"The love you can't have
lasts the longest, feels the strongest
and hurts the most."
Yulia

Axel x Roxas
TheSacred Somebody

HE COULD SMELL it. A bubbling hot scent of melting cheese, greasy pepperoni, and whatever else that was on Axel's pizza coiled into Roxas' nose. He startled in his sleep, nostrils twitching with the delightful aroma. His gut curdled, and he silenced a groan that dug at the clasps of flesh holding shut his throat.

Mmm…

His stomach tangled with hunger, gurgling and bellowing; Axel heard it across the table.

"Roxy-boy, you awake?" he asked. "Hey, Roxas?" He reached across the table and shook the boy by the crook of his arm.

Roxas twisted his face up, battering away Axel's touch. "I'm awake," he said, pallid lids fluttering open.

Axel just about went breathless by the gleam of Roxas' sapphirine eyes twinkled with sleep. He stopped himself from staring and decided to take a sip of his tall 'n' frosty glass of milk.

Damn. Roxas was the death of him. He was so sure of that, he thought that perhaps he should start taking better protective measures.

Yeah, right.

"Have a good sleep?" Axel asked, clenching his straw with his teeth and sucking a sip of dairy juice. "You looked peaceful."

"It was a nice nap." Roxas slumped in his seat, stretching his legs under the table and his arms over his head as he let out a yowl. "Had a strange dream, too."

Axel made an awkward slurp in his drink, as though choking. "Really?" he asked, swallowing painfully. He avoided Roxas' gaze and stared at the carpet outside the booth, memorizing every stitch and clump of lint. Eww. He didn't like that icky shade of puke green intertwined with slashes of brown and faded silver.

Clash-y, very clash-y, he thought.

"Yeah…" said Roxas, drinking his sweating Coke without a straw. "You took me to a nightclub, and when some really fast techno music came on, you went out there and raved with red glow sticks. You had lights all around you. You were like a god of music, letting the rhythm possess your body… Everybody had stopped what they were doing just to watch you rave as music swarmed and trembled inside you."

"Wow, that's odd," Axel said, secretly relieved that Roxas knew nothing of his dirty little secret. "I actually do go to nightclubs." His mind went colorful with the images Roxas had poetically provided. He could actually picture himself, garbed in his punk bondage pants and tight fish-net shirt and spiky collar, swinging, popping, and jerking to the techno magic in a spiral of streamed crimson light.

"You rave?"

"Only when the glow sticks are red," he said, clearing his head of his latest rave experience, which hadn't been all that tangible.

Roxas didn't respond. He was still tired, and was considering another nap. He yawned slightly, eyelids dropping lazily as his irises glistened with fatigue. He grunted. "I woke up thinking the food was here."

"Not yet. Obviously."

"I smell it."

"Since we're the only people in here, and since Joe is the only one cooking, the scent carried from the kitchen to your nose," Axel explained.

Roxas dropped his expression a bit, his eyebrows furrowing slightly and lips perking up in a pout.

Axel couldn't resist; he reached across the table and gave Roxas' nose a tweak. "Excellent sniffer, Roxas."

Roxas pulled away from Axel and yawned, blinking away tears. "The Superior said the same thing."

Axel's stomach tangled up. Why would Xemnas have such an interest in his Roxy-boy? The Main Man must be planning something, he couldn't help but think with an ill-feeling. He frowned. "I don't like that guy."

Roxas chuckled. "You kind of have to; he's your boss."

"Yeah, I know, but still… Don't get too close to him."

Axel still wouldn't look at Roxas. He couldn't bear to look at him and show that he was secretly getting worried about him. It would just end badly if he let on that he cared too much. God… it was hard. He wanted to show Roxas how much he worried for him by taking him into his arms and holding him close. He wanted to caress his neck and nuzzle his honey-blond spikes, to clutch tightly the delicate warmth of his seraphic boy.

Axel snorted at his strange thread of images.

Well, that's never gonna happen, he thought mockingly.

"Heh… Sounds like you're real concerned," said Roxas, scratching his nose and ruffling back an errant spike of wheat. "What's there to worry about? He's our boss. He'll take care of us, right?" Roxas tried to grin at Axel, but it wasn't working. He was tired, though, so he hardly gave an attempt.

