Chapter Fourteen

The first thing Axel did, the only thing he could do, was sleep. Once he got back to the apartment, he just crashed. With Roxas finally out, the space his own again, without fear of accidental discovery, it was like the strings holding him up were sliced away. He literally fell into bed, the last thing he knew before the exhaustion claimed him being Roxas' scent clinging to the sheets.

When he awoke, a deep and dreamless five hours later, it felt as if someone had snuck in while he was unconscious and poured cement over his body. He was heavy – so heavy – and stiff enough that if his joints had creaked like rusted hinges he wouldn't have been surprised. Despite the sleep, he felt like shit; his body wasn't going to be so forgiving of an active night followed by zero recovery time, magic rock of rejuvenation or no. A few snatched hours after the fact didn't make up for what he'd missed. It wasn't fair, damn it.

Hunger pangs in his empty stomach summoned him to the kitchen, pouring the remnants of the cereal into a bowl with the last drizzle of milk and a reminder to himself to go grocery shopping. Right about now, he was regretting having skipped breakfast at the diner. He could still remember the scents in the air, and Roxas' obvious enjoyment of the food.

He paused, closed his eyes. Roxas. Axel's head was filled with thoughts of him. It made his breath catch and his heart seem to beat double-time. When Roxas was inside his mind, he felt… Axel felt…

He felt – scared.

Inhaling hard to try and calm the mounting anxiety, he stood at the counter and crunched mindlessly through his cereal. What he had to focus on now, more than anything – anything that could push this away, even for a little while – was how to locate and deal with the guys who had tried to kill Roxas. Whatever the kid said, Axel had sensed some pretty fucking clear killing intent last night. People didn't half-ass things with a garrotte. Had Axel not been there, then…

Oh, wow. Yeah, he wasn't going to envision that particular scenario. Not right now. It made the cereal do weird somersaults in his gut.

Instead, he considered what little he knew, and it certainly was little: firstly, one of them was named Loz. That was the big guy. Axel remembered his favourite long-haired opponent snapping that one out, and appreciated the help. Second, they likely worked for ShinRa. Axel knew the name, both from his interactions here and the reputation the company still had in his own time. They were a big gun, no doubt about it. There was potential that they were the ones who had hired him.

That was where his info ended, but it was enough – it gave him a place to start.

Done with eating, he went and retrieved his laptop, plugged it in, and set it up on the coffee table. Sitting on the couch, hunching over the keyboard, he brought up a program he had used countless times before. His computer was the one piece of future technology that he brought with him into the various time periods. It looked simple and unassuming enough that it wasn't noticeable, but if anyone got the chance to properly sit down and sift through its contents, they'd have been surprised to find ideas that hadn't been invented yet, occasionally by people that hadn't so much as been born yet. Then, of course, he'd have had to kill them. A good thing, then, that no one had been inclined to break into his laptop so far.

Connecting to the internet, he took a quick look at the unrestricted ShinRa website, all very uniform in its colouring and efficiency. Boring. Their attempt to paint themselves as the forerunners of scientific progress and human advancement was wearying to look at, all the more so due to Axel's knowledge that the public was swallowing it hook, line, and sinker. Pulling a face at the screen, he clicked away, entering now into the company's administrative site. If the public site had been dull to look at, then this one was positively coma-inducing. It was a black background with nothing except some text, links, and the ShinRa company logo. Ugh. No imagination whatsoever.

As punishment, he was gonna hack the fuckers.

He brought up the program he'd previously got going, tapping in some of the admin site's details. This was going to take a while, especially considering the broadness of the parameters he'd input, but he was going to have the entirety of ShinRa's records searched for mention of the name 'Loz'. From the admin site, his program would enter the ShinRa system itself, and from there quietly and invisibly putter its way through layer after layer of security and confidentiality until it had reached the absolute limit of where it could go. Once it had managed that, it would then sift through every piece of information it had touched and take note of any time 'Loz' popped up, if at all. It would then, at long last, regurgitate those instances for Axel's perusal. All up, the process would take… a week or so, he estimated. Considering the enormity of the ShinRa databanks, even a week was amazingly fast, and only then it would be because Axel was using methods of entry ShinRa didn't yet know it had to fight against.

He got the hack going, sat back for a minute to watch it go through the initial stages of bypassing ShinRa's various firewalls and blockers, then, when it had made successful entry, he closed the laptop's lid and left it to do its work. He showered, shaved, and changed into fresh clothes, feeling the slightest bit revived at long last.

