Hey everyone! (if anyone's still reading...)

There are some things you should know about this chapter... (I'm nervous now!)

1. In no way, shape or form is it the last chapter, I have no idea what I was thinking when I thought I was close to finishing. It's going to be a while before this wraps up...

2. Sadly you won't find out what happened to Riku and Axel just yet, because this chapter takes place in the past and I'm introducing a new character (gasp!). Yes, I know I'm horrible for giving you this after being gone a year, but please don't kill me! :-(

3. This is just the first part of the massive wall of text that will be dealing with Marluxia... There will be 3 in total. I was going to post them all at the same time, but I think it will be easier for me to handle the text if I just post what is finished and get it out of the way.

4. I'll end this list of disappointments on an up note: absolutely no rereading required! (which makes me feel guilty, because my stats tell me people must have been doing just that)


What's left in ruins, part 1

X

Scratch, shuffle, rain of pebbles.

Marluxia kept walking, dragging his feet in the gravel, feeling a tad rebellious as he did so. His mom would always tell him to stop dragging his feet because it wore his shoes out and they couldn't afford buying new ones all the time.

Like he ever got new shoes anyway! Currently he was wearing his sister's old shoes; ugly, pink sneakers with hearts sloppily painted on them in ball-point pen and whiteout. His plan was to wear them out as quickly as he possibly could, preferably before school started again in a couple of weeks. Not that he cared if the other kids pointed and giggled and called him a girl behind his back, because he didn't. Not at all.

He kicked angrily at the road, feeling an odd sense of satisfaction as the gravel sprayed around his feet. He was headed for his secret place, an abandoned deconstruction site he had discovered a few weeks ago. It was dangerous to be playing there (or at least that was what the signs posted on the fence around it said) and his parents would surely be very mad at him if they knew where he spent most of his days.

Maybe that was why he liked the place so much.

Sometimes when he climbed the steel beams high above ground he fantasized about what would happen if he fell down. Maybe he would just die right away. Or maybe, he thought with a slight thrill, he would break his legs and die slowly of hunger or thirst… He didn't think anyone would find him; he had never seen another person there. Maybe there would just be a tiny skeleton left of him when they finally decided to get on with the deconstruction, picked clean by rats and birds and ants. Maybe he would be buried underneath the rubble without anyone ever finding out what happened to him (or what ugly shoes his skeleton was wearing!).

The thought intrigued him. He realized that it wasn't normal and that he should probably be freaked out by this kind of fantasies, but he wasn't, and there wasn't much to do about that, was there? Today he was going to climb higher than he ever had before.

He had found a pack of cigarettes on the ground the other day. It was almost full, and he had hidden it in a broken pipe to protect it from the rain. He hadn't dared bringing it home because his mom searched his pockets sometimes, and had she found it, she would have told his father for sure.

Instead, he was going to bring the cigarettes with him when he climbed, and when he had reached as high as he could, he would smoke them and just look at the view. See if he fell today.

That was the plan anyway, but when Marluxia had crawled through the small hole in the chain-link fence and scrambled down the gravelly slope towards the skeleton of a building below, he saw something unexpected.

An intruder.

It was a small boy sitting crouched in the rubble, playing with some sort of action figure. His head was bent down and he was making lots of noise, clearly too lost in his game to have noticed he wasn't alone anymore.

Marluxia stopped and stared at him, uncertain of what to do.

The boy looked to be a few years younger than him, maybe seven or eight, with bright red hair sticking out in messy tufts from his head. It had clearly never seen a comb. And he was dressed even worse than Marluxia, in what looked like too large pyjama pants and a hand-knitted sweater with Mickey Mouse's obnoxiously grinning face on the front. Jeez.

Marluxia decided that an aggressive approach was probably the best way to get rid of him.

"Hey!" he shouted, and the kid's head snapped up in surprise. Marluxia crossed his arms over his chest and tried to look threatening. "Don't you know this place is dangerous for little kids? Go away before you get hurt."

He hoped the message got through that he was more than willing to provide that hurt himself, but to his great disappointment the boy didn't look scared at all; he just frowned and stuck his chin out defiantly.

"I'm not a little kid," he told Marluxia. "I'm eight years old! And if it's so dangerous, you shouldn't be here either."

True as that may be, it didn't make Marluxia any less angry. "Go somewhere else!" he growled. "This is my place."

"Says who?" The boy stuck his tongue out at him. "I don't listen to little girls."

Whoa.

"I am not a girl," Marluxia heard himself say in a perfectly calm voice that in no way matched how he felt inside. But the boy didn't seem to realize how much trouble he was in and smirked arrogantly.

"Then why do you have long hair and pink shoes? Even your hair is pink."

"Better than your greasy bird's nest," Marluxia retaliated, and felt better as the boy unconsciously reached to brush his uneven bangs out of his face, his expression turning into an angry pout. Touchy about the hair, eh?

Marluxia smirked. Maybe his hair was pink and girly, but no one could say it was ugly.

"And the shoes are my sister's; I just borrowed them because I stepped in dog shit," he lied fluently. "Anyway, you shouldn't make comments about what other people are wearing when you're dressed like that."

He made an effort to put as much contempt as he could muster into his voice, hoping that the hair wasn't the only thing the boy was self-conscious about. Apparently it wasn't, because he glared at Marluxia viciously, seemingly unable to come up with an answer.

Seemingly.

"At least I don't have cooties."

This was getting ridiculous. Maybe to a stupid eight-year-old pink shoes and long hair were dead giveaways of gender, but Marluxia had one that trumped all. He marched up to the boy and pulled his pants down along with his underwear.

The boy stared at his crotch and the undeniable evidence that he was not a girl with a very satisfyingly dumbstruck look on his face. Marluxia tugged his pants back up and raised his eyebrows as he met the boy's gaze.

What do you have to say about that?

"Uhm… okay," the boy muttered confused, but then he surprised Marluxia by suddenly grinning. "Hey! If you're not a girl… Do you want to play with me? You can borrow my Action Man!"

He shoved the figurine clutched in his right hand up towards Marluxia's face, who involuntarily took a step back. He didn't like sudden movements.

"Keep your stupid doll," he snapped.

"It's not a doll," the boy protested with a hurt look on his face, "it's Action Man!"

If the hurt came from his not wanting to play, or if it was because Action Man had been insulted, Marluxia couldn't tell. Maybe it was both.

"I don't care what you want to call your doll," Marluxia informed him. "Get the hell out of here before I beat you up."

"But..!"

"GET!"

The boy scrambled to his feet and must have realized that the battle was lost, because he started to back away until he was at a safe distance and then he turned and ran.

The triumph of scaring the intruder away didn't last very long. Marluxia suddenly didn't feel like climbing anymore, but still he felt too restless to just sit down somewhere. He circled the grounds a few times, poking at the rubble with a stick in the vague hopes of finding some cool abandoned stuff (like there was anything left to find when he already searched the place dozens of times). It quickly got boring.

