It's hot.
I try to kick back the covers from myself and get a disgruntled grunt as my foot contacts with a leg, and an arm lazily thrown over me. Even hotter.
Axel is a furnace; he's curled around me, as many appendages as he can manage tangled with mine. It's too much; my skin is sticky with sweat where our naked bodies touch.
Running a hand down my face I recall last nights events. Getting up is going to be a bitch. I turn to the man beside me, blinking groggily. I brush my forefinger gently over the curve of his cheekbone and down the sharp angle of his chin. He sleeps with his mouth open, fully submerged in his pillow. The make-up he must have carefully applied now fucked, and his breath is on the side of rank, and I find myself smiling and thinking about how good he looks.
I must finally be losing it.
We fucked until early in the morning, moving to the cabin after it got to cold to continue under the stars. Then I suppose we fell asleep. Which is odd. I've been able to remember going to sleep since I was very small, willing myself to just shut off. I've never bee able to just sleep, no games, no counting, no recalling, no crying. No nightmares.
Maybe intense exercise is my key to a good nights sleep.
Carefully, I move Axels arm enough to wiggle out of his grasp and sit up. Ouch. It's worse then I thought it would be.
Oh. There are the blankets in a big wad in the corner. I stand my legs nearly jelly. How the fuck am I supposed to get back to the train station? Lots of prayer I guess.
I bend, trying to block out the pain, and tie a sheet around my waist, as I return to a standing position the boat tips. I freeze. Forget the station. How the fuck am I supposed to even get back to shore?
My face is only a glare directed at the tall bare-assed man still curled around where I once was. Taking me prisoner like this. I wonder if he planned it, if he knew that I would want to leave in the morning to avoid the awkward one night stand drop off. My stomach turns at the thought of a stereotypical 'morning after'. Morning after a good date. A date I would have catalogued as my best date until a better one came along.
But I have woken up. The fantasy shed and there is only the reality of what our night was. Part of me wants only to get back into bed, wake up next to him, what could happen? I wont do that. Cant do that.
Fucker. Morning after's are for lovers, and well, we are not that.
Stemming my annoyance I walk outside and breathe a sigh. Docked. Axel must have driven the boat back while I was sleeping. Though the idea that I didn't even stir baffles me. I wake up if Sora gets up to pee in the middle of the night, and his bathroom is on the other side of the apartment.
My clothes are in a tangle with Axels, much like our bodies once were, except for his shirt, which was lost to sea last night. I laugh to myself, but work quickly, dressing with practiced ease. My lower back is throbbing, but there are worse things.
"Who're you?" A female voice snaps through he rolling waves. I turn, shocked. On the dock there is a tall woman standing there with her arms crossed over his chest. She's wearing all black, and has equally long black hair that hangs loosely around her body. She's older, maybe forty, forty-five but beautiful. There's a mean look about her, a guard, that makes me instantly decide she isn't one of Axel's partners.
"Nobody. Who're you?"
"Tifa. Hot shot's manager." She's the one who turned when I ratted Axel out in the hospital. The one who thanked me. "This is where he goes to hide from me, like I don't know." Tifa saunters over to the door, making the motions like she's going to kick it in.
Time to go. I swing my leg over the side of the boat and I'm prepared to make my break for it when his manager says. "He's asleep?" As if that is shocking, it is god awful early in the morning. I shrug when she looks over at me from the corner of her eye.
"Its just that he doesn't sleep. Has nightmares." Sounds crazy close to my own predicament and I feel a pinch I cant explain. It's none of my business. Tifa sets me on edge the way she looks into the cabin. Her face has gained fondness, not like she's in love with Axel but just the simple purity of caring about someone. Really caring about them. About whether or not they get enough sleep.
Though, her expression changes as soon as she turns back to me, her gaze almost accusatory. I make to turn, our encounter long done but she says. "Need a ride?" Roping me back in to her presence once again.
"Sure," I say flippantly. I could use a ride.
Tifa hops out ahead of me, taller then I am. "This way, kiddo."
Bitch. I think, but stick my hands in my pockets and follow her. I really need a shower. I feel grubby, sticky in all the right places at the time, all the wrong places now—like my asshole being slick. No longer sexy.
Tifa leads me through the denser palm trees that hide a small parking lot, where two cars are parked. A flat black business looking car to which Tifa yanks open the driver's side and gets in unceremoniously waiting for me to do the same. The other is some high brand luxury car, painted bright purple.
Did he really have plans to take me home?
Like everything else in this morning after I feel shaken up once again by this new piece of information about Axels plans for me. Stirred with a slew of emotions I can hardly sort through. My heart picking up speed at each turn, each time I ask myself why.