Axel grunted. "I just don't care for the guy, all right? Gives me the willies just being around him."

Roxas snorted a laugh. " 'Willies'?" He asked with a teasing up-turn to his question.

Axel rolled his eyes. "Oh shut up. We all have our ways of talking. Heck, you always 'yeah' all the time."

"Yeah…" Roxas nodded – and then cut himself off. Dammit, he did say "yeah" too much… Axel was onto something? He raised an eyebrow at Axel, but decided not to say anything.

Silence is golden at a time like this, he thought.

He slouched in his seat and stared at the lights on the ceiling. "Axel, can I ask you something?"

"You just did."

Roxas turned away from his ceiling studies to glare profoundly.

"Okay, what else?" Axel felt a little trickle of sweat slip down his neck. He silently admitted to himself that Roxas' eyes were beautiful… but, man oh man, were they scary!

"Do you ever wonder if Nobodies exist or not?" Roxas asked, his tongue feeling awkward from the arrangement of his words. He scrunched his face up and tried again. "I mean, don't you think that maybe… Nobodies don't exist at all…?"

Axel eyed him curiously. "What are you getting at?"

"I'm saying, well…" Roxas clicked his tongue in his mouth, sucking on his teeth for a second while he thought of how to phrase his question. "A Nobody exists because it has no heart right? Well, what if a Nobody still has a heart, than that makes it a non-existent one. Nevertheless, Nobodies are considered non-existent because they don't have hearts; what I'm getting at is, what if a Nobody, who already doesn't exist, still has feelings that exist but can't? Would that make a non-existent thing exist as something that already doesn't?"

Axel's face went sallow. His eyes flickered to Roxas' face, worried that he was watching his reaction…He wasn't. Roxy-boy was intently wondering about the details of the ceiling tiles.

Thank God.

Axel reached behind his hair, underneath his bevy of crimson spikes, and massaged a group of heat-bumps. He sighed. Again he looked at Roxas, pretty and wonderful when deep in thought. Those deadly beautiful eyes of his were tamed with the going-ons behind them. His mouth was slack and his nose was tilted upwards, along with the upward slant of his lovely chin….

Axel found Roxas' angelic visage to be even more captivating than before. Roxas, deep in thought, was an image that made Axel's chest sear with cool heat.

He let out a heavy sigh that sounded more like a gasp for air. "Hmm… You know, I was thinking something like that. But, um…" He cleared his throat. "We exist as Nobody's because we don't have hearts. We don't exist technically, because we exist as Nobodies; I guess that much is true."

Roxas whimpered slightly and breathed in deeply, slowly. "Don't think of this weird, but…"

"Hmm?" Axel blinked to show his attention. For once Roxas actually looked at him, and Axel almost swallowed his tongue. "Don't worry. Nothing's weirder than the stuff I've been thinking, man. No worries there." He laughed a little nervously, and decided to not push any more conversation on his part. He let Roxas continue.

"I've been thinkin' a lot lately. Maybe… I'm not a Nobody," said Roxas. "Maybe I'm something else."

"Huh…" Axel's eyes gazed at Roxas' lips, and suddenly a thought pinged his mind: KISS HIM.

Oh great…Now I'm having regrets; I should've gone for the lips!

He shoved those guilty thoughts away, trying to think of something to say. He was afraid that if he started thinking, he wouldn't be able to stop, get too far ahead of himself, and he might do something stupid-er.

He swore to himself not to think so much about Roxas, determined to keep his mind in the present.

He thought, Right… keep to the moment. Don't look forward.

Axel groaned. He leaned forward and rested his forehead on the cool table. "Oh boy. We're getting deep into stuff we shouldn't."

A flaming scarlet shrubbery, burning a hole through the table and speeding like mad, violently affronted Roxas' eyes.

Axel's natural hair color was deliciously red, a ripe apple for the picking, with its tender blush of violet at the roots, and a shade of crimson lifting and lightening the tips. Roxas felt the longing to run his fingers through the locks of red, but he willfully restrained himself.

