. "He had it coming." His eyes narrow and his voice drops. "Dead weight won't be tolerated here, you know that. Keep it in mind."

"I do," Roxas tosses back, his voice acidic.

Another shrug that clearly says Axel thought it needed to be said, and he slips out of the chair to start wandering around the room, sweeping his fingers over numbers, slashing his index finger across all the ones who have died.

"You're the last one," Axel says once as he comes to the thirteenth and final number on the chairs. It looks like he starts to trace his fingers in a slash across the mark, but instead he just draws a slight circle around it as Roxas draws near. "Number XIII."

Roxas says nothing, simply stands under the tallest one which is right beside I and looks up, half expecting Xemnas to appear. Axel moves closer and with hands like spiders he holds Roxas' shoulders and places his lips next to the blond's ear.

"Those with the highest pedestal fall the furthest," he smiled again, fake and wrong because he knows what he's implying. "And sometimes, all they need is a little push to break."

And he knows. He knows what Axel is talking about though the redhead has never had to say a word about what he truly meant. He'll end up overthrowing the castle if he's not careful, overthrowing or end up a fucking dusk because sometimes he doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut; subtlety wasn't always his strong-point.

"You'll kill me too?" Roxas asks quietly and Axel freezes from where he is standing. "If I become dead-weight? Or if I try to leave the Organization?"

Axel turns the blond around and smiles crookedly as he meets ice-blue eyes. "Xemnas'll have me be the one to kill you if you try. You know that."

He nods slightly, looking up at Axel under the fringe of his bangs. "Yeah. Can you do it? Could you- if you had to?"

The question makes Axel's eyes darken with anger and his fingers dig into Roxas' shoulders painfully. "Don't make me do it, Roxas," he hisses. "Don't fuck up and do something stupid because you know I'll do it no matter how much I like you."

Roxas does an odd little half-shrug and curls his fingers into the cloth over the place where Axel's heart once was, and laughs. "Good."

A frustrated noise escaped VIII as he pulled away from Roxas, hand over the XIII labeled on the stone chair.

Roxas knows what will happen if he decides to go in search of answers about who he was- who his Somebody is. He knows that Axel would try and stop him if he found out and he knows that Riku will do anything to not lose another battle. If Axel tries anything that could be seen as betrayal, Roxas knows that there's very good chance of him being turned into a Dusk.

Of course, Roxas amends as he watches the fire-manipulator rake his gloved fingers across the I engraved on the marble, another slash for good measure, he probably just doesn't care. If he leaves, then he's only setting the wheel in motion for their demise- for both them and the Organization. When Axel comes back, pressing a hand to the empty place in his heart, Roxas knows what he has to do.

-

Lol, I hate the title so much. Sooo much. Also, I've done what I swore to really never do- write AkuRoku. Not because I hate it or anything, it's just that I'm really not too confident in my ability to not fuck up their characters beyond all reason. Any pointers on characterization, on how I handled this/whatever would be lovely as it was a big experiment on my part. 3 Also, lol, pimping out to those of you who have LJs. I post all of my stuff on my LJ as well as posting things that will not end up here due to content or length. Check if out if you like- link is in profile.