I get into Tifa's car, and she promptly starts the car and turns out onto the highway, her blinker tick-tocking into our silence.
"Where to?" She asks.
"Twilight Town." I don't look at her. I look out the window, watching the posh Sunset Town fade away into blocks of color and shape.
"No shit," she says. "Where in Twilight Town?"
"I can make my way once were there."
"Okay," the silence drags. And then she says uncomfortably, shifting in her seat. "With Axel. I mean. This was probably…"
"Only a one time thing." I cut her off. "I know."
She furrows her brow, probably at me, but her eyes are on the road, only occasionally do they flicker to me.
"So why'd you go out with him? Just to say that you did?" She questions, angry ,short. As if I should have put more thought into having sex with Axel.
"I wont tell in anybody." I say. Its ridiculous, I'm sure some people would tell everyone they could. If I do make it, and it becomes known that I slept around for scouts I'm sure Id get offered a lot more in exchange for my body. I promised I'd never sell myself.
"Then why?" I can see her calculating, trying to figure out my angle. What I must want from Axel in exchange for the sex. It must be tiring to be his manager if she interrogates everyone he has sex with.
So I tell her the truth. "I Struggle."
"You Struggle?" Her eyebrows shoot right up. I only glare at her, my pride only slightly wounded, and more perturbed then wounded. It's the reaction I always get—from everyone except Axel. "Sorry. Sorry." Little laughs escape through her dismissive apology. "Which gym?"
"Cid's."
"Really?"
"Yes. Really."
"Cid's a friend of mine. You the kid with the beanie or the one with two bats?" What?
"Two bats." I say slowly. Cid talks about me? To people like Tifa who could make or break my career in a heartbeat. What Hayner would give to be sitting in a car with someone like her. I should try a little more.
Tifa turns off into Twilight Town, if she just keeps going she'll drive right by my complex and I wont have to take the trolley at all. And at this point, the less walking the better.
"Isn't there a match there today?"
My breath catches. I have a fight later on in the week, but it was nearly two days ago when I even thought about it. She's fucking right. My match. The match I need to win to pay my share of rent and a little of the kills I have left over is today in—I glance at the dashboard clock—a little less then two hours.
"Fuck," I say out loud, because that's what I am. Fucked, because I got fucked last night.
"Ill take that as a yes." Tifa smirks at me.
"Stop." I say, startling my driver she practically slams on the breaks. Were in front of my complex. I rush to get out of her car. I pause. Rude, Roxas. I bend down to look her in the face. "Thanks for the ride."
"No problem…" she trails as Axel did that first day I met him, an unspoken ask for proper identification.
"Roxas." Her face fills with recognition, which is weird. So far I'm the only person I met with my name and she's looking at me differently now.
"Roxas what?"
"Strife."
Tifa puckers. "Like Cloud Strife?"
"Yeah." I say, not wanting to elaborate. "I have to go."
"See you around, Roxas." And she drives away.
Truthfully, Strife is not my birth last name, not passed to me by those who came before meant for me to pass on to my children. Its what I named myself—after the Struggle fighter Cloud Strife. We look alike and as a kid who so desperately missed his brother. I thought it'd be nice if he was mine. Older, distant, but family.
Stairs are the invention of Satan. They must be. Why cant our building have an elevator. Because there are only two floors, you lazy piece of shit.
I limp up the stairs with a more effort then I would have liked on jelly legs. I slam my door behind me, and since that wasn't enough I call out. "Sora?"
No answer. Must be out.
Immediately I start a bath, pouring some of the muscle relaxing salts Sora has and pop a couple of pain meds. Though as the water is running I get an urge.
An unstable urge, a pulse alongside my heartbeat, compelling me to unearth my sketchbook and begin a drawing. The pages are frayed and misplaced, with dog-ears and lines of color. It's the only place I allow myself to be messy, to be free. So far it's only sketches for Hayner's cards, prototype after prototype until I get it just right.
I draw out a sketch of Axels face. The angular cheekbones, pointed chin, cat eyes. I try my best to capture his wild hair and cocky smile. I have him down almost to a T without a live model.
I return to the bathroom, catching the water as its about to overflow staring down at the image I've created.
What have I missed? There's something not quite right, but it's all there.
I smudge pencil over his blank cheekbones. There's noting there in real life but I feel like there should be.
I can't believe myself. I shut the sketchbook harshly—the only thing I should be focusing on is the match and I'm nowhere near ready.
~.~
Hey guys. Sorry it's been so long. I went on vacation and then bought Fallout 4. So. I haven't been getting much of anything done. Weee!
My musical recommendation is Blue Neighborhood.
So good.