He'd never felt this way before… he was so sure he couldn't. It was impossible. That's what he told himself, and clearly, that was the way things had to be.

But were they that way? Were they honestly going to adhere to the respective rules of existence? Well, considering Roxas was obviously feeling when he shouldn't proved that rules weren't in application anymore.

How bad was that? Very.

Roxas mentally slapped himself for thinking far too much on petting Axel's apple-bushel red hair. Oohh… he hated it when he thought too much, on anything really! He wasn't going to fall prey to his own mind! No siree!

The thing was, Axel haunted Roxas' mind and dreams, despite having just met him yesterday. Of course, it was a big first impression. It was big enough it left an emotional imprint on the void thriving inside Roxas. But that impression… it burned him. It burned him inside, and not just on the outer lines of his sanity or well-being, but in the unadulterated recesses of his busy, coursing mind.

Right now, Axel was on Roxas' mind, although he denied it. "Ahh, well," he said. "It was just a thought."

"Careful on what you think, dude." Axel mumbled from the table surface. "The more you think about something, the more likely it's going to happen."

"Oh really?" Roxas wasn't actually interested. He was just being rhetorical.

"Ya really." Axel picked his head up. There was a waxy shiny spot on his forehead from where he had lain his head. "It's called the Law of Attraction, a very scientific principle."

"Yeah, right." Roxas was no believer of metaphysics.

"No seriously!" Axel protested. His eyes bulged out of their sockets with the severity of his voice, and Roxas just about giggled at the expression Axel had painted on his face. "Ever noticed how you think about all the happy things in your life, and BOOM! More happy things, right?"

Roxas merely stared, his face saying, What the hell are you babbling about?

"Well, you bring into your life the things you think about the most. The more you think about it, the more it occurs and more the affect it has on you," Axel explained. He was seriously thinking of taking a napkin from the dispenser next to him and drawing a diagram or graph or something, but he had no idea or reason for visual aids. "If you think bad, that's what you get. What you focus on, you attract… You're responsible for the sort of life you're living right now. It's all from the accumulated thoughts you've had over the course of your life. Since your life, I estimate, hasn't been all that long as a Nobody, I'd say your attracted reality is pretty fresh."

Roxas kept staring about three minutes after Axel stopped talking. He finally said his piece, "Dude, there's a lot of metaphysics in that."

"That's my point. Metaphysics effect our lives, whether we believe it or not."

"I don't believe it."

"It sure believes in you, man. Just look at the life you live." Axel made a huge, wide-world-look-at-this gesture, stretching his arms out to the sides. "Ever since you started thinking, 'oh, look, I like this. This is better than before,' it's been better, and it stayed that way."

"So?" Roxas snapped. "It could have happened to anyone."

"No, it couldn't have, and you know it."

"Whatever," Roxas said, somewhat irritated by Axel's nonsense. He waved the truth aside, glowering heavily at his straw wrapper crumpled up in a tight little ball at the edge of the salt shaker. "I'm too hungry to think about this."

Axel sighed in defeat. "Oh well. I tried."

Roxas made a slight mumble, and then folded his arms on the table. He cocked forward and nestled his chin in the folds of his elbows. He let his eyelids get heavy, let his breathing slow and grow relaxed…

The table jumped up; the ground thumped. Roxas popped up from his on-coming sleep, eyes flashing wild and wide in the moment of extremity. He looked frantically about – what, were his instincts going haywire? – and… he pouted. Furiously.

His eyebrows slanted forward into a fierce inclination. "It's you," he said, tone dripping ice.

"Indeedy-deed, Princess," said their waiter, Joe, who had finally arrived with their food. "I couldn't help it; you looked so precious."

Axel's face twisted up sourly. His eyes threatened to become black holes as they turned dark and squinty with malice. He indulged in the pain pulsating in his chest, and he knew what sort of emotion it would have been, had he a heart.

Jealousy. Pure, unbridled jealousy.

How dare Joe say something that was obviously going to set Axel off like a firecracker! The little retard knew Axel was a defensive, possessive bastard. Why the hell would he spur that on?

Axel didn't like it. Not one bit.