He picked the cigarettes out of the pipe, smoked one and then hid them again.

Everything was that boy's fault. This place had been only for Marluxia, but now that the boy had been here, it seemed different. Soiled; like the stone and air had soaked up something of his presence. Marluxia could imagine his dirty fingerprints everywhere, the echo of his shrill voice still bouncing off the walls.

It was hard to understand the feeling, and even more difficult to shake it. Suddenly the place even looked different, like someone had pulled a blind from his eyes. He used to think that the half-wrecked building was a thing of beauty, with its naked steel beams showing in places and its gaping, empty windows opening like portals into the unknown. Now it just looked empty and lifeless. Kind of like a graveyard.

The whole place was like a graveyard, or the insides of a trashcan. No greens, just different shades of greys and browns, dusty and dirty. Crushed glass and concrete and sharp, twisted metal everywhere. It really wasn't a place for little kids.

That god-damned boy should know better than to come here! Didn't he have parents looking after him? The thought of falling to his death on these grounds seemed a lot more unappealing if there was a chance that some little brat and his Action Man would stumble upon his corpse.

Marluxia frowned and stared at his shoes. He wondered if some part of him had actually planned to die here.

Did he want to die?

His pink-shoed feet provided no answers, and after a while Marluxia decided he really didn't want to think about it, so he shrugged, spat on the ground, and left.

This was a stupid, boring place anyway.

X

But the next day he was back again. Needed it. To be alone and unseen and anywhere but home. Maybe he would climb today. Maybe, if it didn't hurt too much.

He wiped at his eyes even though there were no tears there. It felt like maybe there should be.

Inside the fence he went directly for the pipe and picked out the cigarettes. He didn't open the package immediately; first he climbed on top of a large, orange dumpster figuring it would be a good vantage point. He had some trouble getting up, but once he was there, it was worth the aches, because the view was even better than he had thought.

He lit a cigarette, looking out over his deserted kingdom of rubble. He felt a little better about it today, like he had been unnecessarily harsh to it yesterday. What did it matter if it was ugly when it was his? It was still a much better place than most other places he knew of. And it felt good the way the cigarette made his head spin and his legs feel heavy and numb.

Nicotine was the name of the drug inside it; he had learned that in school before summer from a police man that had visited to tell them that smoking and drinking was bad. Your lungs would turn black and fill with tar if you smoked, and if you drank, your heart could stop or you could fall asleep and drown in your own vomit. The police man also said that nicotine was poisonous and that only sixty milligrams of it could kill an adult man. That was awfully little, but they had been assured that there was nowhere near that amount in a single cigarette. But it was still a poison.

Strange that such a small amount could still affect you. It had to be next to nothing if it was even less than sixty milligrams. Sixty milligrams was equal to 0.06 grams the teacher had told them, and a gram weighed so little that you could barely even feel it to begin with.

Marluxia found this strangely fascinating.

He hadn't intended to smoke more than one cigarette, but somehow he was already getting started with his third when he heard a rustle somewhere behind him. He turned his head, and there was that god-damned boy again!

Today he had E.T. on his sweater. When had that been popular? Maybe the boy was stuck having to wear the clothes of an older sibling just like Marluxia.

The boy stopped midstep when he saw that he had been spotted and his shoulders tensed. But then his eyes widened.

"Are you smoking?" he asked incredulously, gawking at the cigarette in Marluxia's hand.

Despite himself, Marluxia almost laughed. "So what?"

"Mom says smoking isn't for kids," the boy enlightened him. Marluxia rolled his eyes.

"Maybe not little snot-nosed brats like you. But I'm ten years old."

"I'm not snot-nosed!" the boy protested, immediately contradicting himself by wiping at his nose.

"Yeah, right. Didn't I tell you I'd beat you up if you kept coming here?"

The boy frowned, and seemed uncertain of what to do. He had brought his Action Man today too, and shuffled it nervously between his hands.

"Why are you so mean?"

"Why don't you just go somewhere else?"

"Because…" The boy kicked angrily at the ground. "The other kids at the playground just pick on me. And mom said I can't go out for two weeks if I get in another fight again."

"Is that why you ran away yesterday?"

The boy squinted up at him and nodded.

He certainly didn't look like a fighter; there didn't seem to be much but skin and bone underneath his ill-fitting clothes. But maybe there was more to him than what met the eye, Marluxia thought and drew another breath from his cigarette with a slight cough. His throat was getting raw. And he was nauseous.

He didn't feel like leaving his spot on top of the container. Not that it would have been much of a problem kicking the boy's ass if he had to, but still… Moving was an effort today.

"What's your name?" he asked the boy.

"Axel." A slight pause. "What's yours?"

"Marluxia."

The boy – Axel – repeated the name to himself slowly and frowned. "What a strange name…"

Marluxia shrugged, and somewhere inside him a decision was made. Axel most likely had no friends to bring here; he was too odd and ugly, and it seemed like he too just wanted somewhere where he could be alone. This place was big enough for two, at least today. He would probably throw up if he attempted to chase him down anyway.

"You can play here if you want. I don't care as long as you leave me alone."

Axel stuck his tongue out. "I don't need your permission! I was going to play here anyway!"

Marluxia rolled his eyes, but couldn't hold back a smile. "Whatever."

He flipped his cigarette away and lay back on the container, deciding to just ignore Axel from now on. He would just lie there and stare up at the clouds floating slowly over the sky, trying to see shapes in them. It was something he liked to do sometimes, because after a while it would feel like his mind was also floating; one thought leading to the next like an endlessly forking road. You never knew where you would end up.

Axel didn't bother him again. Apparently he was used to playing on his own, because after a while Marluxia could hear him get into some imaginary adventure with his Action Man. He had a loud, squeaky voice and he did an incredibly bad imitation of machinegun fire, but strangely it wasn't as annoying as you would think.

Marluxia could get used to this. Feeling the taste of smoke on the back of his tongue while the clouds above illustrated the adventures of Action Man. He didn't know why it made sense to him, but it did.

More sense than being at home.

His mother had heard. She must have heard. Probably his sister too, but none of them said anything. In the morning they just sat there quietly by the breakfast table with their cereal like everything was perfectly normal.

In a way it was, he supposed. It wasn't like it was the first time his father went into his room at night.

X

It was odd how things worked out.

It was the first day of school, and Marluxia had his new shoes on. His mother had sighed when he held the hated pink sneakers up before her, probably suspecting that the holes right through the soles didn't come from normal wear and tear, but she had taken him shopping anyway. The new shoes were maybe not the most fashionable in the world, but at least they weren't pink.

Marluxia had just decided that he would try to take better care of these ones, when he spotted a familiar shock of red hair among the faceless hordes of younger kids at the playground. It wasn't unexpected. All the last weeks of summer break Axel had kept coming to the deconstruction site to play with his Action Man, and Marluxia had been hearing enough of his babbling about his teachers and classmates to figure out they were going to the same school, but he hadn't bothered telling the younger boy about it. If he could avoid it, he didn't want to deal with him in school.