So now, it was a matter of playing the waiting game. He could do that – it was the same as biding his time, which would only make the killing blow he had to mete out to the silver-haired trio that bit sweeter and more satisfying. Knowing that the hack was occurring felt very much like being on the prowl; it flared his hunting lust, for the first time since it had dwindled in the face of needing to keep Roxas safe. He had almost, in all his confusion and the long-game, forgotten what this felt like. When his heart thumped hard, it was because the blood of excitement was being pushed through his veins. This was how it was supposed to be.

Being a hunter… was what felt right.

.o.O.o.

Going in to work that night felt almost surreal. A lot of crazy stuff had happened in a condensed period of time, yet here he was, dressed in his guard's uniform, sitting behind bulletproof glass, continuing as if all was normal. Time marched on regardless of what was occurring within its confines.

Now that he had had a bit of a break from Roxas, he felt… better equipped to deal with the blond again. He had been knocked off-balance last night, between one thing and another, but after resting and just… being away from the kid's somehow bewitching presence, he felt more in control of himself.

He waited with only a slight amount of tension for Roxas to appear on his security monitors, registering the various researchers in the system as they arrived, one eye always watching, despite himself, for the kid's arrival. As time went by, however, and Roxas didn't appear, he had to admit that his nerves were… tightening. He experienced a splinter of doubt as he began wondering if anything had happened, like the duo part of the trio turning up all over again to finish the job. Roxas' friends had been with him, sure, but would that stop the guys? They hadn't hesitated to attack with Axel around, after all. If they really were killers, inept though they might have been so far, it wouldn't have been beyond them to take care of any witnesses.

It wasn't like Axel wouldn't have done the same, under certain circumstances. The temp kid, the BFF – they could easily become collateral damage. That was exactly why Axel had tried avoiding getting buddy-buddy with Pence in the first place. Sometimes people got in the way.

This was… an unhelpful train of thought, though. It winched his tension tighter, making things feel – smothering again.

He took a few steadying breaths, and it was during these that he noticed motion on one of the parking lot monitors. The air in his lungs left in a rush as he identified those surprisingly soft spikes on the black-and-white feed. Roxas. He was here. Axel hadn't realised just how much he'd been waiting for the kid until now.

All of a sudden, he didn't know what to do. His mouth went dry, his palms dampening – he had… butterflies, for God's sake. What the hell had he got himself into, that he reacted like this at the mere sight of Roxas? He'd been so cock-sure and arrogant of his ability to win the kid over and get in nice and close for the kill, and now… well, now he was little more than a wreck.

A wreck who had told his target that he cared about him.

Jesus Christ.

His eyes tracked Roxas as he moved through the parking lot, into the elevator, fingernails finding his palms as the kid rode it down and exited into the long cement hallway. Now was Axel's final chance to collect himself and put forth the correct front. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath.

When Roxas appeared in front of the window, Axel was waiting with a grin and a drawl: "Well – look what the cat dragged in." Unable to keep from glancing at the clock, he added, "You took a while; I wasn't sure you were coming tonight."

Roxas smiled crookedly. "…Were you worried about me?"

The kid was too astute. "I just – wondered how things were going," Axel casually replied.

A warm crease at the corners of his eyes that told Axel he saw right through him, Roxas said, "I see." He lifted his shoulders a little. "Everything's fine. I got a locksmith out, so the locks are all changed, and I've got a guy coming tomorrow to look at the security system. Seems like my one can be bypassed with the right set of internet instructions."

Axel hummed disapprovingly. "The internet?" How… pedestrian. A thought occurred to him. With a slight frown, he asked, "So where are you staying until the new system is in place? Don't tell me you're just winging it with the new locks…"

Roxas shook his head. "I'm sleeping at Hayner's." When a stiffness Axel hadn't even acknowledged fell across his features, the kid rolled his eyes a little, alerting him to the fact that his face had changed. "And Olette's. They're taking me in for the night. It's like going to stay at my grandparents'."

Axel blinked, relaxing marginally. "Oh. Good."

"Yeah." Roxas then smiled, a gentle expression that whipped the butterflies back up, right when Axel's gut had been starting to forget they were there. "So – hi."

Axel swallowed. "…Hi. Did we not say – hi already?" The smile growing, Roxas silently shook his head. "Oh," Axel faintly mumbled. Then, "Hi."

