A/N: Ick, chapter six is finally up. I don't have a lot to say about it, I guess. So, enjoy, yeah?

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The silence between the redhead and the blond was awkward to say the least. After Axel left, Kairi seemed to grow increasingly fidgety; her hands wringing in the couch beside her. Roxas didn't know what he should have said to break the silence, but found he didn't even have to. Kairi beat him to it.

"Axel…" she started out shakily, as if deciding upon her words, "He's…" she stopped, her eyes focusing on a hole in the couch. "After mom and died… we were left alone. Axel was 18 at the time. I was only 11. Our age differences… played a big role in how we treated each other," she stuck a finger in the imperfection of the couch, tugging at it self-consciously. "But he took care of me; made sure I got to school, did my homework. I guess I didn't want to though. I was mad. My parents had died, and all he cared about was school. I was little then, so I didn't… understand. We got into fights a lot."

At Kairi's sudden openness, Roxas couldn't help but be a bit overwhelmed. She seemed like she'd never told anyone this story; her voice stuttering, breaking, wavering. She stumbled to get the right words, and say the right phrases. She continued nonetheless:

"So finally, I got to high school somehow, and I quit. I dropped out." She added the last part more to herself than him, a hollow laugh emitting from her mouth. "Axel was getting money from working a lot of part-time jobs. We were miserable." Another humor-less laugh, "But… then Axel disappeared for a while." Roxas noted the finger in the hole made even bigger as the auburn-haired girl tugged harder at it. The memory of what she was saying must have played a major part in her actions. So to console her, the blond put a hand over hers. It seemed to work.

"But he came back. He was happy, and… He had money. A lot of money," she said. "He didn't tell me where he got it. To this day… he's never told me. But from time to time, he disappears like that, and comes back with more money, groceries, presents for me." She seemed a bit edgy, shifting her weight towards him a bit more. "Around the time I was 17, I started… my own thing. He wasn't happy at all… but it was a way for me to get more money. There was no way in hell I was ever going to work at McDonalds or something." Her sentence with the bitter finish told him she was done with her story, and her blue eyes were almost glassy as if she were going to cry.

"I uh…" Roxas started, licking at his dry lips. He wanted to change the subject, make her feel better, anything. "My parents died too. That guy, Saix…" He saw her eyes widen at the mention of the name, and continue to widen when he carried on in his own shaky voice. "-he killed them."

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Axel came back later that night.

Roxas was lying on the couch, obviously not asleep. The blanket had formed a cocoon around his small body, making him squirm around in it. It was warm, too warm for the summer heat in the non-air-conditioned room. With a muttered curse, he pried the blanket away from his form.

Kairi had claimed fatigue shortly after their heart to heart talk, and gave Roxas a sheet, blanket, and pillow. He had insisted that he could sleep on the couch and there was really no problem with it. The girl had already been offering him Axel's bed, but the blond declined the offer.

Only God knows what he would have found in there if he did.

With the awkward twist and turns in the day's events, Roxas was only left to brood over them. He wouldn't call it brooding, but merely relaying. Others would say he was dwelling. Roxas did not dwell. Though most of his thoughts weren't directed towards the funeral, or Kairi, or what she had said. More of it was about Axel, and not knowing why was upsetting the blond more than it should have.

He was disturbed from his thoughts when he heard a large assortment of curses that would make any pirate blush, and the fumble of the doorknob.

After the voice had hit recognition in Roxas's mind, he matched it with Axel. Said redhead was on the other side of the front door, a tinkling of keys accompanied the curses. Roxas kicked off the blue checkered blanket and went to the door, unlocking the various locks and threw it open with a twist of the knob.

Axel stood here, leaning over slightly as if he were still trying to unlock the door. He paused in his actions, head tilting upward to view a highly amused face.

"Oh, hey blondie! You still up?" He stood up straight now, maneuvering himself around Roxas to get inside the apartment.

