"Find something pretty for me, Roxas?"

Roxas recognizes the voice instantly, which would be less embarrassing if the sound of it didn't resonate in his ear like a musician hitting a note just right, or if it didn't turn his stomach into something like grape jelly.

Kneeling on the floor of Hot Topic, Roxas sits beside an open plastic display case of piercings, intimately acquainting himself with products he's never given a second glance before, as he tries to remember Aqua's instructions on what goes next to or in front of what, and on which display.

Which is to say that he does not remember.

She had promised to answer any questions he had, and then promptly left on her fifteen-minute break.

Despite the excitement with Vanitas, it's still pretty early in the morning, and with his fatigue catching up, it takes Roxas a moment to cobble together his five-star response. "Axel, hey."

Setting a short stack of neon colored plastic balls on metal rings back in the box, and internally telling his stomach to chill the fuck out already, Roxas glances up.

It is a huge mistake. His eyes have to climb a pair of metallic gold jeans, hugging calf and thigh muscles, before they can skim the hard lines beneath a black V-neck, pass over pale, sun freckled skin, and settle on the shock of loose, unstyled red spikes and amused green eyes.

So, he didn't sleep off that crush thing, like, at all, then.

"Putting out some new ear thing-a-ma-jigs," Roxas explains, lifting one to get the jade gaze off of him before something in his chest decides to implode.

"Well…" Axel leans forward, the metallic denim flashing in Roxas' peripheral. "Actually."

Roxas is pretty sure no one has a right to look that damn good in a pair of pants. You know, legally speaking.

Axel tilts the piercing in Roxas' hand toward him with his fingertips. "That's a tongue thing-a-ma-jig," he smirks lightly, "but I appreciate your enthusiasm."

Roxas fights with a smirk of his own. "Shut up, I've had a rough morning." He can't resist sticking out his own tongue. Does Axel have to be good at everything? "Know-it-all."

Axel's smile brightens. He must bleach it. "It's literally my only job."

Roxas laughs and returns to rooting through the box, pulling out another slip of cardboard and plastic that had caught his eye earlier and setting it in Axel's palm. "There."

"Yes, good. Plugs," Axel teases as he flutters the package in front of Roxas' eyes. "These are for ears."

"No, I mean," Roxas' brow furrows, and he turns his attention back to the box, "ah, fuck it."

But Axel doesn't appear to be going anywhere. "Mean what, Roxas?" his needling lilt would be grating, Roxas decides, if it didn't seem to serve as a thin paper wrapping actual concern.

"I thought you'd…" Roxas looks up, you know, like an idiot, and gets stuck again on curious green eyes, until the next words come out more a mumble, "maybe like those."

"Oh." Axel leans back on his heels, twisting the packaging between his fingers and drawing it up to examine. "Shit. Yeah?"

Roxas rubs at the checkered cuff along his wrist, offers a half smile. The plugs were black, like Axel's own, with a mandala cut out revealing a whirl of purple, green, and pale yellow. "They're little stained-glass windows."

Axel runs his thumb across the plastic. "How about that?" he muses softly, scarlet brows rising.

"It's dumb." Roxas' face feels stretched, sunburnt, his thumb fumbles at the joint of his glasses. "I just liked them, and I thought—"

"I've always liked stained glass windows."

Roxas shuts his eyes. "You're just saying that."

"Nah," Axel waves off Roxas' second-guessing. "I've never seen anything like these, and I've seen a million of 'em."

"Yeah?" Roxas shifts purposelessly through the befuddling contents of the box, unwilling to look up in case his flush has burnt through the golden tan the islands gift him when he's home too long.

"Yeah." A toe prods at Roxas' side until Roxas swipes at Axel's boot, grinning up at him in spite of himself. "Thank you, Roxas."

Chastising himself as he realizes his temperature rises ten degrees every time Axel drops the hard R in his name, Roxas returns to his work, nods. One shoulder lifts. "Sure."

In his peripheral, another mirage-like shimmer of gold as Axel leans forward like he's got something clever to say, and then decides against it. "Hey, if you're doing okay, I gotta," Axel fingers the silver hoops lining his helix and winces, "go be responsible."

"Oh," Roxas blurts, before he can stop himself. "Right, yeah." He shrugs. Fistfuls of piercings occupy both hands, and a couple drift to the floor. "Do that."

"Don't miss me too much." Axel chuckles. "I'll be right back."

Roxas' shoulder lifts again and he misses the frown he earns in response.

Axel takes a few steps forward, pauses, doubles back.

"You know." Axel halts, just a step past the blonde on the floor now, facing the opposite direction. Nostalgia thickens his voice, as he raises the plugs to eye level again. "When I was younger my grandma used to drag me to church every once in a while, trying to save my little heathen soul."

Confused but intrigued, Roxas stills, cringes a bit.

"And Grandma wasn't fucking around…"

Roxas snorts and sees a grin pull at Axel's lip as the redhead turns to bear witness to the sound.

"…Went to this big-ass Gothic cathedral in the heart of Radiant Garden."

Roxas lifts his chin to see Axel's sweeping gesture, up and toward the ceiling, as if his spindly fingers could paint pillars in the aisles of Hot Topic.

"And that was a brand-new word for me. Soul. That's how hedonistic my parents were." Axel's fingers swish fondly, and Roxas has a sudden desire to know what kind of people had resulted in this.

