The sky had long turned into a dark indigo panel pierced by sporadic sprinkles of twinkling stars. Two men lounging on a rumpled bed were bathed in the soft glow of a nearby lamp. The only sounds of the room were soft breaths and whispers of impossibilities, improbabilities.

"Run away with me," Roxas murmured while nuzzling Axel's neck. His fingertips trailed over the side of his face, stroking softly up and down the redhead's cheek. "Be mine forever."

Axel smiled, "Where would we run away to?"

"I don't know…maybe Hawaii. I heard it's nice. Or maybe California, it is the golden state. Anywhere we want to go, as long as we're there together." The blond blinked slowly, blue eyes taking in every detail, every moment.

Something akin to remorse slid through Axel's expression. He took a quick glace at the clock across the room.

11:10 pm.

"Let's wish on it." Roxas glanced up at his obsession, fixation and fascination then slowly turned to watch the hands of time change. A hollow sigh sounded as the blond reburied his head into the crevice of Axel's head and shoulder to hide.

Hiding from the stars, from time, from fate, reality and from the facts.

I wish, I wish. Wishing that these problems would disappear,

Dissipate and evaporate.

Starlight, star bright,

First star I see tonight.

I wish I may, I wish I might,

Have this wish I wish tonight.

But when have my wishes ever come true? Never.

~o~o~o~o~

Larxene's parents wanted him hung by his fingernails on top of the wall of China for missing their scheduled dinner. And his parents were only filled with that disappointment that actually made him feel a teensy bit bad. But only a teensy bit.

Roxas had left earlier with a mixture of satisfaction and regretful sorrow on his angelic face. Attempting to hide his unease behind a rueful smile and promises of later plans.

Axel was, in two words, fucked up.

Roxas brought out feelings in him that were so strong he almost resented them, and it hurt. It hurt so damn much to refuse the blonde's desire.

It also hurt to be lying and cheating on someone he considered the closest friend he ever had. What the hell was wrong with him? He had so many chances to end it with Roxas, but his stupid and senseless heart wouldn't let him. The useless thing won't even let him tell Larxene the truth.

Fuck. Emotions.

And fuck my life.

~o~o~o~o~

Roxas was being racked with guilt and his conscience was battling his wants.

He wanted to be selfish, keep Axel to himself. Screw the consequences and anyone else who got in his way. He wanted to finally be happy.

Before Axel he had been going out every night, searching clubs, looking for love that wasn't there, getting caught up in lust he could find anywhere, and waking up just to be kicked out realizing that no one gave a shit about him. Roxas had been fed up with the blissful friends and family surrounding him, having what he couldn't.

He had been miserable.

Maybe unintentionally whoring himself out was a punishment he inflicted on himself because he wasn't strong enough to be happy on his own. Maybe his relationship with Axel was just another ocean of empty and broken promises, pain and suffering.

But…it felt different. It felt real. For the first time it felt real.

And Roxas refused to let it go until he knew.

For now, he was going to see Sora and maybe get his head unscrambled. Maybe mooch a little off of his brother's cooking too.

~o~o~o~o~

Maybe going to Sora's to lay his emotions on the metaphorical table had not been his greatest idea.

The brunette had been fussing over him for about an hour, few intermittent sentences of 'I told you!' and 'Are you okay?' and the very infrequent 'Ouch!' because Sora had been distracted by talking and touched a hot pan without any protection for his hand. He was fluttering around the kitchen like an ADD bird on LSD. Every second his face wasn't turned to what he was cooking, it twitched its way in Roxas' direction, sometimes with an expression of explicit disapproval and other times with a sadness bordering on pity.

Yeah. Not the blonde's best plan.

Finally Sora wound down and placed a pile of food on the kitchen counter, some kind of mishmash of pancakes, toast, and eggs, because Roxas loved breakfast for dinner. If food at nearly 1 AM counted as dinner. Whatever. He dug in to avoid responding to the soon forthcoming rant on morality and 'doing the right thing' spiel.

At first his brother just looked at him, food cooling on his plate. He would open his mouth and raise a finger, furrow his brows a bit, then totally deflate before glaring at his eggs while he sorted through the words that he needed to sooth and lecture his defiant and unhappy sibling. Roxas didn't mind the wait. More food for him.

At last there were words.

"Do you love him?" Sora stared at him with a look so intense it was almost frightening. It wasn't angry enough to be a glare, but it was damn close. His usual bright blue eyes looked almost black and this is how Roxas knew he was in. Deep. Shit.

The blonde waited a bit and took his brother's question into consideration as seriously as he could. He knew if he didn't that his own flesh and blood might go at him with a butcher knife.

