Disclaimer: If I owned KH, I wouldn't have edited out all of the juicy yaoi scenes, now would I.

When Roxas next awoke, sunlight filtered itself through the windows of the same room he found himself in last time and Axel was nowhere to be found. Of course, he's probably sleeping…somewhere…

Slowly, the events of the previous night flooded his mind. All in all, when he thought about everything that had happened from the time of his stepping out of his backdoor for the last time to the previous night, he could not help but think of it all as…bizarre. What sort of vampire feasted on his prey, only to bring them back to their home (Roxas pretty much assumed that's where he was) only to bandage said prey and bathe their wounds? And…

Roxas blushed as his thoughts drifted on to that.

What was that?

Roxas was not completely naïve. He knew certainly of sex, and of carnal pleasures, but now he was…confused. He knew of those things, but he had never known them. This thing the vampire called Axel had done to him perplexed him, setting off a multitude of emotions that he just had no idea how to organize. The vampire Axel was completely out of his scope of comprehension, it seemed.

To begin with, Axel was like no vampire that Roxas had imagined could be. He could remember as far back as the days when his mother was alive, when she would tell him stories of reasonless beasts who looked only vaguely like the humans they had once been, running rampant through the night, with nothing but the instinct to drink the blood of a human. His older brother Cloud would frighten him at night, as they settled to sleep, with stories of reanimated corpses possessed by demons, cunning creatures that would lure their prey in with their charms, only to murder the poor human for food, casting their soul to the very fires of hell. His friends, the few he had in the small village, spoke of beautiful monsters with cold, black pits for eyes.

But Axel seemed none of these things. Well, cunning? Probably. Beautiful? Definitely.

But a monster? A beast? Surely a monster or beast would have killed him instead of bringing him to the place where he rested by day and giving him care. Neither were his eyes black pits. Those eyes…

Roxas had to stop thinking about it as the thought of them made his stomach flutter. He decided that at that point, he simply did not know enough about Axel to make up his mind, and he certainly didn't know enough about vampires in general if Axel was a good representation of them as a whole. And how he felt about Axel…well…

Maybe the vampire could answer some of his questions when night fell.

Roxas thought about his own home for a bit as he stared into the soft folds of the canopy overhead. He wondered briefly about his father now lacking a son. But then again, he had Cloud, who was older and stronger than Roxas by far, and who was much more suited to the blacksmith's trade with his strong arms and muscular frame. He remembered wrestling in play with his brother as a small child, happy times that ended when his mother caught the consumption and left them. Cloud grew up quickly afterwards and there was no more play. Roxas missed his brother, but knew that he had lost him long before he ran away from home. Things would probably be better for him now anyhow; there wasn't enough to eat before as it was.

His father, on the other hand, he would not miss, not ever. A man consumed by grief but who accepted no condolences, he turned to anger instead. This anger was generally directed at Roxas, who, slight by nature, like his mother, was not predisposed to hard labor. For his transgressions, Roxas would endure whippings and nights of hunger. Running away had seemed to solve at least the first problem.

Roxas had run away after narrowly escaping yet another beating. Upon leaving his very humble home, he had just run. He had had no plan of where to go, or what to do when he got to where ever he got. There wasn't much though behind his flight. It was just as well that a vampire had found him. And it was certainly well that the vampire had turned out to be…not quite what Roxas would have expected.

So what to do now?

Roxas wanted to do something other than lay in bed, but upon his attempt to rise and shine, so to speak, he quickly realized that he was still quite ill, as the vampire had said. His limbs ached from disuse, and spine was not responding well to his position. Tentatively, Roxas reached a hand up to his neck and found two things.

First, his neck was left unbandaged and, sure enough, was wearing a slightly swollen bite, two smallish holes, really, with the tender skin surrounding just barely inflamed.

And secondly, he had had to pull aside a soft collar to reach the wound. Someone—Axel, no doubt—had taken the care to put him in a soft linen nightshirt. Probably the vampire's own, judging by the sleeves that reached far past the youth's fingertips.

Roxas was also pleased to find that he was clean after last night. The previous night felt as though it may have been a dream, but here was a testament to its reality. His hair was silky to his own touch like it hadn't been in years. And it was sweet smelling, too. His scalp no longer itched; none of him did. His skin was clean. He thought he might have come out of the bath paler, even, with all the things that had been clinging to him gone. And while Roxas was not one for vanity, curiosity was nagging at him to find a mirror and look at what he looked like now, all properly (or more like improperly) bathed and perfumed and wearing a nobleman's nightshirt.

But of course, he hadn't the strength to even sit up, really, so that was out of the question for now. For now, he had to be contented with his mind's eye.

A knock on the door startled Roxas out of his mental mirror.

Didn't vampires sleep during the day? Who could it be then?

The knock came again.

"Um…come…in…"

Roxas was a little unnerved by what he would find—or what would find him—but the intruder revealed to be a young serving girl with a full, silver serving tray in her hands. Her dark hair was tucked back and away from her face, and she wore a small ruffled headdress that matched her blue and white uniform dress. Her face was pretty enough and her expression was quite pleasant.