The blond chuckled a little, and slipped his ID into the metal tray for Axel to drag across. "I think we've got it covered now." As Axel registered him in the system, Roxas drummed his fingers on his thighs, seeming to work himself up to something. After a pause, he started up, "Look, I just wanted to say something that I didn't really get a chance to last night, or this morning."

Axel's gaze darted over to him, taking in his somewhat nervous expression. His chest tightening, he gave a strained, "Oh?"

Roxas bobbed his head, a hint of shyness coming over him. "Well, it's just that – I had fun. I didn't get to tell you that. You put in a lot of effort that I hadn't expected, and I know things got kind of… side-tracked for a while there…" He glanced up and down the hallway, making sure there was no one around to listen in. "What with all the – you know…"

Axel nodded to signify that yes, yes indeed, he did know.

Roxas shrugged, taking a deep breath and sighing it out, a rueful smile in place now. "I guess I just wanted you to know that before that – and after that – I had a really good time." He fidgeted a little, weight shifting from one leg to the other. "And I don't want you to think that that's the norm for me. It seems lately like everything to do with – that – has worked into a bit of a fever pitch, and it's like my life is consumed by dealing with those guys…" Again, he couldn't help but check his surroundings, ultimately cautious of being overheard. When he met Axel's gaze again, he went on, a little helplessly, "It's not usually like this. I don't want you to think that this is what my life is like."

Oh, hell. The kid was anxious – that's what this was. He had been worrying that Axel would get turned off him by all the weird shit. He had obviously been thinking about this, maybe all day, and had worked himself up to come out with this little spiel – which, now that Axel was paying attention, seemed like it might have been rehearsed in his head beforehand.

He remembered Roxas telling him that he cared about him, too, and felt his insides turn a nauseating combination of tingly and cold. Dealing with this was – gruelling. Maybe this was his chance, though: maybe he could seize the opportunity being presented and just… back off. Act like maybe having to grapple with all of Roxas' shit was too much work, claim that he had really only been looking for a bit of fun rather than the oddly intense experience this had all become.

That would be smart – that would be such a smart thing to do. He could find other ways to get to Roxas, even with his newly beefed up home security. Axel could deal with the silver-haired trio once had all the information he needed, and then just leave Roxas completely the hell alone until the moment of the hit. Everything would be neat and tidy again – just a guy doing a job, and then moving on.

He inhaled, mouth working to find the words, his brain insisting that this was his big moment to finally put things back on their right track. He wasn't entirely sure what he would have said, though, because Roxas continued without expecting a response, all of this cogitating on Axel's part having happened lightning quick, the pieces coming together to form a solution that he'd have been a fool to resist.

"What I was thinking," Roxas went on, "was that maybe we could try all that again, minus the freaky shit." There was a sense of hesitation to his manner, combined with a certain hopefulness in those bright, blue eyes that caused all sense of logic to freeze up in Axel's otherwise intelligent brain. Whatever he'd been poised to say became lost as he realised that the kid was asking him out. "Maybe dinner, at my place? Next Sunday?" Roxas offered.

Axel distantly, brain and tongue for the moment disconnected, heard himself say, "…Sure."

Well. So much for that. On top of everything else, he had now become a self-judged fool.

The grin that spread across Roxas' face, however, slow and pleased, told him that being a fool possibly wasn't such a bad thing in the short-term. One look at that expression weakened him at the knees, making him infinitely glad he was sitting down.

"Great. I'm glad. And this time –"

"This time, no knives in the ass," Axel cut in.

"Unless that's what you're into," the kid replied with a wink. Axel let out a loud, brittle laugh, returning Roxas' ID through the window. There was a rattle, Roxas peering in to find a couple of sea-salt candies that Axel had automatically slipped in. With a chuckle, the blond picked them out and tucked them away. "And here I thought these might end with your successful conquering of my innocence." He regarded Axel warmly through the glass, hands in the pockets of his baggy hoodie. "But you're not like that. I thought at first you might have been," he conceded, referring to their early difficulties, "but I feel like I know you better than that now. I'm just glad you didn't just decide I was a hopeless case and write me off."

Axel's heart turned into jagged-edged stone.

Roxas smiled, ducked his head a little bashfully, and, without waiting for the redhead to muster up an answer, moved on.

He called back, "Don't forget the elevator!"

Axel reached out and pressed the orange button, and heard a soft laugh drift along the corridor as the buzz sounded out. The grating rattle of the elevator descending vibrated along the corridor, Roxas within it, a black and white image on a screen. Then a minute later, he was out of sight.