Did he love Axel? In the span of about what, a month? This whirlwind friendship built on an almost one night stand seemed designed to fail and crumble away at the slightest breath. What did he know about love? How could he when he's never had anything genuine from someone other than a family member?

Love. The thought of his redhead and love seemed to slip and fit so easily against each other. The butterflies when they were just talking about simple dreams or things they saw on T.V. Everything about Axel made him giddy and excited. Axel made him happy. Happier than he had ever really felt before.

Then Roxas tried to think about his life without the ginger in it. The thought only succeeded in making his hands clench tightly into fists and caused a sharp breath to be drawn into his lungs. Trying to think of not having Axel around ever again hurt. Never seeing that smile directed at him again. The blonde's eyes squeezed shut and an angry breath rushed out of him.

Just thinking about it was causing Roxas agony.

Sora just watched as the emotions whisked through his brother. Patient yet determined to hear the answer.

The blonde slowly opened his eyes and looked directly at his brother, gaze unwavering as he uttered a more forceful than necessary, "Yes."

Sora saw the resolve in that stare and sighed. He knew what he was going to say next would not make his sibling happy.

"If you loved him you wouldn't be doing this."

Blue eyes turning darker with anger narrowed. "What?" It was spat out like a curse.

"Seducing him and then trying to make him choose between you or his fiancé is selfish. It isn't anywhere near the love you claim to have for him." Sora's gaze was steady.

"What about him? He wants it just as much as I do! How can you-"

The brunette suddenly stood up and slammed his open palms on the counter. "He's not going to leave her for you!"

Roxas was stunned into silence, eyes wide.

Sora rubbed his forehead and wondered if he had disturbed Riku at all. Maybe. Damn.

The blonde regained some composure and started, "But he said he wante-"

"Roxas," the brunette hated this, he really did. "You have to let him go."

The blonde looked ready to bolt, run away and never look back. A question erupted from his lips like scorching lava. "What if it were Riku?!"

Sora looked at him with furrowed brows and fired a question back at him. "Do you understand how much you could be hurting him?!"

Roxas waited for Sora to elaborate, glaring the whole while.

The brunette sighed once again and explained, "He wants you! Hell he might even love you back now! But he had plans before you; he had everything set up before you. Have you ever thought that maybe he was happy before? That everything was all right until you showed up? Have you even asked him how he feels? Has he ever said he didn't like his wife-to-be?" Sora's questions were going by a mile a minute, his hands waving about with his mounting emotions.

The blonde had frozen somewhere in the middle of the tirade. 'Have you ever thought that he was happy before you? Before you?' It echoed back and forth in his mind. 'Do you understand how much you could be hurting him?' Roxas felt ashamed that he had never once really paused and thought about Axel's feelings. He had assumed with all the looks and touches that everything was wonderful, perfect. But Axel was suffering wasn't he? Being unfaithful to someone he was getting married to in a few weeks, dealing with the guilt, being pressured to choose between what he wanted and what others wanted for him. And Roxas had only cared about them running away and leaving the rest behind. Without thought, without care.

He was selfish. So selfish.

Suddenly his hands felt numb while his lips formed a word without his permission.

"Okay."

Sora stopped his rant long enough to barely hear the end of the word. His brows dipped and he asked, "Okay what?"

The blonde looked up, eyes looking devoid of thought, emotions too murky to decipher. "I'll let him go."

At that moment Riku had decided to come into the room worried about what Sora had been yelling about. As the two discussed quietly in a corner of the kitchen Roxas silently thought about how he was going to give up the only person who made his world bright.

Made it worth living in.

~o~o~O~o~O~o~o~

Axel felt fucked up. And he couldn't even blame alcohol this time. From the moment he woke up he was faced with a throbbing headache and the feeling that today was going to be shit.

Larxene had easily forgiven him for the dinner disaster and had somehow managed to appease her parents with some half assed excuse about him feeling under the weather and being subdued all day by some kind of cold medicine pill. Instead of visiting him today she had decided to go shopping with some friends.

Axel's brain didn't know whether to supply a 'Thank God' or a 'Fucking Shit.'

After dragging his body around the apartment and managing to grab some breakfast, banana and coffee please, thanks, he sagged down on a stool within view of his front door. Of course Murphy's law kicked him in the ass with a buzz from his door. He sucked it up, heaved a sigh, and hauled ass over to the intercom and video screen combo. A bit of the redhead's cranky attitude faded when he saw the face on the screen. A few brightly colored insects decided to invade his midsection while a smile drove his lips upward and out. He opened the door for the blond that seemed to plague his thoughts, night and day.

