Author's Note: Sorry about that wait! It felt too long to me, but I've been busy out of my mind. Starting college kinda does that to you. Anywho, slightly shorter chapter because that's just how it works with the layout of the plot and whatever (which I actually have a little bit of this time). Enjoy!

Other Junk: Hey, this is the first chapter written entirely on my new laptop! W00t!

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Chapter 10

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They were making lanyards. Fucking little beaded lanyards. Damn it, if Axel had wanted to do jewelry design, he would have signed up for the class at the college. No, this was an activity designed to help stimulate the 'creative mind' and to form 'good communication skills with those around you', since one end of the table had half of the materials and the other side had the other parts. The whole ordeal was conveniently, or not depending on how you looked at it, located in a little sunny park in the middle of the bustling city. Though, it mostly looked like an abandoned hobo park. Or one that had been recently vacated for the purpose of that very event. Everyone in this particular little workshop had ridden in a little bus especially reserved for them over to the park, or what was left of it.

Axel ended up making his lanyard red and black with a few silver beads thrown in there. It was fucking cool, unlike some of the other pocket-protector geeks. They wouldn't know fashion if someone shoved it up where the sun don't shine. He was having a grand old time, putting the beads on the wire and whatnot. The problem was that his eyes kept on wandering over to the table directly beside his own where the little blond intern was meticulously working on his own little chain of beads. His was a mix of red, green, yellow and blue beads. Hey, they went together pretty well, so Axel gave him the okay. He did want to go into graphic design, after all. It would help if he had at least some creativity in his bones.

They did that for a good part of the afternoon before moving on to more leadership activities. Like where they had little labels on their backs and they had to get into a line in a certain order without talking. That one was actually pretty cool, but the rest of it made Axel think that they were just killing time.

The day's previous activities consisted of long seminars where no more than half of the people observing were actually asleep or listening to music. Entirely pointless, just like the rest of the damned conferences.

But, before he knew it, Axel was watching the sun lower in the sky and the meeting had come to a close. A slight chill had entered the air and, actually, Axel thanked the airport shuttle driver for giving him the tip to grab his coat that fine morning. He then thanked himself for actually listening to him and again thanked himself for bringing it with him to the stupid park.

Axel began to follow the group of pocket-protector boss kiss-ups back to their little bus when he noticed that they were missing a certain blond, who happened to be his roommate and coworker. Green eyes made a wide sweep of the park and finally fell on the little intern, sitting on a bench beside a recently lit lamppost.

The redhead's feet took him over to that little wooden and slightly splintering bench and he had to place a smirk on his face. "I told you that you were going to need that jacket." He saw the hint of a scowl in those down turned eyes, but the blond made no comment. He simply continued to stare into nothingness and toe the ground with the tip of his shoe. "So, what're you doing over here?"

"Thinking," Roxas replied simply before adding, "You can join if you want."

Axel sighed and almost collapsed on the wooden bench beside him, thankful for the chance to sit without getting crap pounded into his head. "Yeah, I need to do some of that myself." About you, was what he wanted to add.

Roxas just hummed affirmatively, hunching over and rubbing his temples with a hand, "What do you have to think about?" It wasn't a challenge – he simply just wanted to know.

Axel paused and scrounged a response. "They're just some questions that I have no idea how to answer."

"Maybe I can try." The blond sounded disinterested, but Axel could discern a spark of genuine interest behind those words.

He scoffed in return. "You'd think I was crazy. Hell, even I think I'm going off the deep end." And that was as true as the tattoos on his face.

Roxas responded softly, his tone cautious and low. "Maybe you're not." The pair fell to silence, each glancing up at the deep red sunset as it slowly faded into the darkness of night, bringing with it a fresh wave of bone-chilling cold.

Axel broke out of his reprise and timidly asked, "Why did you say that thing to me last night, when you said that you would be there in the morning?"

The blond shrugged and shook his head, not really looking at anything in particular. "I must've been sleep talking."

"Oh." Why did his heart sink? Why was he disappointed with that simple response? Was he really looking forward to a different answer?

As if to mock his pondering, the intern voiced his thoughts. "What other sorts of questions do you have?

Axel shook head in the same way that Roxas had before. "I don't think that they have answers. They aren't really worth mentioning." He shouldered his coat and tugged it snuggly against his neck. The cold really was reaching a piercing level.

Roxas gave a visible shiver and cupped his hands around his bare arms to try to fend off the evening chill. "That's fine. You don't have to tell me." But Axel felt like he should, he just couldn't. The intern began to shiver in earnest.

Axel took note of the blond's discomfort and released any sense of pride that he had stored up ever since he had victoriously outsmarted the blond with his choice of bringing a coat. He let out a sigh and unzipped his coat, letting a rush of the crisp air touch his chest. He gestured the blond over to him. "Roxas, c'mere. I don't feel like watching you freeze to death."

Roxas stubbornly turned away, clutching his arms tighter. "I really shouldn't."

Yeah, like he was going to listen to that. "Bullshit." Axel seized Roxas and pulled him to sit between his extended legs, surprised that he made no movements of resistance. The redhead took that as a good sign and quickly pulled the coat around the blond and zipped both of them in. Roxas' shirt was chilly from the night, but warm underneath as he pressed to Axel's warm and beating chest.