There was something going on behind the cocky smirk of his long-time friend, and yet… he couldn't pin a point on its head.

Frustrated and sort of bristling up, Axel said, "Yeah, he's cute, but don't make a move closer. He bites… and he draws blood."

Both Roxas and Joe gave Axel the strangest, alienated look. "What the hell's up your ass?" asked Joe, getting an ugly facial with snark.

Roxas snorted into the hem of his shirt's neckline. He squeezed his eyes shut and giggled in partial silence, hoping no-one would notice him.

"And what's up with Sparkles here? Havin' an allergic reaction from too much eyeliner?" Joe thought that was REAL clever… He showed it with another smirk. "Gee, Princess, you better cut down on the Goth. It doesn't suit you a bit, your Highness!"

"Oh cut it out!" Roxas snapped. He flung himself up straight in his seat and snarled, "Shut up and feed me, ass-fuck."

Joe jolted his face. His smirk was shot clean off. He shrugged. "Well," he said, reaching to pick up the order from the table behind him he had set it on. "your wish my command!"

Axel rubbed the sides of his eyelids and shook his head. He couldn't take this much longer; Joe was just being immature, and Roxas was being a bit of a potty mouth. He knew it was not like them to act this way. Both out-of-character, really. For one thing, he knew Joe was a pretty nice guy, and Roxas was a pretty clean boy.

What was wrong with these people? Couldn't they just get along?

"Should I get a bib for you, Princess?"

"Kill yourself!"

Apparently not. They both rubbed each other in the wrong way. They had a way of getting on each other's nerves, and they were starting to trod on Axel's last.

He sighed out of aggravation. Man, this is not the way to get my attention.

A tumult upsurged from the rivalry, chopping into the peace of the empty restaurant with booming insults and grandiose puffed-up scare tactics. The ruckus banged brutally against Axel's peace of mind, and it shattered his reserve.

Short of snatching up both men in his arms and shaking them lifeless, Axel blew out a loud breath, seizing their attention with a bestial snarl. The silence came abrupt, and the rowdy antagonists hushed in fearful quiet. They stared into the abyss of Axel's eyes, his glare promising an excruciatingly painful death by scream therapy. Roxas and Joe quickly apologized and shook hands for a truce.

Finally, Joe started bringing out the chow.

"All right," he said. "Here's yours."

He picked up a large platter with a steaming, boiling-fresh Super Supreme pizza pie. The toppings were hidden under piles of toppings and more toppings. There were so many various objects protruding out of the cheese Roxas couldn't tell what, if any of it, was edible. Apparently everything was edible, even if it was bleeding with red sauce.

Axel's eyes swelled with the scrumptious sight of the feast being set before him.

Joe chuckled at Axel's ridiculous expression. "Hah! Happens everytime." He plucked the next item of the table and carefully placed it in front of Roxas.

Roxas practically came in his pants from the sight of the food before him. Piles of thick, long french fries were slopped in blankets of gooey, golden cheese. Gems of sausage and a few reeds of onion were spotted in the sea of cheddar. Roxas' mouth filled with the juices of starvation as he ogled his glorious meal. The smell was scrumptious, and he couldn't place the taste he was smelling… something luxurious, between a blissfully greasy heaven and a cholesterol hell.

Joe was proud of himself. "Thank you. I'm glad to be at your service," he said. He bowed out and away from his customers, slinking away into the darkness of the kitchen once more. The darkness behind him seemed a tad unnatural.

No-one said it, but they both thought it: Joe was creepy.

With creepy Joe gone away into darkness, Axel slapped his hands together in anticipation. "Well, let's dig in!" He grabbed a sloppy slice of toppings, cheese, and hot sauce. Strings of mozzarella pulled from the corners of the slice to the platter, to Axel's bottom lip as he took the first bite. His mouth exploded with favor and his eyes rolled backwards.

Roxas hadn't touched a single fry. He watched, mesmerized, by Axel's hunger and lust for Italian cuisine. He felt a suspicious longing in the pit of his belly, which wasn't growling with greed, a longing that made him wish Axel was licking at him, instead of the tasty grease on his rosy finger tips. He looked at the way Axel's lips moved with the consumption of the pizza slice, bobbing tantalizingly in invitation that made Roxas want something other than chili cheese fries…

He was afraid to admit, but the truth was loading up against him:

He wanted Axel. BADLY.

