CHAPTER NINE
It was cold. There was ice on the streets, snow on the bare arms of the trees, frost coating the dead and dying gardens that Roxas trudged wearily past. The thick treads of his boots crunched quietly along the pavement, the ragged ends of his scarf spinning weakly in the wind. His head was lowered, frown directed at the pavement as he walked, hands deep in the pockets of his heavy overcoat to keep warm, the skin of his knuckles chapped from winter's bitterness. The day was clear, a cleanliness to the air, though his insides felt charred.
He turned left into the pharmacy as he reached it, mounted the short ramp that led up to the store, pausing briefly to kick his hard toes against the side of the building, dislodging the small stones and slush of the street. He entered the warmth, withdrawing his hands carefully, turning his collar down for the few minutes that he'd be there. It was a relief to not be frozen, though his nose continued to feel numb.
Sucking on dry lips, he joined the end of the queue to the prescriptions counter, unbuttoned his coat and reached into a pocket, pulling out the sheets of paper the woman with the white-blonde hair had left with him. She had seemed nice, until she printed these out and handed them over, the ink letters spelling out his troubles for all the world to see.
Antidepressants. Antipsychotics. Long, ridiculous names that he couldn't hope to pronounce at a glance. They had spent over an hour sitting across from each other, silent, with Roxas staring stonily at the window, before she had typed on her computer and run the scripts out with an order to get them filled. Evidently, she hadn't needed Roxas to say a word to diagnose him; evidently, she'd been speaking to someone else.
It wasn't going to change anything. He knew this intrinsically; they could feed him whatever the hell pills they wanted, they could stand over him and make sure he didn't hurl them back up or flush them down, and nothing would be any different.
The owner of the voice had wanted to come with him for this, had wanted to make some show of support, but Roxas was having nothing of it. No fucking way. Not when he'd been talking to that bitch. Roxas was acting as if the owner of the voice didn't exist, and it suited him just fine.
It was his turn at the front of the queue, the pharmacist regarding him pleasantly. Expressionlessly, Roxas handed over his prescriptions, and thought about the fact that, if he so chose, he could annihilate everyone in the store and never hear another word about it. He turned, nodded slightly in acknowledgement as the woman estimated a ten-minute wait, and, hands back in pockets, found a chair to sit on.
Only about a minute went by before the empty seat beside him was taken up, a boy Roxas' age settling down, elbows on the hard arms, fingers laced together. He accidentally bumped the blond, who shifted, crossed his arms, before getting bumped a second time. Blue eyes sliced sideways, narrow and hard, before a slackness fell over him.
"Oh," he said.
The boy, if he heard Roxas, didn't assume that the utterance was for his benefit. He gazed around disinterestedly at the store, tapping a finger against his knuckles, as if he, too, were waiting for the chemist to call his name and hand over his medications. Roxas was tempted to touch his arm, draw his attention, and ask what, if anything, he had been prescribed. He wanted to ask what he was here for.
In the end, he just didn't have the nerve, though.
He and the boy spent the following eight minutes sitting together in silence, Roxas growing steadily tenser, nerves pulling tight, teeth gritting into one another until he could hear the squeak of them in his skull. He wondered if the boy heard, too, if he noticed and filed it away. He already knew so much about Roxas. He knew so much that it hurt the blond to know he existed.
His name was called, ringing clearly through the store. Even if, by some miraculously oblivious coincidence, the boy hadn't previously realised who he was sitting next to, there was absolutely no doubt that he would now. Still, he didn't even glance sideways at the blond, continued to sit there with a mild expression and twiddle his thumbs in a parody of patience.
Perhaps he was sending Roxas a message. Perhaps his patience was deliberate, he needed no words, he was silently indicating, I'm waiting, you know, and I'll continue to wait.
Say 'yes', Roxas.
"No," the blond muttered, and climbed to his feet. He received an odd look from an elderly man standing nearby, but ignored it, approached the counter and paid for his medicines. He bought a bottle of water at the same time, warmed to room temperature, and carried it and the white paper bag out to the front of the store.
He walked several paces along, then stopped, tucked the water under his arm and ripped away the tape holding the bag shut, opened it to pull the boxes out. He stared at the instructions that had been stuck to the front of each, glancing between them. He turned as someone came out of the store, but it was no one familiar, the boy was still in there, probably still sitting there, knowing that Roxas knew he hadn't moved.
