Sunspots
Based on archy the cockroach's gin and sin.

- - -

Axel is sitting on a park bench watching Selphie play when Marluxia sits down next to him. Axel does not look; he averts his eyes at the very first flash of rosy hair. The man beside him waits, and after a few moments pass without acknowledgment, he presses a hand into the teenager's thigh, leans close enough for his breath to warm Axel's neck, and murmurs against his ex-whore's ear.

"Long time no see," he says, and the muscles in the boy's leg twitch and something in his jaw tightens. Marluxia lights a cigarette and smoothes his expensive black suit with a square, manicured hand. "I've missed you," he continues offhandedly, still kneading Axel's thigh.

Axel grits his teeth when Marluxia presses something plasticky into his hand. He knows what it is without having to look, but he glances down anyway and is expectedly unsurprised at what he finds. His fingers curl loosely over the baggy filled with eight bright yellow little pills that look like tiny suns. He's seen these ones before. A strained sigh rattles past his teeth, and when he breathes in it sounds more hitched than he would like.

"I told you I'm clean." His fingers itch.

Marluxia chuckles, but Axel knows him well enough to recognize the displeasure in the sound.

"I know what you told me," the thirty-something-year-old all but purrs. Axel stiffens when a warm tongue flicks his ear.

"I mean it," he hisses, voice sticky with something that might be panic because Selphie is looking right at them. He feels Marluxia's sharp-toothed smile graze his jaw and he tugs away with a cry that he's not sure actually escaped his mouth or not.

Now Axel is standing up and shaking all over and, he discovers, his fists are white-knuckle clenched. The pills biting into his palm send sunspots flashing across his eyes. "Leave me alone!" Axel realizes he's shouting and that people are staring; mothers are ushering their children away, but he can't find the will to lower his voice, even though in the back of his mind he knows that no sort of violence has ever been enough to dissuade Marluxia. "I don't want your fucking drugs!"

Marluxia is smiling around his cigarette. "Really? Give them to me, then." He nods at the tiny ziplock bag.

Axel glares at him and shoves that hand, palm open, in front of Marluxia's face.

Except it's still clenched tight.

Marluxia chuckles again, and this time, the sound is deep, throaty, and full of the upper hand.

"I think you're not as sure as you want to be," he grins, exhaling smoke through his nostrils. Axel stops breathing for a moment and the voice in his head whispers, maybe he's right.

He thinks about before, about being high as a fucking kite and just as bright, about how stained glass just isn't as pretty anymore, about Marluxia petting him, marking him, fucking him.

About Selphie and Naminé and goddamn Roxas who shares a bed with him but won't let him suck him off.

His fingers tighten and he hears Marluxia's victorious intake of breath.

Then he drops the pills into the older man's pocket. "I'm not interested anymore," he tells him, not because it's true, but because maybe someday it will be. Axel turns around and walks away.

Selphie is waiting for him at the edge of the sandbox, gnawing on her lip and looking uncertain whether she wants to cry and hug him or tackle that mean girly-haired man with all the strength she can muster. "Axel?" she settles for asking.

"Don't worry about it," Axel answers, then, "He won't bother me again."

"Good! I hate him!" Selphie shouts, tiny fists balled and her feet spaced in a battle stance. The picture is ruined by the fact that she is dwarfed by the shoes she wears, which are large and worn and belong to Axel. "Don't you hate him, too?"

The red head shrugs and takes her hand. "Let's go home," he replies.

As they leave the park, Axel tries not to think about tiny round imprints on his palm.

- - -