It wasn't that he disliked him, because he couldn't really say he did anymore. He guessed he had just got used to him after seeing so much of his ugly mug, maybe one could even say he kind of knew him by now. Axel was a pretty nosy and talkative kid, so ignoring him completely had been impossible. Not that Marluxia had really wanted to; because he had to admit Axel's antics could be pretty funny.

But he wouldn't stretch it so far as to say he liked him. Maybe having him around for a while had been okay, but that would have to end now. He was too old to be seen talking to eight-year-olds, especially weird, smelly eight-year-olds that no one liked. It would draw attention and comments, and Marluxia just wanted to be left alone.

He leaned back against the tree trunk again, turning his attention back to the porno he had smuggled with him by switching its cover for that of an auto magazine. Axel would most likely not spot him here under the tree in the outskirts of the schoolyard, and if he did, he would just have to tell him to piss off.

Marluxia had worked hard to get to the position he was at today, where everyone ignored him and considered him a boring, weird loner. His first years had been filled with shoves and name-calling and no way was he going back to that just because of Axel. People still called him names, but at least they did it behind his back. He thought some of them were actually a little scared of him, and that was just fine.

His method had been simple. When he could, he ignored the comments and walked away from the potential fights, always careful to not seem scared or angry; because that was a sure way to invite trouble. The bullies wanted to get a rise out of him, so all he had to do was to not give them what they wanted.

But when he couldn't walk away, he made sure to go all out and fight dirty and fight to actually hurt someone. Most boys enjoyed the occasional rough and tumble, but not when he didn't hesitate to poke fingers into eyes and bite until he pierced skin and flesh and swing at them with whatever he could find to use as a weapon. Sticks, chairs, rocks; it didn't matter.

He didn't have to set many examples before the physical violence ended, and it had been worth it in the long run; even though he hadn't exactly walked away from those fights unscathed. There had been other consequences as well; his teacher had forced him to talk to the school counsellor and his parents had grounded him, but it was nothing Marluxia couldn't deal with.

There was in fact very little he couldn't deal with. If there was one thing he was good at, it was reading situations and understanding the rules that governed them, and he could almost always find a way to adapt. School was easy, because there were really only two options (unless you were popular, which Marluxia wasn't interested in): blend in or make yourself so alien no one knew how to control you.

Blending in had never been an option for him, because not only was he pink-haired and girly-looking, he also knew there was something about him that was just different from other people. Something in his head that wasn't normal.

Luckily, people feared things that weren't normal. All he had to do was exaggerate a little.

Axel obviously hadn't grasped either of those basic survival strategies, Marluxia observed over the following few weeks. He got into arguments and scuffles seemingly every day. His clothes and attitude were all wrong, drawing attention when he should be avoiding it. He seemed to have strong opinions on just about everything, and he didn't hesitate to say them out loud even when no one else agreed. Marluxia lost count on how many times he saw him get beat up. He took on too many people at once, and he wasn't vicious enough to intimidate anyone (except maybe the boys and girls who was even younger and scrawnier than him).

Strangely it never seemed to scare Axel or make him tone down his attitude. He was who he was and didn't seem willing to compromise it. Maybe he just didn't know how to be any other way.

Whatever the reason for it, Marluxia had to reluctantly admire it. If he was honest with himself, he knew that it wasn't healthy to always bottle up and ignore like he did, and maybe that was why he one day decided to interfere.

He was walking by the playground at lunch break, when he heard noise from behind the shed where they kept the hockey sticks and baseball bats. Already suspecting what was going on, he peeked around the corner, and sure enough, there was a fight and there was Axel. He was pinned underneath a veritable mountain of angry boys, his skinny legs flailing wildly while he unleashed a pretty impressive host of curses upon his tormentors. It was obvious he would never get free on his own. Some boys held him down, while others punched and pinched and kicked, all safely out of sight from the teachers patrolling the school yard.

It made Marluxia angry. He wasn't sure why, since Axel probably had himself to blame for the trouble he was in. Marluxia had heard him say downright nasty things to the other kids at times; things that were much worse than what the other kids said to him, and he could kind of understand that they didn't like him.

But still it just bugged him that no one would give Axel a break. That they couldn't just shrug and ignore him and conclude that he probably just didn't know better. He was loud and annoying and had ugly clothes and bad hygiene, but Marluxia knew he also had parents that spent all their money on alcohol and stayed up late at night yelling at each other. Maybe life wasn't so easy when you were eight years old and had to deal with that every day.

So he grabbed a baseball bat and wiped every trace of expression from his face, and then he walked up to the boy-heap and told it to leave Axel the fuck alone. They stared at him wide-eyed for a few moments (and at the bat resting on his shoulder), and then they grudgingly stopped their fighting and lumbered away.

Marluxia suspected they must have heard rumours about him.

"You okay?" he asked once the boys were out of hearing range, turning towards Axel who was slowly scrambling to his feet. He looked unharmed; apart from his bloody nose it was mostly his clothes that were torn and stained from all the rolling around in the dirt.

"I'm fine," he snarled. "I didn't need any help!" He was still bristling with anger, his fists clenching and unclenching by his sides.

Marluxia shrugged.

"Sure you didn't."

Axel glared at him, a kind of uncertainty in his eyes.

"Well, thanks anyway," he muttered finally, looking down at his feet. And then, after some frustrated kicking in the dirt, "I didn't know you went to my school."

"Now you do," Marluxia answered, realizing that he was probably being a little bit infuriating. "See you around."

With that he pushed the bat into Axel's hands and walked back to his tree.

X

After that incident, Marluxia started keeping a closer eye on Axel. He didn't let him know about it, since he didn't want the younger boy to get the idea that they were friends or anything, but he kept watch from a distance. And at times when things seemed particularly rough for Axel, he tried to step in. Not in any obvious way, like the first time. If things got too heated he told a teacher that there was a fight, but most of the times it was enough to just go and sit by the swings to get the younger kids to calm down, or as was more often the case; to get Axel to calm down.

All he really needed to do was bring a magazine down to the playground and pretend to read it, and Axel's attention would suddenly be focused on him instead of the other kids. It was a little weird.

Sometimes Marluxia was patient with him, and listened to his babbling or told him what he was reading about, but at other times he was admittedly kind of mean to him, telling him to get lost. Still, Axel just sulked when he would probably have tried to hit anyone else speaking to him like that.

Marluxia wasn't sure why different rules applied to him, but he kind of liked things the way they were. He figured Axel understood that even though he didn't really want anything to do with him, he wasn't an enemy, and he just might be willing to listen if there was something weighing on his mind.

It happened a few times that Axel would show up nearby his tree, kicking at puddles of water or just standing there with his hands shoved in his pockets until Marluxia asked him what was up.