"And I was a literal sort of kid, so sitting in that rock-hard pew, staring up, I kinda always figured souls must look something like those huge stained-glass windows, y'know? Mosaics of color and light, pictures of people and things that really mattered…Sometimes beautiful, sometimes all clouded up, sometimes blinding."

Roxas' throat dries. He can almost see them himself, a million kaleidoscopic crystals of light weaving together.

Words seem insufficient—unnecessary. He nods.

Axel looks a bit sheepish, unleashing words Roxas gets a sense he's never said before. Rubbing at his shoulder, the underside of each forearm reveals a tattoo, black V's blossoming into single, fully colored tongues of flame pausing a few inches before wrist and elbow. Roxas imagines Axel's window might look like that. Sharp scarlet, electric orange, soft yellow: fiery, expressive, bright, and just a little dangerous.

"I used to try and draw them," Axel admits, "way back when, but I could never quite…" he grasps at the air like he's trying to catch fog, the black leather cords around his wrist slipping down. He matches his eyes to Roxas' again, but once more the words don't come. Axel shakes off the memory. It seems to evaporate from his expression like smoke from a shaken match and the wry smile returns, as he turns away. "Anyway," Axel says. "Bet yours would be pretty, all that gold in the sunshine."

With this final swordthrust through Roxas' crushing heart, Axel picks his way around Roxas' set up and saunters toward the back room where Vanitas is hiding out, blue eyes trailing after him.

"Yours too," Roxas murmurs lamely, but if Axel hears him, he doesn't react.

Axel wonders dimly what it is about Roxas that makes him feel guilty every time he leaves his side. Thoughts of crumbling white pillars and an ocean blue window with sand golden ridges spiral in Axel's head as he pockets the plugs he'll buy later and shifts the door marked 'Staff Only' open, offering it his usual grin for the sake of irony.

Axel finds Vanitas sitting at the desk in the back, beside a computer and a set of security monitors. He has his chin resting on his arms, his headphones hugging his neck and his eyes straight on Roxas in a security frame. He's watching Axel's new friend layering packages of piercings on a display shelf, a step off from where Axel had just been standing himself. In other words, playing I Spy: Hot Topic Edition.

And yeah, sure, Roxas is pretty fucking adorable, but that's not exactly an excuse.

"Slacking off again, V?" Axel teases. He can feel the teeth behind his words, sharper than the ones he jabs at Demyx's lazy bones.

Only a flicker of Vanitas' eyes acknowledge Axel's presence.

"Overcompensating again, Ax?"

Axel wonders if Vanitas is referring to the silent conversation he'd been snooping on, or Axel's metallic gold pants.

Probably the pants.

Axel can feel his mouth drop into a scowl before his lazy smirk reasserts its dominance. "No need," he purrs, pocketing his hands and striding right up behind the prickly douchebag. "Break's over. Out."

Vanitas is not one to hide his scowls. "Technically, I have more right to be back here than you do." He relinquishes the chair anyway.

Axel sinks into black pleather, spinning around to face the monitor, fatigued at the prospect of fast-forwarding through hour long segments of Hot Topic employees unloading boxes at paces that would put sloths to shame. "Technically, you should have been fired by now."

Vanitas shrugs.

If Vanitas were smart, he'd leave it at that and get to work. Axel won't be awarding him a scholarship any time soon. He can feel the shadow lingering just past his shoulder, watching him load the security footage.

"You probably don't want to watch that," Vanitas sings, too fucking close to his ear, and Axel snaps the chair back around sharply.

Axel's assessing glare must chill even Vanitas' soul, because the guy unconsciously runs knuckles over the glossy blazer buttons above his abdomen and backs off a couple steps.

"Why?"

Vanitas regroups, sneering at his informational upperhand, and gestures to the blonde bedhead still shifting around on-screen, trying to reattach a plastic door to the piercing display case that he likely has no idea was already broken to begin with.

"Yeah, okay, sure."

Roxas is sweeter than a slice of strawberry shortcake with cream, Xigbar complains in Axel's head.

Vanitas flutters a hand over his heart, facial features and voice softening eerily as he tries to feign innocence, "Wouldn't want anything to come between you and your precious new bestie." Vanitas chuckles, flipping up a palm in consideration. "I mean, aside from the obvious."

Axel has too much pride to ask what the fuck that's supposed to mean.

Scoffing, Axel continues booting up the program on the computer, waving Vanitas in the direction of the salesfloor. "If you're not going to tell me what you did, get lost."

If something had happened, Roxas would have said so. Right?

But as much as Axel wants to believe Vanitas is spouting absolute bullshit, the voice of experience is tying Eagle Scout level knots in his stomach.

"Don't say I didn't warn you." Vanitas takes up a fully loaded rack of hanging clothes, (maybe he really had been working?) and rolls it out of the cluttered backroom and onto the floor.

Axel mentally runs through his conversation with Roxas again, chastising himself for oversharing, though Roxas hadn't seemed to mind, had almost seemed to get it, even.

Nothing weird from Roxas, though, other than the new hipster vibes his thick rimmed glasses and khaki pants had given him. That, and his, frankly tragic, lack of knowledge about tongue piercings.

Shut up, I've had a rough morning. The Roxas in Axel's head smirks and parts pouty pink lips to stick out a pretty pink tongue. Axel chides himself for zeroing in on that, but shit.

Shit.

Axel adjusts the settings on the security program and hesitates only a heartbeat before pressing play.

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