Summary: What he needed was fresh air, a walk in the early morning dark. What he didn't expect was what the sunrise would bring him.

Disclaimer: Yeah, because if I owned this franchise, I'd have nothing better to do with my time than write fanfiction for my own stuff. For the slower among you, no, I don't own anything.

Author's Note: You might have seen this story before, I had it posted over on my dear friend Ashinan's account because I was too lazy to make my own and too shy to post anything anyway. If you're interested, the song lyrics sporadically inserted are from When You're Gone by Avril Lavigne, which is what I listened to while writing this. Review and I'll love you forever!

Sunrise

With a sigh, a man with a head of scruffy red hair rolled onto his back and flopped a forearm across his eyes. Then, almost as an afterthought, he reached out with that same arm to grope around on the bedside table for the alarm clock. When he located it he pulled it across to his eyes, then swore rather loudly and let the thing slip from his fingers to the floor. Another moment passed as he lay motionless but eventually, cursing quietly all the while, he hauled himself out of bed and shoved his legs into an old pair of jeans. Extracting a long-sleeved shirt from a pile of clothes that may or may not be dirty, he grabbed the keys to his apartment, locked the door, and set off down the stairs, tugging the shirt on as he went.

Axel paused when he reached the street, aware that he didn't have a destination in mind. But after a long night of tossing and turning and trying to talk his brain into shutting up so he could sleep, anything would be better than just laying there. He was restless; he had to move and, without really thinking about why, set off towards the beach with his hands jammed in his pockets.

The wind coming off the ocean that morning was chilly, but he had to give it credit for being refreshing. The beach had been a good choice, despite the fact that he had about half of it in his bloody shoes; he lived minutes away, but never seemed to find his way down here. At least he would have a decent view of the sunrise. He didn't get to see those often enough.

Ten minutes later, all optimism towards his decision to walk there had vanished. Bits of seaweed and clumps of wet sand (which he had gained from a rather spectacular face-plant) fell off him as he viciously kicked down the offending sand castle, cursing children and their stupid need to build stupid things in stupid places with stupid tools in the stupid sand that was in his fucking shoes! And the stupid parents who –

"Hey, if you keep doing that," interrupted a bland voice loudly, "I'm afraid I'll have to make you eat the stupid sand in your stupid shoes."

Axel wheeled around, more surprised than annoyed, but the sudden movement on an unstable surface left little room for balance to come into account – his arms windmilled wildly, but he nevertheless ended up on his butt in the sand. Now he could see the speaker (the boy, it had been a boy's voice) – he'd been sitting in the sand feet from where Axel was laying waste to the castle, a dark sweater with the hood drawn up the explanation for his initial invisibility.

With a sigh he checked his watch, then tipped his head back as if looking at the stars and allowing the hood to fall back from his face. Axel's eyes widened as a shock of blonde hair erupted into the early-morning darkness, and the boy tilted his head just slightly to the side to raise a critical eyebrow at the redhead (who was finding it hard to notice the eyebrow above the unfathomable blue of the eyes under it).

"If you're here for the sunrise," he said in the same rough, bland tone he'd used to threaten Axel a moment ago, "the best spot is about thirty feet that way."

Axel looked at where the boy was pointing. "It's exactly the same there as it is here," he said testily, and proceeded to tug off his left shoe and shake the sand out of it.

The blonde stared wide-eyed at the redhead, who was looking very unimpressed as the stream of sand continued for a positively indecent length of time. A long moment of awkward silence passed, and then he conceded, "I only suggested you shouldn't –" He broke off and coughed roughly into his sleeve, made a couple rather disgusting noises, then sniffled once or twice and sheepishly finished his thought. "– that you shouldn't sit here because I'm sick."

Axel grinned. "That would explain why you sound like you've got a hairball." His smile widened at his incredulous expression, and he stuck out his hand. "Name's Axel. A-X-E-L. Got it memorized?"

The blonde laughed and rolled his eyes, but reached out and gave his hand a firm shake. "Roxas," he said simply, then pointed at the redhead's butt. "And that's my breakfast you're sitting on."

I always needed time on my own – I never thought I'd…need you there when I cried..
And the days feel like years when I'm alone...

"Hey, runt." Roxas was long past reacting to the nickname with more than an eye roll; he reached up and relieved the redhead of the two coffees he had stacked one on top of the other. A bagel wrapped in tin foil fell into his lap, and he surrendered the other coffee as Axel plopped down beside him.

"You're late," the blonde pointed out. "I almost thought you weren't going to show."

"Yeah, yeah, slept in." He sipped at his coffee and made a face when it burned his tongue; Roxas, being the wiser of the two, had corkscrewed his into the sand to let it cool off. "Come on though, like I would ever miss this," he added off-handedly as he followed the blonde's example, and Roxas looked over at him curiously. Axel grinned as he tucked into his bagel, grateful for the darkness hiding the sudden flush in his cheeks. He shrugged helplessly.

"I seem to have become addicted to sunrises."

Less than a month had elapsed since that first morning. It felt like forever had passed in the blink of an eye, and now Axel was here, snug and warm under his big down comforter, wondering at his incredible good fortune as his fingers gently traced the shape of a sleeping face, one framed by pale blonde hair. The boy snuggled closer in response to the touch, and Axel pressed his lips to Roxas' temple almost wonderingly. He hardly knew how they'd wound up here. It seemed too good to be true.

