-o- CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE -o- (1912)

feel

I felt sunlight through the cracked linen curtains, and heard birds outside the second-story window. My head twinged. I heard a gurgling noise - a coffee machine - and then footsteps.

I opened my eyes and was surrounded by Scrooge's apartment. There was a moment of utter confusion, but the more I woke up, the easier it was to recall the details of what had led to me waking up here.

In the small kitchen of the apartment, Launchpad and Axel were talking quietly and sipping coffee. I blushed instantly at the sight of Axel's face. After a moment, Launchpad saw my open eyes and eased toward me from the kitchen, a mug in his outstretched hand.

"How ya feeling, little guy?" he said, watching me with patient eyes.

A wave of nausea hit me as I sat up, and with an inspired flick of my hand I cast a sprinkle of Cura. The pain ebbed and I felt human again. I accepted the cup of coffee.

In the corner, I took note of Goliath's stone figure. "I guess we all decided to stay here last night," I commented. I tried to meet Axel's eyes, but he looked right past me.

Launchpad nodded. "Axel just got here - he did some questioning of the late night crowd. He was just sharing what he learned. And Goliath showed up just before sunrise; didn't even have time to explain himself, he was cutting it so close." He picked up a thin ceramic medallion from the coffee table and showed it to me. "He was holding this."

I took the medallion in my hand and examined it, intrigued. The designs on the front were almost exactly like the trinket Master Yen Sid had given me in the Coliseum. I thumbed the design of it and then turned it over, noticing something on the back that was not part of the original medallion. It was something that had been scratched in, haphazardly. A set of numbers.

"Coordinates, I think," Launchpad explained. Then, after a heavy pause, "I think it's a message from Scrooge."

I nodded slowly and took a leisurely sip of the hot beverage in my hand. I digested the information. "Coordinates… to someplace here? In Radiant Gardens?"

Launchpad shrugged. "Like I said, I got no explanation from the big guy. But if these are coordinates, yeah, that'd be a few miles outside the capital. It could be anything, Kairi; I could be making this all up. Could be nothing. But it feels right, you know? I've got a pilot's mind, Scrooge knows that… if he wanted to get me a message that was quick and secret, he'd know this is something I'd recognize right away."

I looked at the stone figure in the corner. "I guess we won't know until sundown, when Goliath wakes up."

Launchpad nodded, taking a long slurp of coffee. "Of course. Right. No hurry." He let the quiet apartment fill his momentary hesitation. A few more slurps. And then, scratching the back of his neck, "Unless Scrooge is in trouble. Then there might be some reason to hurry. This could be a limited time offer."

First he glanced at Axel, who nodded intently. Then he looked into my eyes, holding his breath. He needed me to give him the greenlight.

I felt such an overwhelming momentum, an excited feeling in my stomach, like before a dance competition or the academic bowl final round. Like before a battle. Like something extremely important was about to happen. My heart said go, act, but there was so much more to consider. For example, the team of ten other people we'd be leaving behind.

"The others might want to come," I said slowly. "Like you said, it could be anything. We're stronger together."

Launchpad bowed his head in agreement. He wanted to act immediately, too, but he knew we had obligations to the team. He cleared his throat and shifted gears. "You know what's good? Steak and eggs. The old man didn't leave much up here but, uh, how about I check the pub's stores, see if I can't whip us up some breakfast?"

He clapped his feathered hands together and turned to descend down the stairs to the pub below. He left Axel and I alone together, with nothing but the hissing of the coffee pot. He finally gave me the courtesy of eye contact, and it caused me to take a deep breath, lost in his penetrating gaze.

"What's on your mind, princess?" he asked, moving toward me on the couch.

I allowed myself to exhale, unable to break contact with his eyes. "It's just..." I began.

"Alot to soak in, really?" Axel finished my sentence with a knowing grin, mocking the affect of my voice.

"...yeah." I felt naked in his gaze. He knew me like we were old friends.

He shrugged. "You say that alot."

"Got it memorized?" I jabbed, unable to help myself. We almost laughed together, but the weight of discomfort pulled me back into my more serious thoughts. "It's true, though. Everything just feels like... alot. I feel like for years now, ever since the Keyblade appeared, I've just been living in this... fog. So many scattered pieces of who I'm supposed to be. What am I, really?"

He reached out, so naturally, with an unexpected tenderness, and combed his knuckles along my hairline. The tips of his hot fingers touched the edge of my ear, and for a moment I couldn't contain the electric chill it sent through my entire body.

