He's not some sort of gardener or something. He doesn't pull weeds or hedge grass or clean fucking pools all day and Marluxia's a bastard for pinning it on him. Fucking Marluxia and his free cruise to Nova Scotia of all places and fucking Larxene for demanding that she gets to go with him instead of Axel. Axel deserves a cruise to Nova Scotia way more than Larxene.

He pulls weeds with clumsy hands, yanking out clumps of soil along with plants. His knees ache from stooping over bushes so long and his fingers prickle from the stickers he'd accidentally grabbed at over the past two hours.

"Fucking house, fucking yard, fucking sun-"

Marluxia just had to make him fill in for him. He couldn't just get Xigbar to do it or Zexion or someone else, could he?

"But, you owe me," he'd said, with a file to his nails and a flip of his girly-ass hair like some fucking high school girl. "Remember that time at the music hall with that professor- what's his name?—Anwar? Ansem? Somethin' like that. You remember when I got him to pull your grade up last semester? You remember that?"

Why should he owe Marluxia for being a slut?

He thanks God that this is the last house on Marluxia's list. The Strife's house is pretty small compared to all the other ones, like those big-ass mansions up in that gated community, Destiny Islands, what with their snooty old people telling him to "lightly spritz" their flowers. No, this house is a nice in-between size, and they don't have anything special going on with their vegetation. Just bushes and some flowers in need of weeding and yards to mow and a small pool to brush.

When he's getting up to retrieve the lawn mower a girl somewhere between fourteen and seventeen comes out the front door. She's petite in an eating disorder sort of way and a shade of pale just short of sickly. Her hair is a bright, yellow-blonde and her eyes are big and a blue almost unnaturally bright.

In a distinctively dainty manner she holds a silver cell phone to her ear with one hand and a spiral sketchpad under her other arm.

"I had to scrub all the dishes 'cause the washing machine, like, practically exploded last night," she says into the phone, biting down on her lower lip. "My mom's been going ballistic and Roxas is still eating all the Blue Bell and watching reruns of Dawson's Creek in the living room. It's so sad."

The lawn mower makes a loud, guttural noise when he wrenches it backwards, abruptly drawing the girl's attention to him.

"-no, it's not pitiful, Kairi. Hayner's been Roxas' friend since practically elementary school. He's gotta right to be upset I think."

Axel has the lawnmower to the front grass and is just about to start it up when the girl gives out a shyly toned call of "Hey. Hey, gardener!"

He bristles at "gardener", but responds to it anyway. He doesn't want Marluxia bitching at him for losing customers on a count of his "rude-ness".

"Yeah?"

"You're not the normal gardener," she says bluntly, as if he might not know he's not the normal gardener.

"No. I'm not."

"Where'd the other one go? Mr. Marluxia. Where'd he go?"

"He won a cruise to Nova Scotia."

"Nova Scotia? Why'd he win a cruise to a place like that?"

"Hell if I know."

She continues to gnaw on her lower lip, so much so that Axel wouldn't be surprised if blood started to dribble down her chin. Fiddling with her phone—open and close and open again—she finally says, "Do you want something? Like water or lemonade or- kool aid or something?"

He shrugs. "I'm alright."

She nods. "I'll tell Roxas to get you water anyways. Just in case."

Before he can say another word she's traipsing back into the house. She comes out a couple of minutes later, this time with a pastel blue messenger bag slung over her shoulder and a pout puckering her lips.

At the same time she gets to the driveway a shiny, blue convertible bug pulls up, manned by a girl with auburn-red hair in a trendy cut and plum-purple eyes glued to the rearview mirror she'd repositioned to touch up her face.

"Roxas'll get you some water," the girl says to him as she passes. At the curb, with her hand already holding the door handle, she looks over her shoulder to him and quickly says, "Tell Mr. Marluxia I say hello, would you?"

"'Course," he replies with a cocky smile.

She nods, albeit a little unsurely, and slides into the car. Before the door even fully closes it's whizzing away and out of sight and Axel is alone with the lawnmower in the front yard.

--

By the time the boy that Axel assumes is Roxas comes out with the water, Axel has mowed and weeded the front and back and is struggling to pry the pool brush from the fence.

"Hey!"

The brush abruptly comes off, sending Axel reeling, free arm pinwheeling and hopping about in an effort to keep his balance. He ends up with both feet pigeon-toed on the cement, one arm bent awkwardly to keep hold of the pool brush, and a blond-haired boy snickering at him.

Axel scowls, regaining his composure quickly. "What do ya' want?" he demands.

Still snickering, Roxas runs his free hand through his cornflower-coloured hair, the spikes, surprisingly enough, moving easy and soft between his fingers. His eyes are as bright and blue as his sister's, Axel notices.

"I got you some water," he replies and raises the glass, which is perspiring greatly and containing only one pathetic excuse for an ice cube bobbing at the surface. "Y'know, since you're working so hard and all."

"I am working hard," Axel retorts. To emphasize, he sticks the brush into the pool, sloshing around the thick expanse of forest green algae permeating the water. "Fuck, you're pool is dirty."

"Not my job to clean it." When Roxas turns his nose up at the pool, Axel thinks he looks like one of those preppy guys, hanging off their skinny girls and turning their noses up at everything. "What are you laughing at?"

"…Nuthin'. How long did you leave that water sitting around?"

Roxas' smirk dies quick and his eyes divert to the toes of his sneakers. "I got a call." He says no more and Axel decides it must be something personal and leaves it at that.

He begins to brush the pool. Roxas sets the glass on the ground next to the pool's rim and walks back inside without another word.

It only takes him a couple of minutes before he decides there's no cleaning this pool until somebody fixes up the chemicals. He writes a note at the bottom of the bill and goes up to knock on the front door.

He raps with his knuckles three short knocks and waits wit hands on his hips for Roxas to open the door. When he finally does he has a spoon ladled with what looks like cookie dough in his hand and a cordless phone cradled to his ear.

"I told you Sora- God. Just wait a sec', okay?" He gives Axel a withering look. "What do you want?"

"Your bill." He sticks the slip of paper under the boy's nose. "You guys need to change the chemicals in your pool if you ever want it to be blue again."

The bill is rudely snatched from his hand. "Fine. You can go now."

Axel opens up his mouth, the beginning's of some sort of smart-aleck retort on the top of his tongue when Roxas slams the door right in his face.

--

When he's driving his truck back home, he drops Marluxia a line. Marluxia'd been quite adamant about him calling, to make sure he hadn't done something detrimental to the business.

"Hello? Who is this?" Marluxia answers on the third ring with his normal, irritated tone.

"Hello to you too. It's Axel. I've finished a day's work, I'll have you know."

"What did you do? Did you fuck anything up? Because, I swear if you did I'll-"

"Calm down. I didn't fuck anything up," he interjects. "God, quit PMS-ing, wouldja'?"

"Not yet, you didn't."

"Well, if you didn't want to me to do all your fucking gardening you didn't have to make me-"

"Oh, did Namine ask for me?" Marluxia cuts him off mid-sentence, and Axel can clearly see him flipping his hair as he does it.

"Did who?" he asks, though he's already sure of who it is.

"Namine. The girl from the Strife house."

"Oh. Her? Yeah, she asked where you were at. Said to tell you she said hello."

"Did she?"

"Yeah."

"-Well, you'd better not go and fuck anything up, Axel, or I swear to God I'll fucking kill you when I get back!"

"Right. Got it."

Marluxia doesn't say goodbye. He huffs loudly and hangs up.

--