Roxas gave a slight eye roll as he shut the door and started redoing all the locks. "Can't sleep," he said. After he completed and secured the door (which still had the crack due to Tifa's fit of anger), he turned back to the couch, seeing Axel sitting on the loveseat to the left of the couch Roxas was due to sleep on.

Axel had already pulled out a cigarette, letting it dangle from his lips as he lit it with a lighter from his pocket. It was the cheap kind, the one you find at every gas station, every store, with their multitude of obnoxious colors. Roxas caught Axel moving his hand through the fire, as if fascinated. His eyes lit up with the dance of the fire as it slowly went out, and viridian eyes darted upward to meet with ocean blue.

It might have been then that Roxas could truly say that their feelings went somewhere, at least to him. He wouldn't ever say it to the redhead.

Sitting down on the makeshift bed, he made sure to keep his eyes away from Axel's (though the man was still staring). The blond was extremely uncomfortable and hot in the face, and with these new feelings he had never really cared to show to anyone else, he felt a tad bit of curiosity.

Axel continued to play with the lighter, running his fingers over it as if it were silk and not burning. While he did this, though, his eyes were kept strictly on Roxas.

He was waiting.

And who was Roxas to deny the fact that maybe, just a little bit, the obvious obsession with fire Axel had was an undeniable turn-on?

Certainly not him. Certainly not Kairi. Certainly not his dead parents.

"You know what it's like?" Axel asked, green eyes fixed on the flame now.

"It burns," Roxas said, adverting his eyes to the flame that Axel was so fixated upon. He didn't really think too much of the question or its answer, merely going with what sounded and felt right. Fire hurt. And Roxas didn't like hurting.

With a chuckle, Axel flicked a wave towards the blond, beckoning him closer wordlessly.

And Roxas came closer.

He sat upon the loveseat next to Axel, making sure to keep his distance. Axel flicked the flame open again, doing a demonstration for Roxas with a quick glide of his palm over the fire. He then motioned for Roxas to follow suit.

And Roxas did.

While he had expected a burning sensation, he almost instinctively let out a yelp in the pain he didn't feel. Wait, didn't? He looked at his hand, wide-eyed. There was no burn, no reddened skin. He wasn't on fire. But instead, there was just a warm, tingling sensation. And with that feeling, he decided he wanted to feel that a little bit more.

Axel had leaned in closer by now, to where their faces were nearly touching. Roxas made a move to go back, but Axel caught him, a Cheshire cat smirk forming on his lips. A fleeting thought passed Roxas's mind, other than the ones of panic. This panic sprung from the fact that Axel was indeed at the age of twenty-five, or so Roxas recalled from Kairi's words. It also came from the fact that he wasn't that scared like he should have been; he wasn't disgusted like he should have been.

He didn't push him away like he should have been.

The redhead seemed to notice this, because while Roxas was lost in his own thoughts, lips were mashed against lips, and the blond remained in an unresponsive shock for the first moment or so. And then he felt that same, warm sensation, along with the fire where Axel touched him.

Arms wrapped around the other body, lips crushed together in a fury. Though it didn't seem that passion, love, or much of anything was in this kiss.

Maybe it was longing for acceptance, Roxas had to think bitterly as he felt a hand trail up the back of his shirt, the flesh of the hand making his own heat up and dance.

That same hand was gone as quickly as it came, and his fire was gone when Axel pushed him away suddenly, and Roxas landed on the floor with a small 'oof!'

Blue eyes met the now confused green ones of the redhead, who seemed to be having an argument with himself. There was pain in those eyes, bewilderment, and many-emotions that Roxas just couldn't place himself. The sight was baffling to say the least. Axel had his hands clenched at his sides, before the green of his eye narrowed and he stalked off from the living room to his own room.

With a slam of the door, he was gone.

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A/N: SO UH. This chapter is completely on crack. I know. I have a huge headache, and I need to start another fanfiction [sorry! and… yeah. Just a lot of things. This one got a little rushed though, because a friend of mine bought me a bagel and made me promise to finish it. Woe is I. Review, yes?