Author's Ramble: I'm sorry I haven't updated this in forever! I've been working a lot on original works, and probably half of my fics will go unfinished here. But not this one! There will be a fourth installment, hopefully up soon, and I believe that will warp up IV. Thanks for everyone who's reviewed, alerted and faved! Hope you enjoy, and do tell me what you think. ;)

Disclaimers:
*insert something witty about not owning these awesome characters here*

All titles and quotes at the beginning of each chapter are from Jack's Mannequin: Everything in Transit. The album was written while the lead singer, Andrew, was battling cancer.

Part Three: Searching for Earthquakes

"Finally I've found someone to dull this lonely scene. I don't spend my nights searching for earthquakes. It's biblical how fucked my sleep can be…"

Axel was disturbed from his lunch of a lukewarm burrito in the hospital cafeteria by someone throwing what must have been a stress ball at the back of his head. They'd been giving them out at the lobbies lately, to help "calm the nervous jitters" of patients and families. The intern should have figured that they'd only lead to unauthorized weaponry. Disgruntled, the redhead turned around in his little plastic seat, ready to tell Larxene to get a life already.

Roxas waved at him from his wheelchair, a smirk stretched across his pale face.

Axel decided not to let his jaw drop like it wanted. Instead he said tactfully, "What the hell are you doing here?"

Roxas gave a hollow laugh and rolled up to the side of Axel's table. The room was virtually empty; most hospital workers didn't take their lunch at four in the afternoon and the patients and visitors who did speckle the place ate quietly and didn't look up despite Axel's loud tone.

"Choosing something to eat that isn't selected to be extremely healthy for me," Roxas replied nonchalantly. Axel noted the way the blond eyed his burrito. "I figure if I'm on my way out, I might as well enjoy what I'm shoving down my throat."

Axel chose to ignore Roxas' easy mentioning of the fact he was dying. Instead he decided on, "Talk about giving you a longer leash. God, Naminé's gonna be out of a job if anyone finds out she's set you loose." He was amazed to see Roxas out of his bed, and without an escort. He scrutinized the younger man, noting that the lesions didn't look too bad, at least the ones that were exposed. He was keeping more weight than he had been in the last three months. Roxas was starting to look more human, and less like a skeleton in hospital clothes.

Axel was proud, even if he wouldn't admit it to anyone. Roxas' eighteenth birthday was in a week, and the redhead liked to think he had something to do with making sure Roxas was around to see it.

"Heh, yeah, how about that?" Roxas said, his smile fading slightly as he looked around uneasily. Axel's eyes narrowed. Roxas really sucked at lying sometimes.

"Where's your IV?"

"I didn't rip it out and escape out of my gurney, if that's what you're thinking," Roxas said defensively, crossing his arms over his swelling chest as he took in a deep breath. "I only need it twice a day now." He added it quietly, and Axel was surprised to see the spitfire blond looking at the floor rather than at the redhead.

"When did that happen?" Axel said, setting down his food and turning to stand.

"Last week. You'd have known if you'd visited me," Roxas said it with bitterness disguised as joking sarcasm. Axel sighed and grabbed a hold of the wheelchair. "What are you doing?"

"Helping you get some food," Axel said it with a shrug as he wheeled Roxas into the serving area. He glanced back at his burrito, knowing it would be cold by the time he got back. Oh well. "And you know my schedule has been crazy. I told you it would be. I'm almost done with my internship."

"You still could've stopped by for a sec," Roxas mumbled. Axel rolled his eyes. God this kid could be such a little attention whore.

"I did, dumb ass. Last Thursday and last night. You were sleeping like a freakin' rock."

"There's no proof!" Roxas exclaimed but he was grinning up at Axel. Axel gave his head a small smack and turned his attention to the food on the counters in front of them.

"What do you want?"