A Monday Axel told him that his mom hadn't woke up and gone to work in the morning, so he had had to grab a can of baked beans out of the cupboard for lunch, and now he couldn't open it. Another day he asked if it was normal that fathers forgot to buy birthday presents for their kids. Or that fathers disappeared over the weekend without saying where they'd been. Did all parents argue? What was a divorce? Could you die from smoking or drinking too much?

There were clearly things on little Axel's mind, and even though Marluxia had plenty of his own problems, he didn't mind hearing about Axel's. He couldn't do much about them, but sometimes it seemed to be enough to let him read over his shoulder or let him have a taste of his cigarette behind the gymnasium. It was something of a mystery to him, that it was so easy to make Axel happy with little things like that. It was probably just because he was too stupid to realize it didn't fix anything, but Marluxia didn't complain.

Sometimes things felt a little less meaningless when he watched Axel run off with his back straight again.

X

It wasn't something that happened fast.

If it had been, Marluxia would have put a stop to it before it was too late, but it sneaked up on him so slowly that he never even realized what was going on. Not until an early winter morning while riding the bus to school, almost a full year and a half since he first met Axel.

He had the Game Boy he had gotten for Christmas stuffed in his backpack, and he was in a good mood. It was the first day of school after the holidays, and Marluxia was itching to get back. He had spent most of the break holed up in his room to avoid his father and his stupid sister, and he was thoroughly bored. The Game Boy had helped, but it was frustrating when he got stuck on difficult levels. It wasn't like he had a ton of different games to choose from, so he was forced to struggle on until he was so angry he just wanted to throw it in the wall.

Maybe Axel could help him clear that level he had had so much trouble with. Axel had told him he had a NES console at home, and he was good at video games (at least if his boasting about all the games he had beaten was true).

Marluxia smiled to himself. It would be good to see Axel again, and with the Game Boy they would always have something to do at lunch break.

That was when it hit him, and the realization wiped away his good mood more effectively than any mean comment from his sister. He stared down at his hands.

He had missed Axel. They were becoming friends.

The rest of the day he made himself invisible and avoided Axel. And the days after that one. He didn't like doing it, because he did miss him; maybe even more now when he had realized, and he could see that Axel liked it even less than him. He looked confused and hurt whenever their eyes met and he got into a lot more fights than usual.

Marluxia was ashamed of himself, but he didn't know what else to do. The idea of friendship scared him, and he was pretty sure it was for the best if someone like him didn't even try to have friends. Friends hanged out at each other's houses and told each other secrets, and he didn't want anyone to be close to him and know his secrets. And he sure as hell didn't want Axel anywhere near his house.

He could already imagine his father pretending to be a nice guy, showing off his collection of model airplanes to Axel, and his mother treating them to lemonade and home made cookies. Maybe Axel would like his parents.

That thought was absolutely disgusting.

Even more disgusting was the thought that he would have to start keeping up the same charade; normal and happy, or else his newfound friendship would probably be very short-lived. He had no idea what it was that Axel liked about him, but he suspected it was probably something in his imagination that had very little to do with reality.

Maybe he just liked that he treated him nicer than the other kids. The keyword here was 'nice-r'. Not nice, because Marluxia knew he could be a little mean, and he sometimes had thoughts about Axel that were definitely not in the nice category (like: ugly, brain-dead, annoying).

If they were to be real friends, he would have to start being nice or Axel would surely start thinking similar things about him, which did not sit well with Marluxia at all. But was there even a point of having a friend if you had to pretend around him?

It was for the best if he just got back to being alone, he concluded. Before Axel, it had been perfectly normal; he had even liked being alone, so it shouldn't be so hard to switch back.

Only it was.

Marluxia did try, but it was like he had completely forgotten how to be himself; how to do the things he normally liked to do. He couldn't concentrate on reading, the Game Boy was out of the question, and if he tried to lose himself in some daydream, Axel would soon invade his thoughts and make him depressed. Nothing was fun; even when he smoked he was restless, and after a few weeks of mind numbing boredom he was so desperate he actually started doing his homework. How freaky was that?!

One day he just couldn't take it anymore and sat down beside Axel in the cafeteria during lunch break with a casual "hi". Axel frowned and looked sullen, grumbled something back and then stared at his food in what was probably meant to be an attempt to ignore him. It would have been more convincing if he hadn't kept throwing him uncertain glances out of the corner of his eye.

Marluxia sighed.

"Sorry I've been weird for a while," he said. "My grandma died."

Both his grandmothers had been dead for years, but Axel didn't know that, and hopefully a grandmother's death was an acceptable cause for strange behaviour.

"Oh," Axel said, with very visible and almost comical relief painted over his face. "I thought it was something I… uh, I mean I'm sorry about that." He tried to look solemn and patted Marluxia's shoulder. "My grandma is alive, but mom won't let her meet me."

"Huh."

"Are you sad?"

"Maybe a little." Marluxia shrugged, refusing to let his own relief show on his face.

Axel gave him a sympathetic look.

"It's cool if you want to be left alone for a while. I… I know I talk too much."

"Alright."

Axel swallowed and shut his mouth, looking a little hurt. He had probably never liked being alone, Marluxia thought. And maybe he never really had either.

"You want to hang out after school today?" he asked, and watched Axel almost choke on his mouthful of macaronis.

"Uh… yeah! Sure!" He grinned, shining up in a way that made Marluxia's chest feel uncomfortably tight.

He glared at him.

"But you can't come to my house. Ever."

If this was going to work, it was going to have to be on his terms.

X

Marluxia had found an abandoned cellar some time ago, where he stashed his porn and cigarettes, and that was where he took Axel. Axel immediately loved the place, and suddenly hanging out there after school had become a routine. Sometimes he followed Axel home and watched TV or played video games, and that was okay too, even though the place reeked; seiously reeked of cigarettes.

But Marluxia's house stayed off limits.

He hadn't thought it was possible, but after having met Axel's mother he hated his family even more. She certainly wasn't the best mother in the world; she couldn't cook and she drank all the time and smoked indoors, but at least she cared. Axel only rolled his eyes when she hugged him and kissed him and told him she loved him, but in truth he didn't know how lucky he was.

Marluxia thought it was the best thing in the world when she occasionally hugged him, because his own mother never did. Sometimes he thought she was jealous of him, because of what his father did to him and not to her. Once his sister had told him that it was his fault no one was happy around their house, and maybe she was right.

Strangely though, he seemed to fit right into Axel's family without making anyone particularly unhappy. They were just two now; Axel and his mother. Axel's father had left for good about a year ago, and Marluxia liked to think that it had left a slot open for him. Axel's mother had problems with keeping the fridge filled, since she was usually too drunk to worry about shopping, so he helped her with that. And cleaning. Sometimes he cooked too, even though he wasn't very good at it, but Axel and his mother didn't complain. Axel wolfed down anything like he had never seen food before (which was kind of true), and his mother ruffled Marluxia's hair and told him that he was such a good boy and that she was glad Axel had a friend like him.

No one had ever told him anything like that before, so he never stole cigarettes or liquor from her, even though he was often tempted to.