This was… getting out of hand.
Roxas tucked the boxes away slowly, walked home again, following the familiar streets, climbing the salted metal steps to the home he shared with the owner of the voice. He entered the kitchen, the apartment empty, the owner elsewhere, and poured the bought water into a glass. It was already cold, just from ten minutes outside. The blond took out the foils of pills, carefully ejected them onto the counter, the same number that the directions told him to, and swallowed them one by one, chased by mouthfuls of fluid. He left the boxes where he'd placed them, knowing that the owner of the voice would demand to see them, to see evidence that he was doing as he should.
Then Roxas went to the bedroom, got out his favourite belt, and took it to the closet. He felt calmer with his fingers tracing the stitches, wrapped it around the long bar, cinched it, and started pulling to test it. He wrenched hard. He put a foot on the wall, and heaved back, not trusting the metal to be firm enough.
True enough, it came clean out of the wall, clattering and banging, bringing chunks of plaster, the blond thumping to the floor at the sudden give. The air was dusty, the bar wedged against the door, the belt still tight around it.
Roxas sighed, on his back, staring at the ceiling. He wheezed in the particles of plaster, coughed.
"Shit."
He'd have to tell the owner of the voice that he'd been trying chin-ups again.
.o.O.o.
Six pm. The sun was mostly set, still sending a glow across the horizon; within Hayner's apartment, though, everything was dark. Roxas sat on the couch, muscles loose, relaxed. Blue eyes saw only dim shapes within the stillness, outlines of walls and furniture. All else was gloom.
He felt pain; he knew he was feeling pain. The left side of his face, the entirety of his head, pounded gently with it. He recognised this. There was blood on his face, it had dripped from his jaw onto his shirt, some of it forming trails down the side of his throat, dry now. The cut was deep; he recognised this, also.
Much like the pain, though, this was distant.
He was content to just keep sitting, listening to the soft patter of quick footsteps, as an unseen stranger crept around the apartment, like a dog someone had forgotten to shut away. At one point he heard the crack and shatter of a bottle being fumbled in the kitchen, but didn't bother to investigate.
He just didn't fucking care.
There was a scratching at the door, the sound of someone working at the locks, and this, this caught his attention for the first time all afternoon. His head swivelled around, eyes staring blindly, hearing a voice utter a curse as the owner of the scratching realised that the deadlock had been engaged. There was further noise, a metallic click, before the handle wrenched around, illumination pouring in from an outside, artificial source.
Roxas twisted around onto his knees, the trail mix bowl cold in his hands, his lap numb from where the heavy object had been sitting for the past six hours. As a hand entered the apartment, aiming for the light switch, the blond hefted the object, drew it carefully back and, as the apartment winked to life, threw with all his might.
The heavy glass bowl smashed into the wall just above the switch, a large, jagged piece flying off, putting a deep puncture in the plaster before dropping to the ground, where it split apart into three further pieces with a scattering of a thousand smaller shards exploding outward with the fruit and nuts.
Roxas stared dully, on his feet now, arms dangling by his sides, waiting for the owner of the scratching to reveal himself.
After several beats, Hayner's face appeared cautiously around the door, from where he'd instantly ducked back, shouting his fright. Hazel eyes sought out blue, and for a long moment, they just looked at each other.
"…Oh," said Roxas dispassionately, at last. "It's you."
He turned his back on the taller blond, who blinked for a breathless moment before slowly entering the apartment, sneakers nudging the bowl's wreckage, gaze lowering to it with incomprehension.
He closed the door, eyes next going to the hole in the wall, a cracked concave of white and wood, struts and silver insulation visible, disbelief crawling over his features. He twisted to look at the other blond, lips parting with a desire to speak, nothing springing to mind for a stretching minute.
Roxas just… stood there. With his back to him. He didn't even try to walk away – he was just – denying Hayner's existence.
"Roxas," Hayner managed at last, voice almost inaudibly soft, "what are you doing?" The blond didn't respond, didn't even twitch, and with that, Hayner's bubbling, day-old resentment exploded. He lunged across the space between them, rubber soles crunching on the debris, snatched Roxas' upper arm and swung him around, the spike-haired blond, for his part, completely unresisting.
"What the hell are you doing?!" he roared, grabbing him by the flesh between neck and shoulders and shaking, shaking hard enough to make Roxas' head snap back and forth. "You could've killed me, you bastard!"