Roxas instantly became absorbed in the process of deciding his meal choice. It gave Axel the chance to check the time. It was quarter past. He had fifteen minutes before he had to be back in Burns to chart out his last patient before he went home. By that time visiting hours would have ended in the TCU, and Larxene was working evenings. She was notorious for not letting him slide in for a few minutes after hours.

It'd been two months since Axel had transferred out of the terminal ward and into the burns unit. Squall had been right about TCU preparing him for the worse, and he had to admit—even if it was just internally—that it was a lot to handle. Axel was getting used to looking people in the eye now, and he was proud that his palms no longer itched when he read patient's charts explaining how they received their injuries.

"I want a cheeseburger." Roxas' demand brought Axel out of his daydreaming of exactly how he was going to sneak up to Roxas' room this evening.

"Anything else?" he sighed as he pulled out a wrapped sandwich from under the heat lamps. The nurse knew he was going to be paying for this, and Roxas was probably going to take full advantage of it.

"A basket of fries and a milkshake."

Axel rolled his eyes. Yep. Should have expected that. "What flavor?"

"Strawberry."

After Axel forked over the remainder of his cash and handed Roxas his tray full of food, they returned to Axel's stone cold burrito. Axel sat down and glanced at Roxas who started to shovel the fries and sandwich down his throat as if he'd just discovered the benefits of food.

"Do you like to taste your food?" Axel asked, leaning over to steal a fry from Roxas' tray. The blond glared at the act, but was too busy slurping down the milkshake to make a huge protest.

"I haven't eaten junk food for months," Roxas replied breathlessly after he downed a quarter of the shake. He began to unwrap more of the burger before he paused to look at Axel. There was a mischievous hint to his eyes as he added, "Sides… I don't have much time to eat before somebody figures out I'm here."

Axel groaned and leaned back in his chair. Of course Roxas sneaked out. Why should this even be surprising? He rubbed his teardrop tattoo, and squeezed his eyes shut. "Roxas," he sighed, "you do know that I'm going to get nailed for this if they find you here, right?"

"Which gives you every incentive to make sure they don't find me," Roxas shot back with a wicked grin.

Axel sat forward and glared at Roxas. "How am I supposed to do that when I have to be back at my job in ten minutes?"

"… Well, you wouldn't happen to know of a rarely used janitor's closet, would you?"

-oO IV Oo-

Axel opened the door to the linen closet. Roxas was aimlessly attempting to do donuts in his chair. Attempting, as there was very little room inside to fit the wheelchair, let alone to maneuver it.

"God, took you long enough," he grumbled. "I was starting to wonder if you'd forgotten about lil' ol' me."

"How could I forget you?" Axel's voice gushed with sarcasm that covered the truth behind the statement. "You're like a freakin' wart you acid off but keeps coming back anyways."

"Ouch," Roxas said as he rolled himself cautiously into the hallway. "Very original insult. I can respect that."

"Thank you, it just came to me." Axel's cool reply was quick as he glanced up and down the corridor. Roxas had been missing for forty-five minutes now. Someone had to have noticed. How they were going to get him back into his hospital bed, and possibly hooked back up to several machines without anyone in the TCU or the rest of the hospital noticing was not going to be an easy feat.

"And now for Mission: Hospital," Roxas said dramatically as Axel began wheeling him down the hall towards the less trafficked elevators. The redhead let out a laugh that was probably too loud and Roxas hissed him quiet. He hadn't gotten much of a chance to actually talk to the blond. His life was getting hectic; he was about to graduate from Merlin's classes, earning himself the title of a Practicing Magician. It would definitely look good on applications, and his professors at Trinity Institute were eating it up. Dr. Leonhart had even prompted that Axel was eligible to graduate early—with honors—if he could pass his exams coming up at the end of the month.

With everything going on, something had to take a backburner, and much to the intern's dismay it had to be Roxas.

"Did you even give an excuse before you left?" Axel asked as they rounded the corner and came upon the elevators.

"Are you kidding? They follow me around like groupies. I think the last time I had a minute's privacy was when another patient began palpitating."

