Disclaimer: They aren't mine.
A/N: A bunch of new fanart from currycannon, pouikee, and kareen (all at deviantART), link to the fanart archive up on my profile (make sure you click to the end of the gallery where all the new pieces are). I am clearly not worthy of this degree of kindness. The cover song mentioned in the chapter can be downloaded on my profile via mediafire, an audio rip of the "Kids/Use Somebody" cover by YouTube user pauloandjuli, link also on the profile.
Second Sunday update in a row! Can you believe it? NEITHER CAN I! After this, there are officially only TWO CHAPTERS OF A LESSER BEAUTY LEFT. I mean, theoretically. Unless something drastic happens, LB is going to 18. Almost time to bust out the bubbly.
--
Chapter 16: Necessity
What starts off as an afterthought, a tickle in the brain stem, tumbles its way downstream, over eternally eroding riverbeds, picking up speed until it swarms, purposeful now, through your consciousness. What starts off as a tickle ends up a repetitive, monotone pitch, rumbling in your eardrums, and you can't help but listen and listen to its quiet voice, telling you and telling you. What starts off as a tickle ends up a roar, tearing past your lips, an itch that needs to be scratched, a limb that needs removal. Where do thoughts come from? Nowhere. They just appear. They just appear, tearing a hole in the fabric of reality, logic, and Roxas' fragile framework, his burgeoning construct of new life from the ground up.
"Who the fuck is he, even?" Sora growled on the other end of the line, Roxas imagining an endless hallway, all the doors slamming shut.
"I told you. He's my friend, my roommate or whatever." Roxas thought he might sell his soul for a cigarette, fingertips rubbing at the concrete slab beneath him. It was too early to be fighting, the sun cutting the quad at a sharp angle. In another five minutes, he'd have to either give in or give up, in desperate need of a shower before his 10 a.m. class.
"You're such a liar, Roxas. You told me you liked him. I thought that emo guy was your roommate." Roxas didn't have a chance to respond before Sora plowed onward. "So, what, do you fuck every night? You sleep in the same bed?"
"Actually," Roxas said, angry now. "We're not even together. I haven't so much as—"
"Whatever, Roxas. We weren't together, either." A lighter flicked on the other end, a sharp scratch and a pause while Sora inhaled. "Weren't with Riku, either, were you."
"You're crossing the line, man, and you're totally blowing this out of proportion." All this from missing Sora's nightly 9:01 p.m. phone call, 85 minutes deep into a film he could only half understand, Axel chewing distractingly on the popcorn they'd been sharing. When Roxas finally got out of the theatre, cell threatening to explode with Sora's hundred million texts, it had been 11:13 p.m., hardly late enough to have a shit fit over. But logic had never been Sora's forte.
"I wouldn't say you selling me out for a twenty-four year old is 'out of proportion.'" Sora was half-yelling now, probably sitting by his pool, piece in hand. "So is he your best friend now? Do you tell him all your secrets and all my secrets?"
"Sora," Roxas tried, hand pressed to his eyes. A nightmare, a waking nightmare where his best friend hated his guts.
"No, really. I want to know, man. I want to know if you think he loves you even a fraction of an inch as much as I do. No one is going to love you like I love you." Sora's voice had taken on an odd waver, a pitch or two above his normal speaking voice.
"It's all in your head, Sora," Roxas said. In reality, it just slipped out of his mouth, slipped past his careful walls, his defenses. Too late, he realized this was the wrong thing to say.
"FUCK YOU," Sora shouted into the phone, clicking the call off.
Roxas tried very hard not to throw his phone into the Pacific, had to forcibly close his mind off to the images of him hurling it as hard as he could over the bluffs, powering down under the oceanic assault. Seven weeks of steady decline, and he wondered when—if—he'd ever reach his limit. It had started out innocently enough, dropped hints here and there that Axel was nice, that there was this guy he'd been interested in, and no, he wasn't as good looking as Sora, all the while Sora sniping communists or smoking pot or jacking off. When Sora stopped jacking off and started asking pointed questions about "this Axel guy," Roxas worried that it would become a problem. By the fourth week, Sora was either unbearably bored with their conversations or would do little else than talk incessantly about Axel.
