Bound by Fire, a Kingdom Hearts fanfic series by Raberba girl
Part 4 of 6 - Axel, Roxas, & Xion (rough draft)
29 September 2012, North American anniversary of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days
Summary: In which Axel, Roxas, & Xion get their beach day.
A/N: Kind of like a canon-based "What if?" scenario, since obviously they never got to go to the beach together in any of the games yet. :(
Prologue
"Pleeeaaase pretty please, Sai?"
"What are you, a first grader?"
"Onnnne little day off, just one teeny tiny day! That's not much to ask, is it?"
"In fact, it would be an extreme favor, considering that you just had a vacation, and Xemnas has been getting on my case, and Xigbar and Demyx's fiasco last week set us back, and your precious Keybearers have been slacking off, and I'm up to my ears in giant Heartless reports, not to mention that we're losing manpower even as our workload is increasing-"
"You do realize I'm taking you out, too, right?"
"..."
"I know you hate my kids - which is why they hate you back, by the way; and have I reminded you lately that you're a heartless jerk and a moron? - so I thought all three of you'd enjoy yourselves more without each other's company."
"..."
"Unless you want to go to the beach with us."
"...We can't afford another vacation day."
"Xemnas-sama probably thinks we can't afford keeping that Chihuahua you've been hiding in your room, either. I wonder why he hasn't tossed her into the Void yet? Oh! That's right, because he doesn't know about her! YET."
"I hope you get eaten by a Kraken."
"Be ready to leave as soon as I've got dinner for the kids. I'd recommend you obtain some jeans before then, you're gonna look like an idiot where we're going if you show up in uniform."
"Hmph."
o.o.o
"Really?!" the Keybearers exclaimed in adorable unison, Xion leaping to her feet and Roxas dropping his ice cream. He didn't seem particularly upset about this. "We get to go to the beach?!"
"Yep."
They stared at him, wordlessly beaming in the way that always made Axel feel ridiculously awesome.
"We're going shopping first, though."
"Huh?"
"Why?"
"Well, do either of you even own any clothes other than your uniforms?"
"I've got that black and white and tan thing," Roxas offered.
"Roxas, you're gonna be running around in acres of sand and seawater."
"...Okay?"
Well, guess it made sense that these little doofs thought it was normal to do things like get sent to Agrabah in full-length black coats and boots. "What I mean is, you're gonna need something more occasion-appropriate to wear. So! You guys done with your ice cream yet?"
Roxas looked down at Station Plaza where his ice cream had fallen. Xion hurriedly knocked the remainder of hers off against the ledge, then stuck the stick in her pocket for future disposal. They both smiled at him.
"All right, then, let's hit the shops."
The kids' reactions to swimwear were pretty much exactly as he predicted.
"What? I can't go out in this!" Roxas protested from behind the dressing room partition. "This is like underwear with pictures on it."
"Roxas, the fabric is different, it's supposed to be worn in water. That means it's okay to let girls see you in it."
"How does the cloth have anything to do with whether I can wear it outside or not?"
"...Come to think of it, you kinda have a point."
Xion came out of the ladies' section, still wearing her coat.
"Something wrong, Xi?"
"No," she said self-consciously.
"What happened to the swimsuits you went to try on?"
"...I'm wearing one," she muttered.
"Under your coat?"
"Where else?"
"Xi, you're supposed to wear them by themselves."
"No, I'm not!"
"Xion-"
"Axel, they show my skin!"
"That's kind of the point..."
He eventually coaxed them into T-shirts, shorts, and flip-flops. They surveyed each other unhappily, Xion crossing her arms protectively over her chest and subconsciously posing even girlier than usual, Roxas restlessly tugging at the ends of the sleeves as if he thought that would make them stretch longer. "Your legs are really white," he observed.
"Your arms are really skinny," she realized.
"..."
"..."
"You both look great," Axel said reassuringly, even though what he really wanted to do was laugh.
They kind of rounded on him. "What about you, Axel?"
"Me?"
"I wanna see what you look like in beach clothes," Xion said interestedly.