"Well thank God for heart failure."

"Sometimes I wonder why you work in a hospital," Roxas mused under his breath. Axel rolled him into the elevator and pressed for the fourth floor. The doors closed and it suddenly felt very quiet.

From his wheelchair, Roxas found himself close to the array of buttons controlling the elevator. Axel was staring blankly upward at the numbers flashing from the ground floor up to level two when suddenly the elevator stopped. He looked around to see Roxas had pushed the emergency stop command. There was no alarm on these elevators when the stop was initiated; they were older, and the hospital hadn't bothered to redesign them yet.

And thank God for that, otherwise Mission: Hospital would have been foiled in less than two minutes after its concoction.

"Roxas, what the hell?" Axel barked and moved to press the command again to get them moving. But the patient blocked his way with his wheelchair, and glared up at Axel until the nurse stood straight, staring back.

"We need to talk about a few things," Roxas said, and his words were quiet and oddly serious. The first thing the tattooed redhead thought was he's getting worse even though the blond looked so much better.

Axel had found himself having a conversation like this when he couldn't sleep; Roxas telling him he would be gone in a week, and Axel being helpless to stop it, and helpless to give him the comfort and dammit the freakin' love he deserved. The anxiety was brutal, and sometimes Axel would find it all-consuming. He'd stopped sleeping. It wasn't too bad, but sometimes his vision would blur while he was writing a chart and he'd find himself needing to sit down before the dizziness overwhelmed him.

Axel took a deep breath and rubbed the back of his neck. "Roxas…"

"Nuh uh. Just shut up and listen for a second," Roxas cut in. "I'll let you talk in a sec, but I just need to tell you this because you're the only person in this goddamn world that deserves to know."

Axel's bright eyes tried to catch the younger man's, but he was staring at the flooring of the elevator. The words poured out of his mouth in a nervous but distinctly rehearsed rush.

"I'm gonna be eighteen on Wednesday. I never actually thought I'd live to see it. Since I was freakin' fifteen I've been waiting to die. I didn't even think I'd get to be sixteen let alone legal. It's just made me… think a lot. I gave up when I could have kept fighting and helped myself. I could have made friends and made memories. But I didn't. And I hate myself so much for it."

The blond took a shaky breath, and Axel longed to reach forward and touch him, to give a comforting Cure spell and make his eyes look less sad. But he knew Roxas needed to say this, he needed it just as much as Axel needed to comfort him when he was done.

"I need to tell you how I got here," he whispered, and Axel's eyes widened. The nurse found himself leaning against the wall of the elevator, and slowly sliding down to sit on the floor.

-oO IV Oo-

Roxas didn't go into details about his family life. He didn't talk about his early childhood or his parents or if he had a sibling or a pet. He went straight to the moment that mattered, as if the act of getting HIV was his moment of conception—he didn't exist until it happened.

He was at a party. Roxas ran with an intense crowd.

People were always pushing needles and screwing. A few were into drug trafficking. Sometimes people got hurt. Most of the time you didn't notice; with that kinda atmosphere you're living in a haze. You don't remember names or faces.

He didn't remember the guy's name or face that gave him the ecstasy.

It was my first time trying it. I didn't know that it usually came in pills. I just wanted to have a good time. It was a bad day, and I didn't want to have to think. The guy gave me the injection with his own needle, I didn't know if it was clean or not.

The evening went by in a haze. He was new to the group, but they liked the kid. People noticed him, especially when he felt this good. Everything felt wonderful. Roxas didn't remember much other than minuet details that didn't matter. A girl he accidentally ran into, her hair was soft. His eyelids felt like baby skin. He was thirsty. A few girls asked him to dance—one guy did too.

I don't remember him at all. Some people told me later he wasn't supposed to be there—he was a rival dealer or something. No one noticed at the time. Pretty much everybody was high or just didn't give a rat's ass.

