It had been about an hour since everyone had come back from the castle, and it had taken Axel this long to notice that something wasn't quite right.
"Hey, Roxy?" Axel said as he and Roxas were cuddling on the palm tree.
"Yeah, Axel?" Roxas replied.
"I wasn't really thinking about it until now…" Axel chuckled happily as he recounted the events that had just transpired in the last hour, "but where's King Mickey?"
Roxas was staring up into Axel's big, green eyes so intently that he almost wasn't paying attention to what he was saying. "Huh?" he said, confused. Axel rose an eyebrow. "Oh, yeah!" He snapped out of it, "He stayed back to help this guy named Ansem."
"Who's Ansem?" Axel asked.
"Well," Roxas began, "He was helping us beat Xemnas. I'm not entirely sure who he was, but he had this machine that was supposed to do something important. Ansem was waiting for it to charge, and then a group of heartless gathered around him as he was in the middle of that."
"Oh," Axel said as he listened to Roxas's story,
"Ansem was apparently one of Mickey's good friends," Roxas continued, "so Mickey said to all of us, 'Run along fellas! You'll have to go on and defeat Xemnas without me, because I have to help Ansem right now.' We tried to tell him that we should help him first, but he convinced us that Xemnas must be stopped as soon as possible. So we left them there to fend for themselves."
"Wow," Axel said with some shock, "So I guess everybody's waiting for him to come back now, aren't they?
"Yep," Roxas mumbled.
--
Less than an hour later, another portal appeared on the beach. Everyone ran up to see who it was, and this time it was Mickey. Just Mickey.
"Your majesty!" Donald and Goofy shouted out in unison as they both squeezed him in a three person bear hug.
Despite the affection, only a ghost of a smile could be seen on King Mickey's face.
Uh oh, Axel thought.
Donald and Goofy realized that Mickey wasn't in nearly as good a mood as they were, so they released him. Axel could see that they were suspecting the same thing that he was.
"Where's…?" Sora began to ask.
Mickey just shook his head and looked to the ground.
Then we all knew.
--
Two weeks had past since that day, and Donald, Goofy, and the King had returned to their own home. Before they left, they held a funeral for Ansem. A wooden sign with his name painted on it hung on one of the branches of a bush that was on the edge of the shoreline as a memorial.
Since Roxas was already intent on staying at Destiny Islands, so was Axel. They found a nice apartment that was on the mainland less than a mile away from the island. Roxas and Axel lived there together, and Sora, Riku, and Kairi all had their parents' houses to go back to. Namine found a good place for herself too, and ended up being room mates with this girl named Selphie.
They all went down to the island, and ended up spending most of their free time playing around on the beach.
Axel and Roxas decided that this was a great spot for parties. Everyone else loved the idea, but said that they hardly got around to parties most of the time for some reason. Fortunately, Axel and Roxas had been to many parties back in their Organization days, and the beach soon became a hot spot for everyone on the island.
During one of the parties, most of the people there were eating and lounging around on the beach while listening to some dance music (like how it usually took place). There were so many people everywhere, and it was nighttime, so it was sort of hard to distinguish between all the faces.
Axel and Roxas were busy having a good time drinking some margaritas, when Axel noticed two figures running off behind the big tree holding hands and laughing.
"Hey," Axel whispered to Roxas.
Roxas looked up.
Axel pointed over to the guy and girl that were making their way over to what looked like the Secret Place and said, "Check it out."
"I wonder who they are…" Roxas pondered as he watched to see where they were running.
"Me too," Axel agreed, "Let's go spy on them."
"Okay," Roxas giggled.
Roxas had quickly picked up Axel's habit of snooping around on people once he realized how fun it was.
They swiftly walked away from the party with long strides, giggling and shushing each other as they tracked the traveling couple.
They watched as the couple crawled into the entrance of the Secret Place, the girl
going first, followed by a still laughing guy who was wearing blue baggy pants.
"Come on," Axel said in a loud whisper, and he motioned Roxas forward with his hand and kept going towards the Secret Place.