As bad as the truth was, Roxas was becoming all too familiar to the longing and lusting he was starting to feel towards his newly-found comrade. Despite the truth, as horribly trite and clichéd as it was, he wondered what Axel's statue-like body would taste like, all covered in hot sauce and chili…

Roxas' face betrayed his growing lust, but he was helpless to conceal it. It was very rare, hardly possible, for a Nobody to feel longing and desire; Roxas was taking the advantage for himself by soaking up the moment, a moment that actually included some of the most absurd thinking he had done in days.

Axel stopped eating all of a sudden. Roxas' gaze, although flattering, was making him worry. And dammit! He didn't want to worry when it was practically impossible to do so… or was it? Axel didn't know anymore, and at this point he no longer cared.

"Roxas?" He asked, slurping a cheese-string at the corner of his mouth. "Sorry, but you can't eat me when you have a perfectly untouched order of Chili Cheese fries."

Roxas blinked, startled. He remembered that he had lungs and that he needed to use them. "Oh." He gasped lightly, feeling dizzy and light-brained. "Mmmph… I just can't believe you're going to eat all of that by yourself."

"Ahh, I never do. At any rate, we'll just bring Demyx home a little treat in a doggy bag." Axel laughed at the mental image of Demyx on his knees, sitting pretty like a trained poodle, with a collar and barking. Hee hee… he was going to do just that. Wouldn't Demyx be so happy to get payment for his deed of helping the boys get out of the Castle? Sure. Everyone loves a reward for deeds well done…

Roxas avoided experiencing another scene of Axel eating pizza by practicing his come-hither looks at his puddle of chunky, speckled cheesy fries. They smelled wonderfully fresh and obviously homemade, peppered with nameless spices and dashed with whatever else made it supposingly very tasty.

Finally, and rather sadly, deciding that Axel wasn't going to offer himself up as an All-You-Can-Eat buffet on the first date (was this a date? Roxas couldn't decide on that either!), Roxas plucked a cheese-and-chili-coated fry from the delicious mess awaiting consumption.

He took a single bite, and before he knew it all the fries were gone within seconds. "Damn," he said, wiping Chili from the side of his mouth with the back of his hand. Some sauce smeared on his wristband. "That was good!"

Axel chortled. "Hah, I knew you'd like it." He was only one-third of the way done with his. "Wanna help me eat mine?"

"Eat your what? I'll eat anything you give me."

There was an awkward silence. Axel's male brain had kicked into dirty overdrive that had him getting excited for no good reason. Actually, since it was Roxas, it was a good reason...

Roxas watched the change take place on Axel's smile and his face suddenly flared up. He put a hand to his forehead, shaking his head in disbelief. "Sorry, that came out wrong."

Axel stared at him curiously. "Well, if you put it that way…" His eyes rolled to the ceiling… his mind wondered…

What could Roxas eat for me? Oooh, have I got a surprise for him! He chuckled lecherously, thinking about the weather down South.

Roxas glared. "That's not what I meant!" He was red-hot in the face. He randomly shoved a piece of pizza in his mouth to shut himself up from further idiotic drivel. He sat there, unflinchingly glaring, until the roof of his mouth started stinging. Then it started burning. Then… it was painful!

His eyes watered up and he started opening and closing his mouth to get rid of the spicy sensation searing his tongue. "Ahhh ahh! Hawff hawwff hawf!" He garbled with a mouth full of spicy Super Supreme.

Axel was in stitches. He was literally holding his sides and crying with the pain of his laughter. "Oh my god! Even I can't shove a whole slice!" he spat between convulsions and muscle spasms of happy. He controlled himself after some time, and saw that Roxas looked to be in some sort of pain.

His gleeful expression dropped dramatically. The color died from his expression. "Oh my god," he said again, a little less with the laughing and more with the concern.

Roxas' face was completely tomato red and his eyes were blood-shot. He was panting and crying. He was absolutely helpless.