Roxas skipped over the rest of the evening—he didn't remember any of it.

I woke up on the floor of my friend's basement. I didn't even know what happened.

What did would take weeks for Roxas to piece together, but all along he knew it wasn't good. He couldn't move for a long time after waking. His whole body ached and he was bruised up. He left out details about the extent of it.

In time the whole thing came back to Roxas in fuzzy bits and in information from others at the party. He'd taken the drugs. He'd danced. He'd met a guy. They slipped off.

I thought it was just a crappy way to loose my virginity, y'know? I didn't think it was more than that.

Not until a month later when he started to feel sick.

That was the beginning of the end. It didn't feel like being sick normally. It felt wrong. I was afraid so I didn't tell anyone and went to the clinic. I took the screening and it came back HIV positive in a week. A doctor from the free clinic called my house when I wasn't home. That's how my parents found out.

Roxas didn't talk about his family in detail. He alluded to a possible sibling, but didn't mention names. He just said it was hard for them.

They were in denial I'd do something so stupid. Then when they got over that they were angry. I don't blame them. I was too. I was so goddamn angry.

The clinic said I needed to start AZT and some Cure therapy right away, to keep me healthy. My family wasn't ready to deal with all that. Neither was I. I didn't go to therapy, and I threw away the pills. I thought that my parents didn't want me to be sick because they didn't want me to be gay. Not because they wanted me alive. They just couldn't deal with me being gay.

Roxas had never told them that he'd also taken drugs that night. In fact, he hadn't given his parents any explanation at all as to how he'd contracted the HIV. They had just assumed.

So Roxas got sicker, and eventually someone—my br… my best friend stepped in. He told Roxas' parents that they needed to get Roxas help. They sent him to the local hospital to receive treatments and to stay as an inpatient to become stable.

I didn't cooperate most days. Only when my… my friend was there did I actually take the meds. He'd bring the ice cream and sometimes his friends. He didn't run with my usual crowd.

None of Roxas' friends had shown up. Most of them probably didn't even know what had happened to their youngest friend.

Time wore thin on Roxas, and he wasn't good at fighting. His friend tried everything to get him healthy, but nothing seemed to work. For a year, Roxas was in and out of the hospital, constantly rejecting treatments. His friend couldn't help him if he couldn't help himself. So Roxas watched him leave, and soon he was left alone.

My parents knew I was getting worse. I told them I was ready to die and that they didn't have to deal with me any more. My mom cried. My dad told me that I was a waste of life if that's how I felt.

They sent Roxas to a specialized hospital after his HIV developed into AIDS. He was almost seventeen. He bounced around hospitals—two had refused to treat him because of his lack of cooperation. Eventually he ended up in Traverse Hospital, nearly a thousand miles away from his hometown.

I was so done by the time I got here. I wanted out. I had a plan to kill myself and everything, but then you showed up.

-oO IV Oo-

Axel didn't know what he was supposed to say after that. Roxas hadn't avoided eye contact; he'd said the whole thing staring straight into Axel's eyes. He'd rushed it all out and even though Axel felt like they should have been in the elevator for a year, in reality they'd only been stuck between floors for roughly fifteen minutes.

Axel didn't realize his mouth was open until Roxas' deep cerulean eyes flickered away and he spat, "I should have figured you wouldn't know what the fuck to do with all that info. Sorry."

"No, no! I'm glad… well I'm not glad… I just…" the redhead tried to find the words to thank Roxas for trusting him, but he couldn't. As he realized that his babbling would probably only make it worse, Axel closed his mouth so quickly his teeth clinched together in a loud click. He sat forward, his hand reaching out to touch Roxas but second guessed it and let it fall back to his side. He was still sitting on the elevator floor in his scrubs, inches away from comforting Roxas, but not knowing how.

Finally the only thing he could think to say was:

"Damn."

He said it so loud, so blatantly confused and yet so honest that the muddle thoughts and half-finished sentences seemed to be erased.