The sight of the blood filtered finally into Hayner's mind, unregistered prior to now, and he seized a handful of Roxas' hair, wrenched his face to the side. "Look at what you did to yourself," he hissed, expression contorted with rage both new and leftover, before pawing angrily at the red smears along his friend's cheek. He then paused sharply, eyes narrowing, face dropping from its twisted state into utter seriousness as he touched the blood again. "…It's dry," he uttered.
"Fuck it," Roxas contributed. "…Fuck you," was his afterthought. Hayner's expression changed slowly, crossing a variety of emotional ranges, before settling, with great despair, on bewilderment.
"What's going on, Roxas?" He gripped the blond's face more carefully now, inspecting the puckering wound slashing his cheek. A small exhalation of shock escaped him, fingers hovering over the white-edged valley in Roxas' flesh, not daring to touch. Blue eyes gazed, hooded, at the sliding door. He didn't bother to reply. Closing his eyes, Hayner shook his head. "No," he muttered. Then, more forcefully, "No, Roxas, you're not going to – grey your way out of this, okay?" He turned Roxas to face him, anxiously trying to engage his attention. "Roxas… where did you get this cut?" Desperately, he gave the blond another shake, more gently this time, more urgently. "Why'd you shut down, man?"
Eyelids flickered, before the blue irises focused on him, as flat as they ever got during these periods. Roxas licked his lips, took a short breath, and muttered, "Red hair like whoa." Hayner stared. "Tattoos… not like a clown."
Hayner knew the words coming at him were his own, but showed no recognition of what they referred to. He searched Roxas' face for the answer, gaze falling on the way the blood had trailed so freely when it had still been wet. He then glanced around the apartment, as if something would leap out and indicate what the hell had happened, but from what he could tell, the most violence here had occurred when he arrived. He saw Roxas' overnight bag sitting next to the door, evidence that he'd been home at some point during the day.
Oh. It's you.
"Who else…?" Hayner stopped. Visions of a redheaded flirt burst into his mind, brief and flashing, that charming grin, followed by the question, 'Does he get sick often these days?' Red hair like whoa, and tattoos under the eyes. No one Roxas knew; no one Hayner had thought about since. And yet, the guy had seemed to know Roxas. And now…
"Roxas," the tall blond said slowly, flattening his hands against the boy's jaw, "you need to tell me exactly how you got this cut." His eyes flicked over to it, studying with new perspective, and it occurred to him that it would be a difficult wound to self-inflict. In Struggle matches, people got hurt all the time; Hayner had seen his fair share of injuries, of cuts – this was looking like something you got stitched up after a particularly vicious opponent. Something you groused about afterwards, touching the sticking plaster with a wince, reflecting on just how much a bastard some guys could be.
"Red hair," Roxas said impassively, "like whoa." Then he struck up, breaking out of the monotony, "You know what, Hay? I don't even fucking care. Slice me to pieces. My body's made of meat." He jerked free before Hayner could stop him, walked away this time, around the couch, through to the kitchen, where a high, light sound started up, like the absolute upper reaches of a xylophone. Scowling suspiciously, Hayner followed – gaped from the doorway as Roxas carelessly stepped barefoot through broken glass and alcohol.
"Holy shit, Roxas!" He leapt forward, grabbed hold of the blond, who threw an elbow back into his gut, swung around with fire in his eyes and drove a fist into his face. Crying out, Roxas coming in for a second go, the taller blond seized his hand, twisted it sharply around behind his back, clamped an arm around his throat and held him immobile. In the state that he was, pain meaning little, Roxas continued to squirm, but his body had its own limitations it refused to let his mind cross. Hayner grunted, trying to figure out how the hell he was going to transfer his best friend back to the couch without letting up his grip or forcing him back over the glass, which already had traces of blood in amongst the half-bottle of vodka that had pooled across the tiles.
"You know," he choked out, face throbbing from the punch, something acerbic about Roxas' odour making his eyes water, "for someone that doesn't care about anything, you're fighting awfully hard, Rox!" He hissed in through his teeth. "And you sure as hell made a good go of trying to kill me when I first got here, and I wasn't who you were expecting." He tightened his grip fiercely around the blond's throat and demanded, "So who were you expecting, Rox? The guy with the red hair? The one that came to Aerith's looking for you that time?"