It was foolish, but sometimes he pretended that Axel was his little brother and that his mother was Marluxia's mother too. When they all three sat watching TV and eating pizza, he could almost believe it. The horrible, oppressive silence that reigned in his home just didn't exist with them. Both of them talked constantly, and even though they were often mad at each other, you always knew that it would pass.

In his family, nothing ever passed. It all just added up, like a clouded sky getting darker and darker. Sometimes it felt like they silently hated each other a little more every day, but no one ever said anything about it. It was a silent agreement they had; to keep the illusion that they were a normal family at all costs, because when the storm finally came, everyone knew it would be bad.

X

"All good things must come to an end," Marluxia thought. "And all bad things must have a start."

He liked that kind of balances, and smiled to himself.

All summer he had dreaded starting his new school, but as he was walking up to the large, brick building, he felt nothing but a slight drowsiness.

He had been eating his mother's pills, maybe one or two too many, but better safe than sorry. He was eating them a lot lately. At first he had just been stealing them, until his mother inevitably found out and confronted him.

"Marluxia, I know you have been taking my medicine."

Medicine was a nice word for it, they were drugs and nothing else, and she took them to stand (or maybe ignore was a better word) the complete disaster that was their family.

"Why are you taking them?" she had asked hesitantly, and Marluxia had remained silent. He knew she didn't want an answer to that question, because she already knew it. Just as suspected, he only had to wait a little while before she sighed and nodded.

"I'll tell the doctor to increase the dose. But you don't take anymore than I tell you is alright, you hear me?"

A strange kind of maternal love, indeed. Or maybe it was just guilt, because she for some reason wouldn't do what any normal mother would have done; take him and his sister and leave their father. Let the kid cope with drugs instead.

Everything, Marluxia thought, is completely fucked up.

This new school was the worst of all, or maybe it just seemed so because it was the most recent pain in the butt. Marluxia was thirteen now, and had grown out of his old one. Not that he particularly liked that one, but there had been a balance. People left him alone, and he had a best friend. Here he was just back to square one.

He felt as if he might just as well stamp a 'kick me'-sign on his back. People were already giving him strange looks, and he could easily imagine what was going through their heads. At first glance he probably looked like a girl, on second glance a cute girl and then when they looked closer, not a girl at all. A freak. He bet some of them already wanted to beat him up.

He wondered if he would be able to fight back. The older boys looked almost like grown ups, tall and broad-shouldered with hints of muscle on their arms.

Would Marluxia look like them in a couple of years? He suspected he wouldn't. Maybe he'd be tall; he already kind of was, but his hair would still be pink and his face would still be too pretty.

On top of everything, his mother hadn't let him wear his normal clothes to school. He could at least make an attempt of looking respectable, she had told him and dragged him off to shop for something "proper". Marluxia normally didn't care much what he or other people wore, but "proper" was not a word he identified with in any way, and he felt ridiculous wearing his new shirt and jeans that hadn't quite lost their stiffness yet. He had tried to rough them up a little with a pair of scissors on the bus to make them look a bit more like the ones he favoured (something he would probably be in trouble for when he got home), but the result was depressing. He looked like "a girly hippie faggot", as his sister so eloquently had put it. "A girly hippie faggot forced to wear a shirt."

That was another factor he didn't like about the new school. He would have to share it with his sister. Not that he thought he would see much of her; she had refused to sit anywhere near him on the bus, and walked away from him as fast as she could after having told him her opinion on his appearance.

Marluxia sighed, more for the sake of it than out of any real emotion.

It would be two years before Axel joined him at the new school, two long years when he could only see Axel a few days a week, after school hours. It sucked, and his hopes of making new friends weren't high.

Not friends that mattered, anyway.

There was this group of kids that he had become vaguely acquainted to, kids his own age or older that hanged around without anything to do, and engaged in similar bad habits as those Marluxia had picked up. He had a feeling they thought he was weird, even though they were all kind of screwed up themselves. At least they didn't seem to care.

And at least one of them would be in his class, a kind of lone wolf type like himself, named Zexion. Beyond that, they weren't much alike, but at least he was the one among his friends Marluxia supposed he liked best (barring Axel, of course). He wasn't loud or stupid, and he liked books and computers and weird, monotone music.

Speaking, or rather thinking, of the devil, there was Zexion right now, striking a gothic pose all in black just outside the school yard.

Marluxia suddenly remembered some sort of agreement of meeting up and finding their new classroom within the maze of a building together. He didn't know how he had forgotten about it. Good thing Zexion had arrived first.

Seeing Marluxia approach, Zexion wiped his long bangs out of his face and gave him a smile that seemed a little bit relieved. No one liked the first day at a new school, Marluxia guessed.

"Hey, Marly. Looking sharp!"

"Like a girly hippie faggot, I've been told. Hey."

Zexion chuckled slightly, confirming the truth of that assessment, and Marluxia stopped in front of him giving a slight shrug. Zexion was doing a pretty fine job of looking faggy himself.

"Mom wants me to look proper. Whatever. Want to go inside?"

Zexion didn't want to go inside, he wanted to have a cigarette first. It was probably some kind of statement he wanted to make, shoving his rebellious nature by smoking right there outside the school yard where everyone could see. Zexion had this thing for silent statements (unfortunately no one ever got it). Kind of ridiculous, but he shared so Marluxia lit one up too, and what do you know, some girls passing by actually looked at them like they thought it was cool.

It wasn't, of course. Zexion was quite far from cool and rebellious; a nerdy, bookwormy sort of guy, and Marluxia… well, no further explanation needed. He pulled absently at his shirt, undoing the top button.

Upon closer inspection, those girls seemed to be looking more at Zexion than at him.

Oh, well. He didn't even want to think about what his father would say about him having a girlfriend, anyway.

After a while some more people they knew showed up with their cigarettes and lighters, and Marluxia zoned out of the conversation. He was feeling groggy and absent-minded, which probably wasn't a good way of starting a new year of school, but what the hell. At least he was calm.

Maybe even alright.

He might not like his older friends as much as he liked Axel, but he guessed they were okay. At least he could do things with them he felt Axel was still a little too young for. Even though he had taught Axel to drink, smoke, sniff glue and shoplift, it didn't feel right when he passed out or puked, or when the shop clerks eyed him suspiciously. Two years younger than Marluxia, he was still just eleven years old and Marluxia felt responsible for him, like he really was his little brother.

Axel resented that of course, because he was aaall grown up and what the hell Marly, you did all those things when you were eleven!

He chuckled.

It took a couple of moments before he realized everyone was staring at him.

"Dude," Zexion said eventually, "it's not funny."

"What?"

The silence stretched out a while longer, then Zexion snorted.

"Jeez, you spacing out again?" He waved a hand in front of Marluxia's eyes. "You're not high, are you?"

Marluxia frowned.

"Fuck you, I'm just mellow."