"Roxas!"

Roxas forced himself to swallow the demonic pizza, and gasped out in suffering once it was down. It flamed his tissues until in disappeared off the internal radar once it hit the opening of the stomach. His mouth was still on fire and his tongue was threatening to turn to ash. Tears streamed down his cheeks. His eyes were angry, frustrated, and anguished. Making fanning motions to his throat, he guzzled his Coke, but the spice-fire still raged in his throat, in his mouth, and on his lips.

Axel was panicking. "Here here here!" He flapped his hands at Roxas and shoved his milk across the table, holding it in front of him. "Drink this!"

Roxas clumsily accepted the dairy offering and dumped it into his mouth. Relief spilled over him in an instant. The cold milk extinguished the irritated fires of the spicy Super from hell. He was drinking it in steady streams, letting the cool put out the heat.

"There we go," said Axel. He started to relax. "Good boy… Drink until you can't feel it burning."

Roxas did just that. The glass of milk was about two-thirds empty. He set it down with a huge sigh of relief and pleasure, smacking his lips and wiping away his tears with his thumb.

"Good boy… Milk is the best drink for spicy appetites."

Roxas merely nodded in agreement.

"I'm sorry I was picking on you." Axel looked down at his pizza and had the limp thought he would never eat it again. He couldn't believe that Roxas suffered so much from one slice of the demon.

Well, then again, considering what was on that pizza, it was bound to happen… but nonetheless, Axel was pretty sure he should feel wholly rotten right about now. So, he tried to muster up feeling rotten as he apologized, "I'm sorry. What else can I say?"

"It's…okay…" Roxas replied slowly. "I swear, I'll never eat anything spicy as long as I live!"

"Nah, don't say that, bud," said Axel. He took back his milk, smiling at the remaining dairy drink. "I might take you out to dinner sometime for Buffalo wings."

Roxas snatched the milk back and slurped a huge gulp. "Is that an offer?" He licked his milk mustache away, gratefully tasting something other than painful Capsicum.

Axel skittishly glanced away, shrugged, and stuffed his face with pizza in silence.

Roxas twitched his shoulders in an indecisive way. He was kind of hoped it was an offer, though.

He had the daydream of sitting in a romantic restaurant, eating some dead-fancy unpronounceable French cuisine by the tenderly glowing light from candles, chatting with Axel… The charming red-head in a snappy tuxedo smiles and reaches across the silky cream table cloth, holding his hand, running his thumb across the front of his palm; Roxas looks away and blushes prettily, obviously happy and outshining the candle light by the glow of being loved unconditional…

He blinked back to reality, and nearly sighed aloud. What the hell was he thinking? Romantic dinner? Candlelight? Tuxedos? With a man? Dude, Roxas was getting weird around Axel, and that was the only explanation!

Dammit.

Roxas didn't like feeling so trapped inside his own head. He had so many thoughts, and yet he couldn't express them in any way without creeping Axel out. Especially the sudden wanting to hold his hand and wipe away the smudge of sauce from the corner of his mouth… So innocent, but Roxas knew the truth. Hah. Axel? Innocent? Roxas would pay good munny to see that…

But then he couldn't help but wonder if he himself was innocent. Was there anything to make him question that? Not really. Nothing he could think of, actually. But that didn't make it true!

Was he as much of a good boy as Axel kept saying he was? Roxas had always thought he was one of the uppercrusts when it came to being a bad boy, or at least a boy with survival skills. Huh…. Yeah, he was a good boy. He was predicable, docile, absolutely plain and perfectly boring.

Roxas scrunched up his expression; he didn't like that. All of that meant he was boring, and that was something he hated. Boring. He hated that with as much hate as he could, even if he couldn't!

Axel was watching the show take place in Roxas' ever-changing flavorful expression. Something deep was going on inside the boy, something incredibly pressing and bothersome that would give him no end to distress.

"You're thinking too deeply," said Axel, picking up a stray black olive and popping it in his cheek along with his last bite of pizza crust on what was perhaps his seventh slice. "You're expression is fidgeting."