"I don't care!" Roxas snarled, struggling. "I don't care!"
"Holy shit," Hayner repeated. Shaking his head, he said tersely, "Don't you fight me again, Roxas, I've had enough of your shit. It was my turn to throw the tantrum, damn it." He grabbed the blond up, heaving him over one shoulder, turning even as the burden started thrashing and staggering away from the glass. As Roxas slipped further and further out of his grasp, he wrestled him into the bedroom, managed to throw him onto the mattress, blood smearing the coverlet. Roxas scrambled to his knees, eyes dark with engorged pupil, but, despite all, still wearing absolutely no facial indication of his mood. It was like he'd been wiped completely clean. Only his energy remained, black and crawling close to the skin, six- and eight-legged. Hayner looked at him helplessly, the blond's gaze boring unwaveringly back.
"That guy with the red hair came after you," Hayner stated, no longer questioning. "And he hurt you. He did this to you." A thought occurred. "And this is why you wouldn't go home last night. He's been… Christ, he's been hanging around you, hasn't he?" Roxas stared flatly. Frustrated by the total lack of confirmation or denial, he demanded, "Didn't you say you didn't know him? Why would he know about you, then, Roxas?"
Roxas said nothing.
Letting out a growl, half an exasperated cry, worry managing to lace it even as he resented the blond savagely in that moment, Hayner left him on his knees on the bed, went and got his phone, gazing around hopelessly at the chaos of the apartment. He returned to Roxas, who had lain down and balled up during his brief absence, dots of red following his feet. Rubbing his developing bruise gently, Hayner hesitated, watched as Roxas dug his face into the pillow. This wasn't usual grey-mood behaviour. This wasn't like the other episodes.
But then, he supposed, Roxas had never been attacked before.
The mere idea sent hot rage crashing through his veins. He dialled quickly, held his black phone up to his ear as he kept an eye on his charge. "Seifer," he greeted abruptly a moment later, voice terse, "it's Hayner. Whatever the hell you're doing right now, drop it. Get your stupid gunblade replica, grab your buddies, and head over to Roxas' place. I don't know what the hell went on, but he's been hurt, and he's not talking. I'd go myself, but I need to take care of him, and… Please." The final word was spoken softly. A couple of moments later, just as quietly, he said, "Thank you," and hung up.
Tucking the phone away slowly, he grimaced at Roxas' back. "You heard that, right? He said he'll go. He's going to call if he finds anything out of the ordinary." He paused, added, "You know, we could always just skip all that, though, and have you tell me directly."
Roxas might as well have been unconscious. Or, a good word that sprung to mind was 'catatonic'. Although Hayner was pretty sure catatonic didn't include trying to off your best friend in any way possible. The aggression Roxas was displaying – it was completely unnatural, for either a bad day or good. Roxas didn't hurt people, not deliberately like that. He was a reactor, not an initiator, and that was why Seifer had been so down on him right at the start, trying to pick fights. He'd wanted a rise out of the blond, and the most he'd got was temper and words, until he'd attempted blows of his own.
Sighing, Hayner made his heavy way to the bed, turned and sat on the edge of the mattress, feeling it sink under his weight. He propped his elbows on his knees, took his face into his hands. "I can't believe I had to ask Seifer," he mumbled. Drawing a deep breath through his nose, he closed his eyes, scratched a hand through his wavy hair. "God, what a mess." He glanced back at Roxas. "You'll need to wash your face, Rox. The blood needs taking care of." Roxas, of course, didn't move, didn't acknowledge that he'd spoken.
Lips pursing, Hayner took a tired breath, pressed down on his knees and stood. He shuffled to the bathroom, where he wet a facecloth in warm water from the faucet, and grabbed a pair of tweezers from the top drawer. Olette had left them behind one time, early on in their mutual independence, claiming she needed a pair in every one of their houses 'for emergencies'. Well, her foresight had been grand. Hayner only wished she'd also had the presence of mind to have him lock his booze away.
He returned to the bedroom, Roxas in the same position, and went around to the other side of the bed, sliding in between the mattress and the wall. Digging a knee awkwardly into the mattress, he took hold of Roxas' face, testing for a reaction. He touched the facecloth against the dried blood, swiped at it, watched the blond blink slowly. It had to hurt, when Hayner started wiping it off properly, it had to be sending spikes through the cut, but Roxas just wasn't twitching.
