Notes: Hurray! It's the grand finale. Or something pretending to be such. For ninja butterfliie. It's unfairly hard to write these three. Every scene somehow demands lots of really kinky sex, and jeez, it's very distracting.
Nearing Detonation
Roxas comes home too late. He has to shake her twice until she's really awake, and sitting up in the bed they share when they're both around, and his kiss tastes a lot like smoke. He says, "Someone sort of followed me home."
For a minute her spine goes hard, because she thinks he means a girl, but she eases back when she hears the man's voice, drawling and sarcastic and insulting her furniture, her shitty little television.
"Is he staying?" she asks him and can only see bits and pieces of his face in the gloom, and so she can't really tell what he's thinking when he says, just for tonight.
His name is Axel, and he is still there at breakfast. Kairi scratches some hair back from her face and squishes up her nose and ignores him. He doesn't offer the same courtesy.
"So like, do you people ever eat, or am I expected to live off this crap?" he gestures to the contents of her open refrigerator. Kairi rubs at the hollows under her eyes and trips into the counter, slumps over it.
"Where's Roxas?" she asks distractedly. Her nail polish is chipping. He sits across from her and stares at her intently. Her knees nudge together.
"I don't know. Do you want to get some coffee or something?"
Kairi frowns at him briefly, thinks that it's not her job to clean up Roxas' messes, and finds herself heading back to her bedroom, reaching for a skirt, "Yeah, alright."
She gets home from work and finds the two of them on the couch, sitting side by side and Roxas' hands are already half-way back to himself. She blinks and throws her stuff onto the counter, struggles out of her shoes. "What're you watching."
Neither of them say anything for a very long time. When she turns around Roxas is studying the screen sort of frantically and Axel is staring at her, entirely too smug. She feels a little bit sick.
"Commercials?" Roxas says hopefully, and she shuts the door to her room a bit more forcefully than she really needs to.
Axel isn't there when she wakes up, and she begins thinking that she's safe. Roxas is sort of blank, and won't get off the couch when she tries to wake him up, so she gives up and makes herself toast. He wanders over pitifully when she's spreading the jam, and she gives him several pieces.
The silence is very calming, she finds, and she doesn't mind forgiving him. He's still her—she doesn't want to say boyfriend, it's such an awkward word, but she supposes that's what he is, anyway.
"Kairi," he says suddenly. His voice is low and raspy and broken, and she moves in to put her hands over his forehead, because he sounds wrong somehow, sick, and puts his arms around and her, and cries into her hair.
She doesn't know why.
Axel doesn't show up for a week, and Roxas is so pale she'd have taken him to the hospital, if they had the money. So one day she does something stupid, something extreme, and follows him to work, running as fast as she can to keep up with his skateboard.
It is surprisingly easy to find someone.
"Hello, sweetheart," Axel says teasingly, looking up at her with a quirked smile. When she asks, he shows her his switchblade, his lighters, gasoline. He doesn't say what he does during the day, just gives her a dangerous kind of smile daring her to ask again, and she doesn't.
"Roxas misses you," she admits woodenly. It hurts to say it. Axel laughs viciously, frightfully, and shakes his head.
"You have no fucking idea," he says, and gives an open lipped kiss to the inside of her wrist so fast, so hot, her head spins. She steps back. She's a little bit scared.
"What happened?" she asks slowly, scuffles her feet into the concrete, keeps one ear out for sirens, for danger.
"He decided he needed you more than he does me," Axel says hatefully, and gives her a burning look. She swallows, and he laughs. "Aw, don't look so scared. I'm not mad at you, just him, for being so stupid."
"I should go," Kairi says, and is already half way gone, and wanting more.
She ends up dragging Roxas to a place she knows Axel will be, stealing his wallet and abandoning him. He calls her twice, from various payphones with the money he bummed off strangers, sounding tight and angry and yelling this isn't funny, I know what you're trying to do Kairi, and it's not going to work.
She refuses to listen. He walks fifty two blocks to get back home, and stands sullenly in the doorway and asks her bitingly if she'd like his keys too. They don't speak to one another until Kairi snaps and starts sniffling and he ends up running his fingers through her hair and asking her, sort of tiredly, if she'd please just stop and I love you.
It takes her another week to figure out that it's not that she wants Axel back so Roxas will be better. Well, it is in part, but she'd be lying if that was the extent of her justifications.
"Didn't your mother tell you not to talk to guys like me?" he whispers into her ear, with the alley at her back, and all kinds of painful. Her eyes are closed. She doesn't want to admit to this craving.
"Please," she says, "Please, he's miserable, and I can't—" she's so frustrated she's almost crying, hasn't slept, "I can't fix it."
"I don't fix things." He mocks, "Just look at me with my broken heart."
He starts slipping up her shirt, fingers wicked and long and she manages to open her eyes, to tantalize with danger. "Why's that?"
"Well for one thing," he says into her collar, "There are these two people too wrapped up in one another to even notice me."
She breaks away and runs.
"Do you miss him?" she asks, and Roxas denies it so quickly she knows even he's got himself convinced. She goes and makes copies to the key for the front door, and throws them at Axel's feet.
"Fine," she says, and wants to cry. "Fine. You win. You can have him."
Axel looks up her whole body before staring intently into her eyes, and she feels just a little bit naked.
"Can I have you too?" he asks, and she wonders what her mother would say.
"I can't believe you," Roxas says from the other side of the door, and is refusing to let them in. Kairi seethes and burns and thinks that he's being an ungrateful brat, considering how many morals and fantasies and childhood dreams she's sacrificing for him. Axel keeps stealing looks at her and sniggering.
"Open the door, Roxas," she yells, kicks at it, and is not appeased at his cold silence. The landlady's already yelled at them to keep it down. "Open the stupid—"
"Don't be such a girl," Axel says from behind her, "Or I'm taking Kairi to a hotel and you're not invited."
"Don't just decide things without consulting me," Kairi snaps at him darkly, and turns around to find the door opened and Roxas glaring darkly.
"She's my girlfriend," he insists petulantly, and glares harder when Axel smirks at him slowly.
"It's sort of a two in one deal."
Kairi hides her face in her hands when the land lady roars at them to keep their sexual innuendos out of the hallway, and lets herself be drawn inside.