Whatever it was that wasn't funny, Marluxia never got to know, because his answer made everyone laugh (couldn't have been too bad, then), and shortly thereafter the bell rang, effectively scattering them in search of their respective classrooms.

X

School was a drag, but all in all not as bad as Marluxia had feared.

His grades kept dropping, but his friends kind of grew on him, and he hanged out with them more and more. He smoked with them at breaks and roamed around downtown with them at night and after a couple of months he didn't even have to pretend to listen to what they said and that he cared about their music. It was real.

And most important of all, something happened, and that something was called Larxene.

She got transferred to his school somewhere at the start of his second semester due to some scandal at her old school. She never told anyone what happened, but after knowing her for some time Marluxia thought he could make a pretty educated guess.

The thing about Larxene was that she made an impression. She was tall for a girl and wore her blond hair slicked back flat against her skull, except for two strands that she would style to stick up in a strange, antennae-like fashion. She always wore black, and even though she had a kind of tomboyish look, there was something about her that just screamed 'slut'.

In some ways she reminded him of Axel, with the same sort of presence and like-me-or-fuck-off attitude, but in other ways she was completely different. She knew how to take people for one. She was a complete bitch when she didn't like someone, but surprisingly nice and decent when she did. As a result, her friends loved her and her enemies hated her, and soon she was the new leader of Marluxia's motley little group.

Maybe he was in love with her for a while, he wasn't sure. He didn't know how to connect with his feelings, and the pills didn't make it any easier. If the mists of indifference had been thick before, they were nearly impenetrable now, but somehow Larxene managed to make herself visible through them. Marluxia guessed they were friends of a sort, even though the only reason she ever gave for confiding in him was, "you don't run your fucking mouth like everyone else".

Marluxia shrugged and didn't tell her that it was because he didn't care about anything. Much better if she thought it was because he was trustworthy, or some shit. He wanted Larxene to like him.

Most people she didn't like. Other girls talked about her behind her back, which she couldn't stand (probably because there was so much to say). She got along much better with guys, but somehow her close friendships always ended up as something sexual that quickly turned into hurt feelings and mutual dislike. Marluxia wished he would eventually end up as something sexual, but to his great disappointment it never happened. He was probably closer to her than anyone else so there should be potential for something, but ironically the closeness only seemed to keep him in the friend zone.

Larxene thought he was gay and that was why she trusted him in the first place.

If he had suspected it before, it became apparent the day she asked him if he'd like to come with her to a party dressed up as a girl. There would only be older kids there and they wouldn't want underage boys running around, she explained. Girls were fine though, they could just lie about their age and no one would ask any questions. She'd like to have someone with her that 'wasn't only interested in one thing', and he'd get to flirt with boys and he would be treated to drinks, wouldn't that be great?

Marluxia was offended and told her he wasn't interested in flirting with boys, but Larxene just winked. Yeah, right.

Somehow he ended up going to that party, because Larxene had great powers of persuasion, or maybe it was just plain, old nagging. Maybe he just wanted to be with her. Whatever. They actually had fun warming up with a couple of beers while getting him prepared. Larxene poked his eye with the mascara brush and gave him her sluttiest panties to wear. They shaved his legs and built breasts out of waterfilled condoms, and somewhere around there, when Larxene was squeezing his fake rubber boob, he realized that he was laughing because he was happy, not because he was supposed to.

Okay, so maybe he was in love. At that moment he thought so, at least.

When he finally stood before the mirror he was prettier than his sister, and Larxene pouted and said she wished she had legs like his. Marluxia had very mixed feelings about his appearance.

At least he wouldn't have to worry about anyone noticing that he wasn't really a girl.

"You need a name," Larxene said, smirking. "How about 'Marlene'? It rhymes with Larxene!"

Marluxia thought it sounded stupid, but smiled and went along with it anyway, because it was Larxene's idea.

X

The party ended up nothing like he had expected. He had thought that he'd stay out of the spotlight and just tag along with Larxene, but she soon took off on her own adventures and he was left alone. In less than two hours he had seen her make out with at least three different guys, and his heart died a little. Then he found out that Larxene didn't mind carrying out sexual favours if she was paid for it, and his heart died a little more. Maybe he didn't like her after all.

But the guys at the party sure liked him. Usually when he kept a low profile it resulted in no one paying him any attention, but apparently different rules applied to girls (at least the pretty ones). The guys were practically swarming around him. At first it scared him, how they would stand close and touch his arm or his hair and try to make him laugh. All he could think was that if they found out that it wasn't a real girl they were flirting with, they would kill him for sure. All it took was that someone got the idea to feel out his "boobs" or touch him between his legs. It didn't seem at all unlikely that something like that could happen; some guys were very forward.

It never did though, and after a while, when he was starting to get drunk from all the beer that was continuously pushed into his hands, he relaxed and almost started to enjoy it. Or maybe not enjoy, but it amused him, at the same time as it disgusted him. All these guys giving him appreciating smiles and compliments and more positive attention than he had ever gotten in his life, just because they hoped he would prove to be as much of a slut as Larxene. He could suddenly understand where all those jokes about men thinking with their dick came from.

And maybe even why Larxene needed someone who was different.

But pathetic as the fake courtship rituals may have been, they still felt more honest than his father telling him he was beautiful and that he loved him while forcing himself on him. At least these guys listened and respected him when he said no, even those that were most aggressive in their pick up attempts. There seemed to be a subtle set of rules, and as long as you played by them, you were safe. Flirt without leading on; distance yourself without outright rejection. It was like a game and he discovered (with some surprise) that he was good at it.

Nothing happened that night, except that he did get drunk and he did get to flirt with a lot of boys just as Larxene had predicted. It wasn't until they walked home, and Larxene showed him the money she had made while disappearing with some guy for a few hours, that he started thinking that maybe he could do it too. Obviously he couldn't go all the way without blowing his cover as a girl, but no one knew what sex his mouth had, right?

If guys thought he was so desirable when he put on a skirt, why not use it? If he could suck his father's cock, why not some other guy's? It wouldn't even be half as weird and he'd get paid for it. He wouldn't have to do any more than what was agreed, and if he changed his mind, he could just walk away without charging. Simple.

In his mind the plan made perfect sense, opening paths he had never thought of before. He'd make money, freeing him of having to do chores around the house for his allowance, and perhaps he could get the older guys to buy cigarettes and alcohol for him. Best of all, no one would know who he was, since he was in disguise.

It would all be Marlene.

Larxene immediately loved his idea, and found it immensely amusing that 'those fucking perverts' would be tricked into paying for blowjobs from another guy.

And sure enough, after a few weeks rumours had started spreading about this mysterious, but hot friend of Larxene's. No one knew what school she went to, or who she was, but who cared about that anyway? If you paid her and agreed not to touch her, she didn't mind giving a guy a blowjob.

Maybe some people would have regarded the first time he followed a guy to the toilet as stooping to a new low, but to Marluxia it was the first time he actually engaged in something sexual on his own terms. He didn't feel dirty when counting the money afterwards, as Larxene had told him she did after her first time.