"I'm glad you found someone, Roxas. I hope you know what you're doing, man. If he hurts you, I swear, I'll fuck his shit up so bad." Which was hopeful, really, until it degenerated into: "If I ever see him, I'm going to punch him in the face." Sora's reaction was understandable given Roxas' quiet admission that, though they kissed with fair frequency and made stupid eyes at each other, Axel had never mentioned whether or not they were together or not together, and didn't together people hook up or at least suck each others' dicks. "He just wants in your pants. He's an asshole. I hate him." But it hadn't stopped there, either, Sora slowly expressing more and more dislike that, at first, Roxas had attributed to being protective. As it turned out, he'd been confused. Sora wasn't being protective; he was being fucking psychotically possessive, threatening all manner of insane things unless Roxas agreed to request a new roommate and/or possibly drop out and come home to him.
The good news was that Roxas, after years of being subjected to bouts of Sora's unpredictable behavior, had grown fairly accustomed to dealing with his bullshit. In fact, that's how Roxas defined love: you love whoever's bullshit you pick to deal with since you can't deal with everyone's bullshit. It had been working out pretty well for him—Sora with Riku, Sora with him, Sora on his dick, Sora on drugs, Sora in a full-blown schizophrenic break—so it was no wonder Roxas never stopped to question why he hadn't noticed Sora was really good at playing both ends against the middle. A master tactician, really, how he kept both Riku and him on short leashes. It didn't hurt to think about so long as Roxas didn't think about it at all, and certainly as long as the words "intentional" or "pre-meditated" or "manipulative sonofabitch" never came in to play.
It's just that… well, he was almost happy, wasn't he? First quarter of his senior year, his classes were enjoyable, he wasn't shooting heroin or tweaking or popping pills into oblivion. Axel kissed him, ate with him, made him laugh—things were finally going okay. Why can't he be happy for me? Roxas wondered, going to flick a cigarette that wasn't there. Look. I even quit smoking. He should be happy for me. Sora was anything but happy, it seemed. The more Roxas looked at the situation, the more it seemed like Sora wanted him to be miserable—because if Roxas was miserable, then he needed Sora. Needed him all the time like a benzodiazepine under the tongue, dissolved peace in less than thirty minutes. Sora soothed him, knew exactly where to press to make him collapse at his feet, a toy powered down. Needed Sora on the other end of a call at 9:01 p.m. every night because who else did he have? Who else had he ever had? No one, just Sora.
It's not fair, Sora, Roxas thought, climbing up the stairs to the second floor. You got Riku. You got someone else. Sora hadn't just gotten "someone" else; he'd gotten another First. The First person you call when something's wrong. The First person you tell a new secret to that you can't ever tell anyone. The First person you think of in the morning, in the shower, in bed. The First person you call when you have something to do and want company. Riku had never been just Sora's boyfriend, had replaced the space Roxas created when he went away to Kingdom. And Sora—smiling, brave, princely Sora—tried to stuff them both into the same place, gathered them into his hands and shoved them into the space where his heart was, where only one person fit.
Axel, sitting up in bed and rubbing at his eyes in that controlled, compulsive rub, was enough to wipe the scowl from Roxas' face. "I could hear you, y'know," Axel said around a yawn, arching attractively as his muscles pushed off the sleep. Roxas wasn't even an artist, but sometimes watching the other boy inspired easels and palettes in him, whole canvases of just Axel's skin, the depth of color there in the light of dawn, in the glare of the fluorescent hallway lights, under the wash of the moon. "Friends don't treat friends like shit."
Roxas replaced the scowl on his face, dropped his phone on the ground and kicked off his shoes. "Good thing we aren't friends, then." One would think how much he enjoyed knowing Axel would serve to counteract Roxas' never ending foot-in-mouth syndrome, but more often than not it proved quite the contrary, like even though Roxas had lowered his emotional defenses, his body (and mouth, in particular) hadn't gotten the memo yet.
"Ouch," Axel laughed, sliding from his bed and pulling his towel down from their shared rack. While a naked, showering Axel usually brought on an erection hard enough to hammer a log cabin together with, Roxas couldn't get Sora's latest "fuck you" out of his mind, a certain edge to it that spoke to something he'd been trying to deny for four of the last seven weeks.
--
The end of October had a terrible track record, the last weekend before Dead Week proving treacherous for new freshmen as the first big party of the year, Halloween, slid home; students dropping like flies in the library, buried under photocopied pages of texts they hadn't bothered to buy at the beginning of the quarter. Roxas, now a senior and used to the imaginary stress of first quarter exams, went through the motions with remarkable ease. He'd rip his hair out over the swiftly approaching future at a later date—preferably a later date when his best friend didn't hate his guts. For now, Roxas was quite content to at least give off the semblance of attentiveness in his Sensation and Perception class, pen twirling idly as he imagined Axel's face when he handed over his pathetic birthday gift.