Axel looked up slowly to see Roxas staring at him with his mouth twitching. The blond tried not to, but suddenly a brilliant smile broke across his face and he laughed. Axel began to laugh too, because seeing Roxas so happy after so much shit hitting the fan was the most freakin' beautiful thing he'd seen in the world.

They sat there laughing for a good minute before Roxas leaned forward, out of his chair to clutch his stomach. It hurt to laugh; it made his belly ache and the space behind his eyes throb. He leaned forward, falling out of the chair only to be caught by the intern. They kept laughing, with Axel holding Roxas for the first time. He felt Roxas' spiky, unkempt hair brush against his face and closed his eyes and laughed.

Roxas' laughs began to subside into hushed giggles, and Axel grew quite, one hand wrapped around the younger man's frail waist, the other cradling the back of his head. "Axel…" The blond spoke the words with his face buried in a periwinkle shoulder. The giggles had turned to soft hiccups, which were threatening to become dry sobs.

Axel pulled away slightly to look Roxas in the eye. The patient's eyes were shimmering and threatening to leak. Axel wished they would start laughing again. He liked that Roxas so much better than this broken one. "Hey," he whispered, leaning forward. "Hey…" His fingers moved across the blond's face from the back of his head to brush against his cheek. "Don't go crying on me, now," he whispered.

Roxas took in a deep, gulping breath before he pursed his lips together. Something flashed in his eyes, and in the next moment he was kissing Axel with chapped and shaking lips.

A million thoughts raced through Axel's head. Among them:

Shit, we shouldn't be doing this. He's too young.

Shit, we shouldn't be doing this. He's a patient and this could ruin my entire career.

Shit we shouldn't be doing this. We're in a freakin' elevator.

Shit, we shouldn't be doing this. He's dying.

Shit, he's good.

Roxas buried his trembling fingers into Axel's fiery hair, pressing harder against him as he turned his head deeper into the kiss. Axel was forced back against the wall, his mouth parted slightly as Roxas met it with his own parted lips. They were both breathing hard; Roxas from the strain of maintaining an open airway and Axel from the strain of his inner moral war that he was loosing.

Roxas pulled away and pressed a few chaste kisses across Axel's jaw. Axel realized then that they were both shaking. "Roxas," he muttered, but the younger man murmured him to shut up. The blond leaned forward again, brushing those cracked and quivering lips against each of Axel's tattooed teardrops.

"Roxas."

"I told you to shut up."

"No. You said I got a chance to talk. Then you jumped my freakin' bones."

Roxas didn't look at Axel. He just settled against him, his head rested on his shoulder. "Fine," he sighed, and Axel heard the tiredness in his voice. He rested his hands against the kid's back and rubbed his thumbs in lazy circles.

"We're in a lot of trouble if anyone figures this out."

"Not if they find out about it after Wednesday."

"Yeah, but for now I'm a pedophile and you're a patient I took advantage of by stopping an elevator."

"Oh… Crap. I didn't think about how this would look."

"Yeah, not a pretty picture, huh?"

"For you. On my end, it's rather romantic. And slightly annoying."

"Annoying?"

"You'd get all the credit. When in reality, it was me that trapped you in an elevator to take advantage of your damn bleeding heart."

"I guess I'm just a goddamn hopeless romantic," Axel chuckled. Roxas gave a muffled snort of amusement that turned quickly into a cough. Axel sat up at once and adjusted the kid, letting him have some air. His face was pale and his eyes had suddenly gone out of focus.

"Roxas? Roxas… stay with me, man," Axel pleaded.

"S-sorry," he mumbled. "I... just… tired…"

"I know. We got to get you back up to your bed, but we need to sort out some things first."

"What's… on the agenda," Roxas' voice was far away. Axel saw the beads of sweat forming on his forehead. His hands shook and his eyes wouldn't stay fully open. The intern pulled the blond back into the wheelchair and knelt before it. He spoke quietly and stroked Roxas' hair slowly.