"I don't think you're supposed to touch me," I said. I was surprised when it came out as a whisper. My lips were trembling.

Axel was just arrogant enough to let a glimmer of a smirk spread across his lips. "Why's that?" he asked, lowering his voice. "Is it because you're not supposed to like it?"

He looked at the goosebumps forming on my bare arms with delight. And, then, with a slight frown, he reached out and touched a mark on the inside of my arm. It was a shadow of one of the welts left on me from the Jungle Heartless' slashing vines, one of several scars that remained despite all the Curing magic I'd applied after our first battle together.

I thought of how I used to hide my bruises from Sora, sparing him. Axel touched his lips to my scar and I shuddered with pleasure. With release. Free and unafraid to show my skin.

There seemed to be no going back, not after a touch like that, a moment so intimate and cathartic. I'd been struggling for weeks to wrap my head around "romance," trying so hard to be Sora's girlfriend, thinking that I was simply doing things wrong. But it was easy as this, as easy as following my heart and its deepest urges.

"I keep thinking about how I treated you…" Axel said slowly, his mouth still so close to me that his breath grazed my skin. "Before, when we first met. It makes me sick. Back then I didn't understand- I didn't feel like I do now." He put his hands on me, and I felt the whole of my body tremble. "I don't know when it happened, but something changed here. Something in me. Something between me and you. Right? It's real, isn't it?"

His eyes were desperate. I exhaled, and I waited, open-mouthed, for words that wouldn't come. He read me like I wanted to be read, though, and didn't wait another second before kissing me. I felt the weight of him on me and melted, backwards, onto the couch, clutching the folds of his cloak as I pulled him closer to me. It was like a dam had broken, everything pouring out of me. Every repressed instinct of attraction, exploding.

We pulled apart for a moment, heaving breaths and searching each other's eyes. I realized now that I'd wanted to feel him like this from the first time I'd laid eyes on him. I was afraid of him, yes, but irresistibly drawn to him. I had run away when I'd wanted to run toward him. But how could that be true? How could the truth be so terrifying?

"What's wrong?" he asked, hovering over me. His voice was fragile and breathy, like it had never sounded before. I saw something in him I didn't think was possible: vulnerability.

I wanted to run away again. I wanted to tell him that I needed to be alone, to sort all this out in my head. But that wasn't possible… we were in the midst of so much else. There was no time to think, to understand. With life and death looming, we couldn't deal with anything that wasn't right in front of us.

I didn't answer him. I kissed him again, clutching his hair like reins and savoring the heat of his face next to mine.

"Alright gang, who's hungry?" Launchpad's chipper voice called from the stairwell, a stark reminder of the world that existed outside of our moment.

Axel climbed off of me in record time. I fumbled quickly into a less compromising position just as Launchpad nudged the door open with his huge boots. His arms were filled with steaming ceramic plates.

I smiled at the food he placed in front of me, hoping that my face didn't look as red hot as it felt.

I was grateful that Launchpad was… well, Launchpad. He was more than content to ramble and tell stories between shoveled bites of breakfast, and blissfully oblivious to the sizzling tension of Axel and I struggling not to look too hard at one another.

"Well, better get a move on, eh?" he said eventually, politely collecting our empty plates and dropping them into a sink full of dishwater. "Let's see what the rest of the team thinks about this mystery coin."

Mechanically, I stood and started making my way down the stairs, Axel shadowing my movements with haste. Launchpad was still finishing the dishes, tidying up as a desperate symbol that Scrooge would still be coming home, when my sneakers hit the first landing of the winding staircase.

Axel stood over me abruptly, pushing me against the wall, the same heat I remembered from when he'd snatched me up.

"Axel…"

"I know," he breathed intently, meeting my eyes. "I know it's a secret, and I understand if you don't ever want to bring it up again… but I just have to tell you, especially if this is the last stolen moment I ever have with you. You make me feel."

His long arms scooped me off the ground, cradling my legs completely as his lips found mine. He kissed and groped me with the entire weight of his body holding me flush against the wall of the stairwell. I felt fire in my thighs as I squeezed them around his torso, and heard myself moan in a voice I barely recognized when he drew his mouth down to kiss the nape of my neck.

When we heard Launchpad shut the door of Scrooge's apartment behind him, Axel eased me back to the ground without a word. He placed a final, gentle kiss on my forehead.

"This feeling can stay a secret, if you want," he said, turning away from me as Launchpad's descending footsteps grew closer. "But I hope we can do that again sometime."