It hadn't been like he'd actually forgotten, otherwise occupied with attempting to keep himself from going to pieces, but October 22nd had shot forward on his cellphone calendar with alarming speed until one hazy day Roxas looked at his phone and felt his blood freeze up. Axel's 25th birthday. 25th. That was like a quarter of a century, and how the hell had he let it get all the way to October without thinking what to get him. Juggling his arguments with a certain schizophrenic brunette while prepping for the only thing he could really think to give Axel kept Roxas focused on the external for most of the month, kept him occupied, too busy to notice the ice melting down around him. What was once impenetrable, five miles of frigidity, was now thin enough to scatter the sunlight around him, a million facets orchestrated to get him to peel back his eyelids, to inhale.
Axel insisted on holding off on the gift-giving until the joint Halloween slash birthday party the kids at Little Vista were working on, a psychotic flaming hedgehog inked to life on the living room wall (Olette had to paint over a mysteriously appearing hairy dick scrawled nightly in front of the hedgehog's mouth), though he let Roxas treat him to a 1 a.m. game of cosmic bowling the day of—a pitcher of beer that he took innocuous gulps of in the black light, an obscene slice of pizza that he more smeared on Axel's face than shared with him—and a long, slow kiss in the hallway outside their door after they got back, Axel's tongue so deep in his mouth that Roxas could later taste the other boy at the back of his throat, climbing dizzily into his lofted bed as his stomach swooped away, cheeks aching with a grin he couldn't ditch. It was so easy to like Axel, the easiest thing in the world. This year he'd donned angelic garb with little prompting, all the while focused on how Axel would look at him when he saw the wings, meticulously pieced together snowy feathers that ran him about 45 bucks at a specialty store, gold tinted bronzer, and a gauzy, white tunic that Roxas figured made him look sorta heroic, if there was such a thing as heroic-looking twelve year olds. It would be worth it, Roxas decided, even if he got cooed and fawned over by the girls, if he could get Axel to look at him with stunned eyes, blossoming hunger. Imagining the look, caught slivers of it here and there before Axel looked away, could make Roxas come ten out of ten times, a statistically golden orgasmic flare that burned up all his blood.
Floating back to the dorms, high on possibility, Roxas absent-mindedly answered his phone as it rang, head already calling up images of Axel lying on his bed, phone pressed to his ear.
"Hey," Roxas said, smiling hard.
"What the fuck, man." Shit. Not Axel.
"Hey, Riku." Clearly not a good sign since Riku called him a grand total of never times in the four years he'd been away at Kingdom.
"What's your problem? You sell all your friends out now?" Riku's voice was especially venomous.
"This is between me and Sora. And, for the record, he's totally overreacting." Roxas stared at the laces of his shoes. So dirty, sodden from his walk through the grass.
"He said you're selling him out for your pedo friend. You're taking him for granted."
"No," Roxas insisted, the fire almost gone from his voice after eight weeks of being a repeating record, "I'm not. I'm not, I'm not. It's like both of you are living in an alternate fucking reality."
"So you aren't spending every waking moment with this Axel guy?" Roxas could almost hear Riku's eyebrows somewhere around the vicinity of his hairline, raised high and stubborn across his forehead.
"He's my fucking roommate. We're together all the time because we live together."
"And you don't hook up." Riku said it like he thought Roxas was full of shit, like no matter what he said, Riku wouldn't believe him.
"We just—we kiss, okay? I l—like him." Roxas stopped, his dorm in sight, and crouched on the ground, buried his face in an arm. "Is that wrong? I want—I want to be with him. Why is that wrong?"
"Listen, man, we're just looking out for you. You know you can't trust other people. Everyone else is going to fuck you over. You know this."
Because you've never fucked me over. You've never complicated my life and I've never let you do it. I've never been so confused about my own emotions that I felt like going to sleep in the middle of an intersection. "That's not true," Roxas whispered, head spinning. There was a scrambling on the other end of the line, a slight struggle, and then Sora breathed through the static.
"Yes it is. Why are you doing this to me, Roxas? Don't you love me anymore?" Sora was crying, miserable sounding.
