For Lorei of KHYaoi community. Prompt was "library."
Larxene/Roxas. No likey het, no read.

EXISTENTIAL THEORY
spirallin/reveneirz
Larxene considered herself a very simple girl, with very simple desires: she liked books and daring, fantastic stories, she liked toys and lethal weapons, and she hated everything else, humanity and nobodies alike, or at least the very large majority of them--they were insipid, blathering morons, and boring. For this reason, she and everyone else knew that the Castle's library was more or less her territory, and they'd do well to stay the hell away from it, not that it was a difficult task; the only other person that was nearly as well-read as she was Zexion, and he tended to pick up large, heavy tomes and squirrel them away in his room, and as such, was the only person she grudgingly allowed into her space.

Also for that reason, she was understandably offended and irritated when the intruder started making regular trips to her library. His short, golden-blonde presence in general annoyed her, but what was largely the cause of her irritation was the red-haired nightmare that occasionally followed him, until Larxene made it clear that there would be no incessant, idiotic bantering in her library, else their deaths would not be a swift one. Axel quickly cleared off.

Roxas, however, did not. Today, she observed, from her lounging seat on one of the library's long, sterile-white couches, he was rapidly scanning what looked like a large, thick textbook. Huh. Larxene pulled herself up and off the couch and walked over--the way a cat might, if it found a particularly plump and helpless looking mouse--and decided some mischief-making was in order. See if she couldn't scare the little blonde punk away. After all, Larxene did so love toys.

To his credit, Roxas did not squeak when the text was yanked out of his hands; he settled for an empty glare in her general direction.

"'Existential theory'," Larxene read from the cover. Oh, but this boy was terribly amusing. "My, number XIII, such deep reading. VIII boring you yet?"

"Give it back," Roxas said evenly, voice flat and unimpressed and demanding still. Larxene laughed, low and sarcastic, and handed him the book; her own, an edition of Through the Looking-Glass, tucked in one hand, held to her side.

"You don't really believe that, do you, now?"

"What do you want?" he asked instead, sounding bored and vaguely irritated.

"To...understand." Hm. Letting a malicious smile drape over her pretty face, Larxene paced around the chair the boy sat rigidly straight-backed in. "To see what makes you tick, Roxas," she purred, elbows resting on the chair-back, arms curling around his slim shoulders. She nudged his chin up and tilted his face towards her with one arched wrist; he stared back at her impassively. "You haven't answered my question, boy."

"It's XIII," he snapped, the tiniest hint of anger pinching his brow--and then cleared off.

Larxene grinned, cat-like, at him; Roxas looked into her narrowed, glacier-blue eyes and thought of tigers. Swift, deadly shapes, darting through the foliage of the Deep Jungles--dangerous hunters, predatory, could dispatch of their prey with a single swipe, but not without purpose. Never without purpose. He wondered what Larxene's was, then.

"--whatever, XIII," she said. "In any case, if you're looking for answers--" there was a nearly imperceptible tensing in his shoulders, and she smiled, and knew she'd found the crack. "--You won't find them here. Do you believe you can find answers in a book that any old human could write about existance, nonexistance--" her voice rose fractionally, an old, slow-simmering anger that ran circles in her lack of heart and brain, that wearied her and enraged her at the same time--"--when they had a sane mind and heart to do so?"

Her laughter was keen and cruel this time, and the hand that had been draped idly over his chest suddenly clenched sharply, nails digging, into the region where a heart ought to have been. In the same instant, Larxene let go and drew away, scornful expression still painting her face. Roxas stood, turning slowly to face her.

"No," he said, and stared back at her--this crazy, this tiger-eyed woman, probably not much older than he but with such a old hatred bubbling in her skin--"but looking into books about lands and creatures just as nonexistant as we are"--he gestured at the book in her hand, and a vision of the pale-blonde standing before him, falling through a long, long darkness, flashed in his eyes--"isn't finding you answers, either, is it?"

They stared each other down in silence; over their heads, there was the straining sounds of music, Demyx singing. When I say "shotgun," you say "wedding." Shotgun...

Larxene decided then and there that she was a simple girl, who liked books and stories and toys and weapons and Roxas. She laughed again, cold and haughty, but she yanked at the collar of the boy's coat, tugged him forward, and dropped a bitter kiss on the top of his head.

"You're a darling boy, XIII, and I think I rather like you." Larxene smiled, and shoved him away forcefully; when he regained his footing and glanced at her, she said, "Now be good, and get the fuck out of my library."