I lost someone important this morning. This is verbal fucking fallout. Sorry.

Roxas thinks giggling sounds like suffocation, like frothing lungs, he's thinking in deep reds and stark white, ruby-tinted foam oozing between teeth the colour of fine china and polished bone.

At least, that's how he prefers to imagine it.

These kids, their free life, free love, all open-wide and inviting, but no room for him.

Tiny Roxas, some skyline silhouette, scrunched up like bad poetry, knuckles the colour of war, eyes the colour of want. Managing 'lonely' in a city full of people. Boiling jealousy like chemicals in the crawling blue veins beneath his skin.

He'd almost snigger because he is the punch-line, the mockery of 'what they are'.

Nobodies.

Emotionless.

Xemnas' fairytales of reassurance.

He wants to cry and laugh and scream because all the feelings he's 'not feeling' are breaking his non-existent heart.

There's this girl, right? He sees her off along the promenade. A pretty porcelain doll, soft curves and curling lines, her colours blended to soothing shades of neutral and she is unfamiliar territory. A positive caricature of Larxene, 'cause that dame's all nails and teeth, petty arguments and teasing grins.

But this, this girl, velvet hazel curls framing a smile like star-shine, she's pressing fingertips against her lips, her half-hearted attempt at easing the amusement fizzing up her throat, glittering behind her eyes. A personification of long summer nights and castaway beaches Roxas thinks he remembers.

Roxas, he's got this stupid half smile on his lips, he forgets his company, words spoken through a daydream haze, he's saying, 'I bet she feels comforting', with her soft hands, softer smiles, but Axel's beside him, flashes and sparks erupting from his fingertips, a nuclear epilogue between the lines of his palms, saying, 'I bet she feels like fire', because God, Roxas I need to be needed. Just look at me.

Roxas clenching his jaw, the sliding of enamel sending nerve-shattering earthquakes through his skull. Maybe he shouldn't feel this. This, what is 'this'?

Too late to think, Axel's fucking talking again, protesting they feel nothing.

Axel who lies through his teeth. Axel who knows all that jealousy and anger and want, personified in blonde hair and blue eyes.

But there's a boy, another boy, captivating Roxas' attentions, who looks like beaches and bombshells, ruined by the ropey muscles pulsing away beneath sun-eaten skin. This kid's not tainted by black cloaks and keyblade legends, instead he's got this big mouth, big ideas, broadcasting them with an enthusiasm Roxas isn't sure he knows how to feel.

It's almost a shame, Axel thinks, that boy's so young, so hardened but then his eyes drift to Roxas, a curious concoction of shattered glass and the compressing weight of an ocean and he cannot see the difference.

'Don't you think I'd do well here?' Roxas practically singing in his fairy-breath voice, an admittance that the thought has crossed his mind at some point. The thought of leaving. Tracing glassy eyes along the fine creases of his knuckles, he says, 'A land of perpetual twilight'. Because this is his skill, all he is worth. His eyes encase it, his arms embrace it. All these bright lights, innocence and strength of a heart maybe he no longer has.

Don't you know I belong here?

Roxas, casting sly glances to his side, thinks maybe Axel's like a clown, chalky white skin, eyes like fireworks and bad luck. Layer upon layer of abandoned expression and false emotion piled up so thick Roxas can't tear through the surface with his dirty fingernails and penchant for disobeying authority. Almost sees the greasy red make-up smear, a smile across where there is none.

Where it doesn't belong.

Underneath underneath underneath, Roxas thinks maybe Axel looks a little sad.

In his head he hears Axel's voice, persisting they feel nothing.

Axel's talking through his hatchet-wound grin, spinning bullshit reasoning, carelessly abusing words that sound like 'friendship' and 'permanent', saying, 'Jeez, Roxas, and I thought we were pals'.

And it should sound like a bad joke. But no one laughs, except the kid's by the pier. The friends by the pier. Roxas hardly considers Axel a friend. They are convenient, falling together and struggling at these polite snippets of conversation they've stolen from professionals, without emotion to fuel anything worthwhile. They are so pointless. Roxas with his blue, blue eyes settling along the skyline, on the brighter children of a twilight town. He wants them, those kid's with hearts pumping, wants them to confide in him, show him how a heart works.

Roxas who needs better.

Axel who needs Roxas, and in his head, insisting they feel nothing.

Roxas was a stranger among their half-dead ranks, bright eyes and energy too sharp to touch. They pulled him from the sky with leather fingers and a green glare of jealousy they deny with appalled expressions and exaggerated hand-gestures. They search through worlds for their hearts, increasingly desperate, the trail of destruction left in their wake an accurate depiction of such.

Roxas' got this clarity glow in his eyes that says he's already found his

Roxas makes a heart-shaped fist, presses it against bone cage and says, 'I think I'm jealous'.

I think i feel jealous.

He gets that look on his face, solid stone and focus, looks all wrong on his teenage face. He's already found his heart, buried beneath the black and black and black compact in his chest cavity.

He's logical, why waste something as valuable as emotion on someone like Axel, Axel who's so starved of feeling, who surely can't have anything to offer in return. He needs to blend with something relatable, something with a pulse.

Roxas would run forever to fight to feel. And run he does.

Axel who thinks hearts are petty accessories to blame for their nobody state of emotional limbo. Wringing his knuckles thinking he should shield Roxas from the downsides of a heartbeat.

Axel who'd die to protect Roxas. And die he does.