"You can't ask me to do this," Roxas whined, throat increasingly tight. Would he sit there in the middle of the pathway and cry? Would he finally go to pieces? "It's not fair, Sora. You—you want me to put you first. All the time, you want to be the only person I have." Roxas swallowed, felt his eyes burn. Why today? Of all days, why today? "But I'm not your first, not anymore. I'm not the only person you have. You want me to put you first, but you won't do the same for me, and that's not fair. Not to me, not for you to feel like you have to."
"Oh, please," Sora shouted, miserable to angry in less than a second. "That is fucked up and that is bullshit. I've spent years worried about you and worried about whether you're gunna kill yourself or not. All your fake bullshit about wanting to die, 'Oooh, Sora, I'm so sad, I hate my perfect life, I'm so lucky, I want to die, wah wah wah, pity me, pity me.' Who else is going to put up with that shit?"
"Stop," Roxas whispered, chest burning. "I'm allowed to have other friends."
"I'm not saying you can't have other friends. I'm saying why are you treating me like shit? Huh? When I've done so much for you, Roxas. I love you so much."
"Stop," Roxas whispered again, one hand braced against the asphalt, poor comfort for the collapsing burn in his chest. "It's not right. We're… you're too attached. I'm too attached. We're going to kill each other like this." We're best friends, not lovers. "You love me, but you're not in love with me. You can't tell me I have no right to… to…"
"Fuck you, man," Sora said, and Roxas could hear him shaking his head through the phone. "Fuck you for this. We're done. You tell me that I don't love you? We're fucking done."
"Sora, that's not what I'm saying." An emptiness settled into Roxas' body. Eight steady weeks of having his soul ripped in two, and finally half had come loose, billowing out before him. If he could just catch it up again, everything would be fine. All he had to do was reach out, wind his fingers in it.
"You're like a fucking… devil, man. You're evil. You suck people's souls out. I gave you everything, and then you turn around and treat me like this."
"You're wrong," Roxas said. You're wrong, Sora. I love you, but you can't ask me to sit at your heels forever, waiting for something that doesn't exist. Defeat was heavy on his shoulders, but he'd been expecting this, love slowly battered away by the constant arguing, the constant doubt, the constant fear. Was he supposed to trade being Axel's whole world for being Sora's erstwhile plaything? Was he supposed to wear the title of Best Friend Forever above his head, carved into his chest, and sacrifice all that he was? No. I won't.
"Whateverrrr," Sora said, dragging out the last consonant until it sounded arrogant, empty-headed like he had a million other things to do and Roxas was nothing more than a waste of time. "Fuck you, I can't believe I wasted my entire life loving you. Take care of yourself, and don't contact me again." Roxas could say nothing in response, mute with Sora's forced indifference, his facetious disdain. "What? Nothing to say? Yeah, bitch. Go run to your new best friend; see if he gives a shit. Whatever, I am so done. So fucking done."
And then there was silence, the call clicked off on Sora's end, Roxas sitting on the ground with his head to his knees, phone still pressed up against his ear.
--
Despite his best attempts at putting on a normal, non-devastated face, Roxas looked ashen, like utter shit as he opened the door to his dorm room. It took Axel all of five seconds to look up from his documentary on Machu Picchu before basically tossing his laptop aside and darting over to take Roxas into his arms.
"What happened?"
Roxas tried hard to shrug, knew that he wanted to save a little face. It was Axel's party, was Halloween. He wasn't going to be a buzzkill, goddammit, but the shrug never managed to lift off his shoulders. Instead, Roxas found his face buried in Axel's chest, lost in the sensation of Axel's fingertips rolling waves against his back. He wanted to crawl inside the other boy, drown out the rest of the world with the thrumming of blood, the vibrations of metabolism.
"Sora," Roxas said simply, swallowing and swallowing at the hard stone in his throat, the seed of a sea of fruit. Pull it together. Pull it together. You owe it to him.
"You don't deserve his shit," Axel said fiercely, crushing Roxas to his chest. "You do nothing but worry about him and obsess over him. It's… fucked up."