Figuring that the cut itself would have to wait for when Roxas was back in his right frame of mind, knowing there was no way he could take him to the emergency room in this mood for fear of them taking one look at him and throwing him into a padded cell for a few days, Hayner finished off, eased himself up. The cloth had been white to start with, not necessarily the greatest choice considering that now it had turned a murky, rusting red. Balling it up, he threw it over towards his dirty laundry in the corner of them room, before shifting around to the foot of the bed.
"I'm pulling the glass out of you," he announced, hoarse with weariness. "Don't be a bitch about it, okay? If you can walk straight into it without flinching, you can sure as hell make life a little easier by letting me pull it out without squirming or kicking." He added firmly, with a note of hardness, "I'm not interested in your contrariness, Rox. Not tonight. Not after all this." When no answer came, he took this as his go-ahead, sat down heavily and carefully lay back, positioning himself so that he could reach the blond's soles without having to uncurl him from his foetal coil, but where he wouldn't necessarily get his teeth booted in, if the instinct occurred.
Cautiously, he reached forward with the tweezers, touched them to one of the five or six pieces that glinted in Roxas' foot, waiting for a jerk, some kind of reaction to the pain. Absolutely nothing. Taking a breath, steeling himself, head lifted awkwardly from the mattress, he trapped the sharp protruding edge between the flat metal ends and gently slid the first piece out. Blood came in response, but it was thin, manageable. A couple of them might need bandaids when he was done, though.
"You know, one thing worked out well, at least," he sighed conversationally, carefully pulling the second sliver free and wiping it onto the bedcovers. "I mean, if you're going to break a bottle and walk all over it, what could be better than something that disinfects while it cuts you? Probably," he continued in a mutter, "the definition of a 'win/lose' scenario."
There was silence for a while as he worked, before Roxas, voice muffled by the pillow, said, "It wasn't me."
Hayner slowed, glancing up quickly. Roxas volunteering information was a good thing. It suggested that maybe he wasn't too far gone just yet. As casually as he could manage, Hayner asked, "What wasn't you?"
A pause developed and lengthened, until Hayner nearly gave up on the whole idea of a conversation. The spike-haired blond continued, however, explaining in a low voice, "…I didn't break the bottle."
Hayner froze, computed this, lifted himself up and asked intently, "Does that mean that it happened here? Did the guy follow you up?"
Fractionally, the motion barely noticeable, Roxas shook his head. "No. It wasn't him. It wasn't me. Someone else."
Hayner grappled with this, scrubbed quickly at his forehead with his knuckles, demanded, "But that means someone else was up here, Roxas. Did you let anyone into the apartment before me? If you say you didn't do it, or the guy that hurt you, then who?"
To the wall, Roxas said, "…I don't know."
Frustration. It built up and up within Hayner, until he felt like he could burst. Usually, when that happened, it was the trigger to one of his week-long foul moods, but this time, this time, he didn't have the luxury. Not with Roxas bleeding on his bed, and Seifer just a phone-call away.
"God damn it," he muttered angrily. "Why the hell can't you care enough, just enough, to make some fucking sense, Rox?" He returned to the task of the blond's feet, less gentle this time. Roxas' toes twitched automatically at the spike as he yanked one of the larger shards out, leaving only two more to go. Other than that, Roxas didn't move again, straight back to normal – or whatever the hell was masquerading in its place.
It took ten minutes to work out the final piece, embedded awkwardly beneath the skin, Hayner concentrating with a scowl. At last it came free, releasing a new trickle of red, swabbed away by a section of the bedspread. Slipping from the bed onto his toes, knees bent, Hayner tilted his head to the side and inspected the end result, searching for any remaining glints reflecting the overhead light. He reached out, took hold of each of Roxas' feet and gently probed with his fingertips until he was satisfied the job was done.
Wiping his hands on his shorts, exhaling deeply, he stood, bent over the mattress and scooped up the delicate little pieces of glass, poking at them idly in his palm, rose-tinted from their time within Roxas' skin. "Okay," he breathed, and left the room, went to the doorway of the kitchen and hovered for a moment, wanting to throw the offending shards into the trash, but not wanting to end up tracking more fucking glass through the rest of the house via his sneakers.