Roxas didn't seem to hear Axel's comment.

Boring? Am I really all that… ordinary? His thoughts were tormenting him savagely, and he was starting to see why people lost their minds: they thought too much. Obviously it was his turn to drive himself insane.

Excessive thoughts flooded him. He couldn't process all of them at once. Some thoughts were random tid-bits, things that included savoring the flavor of cold milk and cursing Mexicans for their nearly-religious use of jalapenos. His other thoughts… were slightly more dangerous.

He didn't appreciate how certain thoughts deserved ample emotion. He couldn't provide ample emotion, so why was his own emptiness demanding that of him? He couldn't answer that; he wasn't sure if he should, but he was doing his best to avoid an answer all together.

"Roxas, what's wrong?" Axel asked. His eyebrow was arched, and Roxas focused on that one detail to ground him back to the earth.

He shook his head. "I'm fine," he insisted.

"You're thinking too much."

"Gee, thanks for noticing." Roxas shut himself up with that.

Woah… bitterness much? Where'd that come from? I don't like that one bit.

He drank from Axel's glass without pardon. "Sorry."

Axel's turn for his expression to jolt. His lively green eyes were fierce with what could have been concern, a lesser degree than that shown when Roxas was about to die from the ultra-spice of the Super. "Dude, you need to seriously chill."

"I'm trying," said Roxas. His voice sounded of on-coming defeat. He was not even convincing to himself, that's how bad he sucked. "I just can't stop thinking."

"Thinking about what?"

Roxas' lip trembled. His sucked on his tongue, wishing he could swallow it just so that he wouldn't suddenly find himself declaring undying love to Axel, an undying love that didn't—could not have possibly—exist for a person who was non-existent as well.

He wanted to answer Axel, wanted to tell him that he was thinking about him. Thinking about him all the time now, it seemed. He couldn't stop himself from admitting the truth, but he was going to keep it a secret as long as it would remain as such.

"Thinking about going to the bathroom," Roxas finally answered.

"Bathroom?" Axel repeated, tone implying that he didn't believe that Roxas could have that much emotional conflict about using the commode. He knew he was right, but he was going to keep his mouth shut so that Roxas could have his peace. "It's over there, second door on the right down the hall. Can't miss it. Has a little sign that says 'Boys' with a cute little stick figure… If it has a bow on its head, you've gone too far."

Roxas tried to hide the fact that he didn't expect Axel to believe him. "Oh. Thanks." He got out of his seat. He had a nagging sense that Axel knew he was lying, but he chose not to acknowledge it. Stagnant silence shoved itself between the moment that Roxas stood up, Axel watching his every move, every flick.

He truly regretted lying to Axel. Truly. If he would, if he could have, felt remorse. He had the instinct that perhaps, he should reward Axel for his kindness, understanding. Sure, he wasn't expecting much from a fellow Nobody, but he knew Axel was as considerate as they come.

"By the way," Roxas gently touched his thumb to Axel's chin. "You've got a smudge right…here." He wiped it away for him. His thumb lingered, almost like it were a sponge absorbing all of Axel's breath and warmth.

Axel couldn't believe that Roxas was coming on to him, to put it bluntly. Roxas was giving him a look that said more than anything Roxas had said all day long. It was a look of suffering, long-time need, and surfacing want that was starting to take him over. He understood the confusion swirling in Roxas' mind, and he knew that someday they would be together. Just as soon as the both of them settle their issues, with the world, themselves, and each other.

When he noticed that his self-control was about to give, before he gave in to the impulse of sitting in Axel's lap, Roxas let go of Axel and walked away without another word.

AXEL COULDN'T BELIEVE it. He was about to burst from his joyous inner giggle-fitting. From what it seemed, Roxas was warming up to him! He was falling for him… was he? Axel liked to think that Roxas needed more time to be sure of his partially-existing emotion. There wasn't a whole lot of evidence towards it but there was some.

Roxas was apparently brainwashed and scrambled by Xemnas strong-scented philosophy on Nobodies when it came to emotions and hearts. He had yet to see that what he was thinking about, when it went down to the roots of feeling, he was on to something, and that something was right.