"First, we need to not do that again until you're eighteen."

"It… better… be a really freakin'… good make-out session for my birthday."

Dammit. He doesn't get it.

But Axel couldn't voice his thoughts; he couldn't say to Roxas that they couldn't do that again, ever. Not if Axel ever wanted to be able to survive once…

The thought threatened to go unfinished.

Once he's dead.

But he made himself finish it. A little piece of him broke off and died with that mental admission.

"Second," he went on, choosing to ignore Roxas' words, "we need an excuse for why we were stuck in the elevator."

"It broke?"

"Good enough. Hopefully no one will notice me putting you back in your room."

"You found… me in a linen closet. There… No blame on you."

"You do know we're pushing this, right?"

"Yeah, your point?"

"You're gonna screw me over for my job, you know that right?"

"Yeah, your point? C'mon, Axel… what the hell… are you doing in a hospital anyways? You… you hate them as much as me…"

Axel stood up slowly and rubbed the back of his neck. He turned around a few times in the limited space of the elevator. It was getting really warm.

Probably from us making out on the goddamn floor.

"You never… finished your story…"

Shit, he remembered all that.

It had be Axel's hope that Roxas hadn't remembered much of the explanation he'd supplied all those weeks ago. The younger man had literally passed out in the bathtub before Axel could tell him the "exciting conclusion."

Axel turned back to the blond and fingered one of the tattoos under his eyes. He could still feel the butterfly-like touch of Roxas' kiss there. The kid deserved an honest answer, especially after what he'd told Axel. No more secrets.

"That teacher I mentioned?"

"Mhmm."

"I burnt half of his face off. Then I shot fire around the whole room. A girl was walking in to ask some questions on an assignment. She got a blast that burned her beyond recognition. She died in the ICU the next day."

Roxas forced open his heavy eyelids and looked up at Axel. The redhead was looking anywhere except the blond. "Only person who knew I had more control over my magic than that was my brother Reno, and he never said a word to anyone. So they put me in an institution to learn about controlling natural magic. I stopped using Fire I was so damn guilty. I decided I wanted turn my life around. After I got out, they expunged my record on account of good behavior. I knew I was gonna have to spend my whole life making it up to that girl's family."

"You're not that angry person anymore, Axel," Roxas said after a moment's silence. "You don't have to prove anyone anything."

"I don't think it's for them any more. I think it's for me."

Proving once again, how selfish I am, Axel thought bitterly.

"Does it make you happy to work with those people? Help them, and stuff?" Roxas breath was labored, but he was trying as hard as he could to string sentences together.

"Not really. It makes me freakin' sad as hell, actually."

"Does any part of being a nurse make you happy?"

"Well, there's you."

"Oh, besides me. I go… without saying. I'm the… sunshine… of your existence!"

"When you're not a smartass." Axel gave the kid a soft smack in the head and smiled as he pushed the wheelchair away from the control panel. "You're gonna pass out in that chair, kid."

"Nommnot…" Roxas slurred, his head lolling onto his shoulder.

"Sure," Axel laughed and pushed the stop command again to get the elevator moving. He felt the engine grind to life, and they ascended up to the fourth floor.

"Hey, Axel," Roxas whispered, verging on sleep right before the doors opened.

"Yeah?"

"You do know Naminé's not my nurse, right?"

"Who is it then?"

"Larxene."

Axel opened his mouth as the doors squeaked open. He turned his head to see Larxene—periwinkled and more pissed off than Axel thought humanly possible—waiting for them with arms crossed tightly. His stomach promptly dropped through the elevator shaft and he had the sudden urge to run. Not that there was anywhere to run to. The intern swore he saw a thin plume of smoke rising from the nurse's flared nostrils.

"You two…" she seethed.

Axel looked down to see that Roxas was fully awake now. They both glanced at each other and gulped.

"…are going to owe me… so big."