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The icy wind whipped past his black hooded head, the driving snow melting on tattooed cheeks as he trudged through the heavy drifts. He had to be there… Roxas had to be somewhere in this world. He wouldn't have just left like that, and he hadn't been on the clock tower where they were supposed to meet and neither was he in his living quarters in the castle. The sun had long since set in their own world that was never supposed to be, and it was a new evening in the Land of Dragons. But that did not make the wind softer or the snow less bone-chilling.

It had been one of the first solo missions that the blond had been assigned to. Axel had had his own assignment to complete and he was already dead tired from it. Trudging through knee deep snow really hadn't been on his to-do list for that day, but the extremely pissed off mood that would normally come from that situation had been smothered by the worry for his best friend.

The Flurry of Dancing Flames had never really visited the world before, so he was bound to the trail at his feet. It took him past a little snow-covered village and far up the mountain.

His breath was taken from him from the altitude and the wind that continued its continuous bludgeoning. Axel trudged on, thankful that there weren't any heartless to slaughter on his way. Not even those creatures dared those cliffs. But he had a different purpose. This was for Roxas.

He pulled around the corner of a cliff and spotted the peak of the mountain. A dark smudge in the pure white but night-darkened snow made itself present to the redhead. He drove on with an increased vigor and grabbed at the dark material, only to find that the small black coat was long cold and empty of a certain blond.

"Roxas!" The name pierced the wind and was lost to it. He called it until he could hear the echoes all around him. That was when he noticed a slight movement in the snow a little ways up the mountain. A snow-covered head bob up before slumping back down against that delicate looking chest…

No matter how much his muscles had complained to him on the trek up the mountain, Axel caught his second or third wind and made quick work of the remaining stretch between them. Black-clad knees fell to the dark white snow before the mostly bare-skinned blond, pulling the half-frozen nobody into his arms.

He could feel the convulsive shivers and the chill of his skin through his coat. "Holy shit, Roxas, what are you doing?" The snow on the blond spikes melted against his warm cheeks.

The response was made through blue lips, the voice thin and weak. He couldn't keep the stutter out of his words. "I w-wanted to s-see if it w-would m-make me feel. M-maybe it w-would give me answers or- or m-memories."

"Roxas, you idiot," Axel whispered, removing one protecting arm in favor of unzipping his coat to accommodate the Key of Destiny and zipping them both in. He willed the fire deep within him to touch his skin and warm the blond. He was so cold… "Freezing yourself to death won't give you answers." The Flurry of Dancing Flames' tone was dark.

Number XIII turned on him, his last scraps of strength used in sounding ticked off. "Then w-what will?"

Axel sighed and pulled the blond closer to his chest, closer to that hollow chamber that only contained his inner flame. "I don't know. Now, let's get you back to the castle before you turn into a popsicle."

"Can it be sea salt?" Came the muttered plea.

He was delusional. That was a pretty fucking bad sign.

"If you ever want to feel again, you're coming with me." Axel was surprised when the blond made no resistance when he picked him up, cradling him with the utmost care. He was so light and… fragile. Darkness surrounded them and they were launched into motion, making their way out of the snow and storm and into a place just as cold and heartless.

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"Roxas, do you dream very often?" The warmth seeping through his shirt felt familiar all of a sudden, like a long lost glove that had been used for many a year.

The blond paused a moment before responding. "Not as much as I used to."

Axel was feeling brave, for some odd reason and voiced yet another question. "You ever think they might mean something?"

"Eventually, they might. I don't know," he finished quickly, squirming slightly where he sat. Axel did have that effect on people – to make them nervous and fidgety. Usually it was just because of his hair and facial tattoos, but those didn't seem to phase the blond. At least on the outside, it didn't. "I-I kind of feel like going back to the hotel now."

Axel sighed internally. Damn, he was having a nice time just talking with the intern, especially since the redhead could actually drop little questions on him. It felt good just to get them out. "Yeah, we probably should." He unzipped his coat, not without regret as the icy wind caught the blond once more as he pried himself free. He stood awkwardly to the side, eyes determinedly adverted as Axel stood to join him, closing his coat back up. They started to walk towards the street, determining that they did, in fact, miss the bus back to the hotel.

The monster eating away at Axel's stomach would not be ignored any longer, and he figured that the blond was in no better a condition. "You want to get something to eat?

Roxas had stuffed his hands into his pockets to better fend off the chill. "Like sit down with tablecloths, the hotel, or just room service?"

Axel shrugged as he strolled nonchalantly down the park pathway beside the intern. "I was thinking tablecloths, unless you're too tired."

The blond snorted, sounding as though he were fending off a shiver to his voice. "I think I'll be fine. It's not very business-like to fall asleep over a bowl of soup." Axel's mind conjured an image of Roxas doing a face plant in piping hot soup. Humorous, but painful to watch. He'd end up looking like a lobster face. Now, that was a whole new visual. The blond continued with a question. "You have any place in mind?"

The redhead hummed in thought. "I was thinking Italian, but I'm open for amendments."

"Italian sounds fine." It hadn't occurred to Axel that he hadn't gotten a glimpse of those blue, blue eyes since they first started talking on the bench. He was feeling deprived and he wanted more.

Axel continued on in his joking manner to shove away the odd and rather out of place thoughts buzzing around in his head. "Just nothing too garlicky. We're going to be sleeping in the same room, you know."

"Right, that. Okay deal, as long as you keep your side of it." Axel could have sword he saw a flicker of a smile on the blond's face.

"Consider it done."

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End Notes: Review, my lovelies, as always! I need some boosters to get me through the next chapter, because it's going to KILL me.