I. Resplendence.
Tender, tatterdemalion hearts on a tasteless, twelve o'clock day. He number one should like very much to waste a quiet while on a park bench in melodrama, deliquescing under a cascade of skeletal leaves; He number two is in the interest of counting cracks in a transversal trail of cement, which so leads Him by way of manifest destiny to one such homely bench in the park on that very tasteless, twelve o'clock day, or perhaps a few minutes after.
'I'm not so fond of smoke, if you don't mind,' interjects He number one with all the scraped and summoned city nastiness He can muster on the spot, which is not nearly enough to merit more than a molecule of significance. He number two does not respond likewise; au contraire, His thin, chapped lips only crack and bleed into a cheshire grin, and the cigarette is put away under a thick-soled boot.
'Good thing I don't mind,' says He number two in a predictable manner, twitch of the shoulder and tenacious tenor in all. He has just the sly of the eyes, the slide of the hands, to initiate the stirrings of a scowl on the contumacious countenance of His unknowing counterpart.
'Colleagues in crime,' continues the second man in His mercurial mantra, hypnotic and beguiling with acidic eyes. 'Think we could pull it off?'
'Red's not my color,' is the other's shorthand response. In compliance with Newton's law, He number two promptly rakes blackened claws through a scandalously scarlet mane that puts Him in place with the season; simultaneously, He extends an invitation to hear its declination and walks away with laughter in His Mouth and on His Face.
II. Microfiche.
The embraces were hot, and not just in the sexy way, but in the way that made Roxas want to fall, fall, fall, deeper into the burn until it diluted the icy rush of cold air through his veins. It was like...getting dressed in the laundry room, just to feel the warmth of freshly dried cotton on his morning-cold skin; like crawling half-way into the dryer just to nestle amongst the socks at five o'clock in February. And Axel would close his heat around them and put their faces together so he could stare into sharp, shallow vanilla-sky eyes until they felt like kissing or fucking or going to sleep.
Not that Roxas really knew what freshly dried cotton felt like.
Axel was hotter than his skin, curled up in a pile of embers and ash when he went dormant. Roxas put himself against that warmth, his darkness awash across Axel's fiery back in his intuitive desire to consume. Their breath laced together in a tangle of temperatures, but there would be only nothing, nothing, and nothing more.
-- It's out.
III. The Endangered Man.
He only really lives to pass the time, you know. To shorten the shrinking canvas spread of his life, like a candle. He sits by himself on a park bench pedestal without any fanfare for the efforts he once labored. He has forgone any of the significance he once allowed himself; he has relinquished his former influence on fate, fact, and every other arbitrary fairytale that the blind men or the blindness of Man uphold as reality. Reality is as much a religion as God, maybe bigger, and he is the greatest disbeliever of them all. He cradles the wishing hooks in the pocket of his long, dark coat, no longer anchoring him by any lifeline. He just flickers in his glass encasement, like a candle.