"Funny," Roxas said, eyes closed tight against the fabric of Axel's shirt. "He said the same thing about himself. But you know what?" Roxas turned his head and pressed his ear up against Axel's chest, listened to his heartbeat. "I can't do it anymore. I've been deluding myself, thinking we were what we've always been, when really we were all so helplessly fucked we were tearing each other apart." Axel's hands, warm on his back, kept Roxas anchored. He wondered if he'd be this brave if he was alone, if he'd be this sane alone with a bottle of Ativan, with an empty freeway. I'm right. It's okay, I'm right. I… Axel, I…
"Do you want to skip tonight?" Axel, rubbing circles into his back, was making Roxas feel weak, thirsty.
"No way, no. We're going. It's your party. I even bought wings," he rushed, slurring his words in his haste.
"Wings?" Axel questioned, and Roxas was suddenly very aware of just how close they were, Axel's breath curling around his neck. In his shocked daze, Roxas hadn't noticed Axel was already dressed up for the party, all of his clothes either extra tight or one size too small, jeans shredded, a layer of bullet adorned belts, a tight leather jacket that looked worn though Roxas had never seen Axel wearing it. His hair, usually jutting out behind him like a burst of flame, razored out, stiff and straight like modified liberty spikes. The effect, sedated street punk, made Axel look positively feral, eyes acidic, gorgeous. You want me to give up this? Never.
"You're already dressed," Roxas said stupidly, running a hand down one of the leather lapels.
Axel grinned, posed slightly. "You like? I'm like a lead singer or some shit."
"Really?" Roxas asked, allowing himself a small smile as he gathered the parts of his angel costume into a bag, wondering if he was going to look like a drag queen in it. He refused to let Sora take this from him, too. "Bang lots of groupies?"
"Nah," Axel said, watching Roxas move around the room. "I'm hard for my backup vocalist, though. He's so hot."
The intent in Axel's voice sucked up all of Roxas' air, and he hurried out into the bathroom to assemble himself. He tried to think light, empty thoughts, but the repetitive voice in his chest was on a repeating loop of increasing intensity: let's get fucked up, let's get fucked up, let's get fucked up. Rolling streaks of golden shimmer across his cheekbones, Roxas wondered if there was any other choice.
--
Getting "fucked up" amounted to taking a shot of the alcoholic beverage of choice for every girl that came up and touched his expensive wings or cooed over his golden skin. At some point in the night, a good hour after he found himself vomiting into the trashcan beside the backed up toilet, he'd been having a near rave experience in the Little Vista backyard undergrowth, Zexion, dressed as a vampire, pogoing along with him as whoever was DJing amped up the happy hardcore. Roxas was 85% sure Zexion was on some sort of amphetamine, about 60% sure that he'd declined the offer to also partake, but if his sweat-pouring body and euphoric bursts of hugging strangers was any indication, that number was probably more around 15%. All Roxas really knew was that he'd never felt better, that he'd never had this much fun, that everything would work out, and damn where was Axel already because he was missing this awesome song.
160 beats per minute of hyperactive techno funneled straight into his head as Roxas made his way in from the backyard, unearthing Axel deep in the midst of a particularly rousing game of flip cup, a cheer of Roxas' name going up as he stumbled his way into the room. Axel, clearly the most drunk Roxas had ever seen him, slid easily over to Roxas despite being in the middle of a game.
"Hey, where you been?" Axel was all whispers in Roxas' ear, liquor and fruit on his breath, his hands sloppy on Roxas' hips.
"I'M HIGH!" Roxas shouted over the noise, flailing a hand around as if in explanation. And drunk, and probably smell like vomitus maximus over here, fuck. "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" Roxas shouted, attempting to give Axel a kiss on the mouth but managing to get his neck instead, lapping away like a blind kitten. The world pinwheeled around them, Axel's hands petting the feathers of his wings. There was a jeer from one of the couches that sounded suspiciously like Hayner telling them to save it for the porn website, and Roxas detached himself from Axel's neck, licking his lips and reaching for a cup in Kairi's hand. The jungle juice she was drinking was practically fetid, but Roxas downed it anyway, smiling as Kairi complimented his tunic.
"Wearing anything under there?" Axel asked, again just breath in Roxas' ear, pawing at the front of his tunic. Roxas rolled his hips into the touch, had a fleeting thought of being able to taste the color purple, that Axel's sweat tasted purple, and he wanted to taste every inch of salted, dripping skin Axel could offer.
"I have something for you," Roxas said, head spinning. "It's… it's in the room." He was pretty sure he'd arrived with more than just the costume on his body, but for the life of him, he couldn't figure out what he'd done with his phone or his keys. In lieu of a response, Axel tugged Roxas toward the door, fingers wound tightly with his. Before Roxas made it fully through the door, vampire Zexion collided with his back, shoved a—"BANANA, ROXAS! BANANA! THIS SHIT IS B-A-N-A-N-A-S!"—condom in his hand.