He felt liberated.

X

The first time he ever felt bad about it also happened to be the first time he brought Axel along with him to a party.

By now he had discovered that you didn't have to be a girl for certain guys to want to pay for some time alone with you, and since then he had stopped being Marlene. It was much less risky, and he had always hated being taken for a girl anyway.

He had told Axel to just hang around and wait for him while he got them some beer, conveniently leaving out the details about just how he planned to do that. Axel had nodded, looking slightly overwhelmed and maybe even scared by the masses of people and the loud music, but Marluxia had brushed it off. It wasn't like he was going to leave him for long, and Axel could manage on his own. He was a tough kid.

Marluxia just had to be done with it quickly.

Or so he thought.

It wasn't supposed to be more than a blowjob, but the guy just wouldn't come even though Marluxia sucked him until his jaws ached. Eventually he agreed to let the guy flip him onto his belly and just fuck him instead. But did he make it a quickie?

No.

That was why almost two hours had passed before Marluxia made it back to the party from the parking lot, slightly bandy-legged and with a box of beer and a wad of cash (for the 'extra') in his pocket. Axel was nowhere to be seen.

Marluxia looked for him with increasing annoyance. He just wanted to sit down somewhere and get drunk now, damn it! Was it so much to ask that Axel at least waited for him, when Marluxia had gone through the trouble of getting him invited and promised to get him beer? Ungrateful little shit-he… Wait, there he was.

Marluxia pressed towards him through the crowd and bumped his back with the beer case.

"There you are!"

Axel turned with a small start, and Marluxia smiled at him, jumping the case of beer in his hands. "I just saved the day! Sorry it took so long."

Then he frowned, as the look on Axel's face finally got through to him; disoriented, scared. And was that tears in his eyes?

"Are you crying?"

Axel shook his head, even though it was obvious that he was.

"I got some beer too," he said, holding forth a bag that Marluxia hadn't noticed until now. What the hell?

"Where did you get that?" he asked, suddenly on edge. Something about Axel's body language was off, and Marluxia hoped he hadn't stolen that beer from someone. That could get them in a lot of trouble; people tended to be kind of touchy about their booze, and half the party probably wondered what little punks like them were doing there anyway.

"Uh… I traded it." Axel's voice was so quiet that it was hard to hear him over the music, and Marluxia was starting to feel strangely cold inside. Axel was lying to him.

"You… traded it?" he asked suspiciously.

"Yes."

He tried to look Axel in the eye, but his gaze kept flickering away.

"For what?!" he exploded. "You don't have any money!" If he hadn't been holding the beer case he would have grabbed Axel's shoulders and shook him. "Did you steal it, you fucking moron?! If anyone finds out, I'll get the blame for that, just so you know! Couldn't you wait five minutes for me to get back?!!"

Axel backed away a step, green eyes blazing.

"I didn't steal anything! And I was waiting for you, but you were gone a LOT longer than five minutes!! What the hell were you doing?! I don't know anyone here, and I had no idea when you'd be back!" Large tears shimmered in the corners of his eyes. "I should be mad at YOU!"

Axel was really loud when he was shouting, and Marluxia noticed people were starting to point and frown at them.

He made an effort to calm down, trying to soften his expression and relax his shoulders. "Okay, okay, I believe you; I'm not mad… Sorry! Let's go outside for a while."

Axel nodded; his anger fading away as he hooked his arm with Marluxia's, staring into the floor. Marluxia knew him well enough to suspect there had been no anger in the first place, at least not directed at him. It was just Axel's default way of reacting to anything that made him feel uncomfortable.

This was a little more than just 'uncomfortable', though, and it worried him. Axel was proud, always wanting to seem older than his twelve years, and for him to hang on to his arm almost in tears in a room full of people, something had to be seriously wrong. He wouldn't freak out like this just because Marluxia had left him alone for a while.

They snuck out and by some couples making out against the wall and slunk in behind a large garbage dumpster further down the alley. It seemed like someone had made temporary use of it as a toilet, judging by the wet spot on its side and the puddle below. Nice.

Axel didn't seem to notice, falling to his knees as soon as they were out of sight, breaking into desperate, shuddering sobs that shook his thin frame. Marluxia had never seen Axel cry before, and all he could do as watch him in confusion. It took a while before he finally got a grip of himself and crouched down beside him to pat his shoulder.

"Hey, what's..? What happened??"

The story spilled out of Axel's mouth in confused fragments, worse than anything Marluxia could have imagined. He had traded something for his beer.

Some guy had talked to him. He had glasses and he wondered how old Axel was and what he was doing there. He had asked why he wasn't drinking. Did he want a drink? Sure. Axel had taken the can and drunk it as fast as he could, like a real man. The guy had laughed, giving him another one. Seriously, what was he doing there? Was he there all alone? No, Axel was there with Marluxia to party and he was fourteen years old. He had lied about his age, but that was what he was supposed to do, right? The guy said he knew Marluxia. He said he thought he saw Axel with him earlier. Marluxia was a nice boy; they had done business before. By business, Axel assumed he meant buying beer, so he had followed him to the basement to get some more. It was cold, and they had walked a long corridor, and eventually Axel had asked the guy why he kept his beer down there. The guy had stared, like he had said something stupid. Did Axel think he was just going to give him beer? No, no, of course not. He didn't want to seem clueless. But that was what he had thought. Because the guy hadn't said anything about payment. Or maybe he had, Axel had been downing the second beer as fast as the first one and it was hard to remember exactly what they had been talking about. And he still didn't understand why the beer was hidden in the basement. Maybe to keep them chilled. They went inside a room. It was cramped and smelled like mushrooms and the guy told Axel to take off his pants. Underwear too. That was when he understood that it wasn't about the beer. Still, he had…

Somewhere around there, Axel started crying to much to be able to form any kind of coherent sentences, but he didn't need to say anymore. Marluxia held him tight, feeling cold with rage. He could guess who that guy was, a miserable loser going by the name of Dennis. He was almost thrice Axel's age.

And they had done business before.

"Why would anyone want to do that when it hurts so much?" Axel whispered against his shoulder. "In the magazines it looks like it would be nice… Or do you have to be a girl for it to be nice?"

Marluxia could only shake his head. Why hadn't Axel just left when he understood what he was expected to do? He hadn't been forced to anything by the sounds of it. Dennis probably thought that because they were friends, Axel didn't mind earning some extra cash Marluxia's way. And Axel had just played along with it.

It was so fucking wrong that he just wanted to smash something.

How, how, how did this happen in just little over an hour?

It didn't matter what people did to him, because he was weird and looked like a girl and had pink hair and even his own father wanted to fuck him, and besides he didn't care anyway. But Axel was a real person with feelings behind his green eyes. Maybe he was the only real person Marluxia knew. He shouldn't let guys fuck him in mouldy basements and pay him in beer.