Roxas was questioning his existence. He was starting to have feelings he was told he wasn't supposed to have.

Axel smiled to himself as he drank the rest of his milk. He's learning. He'll figure it out eventually.

He had belief. Axel believed that Roxas would come around eventually, and when he did, Axel could state for the world "ITYS" – or, "I told you so."

With that, Axel sat around waiting for Roxas. True, he could have gone in with Roxas to the boys' room, but he felt that Roxas needed a little privacy to sort out his thoughts without his interference and flirting.

COLD WATER TO clear the mind, Roxas splashed it on his burning cheeks. When it wasn't enough he shoved his whole face into the sink full of water, opened his eyes and blew out of his mouth until he was on his last breath. Before he suffocated he resurfaced and breathed, flaxen hair flattened to his forehead and dripping in long, running threads of sink water. His heated face had cooled down. He could finally get a handle on his roaming conscience which had already begun badgering him.

I'm not myself. I'm not anyone, but why? Why does it have to happen to me? It shouldn't have ever happen. It's not true…

What isn't true, he could hear a little voice in the back of his mind ask him. Really – what needed so much denial?

Emotion, I have no emotion.

Emotion, when it came to a Nobody, should've existed at all. He desperately tried to convince himself of that somewhat-defined truth… It couldn't exist yet, here it was.

It was obviously there, and it bothered Roxas endlessly. In only one day of knowing Axel and he was already proving to be the worse kind of a good bad thing. He was a wonderful thing in the worst of ways.

It's not real. I don't believe it. It can't, so it isn't.

He wasn't convincing himself. He sucked at persuasion. He was failing his own confidence speech to himself, and he was just going to give up. It was all he could do.

But did this defeat include the acceptance of the horrific, beautiful, terribly wondrous hurt searing inside? That brave, rebellious Something that defied the laws of logic and existence? He wasn't going to give in to that. Not yet. It was too early for the discovery of what was behind his empty assumptions.

I feel nothing. I feel nothing, I have nothing for Axel!

The persuasion, the denial, the struggle. None of it was working. The more he fought, the more he was getting butchered by the nagging of the Something inside him that was begging for him to accept, to receive, to give himself over to the wonderful thing he was harboring.

Accept it… If he did, what would happen? What would become of the world around him?

Roxas splashed more water on his face; his thoughts were becoming too much to handle. He couldn't give in. He just couldn't… It would break reality as he knew it, which wasn't all that strong of a knowledge to begin with. Reality was a steadfast, fragile thing. So many things could threaten its own existence… just like those feelings, that phrase –

He was unsure of that now. Something, not the same one but something else, was urging him to succumb. It urged him towards defeat.

You'll feel better. You'll be yourself, who you are, and who you're destined to be.

Part of him wanted to be in love more than anything. It wanted to hate, to sob, to explode and be genuinely happy – it wanted any sort of emotion. The other part of him, the disciplined good boy who had been groomed by Xemnas to be the perfect soldier Nobody, said that he could not love, could not hate, and could not cry for any other reason but a bodily response to environmental stimuli.

No, no. Don't believe it. It can't be. It never was; it never will be.

He wanted love, but he refused to admit it. He had love, but it wasn't real. It could be real, he liked to think, but there was no possible way … well, there wasn't concrete proof that it couldn't be real either…

What could he trust? That love could spring, so early, so impossibly, from non-existence? Or that he was damned to being heartless, emotionless, and damned to love without love.

Roxas sighed. This isn't going well.

Truly, it wasn't.

--

;I own nothing but the words and situations I control. (I also own Joe Steele, and that's it.)
Sorry it took some time to get this chapter out.
I didn't edit as much as the last chapter; there were no rewrites for this one.
I don't care for this chapter much, but I did it for my readers! Huzzah!!.
Tell me if I lived up to my earlier chapters.
I'm having doubts if I can continue to win against myself in the game of "That's good. Can you beat this?" with every new chapter. Oo;;
It's getting harder and harder to write this fanfiction… no, I'm not going to give up.
If I ever do, I'll personally send all of my reviewers a message if fate becomes of such.
Anyway – See you next installment!
TBC