beta: the ever-lovely michele-bell.

[maybe sprout wings]

x

A bird.

Axel reaches out to touch instinctively a second before his mind catches up with his body and he freezes, remembers to drag his hands back to his lap where they belong.

But.

There's a bird on Roxas's skin.

x

"So, what do you want for dinner, Rox?" Axel opens the fridge and sticks his head in, waiting for a response.

He can hear Roxas fidgeting with colored pencils at the kitchen table, rolling them around and around on the wooden surface with his palm.

"Uh…food…um…" Axel glances over his shoulder and sees Roxas gripping the edge of the table, knuckles white. The words sound like they are being forced out from between gritted teeth. "Uh…Friday and Kairi…seven o'clock…um …two, uh…ah, legs."

"The chicken we had last Friday?" Axel says. "Cool, yeah, I think I can make that. Or, you know, if I can't, I can just call Kairi and steal her fuckin' recipe."

Roxas nods, face tight, and turns away.

"Roxas, hey," Axel says. "Hey, look at me."

"Door…um…"

Roxas slams his fist on the table and Axel winces.

"Hey," Axel says softly. He stands up and wraps his arms around Roxas's tense shoulders, pretending he doesn't feel the hot tears seeping into the front of his t-shirt. "I saw the stupidest show on TV last night. It had that actress you hate, the one that always plays the psycho mom character? I mean, the show was really retarded, but I sat through the whole fuckin' episode, so I guess it wasn't that bad, and half of the people died at the end, which was actually kind of awesome. I'll wake you up next time if you want, Rox, but you have to promise not to kill me beforehand."

Roxas whispers something Axel can't hear, but he nods anyways, tightening his hold.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, me too."

He could be wrong. He could be completely wrong about everything he thinks Roxas is trying to say to him. Doubt clings to his skin like stale sweat, swells up his throat worse than a spider bite.

Roxas sighs and twists his hand into the front of Axel's shirt. His fingers are trembling faintly and Axel covers them with his own hand.

"Hey, you're okay," Axel promises, and feels a stab of relief when Roxas looks away.

The lie tastes sour in his mouth.

x

"He still – it's not like he's stupid or anything. He still understands what I'm saying. It's just - it's like words don't really work for him anymore. They get all mixed up in his brain."

"But will he get any better?"

Axel fiddles with the phone cord and tries to forget the expression on the doctor's face when she tried to explain meaningless, clinical terms like expressive aphasia and agrammatism when all he wanted to do was push past her white coat and see Roxas.

"He goes to speech therapy classes now," he says. "I drop him off every week, after work."

"Well, that's – that's good, Ax. That means he's getting better, right?"

Axel pauses for a moment, listening hard. Strains of a television game show drift in from the next room and he pictures Roxas curled up on the couch, fiddling with the remote and waiting.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, he's fine. Listen, I need to go now, but I'll call you later, okay? It was great talking to you."

He doesn't bother waiting for an answer before he hangs up.

Roxas glances up at him for a second when he enters the room, but then his gaze flicks back to the television screen and Axel relaxes a little. A woman is jumping up and down with tears in her eyes and a fistful of cash in each hand, smiling wide enough to transform her flabby face into something that could be beautiful.

"So, guess she won, huh?" Axel says, leaning against the doorframe.

Roxas looks at him with one eyebrow raised and he laughs. There is no way he can misinterpret that look.

"Yeah, I don't know how I graduated from high school either," Axel says, sliding into the empty seat Roxas left for him.

Roxas shrugs and flashes a quick smile and Axel forgets how to speak, throat dry.

His heart is beating, beating, too loud in his ears and it hits him, the realization that it was never over, not even when he thought it was and it should have been.

Not even after the accident.

x

"Uh…" Roxas's eyebrows are furrowed and Axel can feel the tension in his body, his frustration and his mounting anger as each second crawls by on broken kneecaps and splintered wrists. "Um…five o'clock…uh… Friday…and, um…two…six o'clock…uh…"

Kairi looks like she is about to cry.

"It's okay," she says, leaning forward to touch his hand gently. "It's fine. You don't have to force yourself, Rox."

Axel anticipates the explosion and steps back to allow Roxas to storm past him, out the kitchen door.

They pretend Roxas's pride is still intact and look away.

"He can understand you," Axel says, quietly, and Kairi flinches, scrubs a hand quickly over her face.

"Y-yeah, I know that," she says. "But I can't – how can you just stand there and listen to him while he – god, while he tries to - "

"Because he hasn't changed," Axel replies, cutting her off. "He's still Roxas. He still hates broccoli and horror movies and he's just trying to tell you about his speech therapy class because you asked him how he was doing."

"But how can you understand him?" Kairi asks, helpless. He looks into her eyes and sees years of friendship laid to waste.

Axel shrugs and pulls at the threads hanging off of his sweater, unraveling the hem absently. "I don't know," he says. "I just do."

He brings her mug to the sink and pretends not to notice her badly concealed resentment.

x

Roxas climbs into the passenger side seat and drops his bag next to his feet with a loud thump.

"So, how was it today?" Axel asks casually, flicking on his turn signal and cutting in front of a purple minivan. The woman talking on her cell phone shoots him a dirty look and he grins into his side-view mirror, hoping that she sees it and flips out.

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches Roxas's stiff shrug and pushes down the sudden, irrational urge to punch the steering wheel.

"What, that bad?"

Roxas sinks lower into his seat and pulls his hood down, covering his eyes.

"Fuck," Axel says. "Look, forget about that, okay? It's just one fucking session. Doesn't mean anything. There's supposed to be a steep learning curve anyways, so it's gotta get better soon."

He doesn't think about what they will do if it doesn't.

He doesn't think about what it must feel like to be trapped in a body that refuses to string together words, that collapses under the weight of a simple sentence.

Everyone knows that it must be terrible, but only Axel knows that Roxas had wanted to major in English.

x

Sometimes, Axel wonders if they would be better off in another city where nobody knows their names.

If Roxas would talk again in a place where every sidewalk is a brand new canvas, waiting to be covered in his messy chalk scrawl, and no street corner is steeped in childhood memories or the history of them.

If it is even possible to suffocate under kind letters and misguided pity and reassuring hands that do not know how to carry a thing.

But then Kairi calls, or a car with no muffler drives by, or Roxas looks at him from beneath his shaggy bangs and blinks.

And he buries his thoughts for another day.

(Sometimes, Axel wonders if this is killing him, or if he's just now learning how to grow up.)

x

Trembling hands, shoving at his shoulders, wake him from a light doze and he sits up groggily, pushing the heel of his palms into his eyes. The clock reads 3:48 in bleary red digits and Roxas is perched on his bed, frightened blue eyes illuminated by the streetlamp outside the window.

"What," Axel mumbles, before the stench of smoke hits him and he grabs Roxas by the wrist, tugging up until he can see a plastic lighter clutched between trembling fingers.

"Fuck," he says, and Roxas swallows hard. They both dash to the front door, Axel stumbling a few steps behind. He barely manages to stop himself from tripping on Roxas's heels when the other boy freezes on the front lawn and twists around abruptly. The fire is reflected in his burning eyes, painting his skin gold and bright.

It is beautiful.

"Roxas," Axel whispers, awed, his fingers reaching out to trace the bird-shaped scar on Roxas's forehead.

Roxas's lips quirk into a small smile and Axel leans forward without thinking.

x

By the time the fire engines arrive, the wind is just beginning to sweep up the ashes and some of the neighbors are standing around in their bathrobes.

The car parked out front is gone.