In the end, he resignedly threw them back to where they'd started, soaking clean in vodka. He stopped in the bathroom again, swapped the tweezers for a towel and two bandaids, returned with them to Roxas, crawled onto the bed beside him and lay back down with his dirty shoes on the second pillow behind Roxas' head. Carefully, he wiped the running blood with the towel, then lifted his friend's feet and placed them onto the cleanest section of the now-soiled towel, before stripping the bandaids of their wrapping and applying them.
Finally, he was done with Roxas' feet. The temptation to just close his eyes and fall asleep playing watchdog to the spike-haired blond was strong, but the smell of alcohol had followed him, adhering to his rubber soles, nagging for solution. Rolling onto his back, he stared at the ceiling for a long minute, muscles achingly weary, eyes itchy.
His phone rang, hands delving into his pocket and fumbling, struggling to get it out before the custom tone ran its course and cut off. He answered quickly, "Seifer?" There was a long pause, hazel eyes narrowing gradually, the small voice in his ear drifting to where Roxas lay, staring at the wall. Hayner pushed himself up onto his elbows. "…Shit. Right. I see…" He reached up to rub a knuckle over the bridge of his nose, winced as it dug into where Roxas had hit him, a motivated punch lacking aim. "Okay. No, it's fine. I'm here with him." He listened for a moment, bristled. "Yeah, and fuck you, too. I'm capable of taking care of my best friend, thanks. I appreciate the help, you bastard. Just make sure the place is locked up when you leave." He hung up with a savage stab of the button, sitting agitatedly. "Well," he threw irritably over his shoulder, "I'm sure you know what the report was. Stuff all over the ground, that pole that holds your window shut among it. Your plant was knocked over, and your TV was smashed. Rai was crying because he sniffed part of the carpet near the wall that smelled weird and 'spicy'." He stood, running his hands through his hair, paced towards the door then spun, gripping his head with helpless fear. "Roxas, this is big. This is big, and now you – you're like this." He closed his eyes, swallowed. "We can't report this to the police until you're back to normal, okay? So please, please – pull it together, man." He blinked, watched the blond's back, waiting, hoping for a reaction, any at all. The unbroken silence was a disappointment.
Growling under his breath, Hayner twisted, left the room, grabbed a handful of towels and the broom from the closet next to the bathroom, carried them into the kitchen and threw the towels down. He went about cleaning the mess, mopping up the vodka, sweeping the glass, the broom-head sodden in moments. Faced with a night of tidying and lack of answers, he threw himself angrily into the task, fighting back the small, dark voice that told him he should have known something was going on with Roxas.
Half an hour later, someone knocked at the door. Hayner froze, head jerking up, posture stiff. Expression set grimly, he pulled the broom up, taking his phone out and clutching it against the peeled wooden handle in case he needed to make a quick call.
Roxas was standing in the door of the bedroom, skin drained pale, eyes dull, hair dishevelled. Hayner paused next to him. "What do you think?" he asked tersely. "Is it the guy?"
"Axel," Roxas uttered. The taller blond's eyes thinned out.
"Axel? That's his name?" He grunted. "Right." He headed for the door, wielding the broom in front of his body, Roxas hanging back, staying at the bedroom. He pressed his nose to the wall, half his face hidden, watching as Hayner approached, another knock rapping sharply at the wood.
"Who's there?" the wavy-haired blond barked.
"Chicken-wuss, let me in," was the muffled, annoyed answer. Hayner wobbled visibly, throwing a wild look over to Roxas, who leaned out with a frown.
"Seifer!" Hayner unlocked the deadbolt, wrenched the door open, the large Struggler barging past the instant that he could, elbowing the broom aside.
"What're you gonna do, sweep me to death?" he muttered, strutting into the middle of the room, pausing as he crunched over the broken pieces of bowl, the trail mix. He looked down, lifted a foot to observe the mess with a frown. "What the hell is this?" He stepped back, crunched some more, looked around at it all with dawning comprehension. "Don't tell me something happened here, too…?" Hard eyes swung around to Hayner. "You didn't say anything about this."
Hayner glared. "There was nothing to say. This was just… an accident."
Seifer's gaze found the hole in the wall, widened, turned back to Hayner. "You've been sucker-punched," he observed, startled. Then, suddenly all cold business, he demanded, "Who did all this? This was no fucking accident, Hayner." His hand moved to rest on the hilt of the gunblade replica hanging sheathed at his hip, sharp as the real thing, the only part lacking being the bullets. "So, spill."
