A/N: Very short fic. Written a while ago. Uploaded with minor corrections, but not worth the reread.
Smoke-
According to the world, he doesn't quite have a heart (yet).
According to Namine, the two of them are in so-called "love" (it's sweet).
According to Roxas, this doesn't mean a thing (really).
According to himself, it's enough to keep.
&
A stifling sort of day, and they are lying about on a couch, sticky with sweat and limbs lethargic. Another world, another time; they can't even remember whose smart idea it was to visit Hollow Bastion in the middle of the hottest summer since...they don't really care at this point.
Outside, the sun is beating down; an insipid star that refuses to go down with all the others.
Inside of their rented apartment with broken air-conditioning (paid for by the Organization, unknowingly), clammy hands claw about blindly until they twine around another.
"It's too hot to hold hands, Axel," comes the disgruntled reply, even as a pair of blue eyes shoot open to peer at the boy.
Axel sighs and stares at the ceiling, refusing to loosen his perspiring hold. "It's too hot to do anything."
"Exactly." But the boy doesn't struggle and Axel relaxes again, mind drifting to swimming pools and icy drinks and failed "unofficial" vacations like this one.
"The Superior is gonna be pissed when we get back," Roxas tells him blankly, sitting up so Axel can see his T-shirt plastered to his back with sweat.
"Yeah, so? Do you wanna go back?" Axel wishes he knew the answer to this question, but Roxas is too hard to read sometimes. Even for him, and they're "friends".
He holds his breathe when the blonde turns his head towards him and laughs. "Not on your life!"
&
He found their punishment rather uninspiring, but Axel sympathizes. It must be tough on the Superior to devise new punishments while bringing down the worlds single-handedly.
The past four hours were spent cataloguing the library according to author, genre, freakin' publishing dates. Axel doesn't mind sitting down and thumbing through an occasional book (surprising, he knows), but his limit was passed hours ago.
He sneaks a glance at the blonde, and is surprised at the slight smile playing on chapped lips, blue eyes darting across the open page as the boy holds it reverently in his gloved hands.
"Oi, Roxas!" He snaps his fingers, because - honestly!- a book has nothing on Axel as far as the world is concerned.
"What?" The book snaps shut and Axel gulps. He decides to think things through the next time he does something stupid like this, and feels a distinct wave of déjà vu.
"Umm…" A flash of inspiration and he opens a portal, pulling out a bar of sea-salt ice cream from a vacuum of nothing. He grins at the sudden look of longing that crosses Roxas's face.
"Here!" Axel congratulates himself on going to Twilight Town to pick up the stupid thing. Which suddenly doesn't seem so stupid as he watches Roxas stuff his face with child-like abandon.
He ignores Larxene who had slunk in unnoticed, mouth spewing lewd comments and hands gesticulating suggestively.
Watches as the two blondes argue, and wonders why he has the sudden urge to save this moment in time forever.
He knows he can't, so he throws an arm around the smaller blonde with a grin.
"Her ideas aren't all that bad, Rox!"
The moment is somewhat ruined and he smiles at the fuming blue eyes boring into him, promising pain and not much else.
Axel is no idiot, and he firmly refuses to act like one.
&
Roxas builds a castle out of cards stolen from Luxord.
Whenever he finishes a mission, he makes a bee-line directly towards his room, where he will sit down for hours and continue construction.
Axel comes by sometimes, leaning against the white wall and watching the hunched back of the blonde, the slightly furrowed brows and delicate hands moving to build something that is bigger than both of them.
One day, Roxas finishes. He sits back and stares at the structure blankly.
"What is it?" Axel pushes himself off the wall and takes a seat next to him, whistling at the gigantic citadel that takes up half of the boy's room.
Roxas shrugs and lies down flat on his back, eyes shut and lips thin.
They sit in silence for a while, the ticking of the clock a dull reminder of something they knew a long time ago, back when they had hearts.
Axel stares at the card castle thoughtfully; he can find Roxas's card-room on the third floor and the library is in one of the spiraling faceted towers. He almost laughs when he leans in closer and notices his room is made up of 8-of-Hearts.
It is a perfect replica, and maybe something more.
Roxas sits up and shifts closer to Axel, eyes boring into the castle and the slightly nervous drum of nails on cold flooring.
A tiny spark starts near the bottom of the edifice, quickly bursting into a funeral pyre that swallows up the cards whole- chars them and burns them and pumps out an acrid smoke that makes their eyes water and they still won't move away.
They watch in silence as the white castle burns down to the ground, and Roxas has never looked so beautiful, Axel thinks distantly, face aglow with the flames.
&
Axel is gone for a period of time (to visit a pretty little witch, he tells Roxas with a laugh).
What he doesn't say is how he paled when he saw Namine erase and create new memories like it was all just a joke (it is, he thinks, what else can it be when people's lives are destroyed with a set of crayons).
Axel shakes his head and bites his lip and shoots his mouth off like he always does (he doesn't want anyone to worry).
And Roxas starts to drift.
&
They go to the beach one day, the sky a gray film and the ocean a churning black expanse laid out before them.
Not an "unofficial" vacation; this time the Superior is so far gone with his plans that he wouldn't notice if the castle was empty (it nearly is).
Roxas collapses bonelessly onto the sand, digs his fingers into the grains until his fingernails are cracked and dirty. Blue eyes stare up at the sky and see nothing.
Axel stands by his head and looks down silently, his figure casting a shadow across the blonde boy.
A few minutes later and the two are lying down, side by side and hand in hand.
"It's too hot to hold hands," Roxas murmurs as the ocean spray washes over them, a distant boom in the background of both their minds.
Axel turns his head and laughs. "It's always too hot to hold hands." But he doesn't loosen his steely grip, and Roxas, in turn, doesn't wince.
Axel feels hollow now- a tenuous thread about to break- and he doesn't know why.
"Hey, Roxas?"
"Hmm?"
Axel tightens his hold at the sound of the distant reply, and something hurts in his chest cavity, an ache that won't go away with a good night's sleep or all the medicine in the world.
He's about to offer his heart on a silver platter, and for once he knows what the answer is going to be.
"I-"
&
A rainy night and an empty goodbye and the death of something beautiful.
&
According to the world, he shouldn't feel this way (betrayed).
According to Namine, it's completely natural to cry (except, no. it's not).
According to Roxas, he should have known this would happen from the beginning (but he did; really).
According to himself, he- he can't even say it- he can't- it hurts so much-he's gonna d-
&
Axel douses himself with gasoline and lights up a match and laughs at the pair of wide blue eyes that can't even see him anymore.
(up they go, in a pillar of smoke.)
fin