The next person to come along found Axel with his head in his hands, looking like he'd been sitting like that for a while. He buzzed them through, barely noticing who it was, just glad that for once it wasn't Ansem, who would undoubtedly have berated him for being so inattentive.

This was getting… harder. More than that, it was getting more confusing by the day. For the first time… Axel was on the edge of questioning why it was that someone had to die, which was the sort of thing a paid assassin was ill-advised to consider.

Dragging his hands across his face, he stared through his fingers at the desk, wondering how much longer he would need to keep this up. It was draining him of all his energy – this job was becoming positively vampiric. Could he, after all this, just make the hit and go home? Put his feet up? Watch a movie and laugh out loud, a king of not only the world, but of time?

His confidence, such as it was anymore, and the feeble control he had managed to wrest back from the void were shaken.

The night passed with Axel fighting to keep his agitated mind sufficiently occupied. The regular boredom was tangled with thoughts of Roxas, the pressures of the job, memories of last night, and, as the early hours rolled around, flashes of this time last night, when he and Roxas had been in his own goddamn bed. He could see and hear and smell it all so clearly in his head. His flesh responded, a longing sweeping through him that he had to force away, with no relief existing within the glass, metal and concrete of this guards' cage.

What he really needed right now was a sustained period of aloneness – time to himself, consisting of only himself, no Roxas in sight, nothing to make him second-guess things, nothing that made him struggle. He needed life simplified, so that he could think clearly again, which was something he was rapidly losing his ability to do. Basically, he needed booze, and lots of it. He needed to get hammered to the point of vomiting all this uncertainty away, leaving him scraped raw and ready to inflict damage on the universe.

When the night finally ended, researchers trickling by, he once again found that Roxas was back in front of him. The blond appeared at the window, a furtive air about him as he asked, "Hey, is there anyone else around right now?"

Axel blinked tiredly, looked at the monitors, answered, "No – Fuu and Lucrecia just left the parking lot. I don't know about anyone coming up, though, I can't see the lab."

"That should be fine." Roxas vanished, and a second later there was a knocking at the door. Bewildered, Axel hesitated, then eased up from his chair and went to unlock it. Roxas stood waiting expectantly on the other side, and, for his efforts, reached up and tugged him down for a kiss that tasted both salty and sweet.

The kid wasted no time, apparently aware that this wasn't the sort of thing to get caught doing. Ansem hadn't yet left the building – if he stumbled across the two of them like this, he was likely to swallow his tongue and possibly fire the redhead on the spot. But despite this… Axel couldn't fight it. He kissed back without thinking twice, his body on auto-pilot when it came to Roxas, all action and no consideration, not a shred of a care about how tormented he was going to be about this later. There was just something about the blond that flipped a switch in Axel, evoking a heat that reached right through skin and muscle and bone and gripped him before he even knew it was there. And the flavour…

So this was what those candies tasted like.

The kiss was short, but intense, all delving tongues and a sense of brief intoxication. They parted with a gasp, Axel gazing dizzily at Roxas, who stared up into his eyes with another of those amazingly slow grins. The way it spread across his face was like dawn breaking. "A reward," the kid whispered, "for all the candy."

Throat bobbing as he swallowed, Axel muttered back, "I need to buy more candy."

Roxas laughed softly, pressed another salty-sweet kiss against Axel's mouth – and then was gone.

Axel was left reeling in the doorway, until he realised he could hear the elevator somewhere in the background, heading back down to the lab. He heaved a shuddering sigh, holding himself steady in the doorway for a moment, trying to collect his strength. Before whoever it was could reach the corridor, he closed the door again and locked it, returning dazedly to his seat. His eyes found the set of monitors, Roxas' slender form crossing to his car, and there was a – a bounce to his step that Axel knew had everything to do with him.

Belle went by, a pleasant smile on her face as she bid, "Good night."

Axel's voice was hoarse as he mumbled the same back to her. If she gave him a weird look because of it, he didn't notice.

The taste of sea-salt and sugar lingered on his tongue, sending occasional tremors through his flesh. Roxas was… a bold one. And why not? A kiss didn't compare to sex. They had already done so much. But it was… unexpected. All this affection the kid had to give – Axel… didn't deserve it.

He didn't deserve it, but craved it anyway.

Oh, boy, Axel.

He was in a fine, fine pickle, entirely of his own creation. He should have hated himself – should have corrected himself – should have set himself straight and made all this go away…

But all he tasted was the candy, and a swelling ache for Sunday.