The wavy-haired blond shook his head with aggravation. "Why are you here, Seifer?" he asked, eyes cutting to the side. "I'm pretty sure I told you I could take care of this – you're not needed."
The older man straightened, chin rising. "Says you," he returned witheringly, "but you didn't see what I did. Roxas' apartment's a mess. You haven't even told me what the hell happened, or how bad he was hurt. What, Hay, you thought I was gonna go home and have a pleasant dinner after all that?"
"Isn't Olette waiting for you or something?" the other blond muttered. Seifer's eyes narrowed.
"This is more important." He caught a twitch of motion in the peripheral of his vision, head twisting sharply to see Roxas half-hiding behind the doorframe to the bedroom, expressionlessly watching. "You," Seifer commanded, "get over here and let me look at you."
"No!" Hayner said instantly, moving forward, heading for Roxas. "He has bare feet, he'll cut them again on all the glass."
"Again?" Seifer echoed. Hayner threw a scowl back at him, leaned the broom against the wall, tried to lead Roxas back to the bed, but the blond resisted, clinging wordlessly to the doorframe.
"Roxas, come on, just come and lie back down," Hayner muttered. The blond dug his fingers into the frame, kept his flat gaze fixed on Seifer.
"…What's wrong with him?" Seifer asked after several moments, a puzzled sort of timbre to his tone. Hayner growled.
"Nothing, nothing is wrong with him, now come on, Roxas!" After a few more moments of struggling, he released the difficult blond, resisted the urge to punch the wall. "What did I say about your stupid contrariness?!"
Seifer barked out a laugh. "Contrary? Chicken-wuss the second? Nice joke, idiot. He's the biggest pushover I've ever come across." He walked over to them, leaning to one side to engage Roxas' stare again. "So, care to tell me why the hell I'm here, Blondie?"
Hayner bumped his forehead into the wall with a low rumble of resignation. Roxas didn't move, didn't speak, didn't break his gaze. Seifer smiled a little, an uncertain, borderline sneer. "Do you see something you like, Roxas?"
"Seifer, stop," Hayner sighed. "Just – please leave. We don't need you here."
Pale blue eyes narrowed in his direction, Seifer smiling more thinly. "Should've thought of that before you called me. I'm not going anywhere til I've had some answers. Besides…" He wrapped his hands around Hayner's shoulders, the wave-haired blond jolting at the sudden contact, and shifted him hard to the side, pressing him against the wall as he got a good, unobstructed view of Roxas' face for the first time.
"…Nasty little graze you've got going there, Roxas," he said, frowning coolly. "Tell me how it came about."
Roxas said nothing.
"I said tell me," the man snapped, releasing Hayner, grabbing Roxas instead, grip tight, fingers digging in. Hayner punched his shoulder, hard.
"Leave him the hell alone," he yelled angrily. "He doesn't have to answer if he doesn't want to, he's in shock, you asshole!"
"Fuck his shock," Seifer responded bluntly. "I wanna know what happened."
Pushing himself between them, Hayner got in Seifer's face, snarled, "He got attacked, okay? He went home to get some clothes to stay here for a few days, and some guy attacked him. He came to Aerith's the other day looking for him, but Roxas was sick. I think he must have followed him home." He shoved at the taller man, forcing him away from Roxas. "So back off!"
Seifer allowed himself to be pushed, staggered back a couple of steps before steadying, eyeing them both with an odd expression in place. "…I want to hear Roxas say something."
"No," Hayner argued heatedly. Seifer arched an eyebrow.
"No? No speech whatsoever?"
Hayner hesitated, glanced back to gauge Roxas, see if there was any chance in hell he was about to snap out of his funk. "…No. No speech whatsoever," he said miserably, after a pause. A long moment passed, Seifer studying the pair of them, before Roxas abruptly let go of the doorframe, and shambled back to bed. Hayner craned his neck, made sure the boy was going to stay there, before returning his attention to Seifer.
Silence grew between the two blonds. With some actual real concern, Seifer asked, "…So, is it just his face? It wasn't anything more than the cut? I mean… I've seen guys get beaten worse than this before. Roxas is the first I've seen that just clammed up like this."
Hayner blinked, head jerking up. "What else would it be?" Seifer raised a brow, held his gaze evenly. It took a few seconds to occur to Hayner what he was referring to, blanching as it sunk in. "He would have said something if… Wait, are you suggesting that - ?"