And guys shouldn't want to fuck him anyway! Besides from only being twelve years old, Axel was too skinny and he had dirt under his nails and never washed his hair. His face was long and narrow and his nose was too big. He had pretty eyes, but that was about the only thing he had going for him. He was just an ugly, bony, normal boy, while Marluxia… He had been told numerous times how beautiful he was, and even though he hated it, he could see it himself whenever he looked into the mirror.

His legs were slim but curved like a girl's. His face lacked definition, making it look soft and feminine. He was sway-backed. His hair was naturally wavy and would have fallen over his shoulders in perfect ringlets if it wasn't for his choppy haircut. His hands and feet were small and delicate for a boy.

He had been so sure that was why…

He opened a beer, suddenly feeling the need to occupy his hands with something. It was wrong. And it was his fault.

"I really didn't think anyone would try anything with you," he tried to explain himself. He should never have left Axel alone. He should never have brought him here. He knew the people who partied here weren't exactly known for being nice. "The fucking pigs. I thought they only wanted to do it to me because…" He paused frustrated, the words not wanting to come out. "…you know."

He glanced into Axel's eyes, but saw only confusion there.

He shrugged and swallowed, bracing himself. "They say I'm pretty like a girl."

Axel's expression slowly changed as the words sunk in. Eyes narrowing with understanding, mouth opening with surprise, and Marluxia waited for his reaction. That's right, Axel. I do this all the time.

Would he think it was wrong? Disgusting? Would he rightly assume that what just happened to him was in a way Marluxia's fault? Get mad for real and find someone else to hang out with?

Nausea pricked the insides of Marluxia's stomach.

It felt wrong and disgusting when he thought about it now. While Axel had been fucked in the basement and bit his hand to not cry, Marluxia had been in the back of another guy's car with his cock shoved down his throat. It was just… not supposed to be like that. It was something you were supposed to stay away from. He could understand if Axel would want to stay away. If you had the choice, why wouldn't you?

He couldn't look away from Axel's eyes, puffy and lined with red, and he was sure that this was it. That he was losing his first and only real friend.

"I think you're much prettier than any girl," Axel told him.

Marluxia had no idea how to read that comment, and he had to blink several times before he realized that the look in Axel's eyes wasn't angry at all, it was… Whatever it was, it was more emotion than Marluxia could handle, and he let out a chuckle of embarrassed surprise.

"What, are you a homo or something?" he teased, wanting to break the awkward spell.

Axel looked scared before his eyes dropped to the ground, and suddenly something within Marluxia clicked into place; a realization.

Oh. OH.

"That's okay, though I'm not," he quickly assured him, laying a hand on his shoulder to show that it truly didn't matter. It was kind of a surprise though, and a little bit worrying, because did this mean..? He smiled at him. "We'll have to update our porn stash!"

Axel didn't answer, and new tears were rolling down his cheeks. Maybe now wasn't the time for jokes, no matter how well-meaning. Marluxia and put his arms around him and let him lean his head on his shoulder and cry it out.

He didn't say anything, because he didn't know what the right words were. Maybe he should have known, since he had also been crying in the beginning, but he couldn't recall what it had felt like anymore. When he still cared. It was probably better to be quiet than to say something stupid.

He waited until Axel had stopped shaking, then leaned away to look at him, hesitating. He had an idea, but wasn't sure if it was a good one. Maybe it would make Axel feel better, though… and if it would, that was all that mattered.

"Do you want to kiss, or something?"

For a moment Axel just looked at him strangely and wiped his nose and eyes. Then he nodded.

Marluxia nodded back, offering him a small smile. "Okay."

Maybe it would have felt better if Axel had said no, but he pushed it away. A kiss was a small thing to give away, and nothing to be complaining about after what Axel had just been through.

He had kissed some times before, but he couldn't really say he had got the hang of it yet. The guys he slept with usually weren't focused on kissing, which was just fine with him, but at the moment some experience could have been handy. Axel obviously had no idea what he was doing, and it took a couple of tries before they got it right. Surprisingly it wasn't so bad.

Marluxia had an idea of kissing as something slimy and vaguely disgusting (except if it was with a girl, but that was something he sadly hadn't experienced yet), but Axel only tasted of beer and he kept his tongue to himself. It was just soft lips and warm puffs of breath, and it was actually kind of nice.

He wondered if Axel liked it. If he liked him. What would happen if he did? The thought of being Axel's boyfriend felt wrong, even if he wasn't sure why. They were always together anyway, and now they were kissing. Maybe Marluxia wouldn't even mind kissing him again. What else would they do? Hold hands? It wasn't likely that Axel would want to try anything more advanced any time soon.

He guessed it wouldn't be that awful, but…

He had liked having a friend. Sure, he had never understood what Axel liked about him, but he had kind of hoped that he knew. If it was just that Axel thought he was pretty, and liked him like that, then… it just didn't seem worth very much.

They broke apart and he giggled nervously. Maybe the tingling in his stomach wasn't all bad, but it was too tangled with nervousness to know for sure. Axel was smiling slightly, which was good.

"Did you like it?" he asked him.

Axel nodded, smile turning into a proud grin.

"I'm going to tell mom I got my first kiss!" Then he hesitated, smile dying. "But not the other thing…"

Marluxia nodded, feeling queasy. Something told him Axel's mother would be terribly angry, kind of like that day when he had followed Axel home after one of the kids at school had broken his nose. She had called that boy's parents and Marluxia didn't think he had ever witnessed such an impressive fit of drunken rage before. What would she do if she found out someone had fucked her precious son?

More importantly, what would she do if she found out it was his fault? That he was just a pretty little slut that everyone fucked and that he was really the worst person in the world to take care of Axel?

It wouldn't be very nice, that was for sure.

He hadn't really reflected or cared what others might think of his actions before, but when he thought about what Axel's mother might think, it suddenly felt bad. She thought he was a nice boy that helped with chores and kept Axel out of trouble, and he liked that, even though he really wasn't.

"Are you going to tell her you got it from me?" he asked to change the subject.

Axel looked up. "Of course!" Then he frowned. "It's alright if friends kiss each other, right?"

Marluxia shrugged. Somehow he didn't think that the two of them kissing would be something that Axel's mother would disapprove of. Some people had problems with boys kissing boys, but he couldn't see her being one of them.

And he liked the way Axel had said 'friends', like the thought of boyfriends hadn't even crossed his mind. He smiled at him.

"I think it's a little unusual, but why not?"

"I thought so," Axel said, nodding and wiping at his eyes again. "Can I have a cigarette?"

They ended up talking a lot that night, and it might have been a horrible thing to think, but maybe something good had come out of this disaster. Axel was two years younger, and the age difference made it hard to feel like equals, but tonight a boundary had been crossed.

They shared something now; an impurity.

For the first time ever, Marluxia told someone about his father.

X


And that's the first part of Marluxia's adventures... More to come soon! Thank you thank you thank you people who put up with the wait!

Now I'm dying to know what you think of Marluxia! (And little Axel, of course! :-))