Axel was mysteriously quiet on the walk back to the dorm, though Roxas did his best to talk about what probably amounted to eighty billion words a minute, increasingly nervous as they approached. Oh, god. Is this it? Oh, god, oh, god. He turned the banana-flavored condom over in his hand again and again, his other hand sweating against Axel's palm. Axel, clearly not as sober as he pretended to be, led them into exactly five bushes, at one point stopping so suddenly that Roxas bumped into the other boy and rebounded straight onto his ass, the impact causing an obscene giggle to tear out of him, one Roxas couldn't stifle for the rest of the walk back to the room, finally subsiding as Axel locked the door behind him and turned to face Roxas, swaying slightly.
Almost choking on the charged air, Roxas swatted unsuccessfully at his pillow until he beckoned Axel over and pointed upward. "Under there, I put it under there." Axel reached up easily to retrieve the silver-wrapped square, smiling lopsidedly at Roxas before tearing the paper away. "I—Demyx helped me record it. It's like… like a cover of two songs. I arranged it myself, though."
Axel stared intently at the case, opening it carefully and pulling the sleeve free to examine the note Roxas had written on the inside. The smile slowly quieted on Axel's face as he slid the CD into his laptop, listening intently as Roxas' mournful tenor filled the room, strains of broken longing against Demyx's skilled picking, precise upstrokes and just the right resounding acoustic tone. Each breath the recorded Roxas took was felt rather than heard, Roxas watching Axel's eyes dilate as his reworked pop songs took a somber, beautiful turn. Roxas felt a pang as he wondered whether or not Riku had ever listened to the song Roxas had written for him, felt his heart ache, really ache, when he heard where Sora's harmony would lay under the melody, the memory of Sora's voice against his, his hands, his skin.
Axel closed his laptop after the song ended, looked at Roxas like he was the only person in the entire world. "Thank you," Axel said, voice reverent. The simplest form of gratitude, but sometimes still the most profound, Axel's hand at the base of his neck, kisses dropped on the tears rolling down Roxas' cheeks. Why it had to hurt, why it couldn't be easy, why it had to be difficult, why everything was so tangled—Roxas didn't know, didn't know anything other than knowing he was right, that Sora was wrong, and that it was okay. This, Axel's mouth working against his, was okay.
Pulling away, Roxas took an unfocused breath, had to pick a spot on the carpet to focus his eyes on, "Sorry it's so lame. I swear I give better presents. I'll make it up to you, I swear." Drunk speech, slurred all over the place, and Roxas wondered if normal people got drunk this way, too, conscious of how fucking retarded they were being.
"It's not lame," Axel said into his mouth, licking at his teeth. "But if you really insist on making something up to me, I have something I've been wanting to ask you for." Axel's eyes glinted wickedly and Roxas felt his stomach spiral.
Oh, god, it is, it is, oh, god, banana condom, oh god. "Oh, god," Roxas said, closing his eyes as his heart lurched painfully in his chest. Want. Want want want.
"You can say no," Axel said, running his hands through Roxas' hair, pulling them away covered in golden specks of light. "Hope you don't," Axel whispered into his temple, licked under his jaw.
At this point Roxas was pretty sure Axel could've asked for the moon, and he would've jumped to catch it. "My answer is yes." Yes yes yes, god, yes yes yes. "Nn-don't care what it is. Yes." Roxas closed his eyes, felt a sway in his body that he went along with. "Whatever you want, yes. Yes, please, yes."
Axel's hands pulled him at the hips, directed him in a semi-circle until he was walking backwards toward Axel's bed, the redhead's tongue in his mouth, wet and sliding. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Roxas felt Axel's hands slide up and down his thighs, a torturous rub that called up claws under his skin. When Axel's hands slid up under his tunic, Roxas' breath caught, the wings on his back fluttering. This was it, the line in the sand. Roxas didn't know when they'd drawn it, but it was there, uncrossed. Taking a breath, Roxas braced himself against the bed, arms behind him, before he worked out the way to ask a question without panting, Axel palming his erection through his briefs.