"Urk..." Having no particular interest in showing off the distinctly countable ribs Saïx kept bugging him about, Axel came out in a T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops as well. He raised an eyebrow. "Well?"
"Your legs are really white, too," Roxas noticed at once, as if he was doing a study on Organization member leg colors.
"And your arms are really skinny," Xion noted in a 'Yay, my friends have something in common!' tone.
Axel resisted the impulse to facepalm. "Well, that's what happens when you wear the uniform practically 24/7 and ignore Saïx's protein-nagging. Man, we're gonna look like idiots tomorrow, aren't we... Whatever. Okay! Now that we're all suited up, let's head home for some chow and get to bed before 11:00 for a change. Beach days are worth being well-rested for, heh."
The next morning, Axel was awakened before the time set on his alarm clock, even though he'd been careful to not actually set his alarm. "Whyyyy?" he moaned, pulling a pillow over his head and burrowing farther into the covers.
"But...isn't it Beach Day today?" Roxas said worriedly.
"There's a vacation notice in the Grey Area and everything," Xion added.
"It's not even 7:00 yet! Go back to sleep!"
When Axel woke up for real an hour or two later, he found the kids munching on Pop-Tarts and playing Monopoly at the foot of his bed. "I landed on Free Parking," Roxas was proclaiming triumphantly, "again!"
"No fair!" Xion shrieked.
"Sssshhhh! You'll wake up Axel!"
Axel stared. "Where in the multiverse did you even find that game, much less-? You know what, never mind, I don't want to know."
"Axel!"
"Yay, you're up!"
Axel blarghed through his morning, trying to fend off the kids' enthusiastic impatience. Eventually, however, they were all dressed and fed and packed and ready to go, and came strolling out of a dark corridor into Twilight Town. "Can we ride a train, Axel?" Xion asked suddenly.
"Oh yeah," Roxas realized. "We've never actually gotten to ride a train, even though we've been here a billion times. And the times when I jump up on top of the tram until the driver stops and comes out and yells at me don't count."
"Have you ever considered actually paying the fare?" Axel asked in amusement.
"What's a fare?"
Life Lesson Number Six Billion Nine Thousand Two Hundred Seventy-Eight, or so it felt to Axel. The kids seemed to like it, though, talking to a clerk who was not a Moogle and getting to use munny for something other than synthesis material. "So," Roxas said as he looked happily at his shiny new ticket, "if I show this to the train driver, he'll let me inside the train this time?"
"They're called conductors, not drivers, and yes."
"You're really good at train riding, aren't you, Axel," Xion said admiringly.
He laughed and ruffled her hair. "It would be really, really lame if I was bad at something like that."
"...I'm not lame, am I?"
"You're making it really hard to not glomp you and squee, that's what you are."
"What does that even mean?"
They acted more like excited six-year-olds than teenagers (if you could even call these memoryless infant Nobodies teenagers...), moving from window to window and car to car, exclaiming over everything that breathed or moved or sparkled.
"Cool, I've never seen this part of Twilight Town before."
"Hey, look, the little girl on that other train is waving to us!"
"Oh, a food cart! Score!"
"Axel, that guy has his finger in his nose, I thought you said that's bad to do where other people can see."
"*gaaaaaasp* THEY HAVE ICE CREAM."
"Rox, you eat ice cream every da-"
"I'M GOING TO BUY SOME ICE CREAM FROM THE FOOD CART."
"...Knock yourself out."
Roxas happily came back with three bars of sea-salt, which he distributed before gluing himself back to the window. "Hey, Axel? If the sun sets red because red's the color that travels farthest, would it set blue or green or something when you go close to it? And how come blue and green can't go as far as red, anyway?"
Xion looked surprised. "Colors can get tired?"
Axel threw up his hands in amused, exasperated resignation. Which he wasn't complaining about, since it was, after all, a feeling. "Looks like the time has now come to explain how the universe works. Dang it, Sai was the one who wanted to be a teacher, not me..."
By the time Roxas and Xion had learned what the sun was made of and how it lit up Twilight Town and the definitions of words like "rotation" and "revolution," the train was pulling into the Gulfside station. They scampered out and immediately looked up at the sound of seagull cries overhead. "What are those?"