They both got to the entrance and then got down on their knees to crawl inside. As they felt the dirt on their hands and knees, they heard the faint sounds of the girl giggling some more as she made out with the guy she was with. Even though they couldn't see what was going on yet, they could tell that the couple was making out, and they could tell that the girl was very bubbly.
The ease droppers halted their own laughing as they tried to get a better look at who the two love birds actually were.
Finally, as the lighting allowed for a slightly better view, Axel and Roxas could see blue and blonde hair, a white dress, a yellow and white jacket, and the same baggy blue pants from earlier.
It was Riku and Namine.
Roxas let out a gasp, and Axel, whose mouth was also hanging open, caught the gasp by placing his hand over Roxas's mouth.
But not before Namine heard it. "Hmm?" She murmured as she brought herself away from Riku's lips.
"What is it?" Riku said with obvious frustration from the interruption.
"I thought I heard…" she began. Then she shrugged, gave up with another giggle and said, "Never mind."
Axel and Roxas had gotten out of their as fast as possible. When they had escaped, Axel looked over at Roxas and said, "Wow."
"I know…" Roxas said.
They then headed back to the party, eager to reveal to everybody what they had just seen.
--
The next evening, Riku and Namine were an official couple. Everybody knew about it now, but it turned out they had been keeping their relationship a secret for a few days.
When they were asked why, as everyone was lounging around on the palm trees, they said it didn't seem appropriate since everyone was just getting over Ansem's death.
"'Just getting over!?'" Kairi exclaimed, "We're all totally over him! Why else would we be having parties and everything?"
"Kairi…" Sora said with a frown, "That's not nice."
"Well," she countered, " It's not like we really knew him that well. It was mostly just Goofy, Donald, and the King."
"Yeah," Sora decided not to get too worked up about it, "I kind of knew Ansem too, but you're right; let's not get all worried about something like that when we have so much other stuff to think about."
Riku laughed at that.
"What?" Sora asked defensively.
"What exactly," Riku said, "is so important that it needs our attention so badly?"
"Parties," Axel answered.
"Paopu fruit," Kairi added.
"Very pressing issues," Sora concluded.
Riku leaned back against Namine on the tree and sighed, "Right…" he said with a smirk, and gave her a peck on the cheek.
"Hey," Namine said with some enthusiasm, "How about we all have a race to that big star that's on the other side of the island?"
"Okay," Kairi smiled.
"Sure," shrugged Sora and Riku.
"I'll be the official referee," Axel decided.
Shortly after that, Sora, Kairi, Namine, Riku, and Roxas were all lined up behind the bridge in the back of the island. It had a couple of wobbly planks that, if stepped on, would fall to the ground and send the person that was on top of it tumbling down with it. This was a good obstacle for a race, which was why this route was so popular for that purpose.
"First one to touch the star and get back here wins," Axel explained the rules that everyone knew anyway. "On your mark," Axel raised his left arm as if he held a racing flag, "Get set… go!"
On the word "go", Axel lowered his raised hand onto Roxas's sleeve and held it firmly to prevent Roxas from going anywhere. Because Roxas took off expecting to run at that moment, Axel pulled hard enough on his sleeve that the collar part of Roxas's long sleeved t-shirt fell down, exposing one of his shoulders. Along with that, he also fell to the ground mid-stride.
"Gah!" Roxas yelled in surprise as he hit the dirt.
The others ran up ahead without noticing that Roxas had been forced out of the competition by Axel.
Roxas was now lying face down to the ground, so he flipped himself over to look up at Axel. "What the hell was that for!?" he demanded.
Axel's grip was still on Roxas's sleeve, so he switched his hand over to the hand that the sleeve belonged to, pulled Roxas up from the ground, and placed him in a tight embrace with himself in one swift motion.
"I wanted you all to myself, silly," Axel said with a smirk, then brought Roxas's lips to his own and gave him a forceful kiss that lasted about three seconds.
"I want to be mad at you…" Roxas mumbled, but still had a tomato red face as he received more kisses from Axel. "That did kind of hurt…" More kisses. "Falling on the ground…"
"Sorry," Axel said before resuming.
Then Roxas shot him a coy smile, "I didn't want to race anyway," he finally decided as he gave up.
Axel laughed. "I love you, Roxy." He said.
"I love you, Axel."