The expression on the blond's face as he came in seemed the exact opposite of what Axel was currently feeling and it brought the redhead's mood back down a bit.

It seemed like blue eyes flicked away from him every chance they were able to. Roxas seemed to be having troubles gathering his thoughts before he could force out a strained sounding, "Hey." Blue eyes looked at him briefly and then settled on the lovely wooden floor beneath his feet.

Axel felt apprehensive but managed a small smile as he responded with his own, "Hey." And in an attempt to wipe the hopeless look on the blond's face he stooped low, gently grasped a smooth chin and tilted it up to place a quick but tender kiss on soft lips.

Roxas gave in easily and responded before gently breaking contact. He looked scared and almost lost. Broken.

But the look was gone quickly replaced with an unfeeling mask that looked nearly cruel. Axel didn't know what was going to happen next and had a feeling that it wasn't good. Not at all.

"Axel, I…I-I, um..we-" The blond cut himself off and the resolve in his façade just about crumbled before being firmly sealed into place again.

"We can't do this anymore."

And just like that, though Axel wasn't expecting the strength of it, his heart crumpled, folded in on itself slowly and painfully. And all he could say was, "What?" Like an idiot.

Blue eyes that seemed icier than they had ever been, especially directed at him, bore into green. Unforgiving. "I'm done with this affair. It was fun, but I'm ending it. Today we go our separate ways."

Green eyes skirted away in the direction of a nice brown wall and stayed there, effectively missing the faltering frost in Roxas' gaze. Axel's voice was dreary when asking the only other question in his mind. "Why?"

Why.

Roxas powered through his bullshit speech while trying to seem sincere enough before he attempted to commit suicide in Axel's kitchen. "You're getting married, tying the knot. There's no room for me here so I'm moving on." He added a douchey smirk for his next sentence so he could convince his redhead that he was a completely heartless bastard. "You were a good lay, but that's it." Each word the blond uttered was slowly murdering him, particularly when he saw the effect of them on Axel. It took everything in him to stay nearly emotionless, untouched. "Don't worry, you wouldn't have been happy with me anyway. No one ever was." The blond's smile looked loathing now, filled with contempt.

The redhead didn't know what to ask anymore. Spiteful words had done enough bloody damage to his insides, skewering butterflies in the process.

"Goodbye Axel." With that Roxas turned around swiftly, opened the door and gently closed it behind him.

The latching door sounded like a bullet to him, ricocheting in his head. Roxas may as well have slammed it. Axel wouldn't have been able to notice the difference.

Yeah. Definitely a shit day.

~o~o~O~o~O~o~o~

Roxas ran as fast as he could out of Axel's apartment complex before he hurled the meager contents of his stomach into a nearby trashcan. The thought of what he just did made bile rise so quickly he didn't notice the torrent of tears welling up his eyes and pouring down his face. He was too busy gasping in air and frightening a lone woman walking up the street who turned tail after the second heave of vomit.

The blond swiped an arm over his mouth and slid to sit on the ground. He had to sit on his hands to preventing him from tearing out his own hair or gouging out his eyes. Anything to distract himself from the glacial pain in his chest.

Nothing in his life could ever compare to the pure anguish he had felt while tearing down the only person he loved that possibly, for once, loved him back. More tears pricked at the back of his eyeballs and he had half a mind to run back to Axel, scream it was all a sick joke, kiss him again. Tender like when he walked through the door. Pour everything he felt into it to make the redhead understand.

But he knew he had to hold the feelings back, hold the tears back a little bit, and walk away. So he walked away.

And every step he took felt like lead while his heart sunk to a bottomless ocean.

~o~o~O~o~O~o~o~

Author's Note: I suck. I suck so much for making you wait this long. Just finished my first year of college and got my first job. I'm going to finish this story even if my old writing kind of kills me inside.

True Author's Note: I started the chapter so long ago that the author's notes are old! T_T I'm a sophomore now and currently studying abroad in Italy, Rome. (Go read an AkuRoku fic called Moped romance! It's awesome and one of my faves!) I'm just a real busy person! I'm going to Naples on Monday to check out the sites. This fic is almost done and when it is I'll probably revamp some of the old chapters and finally post all my other fics that were started a looooong time ago but I refused to post them until my first fic was done. Ugh I suck with time management for my hobbies. I hope you read, at least the people who have this story on alert. And I have no idea why you're so loyal since this is my only "real" fic and there are better writers who actually update when they say they will…. -_-; But thank you! Didn't check for typos in this so if you spot any, tell me and I'll be on it! Bye for now. Hope to finish this fic this year. *sobbing forever*