"Good afternoon, my lord," she began, "I trust you've been sleeping well."

Roxas ran a nervous hand through his hair. My lord?

"Um…very well, thank you…"

"Surely you must be hungry, my lord," she mused aloud cheerfully, "his Majesty has had us up all night drawing up plans for your diet, my lord. His Majesty seems to think you are much too thin…" Like a whirlwind, she quickly darted around the room, setting and resetting various things for Roxas to eat comfortably in bed. After she had finished bustling about—having set up a nearby side table as a temporary breakfast table and unloading from her tray a multitude of little dishes containing foods that Roxas did not know what most of them were, although they all looked and smelled equally delicious he quickly decided—she moved to the scarlet bed where she helped Roxas sit up carefully, with delicate hands, and fluffed behind him many pillows upon which he comfortably reclined in a semi-seated posture. All of this happened so fast that Roxas had to take a moment to process what was transpiring.

Several things concerned Roxas then. The first of these was invariably how hungry Roxas found himself. Upon realizing this, Roxas also picked up on the faint but very distinct taste in his mouth. He thought on this and recognized it as the same, unmistakable, flavor that had been on his lips when he awoke the previous night. Surely, in all the care that had been administered to him, Roxas must have been fed sometime while he was comatose. But he was terribly hungry now, he felt as if he had not eaten in all that time. So, what was this strange but wonderful taste on his tongue that made his lips even tingle?

Roxas considered asking the serving girl but thought better of it. He would question Axel himself on these most peculiar circumstances.

The second thing that puzzled the youth was the servant before him. His first thoughts towards the girl standing to the side with a cheerful smile was that vampires had some system of ranking and that she must have been a lower rank of vampire to be serving the vampire that had taken Roxas. But then he realized that this thought was absurd, at least concerning this young girl, for it was daylight and did vampires not sleep throughout the day? But then, Roxas' many other ideas about vampires, borrowed from others, had proven themselves to be false, so maybe this one was, too?

But no, this girl had a flush to her cheeks and a tint to her skin, much unlike the pallor of the vampire who Roxas knew was such. She also had imperfections about her, such as her nails (chipped and of different lengths) as well as a small blemish near her hairline on her forehead. And when her hand had grasped at his as she was helping him to rise up from his sea of pillows to sit, it was warm, the skin springy and taut and oh so very soft in its youthfulness.

Axel's body, of which all parts Roxas had seen, even through the fog of his mind, much to his mortification, was none of these things. The vampire was a thing that was great and white, looking for all he was as a marble statue come to life. And while his skin was soft to the touch, it was cool and very smooth, the years seemingly having eroded the natural indentations in the stone of his hands to just faint lines. Neither his face, nor his hand, nor his back, nor his limbs, nor…other parts…bore any blemish, and his nails, on his fingers and his toes, seemed to be made of impossibly thin glass, for they looked polished and perfectly made.

So Roxas could only assume that the girl was, after all, human. And that brought up the real question of what she was doing there in the first place, a servant to a vampire of all things. Did the vampire collect humans? Was the girl once in the same position that Roxas was in now? What did the vampire called Axel want with him, anyway? Was he looking at his own future, so to speak?

He doubted the last of those questions. No one, human or vampire, cared so lavishly for one who was destined to become his or her slave. Though the girl looked to be far from slavish to Roxas. Though she was working, it seemed that it was of her own free will; no one could act so falsely cheerful if they were being forced to do so against their will, could they? Again, Roxas did not know the extents of what exactly a vampire could or could not do, but the serving girl's happy demeanor seemed nothing if not genuine.

All of these things Roxas thought of as he picked at his food. While he was desperately hungry, his stomach turned at the thought of overeating, or even eating until he was full. The solid foods, as tasty as most of them were, Roxas ended up giving up on quickly as he felt that he was likely unable still to keep much of it down. He settled instead on a thin but expertly prepared beef broth. The serving girl would ask quietly if he was done with this or that dish and, upon seeing Roxas nod or thank her politely, take them up and replace them on the tray.

Roxas finished his broth and patted at his mouth with an embroidered napkin—also a deep red with gold roses stitched around the edges—as though it were some precious thing that he didn't want to taint for its beauty. This vampire must be some noble, he thought, to afford things like this, and for wiping one's mouth even!

He yawned then, tired again after sitting up for the while. The broth had warmed him and he was feeling sleepy once more. The servant girl must have caught on, for she quickly took the empty cup from Roxas hands and helped him settle back into bed as gently as she had helped him up. With a minimal amount of clattering of dishes, she had everything back on the tray and all of the furniture arranged back into its original positions in the room. She bid him a good sleep:

"Rest well, my lord. His Majesty will be here soon."

And with that she left, leaving Roxas to doze off against the pillows, which she had fluffed for him, dreaming of the vampire Axel.