Seifer held up his hands, glancing away. "I… am suggesting absolutely nothing," he disclaimed. "I just wonder, is all. Roxas' behaviour isn't… normal." He looked back at Hayner, a crease forming between his eyes. "I've never seen him like this before."
Hayner crossed his arms, drew a breath, glanced back one more time before pushing past him, grabbing the broom again, heading back towards the kitchen with a thin mouth. "Yeah, well, you haven't been around him much," he muttered. "This isn't just about the attack, okay? I can tell you that much. I don't think anything… worse, happened to him than what we can see. He just…" He paused at the kitchen entrance, gazing blankly down at the mess, Seifer following, leaning beside him against the wall. "He shuts down like this from time to time," Hayner explained quietly. "He's always done this. And I guess the stress of what happened to him triggered it again, even though he only had an episode last week."
Seifer shot him a sceptical look. "I saw you guys over the weekend, and he seemed fine."
Hayner closed his eyes, shook his head. "We got lucky. That was right after it finished."
"…Oh." Seifer peered over Hayner's shoulder. "So… this is actually almost normal for him, then. Nothing to worry about."
Hayner gave a sharp, bitter laugh, shot him a scornful look. "Seifer, if your best friend went like that every couple of months, would you honestly not be worried?"
Pursing his lips, the man considered him closely. "I guess not, then," he conceded. His gaze went to the kitchen floor. "So what did happen here? The bowl out there, this all here…?"
Hayner sighed. "Roxas, and Roxas. He lost it a little. He wasn't trying to hurt me, though."
Seifer nodded, scrutinising the side of his face. "…Good." He waved a finger in front of his own face, mocking, "And this, that little mark there, the shape of someone's fist, that sure wasn't Roxas trying to hurt you at all."
Sending a dry, unimpressed look over, Hayner returned to pushing his feet through the towels, sweeping at the bottle's remains. "You can leave now, anyway," he said shortly. "Your curiosity's been satisfied, you know at least as much as I do. Your trip to Roxas' has been vindicated." He snorted, asked, "Before you go, though, how's Rai doing?"
Seifer was quiet. "…That was pepper spray in Roxas' apartment, you know," he revealed, hands going into his pockets. "Rai's busy squeezing a bottle of eye-drops into his skull to try and get rid of the burning. His face is bright red. He's wheezing like fuck."
Hayner stopped, twisted, stared dumbly. Seifer rocked a little, shot him a bland look, nodded, shrugged slightly. "If it's all the same to you – and I don't really care if it's not – I'll be hanging out here tonight." He grimaced. "The guy knew where Roxas lived, right? What's the guarantee he's not heading here next? You want a face full of pepper that bad?"
Hayner struggled, expression utterly blank. "…Pepper spray?"
"That's what I said," Seifer agreed. He clicked his tongue as he surveyed the broken glass on the tiles. "I might as well put myself to use while I'm here. Do you have another broom or anything? I'll start cleaning up out near the door."
Hayner scowled, a hand leaping out the grab the man's arm as he started to pull away. "Did I say you could stay?"
Seifer cocked his head to the side, rolled his eyes, pulled his gunblade replica free and pointed it at the ceiling. "Do you have anyone else willing to protect your pansy-ass if some crazy violent dude comes a-knockin'?"
"What are you going to do, hack him to pieces?" Hayner demanded sarcastically. Seifer smiled winsomely.
"Wouldn't that make me the hero if I did?"
Hayner glared, hesitated, eyes flicking to the weapon. "Pepper spray." His expression fell slowly. "A guy went after Roxas with pepper spray."
"Congratulations," Seifer said mildly, "you appear to have caught on to the fact that there was pepper spray involved, Hayner. Now, where's your little handheld vacuum cleaner thing? You have one, right?" He left the blond standing there, went to the closet beside the bathroom, bent down and started rummaging through.
A noise of victory came moments later, as he withdrew with his cleaning implement of choice, straightening, the gunblade's sheath knocking the wall as he turned. His boots clomped down the short hallway, heading for the sitting room, poking his head into the bedroom along the way.
"Go to sleep, Roxas," he commanded the blond, who lay on his side with his hands clamped between his thighs, eyes wide and unblinking.
"No," came the answer. "I'm not going to."
Shrugging, Seifer continued on, Hayner making no more arguments about his continued presence.