"Birds," Axel teased.
"I KNOW they're birds! I've just never seen them like that before..."
"They sound sad," Xion said.
"They're not sad, they're hungry. Don't feed them unless you want to get mobbed."
"But...if they're hungry...!"
Axel grinned. "Well, fine, then; try it." Then he took cover and laughed as he watched Xion and Roxas getting chased around the station platform by greedy seagulls.
"Axeeeelllll!"
"I did warn you."
Apparently he wasn't used to it yet - it was incredible how much they didn't know or hadn't thought of. That if they didn't strip down to their swimsuits before going in the water, their only clothes would be soaking wet and they'd have to RTC like that; the fact that flip-flops did not tend to stay on one's feet when one went cavorting in the ocean; the folly of touching jellyfish, no matter how invitingly squishy they looked; and on it went.
"You can make a castle out of sand?"
"Well, you know. Not a real castle."
"Sooo...a Nobody castle?"
"You're joking right?" Axel said warily (it was usually hard to tell), and felt actual relief when they grinned at him. (Again with the feelings; what the heck was up with this lately?)
"It doesn't really look like a castle," Xion said critically when they had finished. "More like a sand pile."
"With shells stuck on it," Roxas added helpfully.
"Yeah, well, I never said I was an expert sandcastle-maker, okay?" Isa's castles were the ones that always looked like they could pose for magazine covers. "This is just how people make sandcastles. They only actually look like castles if you have this thing called talent."
"Can we make sandhouses, too?" Roxas wondered. "Like the houses in Twilight Town?"
"Or sandtrains," Xion offered.
"SandKeyblades..."
"SandHeartless..."
"Guys, it's sand. Make whatever you want."
They suddenly looked interested. "Can we make a sandAxel, too?"
"Hey, where are you going with this?"
Of COURSE it ended up as a sand-fight. They ran around pelting each other with balls of damp sand and laughing at the top of their lungs, until they ended up too far out in the water and Xion tripped, splashing full length into the ocean.
"Xion!" Roxas stooped to grab her and was bowled over by an incoming wave. "Gaaahhh! It's cold!"
Xion laughed. "Your hair looks funny when it's wet, Roxas."
"His hair always looks funny," Axel chuckled, scrubbing a hand through it.
"It does not! Yours looks funnier."
"Hey, I comb my hair, for one thing; and do you even know how much time I spend gelling it every morning?"
"I like it better without that goop," Xion said, and the two of them suddenly knocked Axel over as if they had planned it.
He came up sputtering, hands poised over his head in a horrified sort of way. "My haaaaaiiiiir!"
Roxas laughed. "Now you look like a girl."
"Hey!" Well, at least he could swim now without worrying about the 'do. "Rox, Xi, come out where it's deeper, I need to teach you guys something else."
They both picked it up shockingly quickly, first paddling and then stroking in wide circles around him like they were fish. Must be something to do with the original Island-dwelling Keybearer...
"This is fun."
"I like swimming."
"Yeah."
"Okay," Axel said a little worriedly, "which means that our next lesson is about these things called currents and undertows..."
He tired much faster than they did, what with his fire element not reacting so well to his body being submerged for so long. He actually needed their help getting back to shore, which was kind of humiliating. "I'm not actually a loser, you know...just really lazy..."
"Okay, Axel," Roxas said with a grin.
"Do you want some ice cream when we get back to the beach?" Xion asked, in the same tone little girls used when speaking to their baby dolls.
"...You guys are enjoying this, aren't you."
Not that he minded much when the three of them were lounging together on their beach towels, licking at their usual desserts in this very not-usual setting.
"You were right, Axel," Xion said happily. "The beach is really fun."
"Yeah. We have to come here again," Roxas said, as if it was already a done deal.
"Might not be easy, but I agree," Axel said. Sitting in the warmth of this sun and this friendship, with the best taste on his lips and his two favorite people for company... Fighting to hold onto this for as long as he could might be difficult, but it would always, always be worth it.