"Do-do you have any lube?" Roxas drew a shuddering breath as Axel's fingers dipped beneath the band of his underwear, dipping back out as Axel licked a wet streak up the inside of his thigh. "I h-have lube. In there," Roxas pointed a shaking finger at a bag shoved under his desk.
Axel took a moment to peel Roxas' briefs down his legs, breath warm on his straining cock. "Don't think we'll need any," Axel said, smiling up at Roxas as his pre-come slicked down his twitching erection, Axel still stroking fire up to the crease of his thighs.
"You," Roxas said, brow furrowed. "I mean, we aren't—you don't—"
"The long awaited blowjob, aren't you excited?" Axel smirked.
Do I look excited? "Are you—I mean, why? It's your birthday. I would—I would love to s-suck—" Roxas fumbled.
"Roxas," Axel breathed, tonguing the head of his cock, the slide of warmth across the slit making Roxas inhale in a hiss. "There is literally nothing else I want." A swirl of tongue, Axel favoring the underside with a slow motion of his head. Roxas thought he might scream. "Is that okay with you?"
"Yes," Roxas whispered, head falling back as Axel took him to the back of his throat in one steady movement, felt Axel swallow, felt his tonsils, and thought he really might scream, not able to get enough air in his lungs. "Oh, god," Roxas said, arm tossed across his eyes. Watching would be too much, watching his cock slide in and out of Axel's mouth, the redhead's hands on his hips as he fucked his mouth with Roxas' cock. "Oh, god, oh god," Roxas' half articulated prayer. Please, let him like me tomorrow. Please, let him like me for real. Please, let it not be weird. Please, oh, god, please. As Roxas got closer, one of Axel's hands smoothing up across Roxas' chest—kneading his muscles, flicking at his nipples—the other doing delicious things to the base of his cock, Axel alternated between running his tongue along the sides of Roxas dick, eyes watching his face carefully, and sucking him entirely into his mouth, the head of his cock somewhere down Axel's throat. Roxas tried not to compare it to Sora, tried not to compare it to Riku, tried not focus on the exact reason why Axel was so good at sucking cock was probably because he had lots of practice. He tried to do nothing, tried to accept that Axel's gift to himself was being able to make Roxas feel good, felt the idea flit around the edges of his comprehension. Did Axel really like him that much? Did he—oh, god, Axel was jacking Roxas off into his mouth, wrist twisting expertly, the slight sucking as Axel bobbed his head. Roxas felt the claws under his skin threaten to tear their way out, a soft moan spilling past his lips as Axel glanced upward, met his eyes. It was too much, far too much, and Roxas' entire body shook, limbs rigid, as Axel swallowed his come, the head of his cock nudging the back of Axel's throat.
As Roxas collapsed against Axel's bed, he felt the other boy pull his knees wider apart, felt Axel push his legs up until his feet rested on the edge of the bed. His body erupted in goosebumps as Axel spread the cheeks of his ass, licked at him, placed a kiss, a promise, on his puckered hole.
"I have," Roxas breathed, exhausted, "a banana."
"A banana," Axel smiled, swallowing Roxas again, letting his softening dick slide down between his lips.
"A condom. Banana condom if you—if you want."
Axel nuzzled Roxas' abdomen, kissed his hips. "Don't you want to remember it?"
Roxas swallowed thickly, could barely remember what it felt like as Axel first sucked him into his mouth. Damn. "Yes."
"Me too," Axel said, and it seemed like he couldn't get enough of pressing Roxas to him, gathering the blonde into his arms, dragging him up against his chest. The lights were still on, Roxas' wings still jutting out behind him. "This is already the best birthday ever." Roxas tasted his own semen on Axel's tongue, almost refused the water Axel held for him to drink just so he could remember, perfectly, what it felt like. "Any more and I might explode."
As they drifted off to sleep, the lights still on in the room, both still fully costumed, Roxas wasn't sure it was the right thing to have done—if it was healthy, smart, or anything other than blind need… that is, he wasn't sure except for the warmth in his chest, spreading, easy like honeyed sunshine. All his walls useless, his built up plans blown away, towering structures erected to protect a shivering heap, but how could he have known? How could he have known it was so warm next to the sun? As his breathing evened out, the warmth spreading down through his body, tickling the sides of his neck and the spaces between his toes, Roxas felt rather than heard Axel whispering something to him, felt Axel press a kiss to his forehead before the other boy's breathing evened out, the steady rise and fall of his chest a clockwork anchor, the clearest comfort Roxas had ever known.