This…he didn't want this to go away. What was it about the kid that drew him in? Was it that voice, his hypnotic voice that, once cleared of the cold, had become the most mesmerizing sound he'd ever heard? Was it those eyes, those unfathomably blue eyes, or that quick look he gave him, the piercing flash of intelligence as he saw through Axel's pretenses – was it all these things and more; was it Roxas' imperfections that, to the redhead, made him so damnably perfect?

He'd always thought it would never matter. Their friendship was new and untested, but it was strong, and that was all he assumed Roxas would ever want of him. Boys like him…well, they did better. They didn't go for guys like him – the grease monkeys, the auto shop housewives, the guys who always ended up highly flammable at the end of every shift. He could not have been more surprised.

Axel still wasn't quite sure how it had happened. He'd tossed Roxas his bagel just like he did every second morning and flopped down in the sand beside him, and suddenly the blonde was leaning over and peering intently into Axel's face – he'd reared back, but not half as much as he should have – and suddenly Roxas' lips were on his, and Axel was kissing him back, and when they broke apart to draw breath the blonde's eyes were shining, and Axel had dizzily told him how much he loved that particular shade of blue.

And the clothes you left, they lie on my floor, and they smell just like you.
I love the things that you do…

"Axel."

The redhead paused, but didn't look at the older woman sitting across from him. He'd been determinedly playing with his lighter for the last ten minutes straight, flicking it open and snapping it closed, flick and snap, flick and snap. He hadn't heard a word out of the woman's mouth until she'd said his name.

"You haven't been listening to me at all."

"That's right."

"And how will not paying attention help you?"

Axel chuckled bleakly. "I don't need help, least of all from you."

"Why don't you give me a chance – I can't make you feel any worse, right? Just tell me what happened."

The redhead's eyes narrowed; he snapped the lighter closed one last time and stowed it in his pocket. "I told you, I don't want to talk about it."

"You must."

Axel's mouth twitched into a snarl, and he reached forwards to pluck the notepad from the woman's fingers. "Listen very carefully," he began slowly, stabbing the book towards her with every word. "because I am about to explain exactly why you will never get a single word from me on what happened. One: you're assuming I want to be here, and I can assure you, I really don't. I can think of several things I would rather do than watch you scribble my psychoanalysis into this book." At this, he tossed the pad over his shoulder. "And I must admit, a few of them involve putting sharp things into my own eyeballs.

"Two: I'm nothing more than a couple of shiny dollar signs to you. I'm half-convinced that if I were to say anything, all you'd hear is cha-ching, and I won't apologize for not wanting to spill my guts to a cash register. Got it memorized?"

The woman scrutinized him silently for a long moment as Axel glared back at her, and before she could speak he stood up and grabbed his jacket from the back of the armchair.

"We are not done," said the woman severely as Axel walked to the door.

"No, I think we really are," he said calmly, not looking back at her.

"You're just angry, Axel."

The redhead paused with his hand on the doorknob. The muscles in his jaw tightened visibly, and then with an air of disgust hanging thickly about him he turned back to her very slowly. "At who, do you think?" And then he opened the door and strode from the room.

The woman considered her next action for a long minute, then jumped up and jogged to the small lobby of her office; the elevator doors were just opening for the redhead standing before them. "Axel, you know better. It wasn't your fault."

The man stood there for a second longer than he should have, and when he stepped forwards into the elevator he didn't look back.

But that didn't stop him from flipping her the bird over his shoulder as the doors closed behind him.

The windshield wipers flashed continuously across Axel's vision, furiously battling away the flurries of dancing snow that swept up the car's hood. The world outside the comfortably heated interior was white, totally white, a snowstorm that devoured the beams of his headlights and the road ahead in the same mouthful. Axel wasn't concerned. He knew these roads back to front, had traveled them in much worse conditions – a couple times, he'd done it so drunk he could barely see the steering wheel. He'd done it then without incident, and tonight he was stone sober. Sober, and with Roxas' head resting on his shoulder.

It had been a good night. Larxene hadn't felt the need to interrogate Roxas this time – the memory of her smiling sweetly and locking the poor kid in the bathroom with her "for questioning" still brought a smile to Axel's face. It hadn't been funny at the time, of course – Axel distinctly remembered screaming bloody murder at Larxene through the door – and that was part of the reason he found it so funny now. His best friend was one of the scariest people you would ever meet (she'd actually pulled a switchblade on someone before. Four times before, to be exact), but she wouldn't ever actually hurt anyone, no matter how sincere her threats seemed at times. She was harmless but still terrifying, and that's why it surprised Axel when Roxas burst from the bathroom wielding a plunger like a sword and laughing his fool head off.
When he stuck his head into the bathroom to investigate, he'd found Larxene sitting in the bathtub with the shower curtain tangled around her; one of her arms was trapped in a vertical position next to her head, but she was laughing as well. Apparently, having the balls to escape from her questioning using a shower curtain and a plunger earned instant respect.

So, tonight had been good. There were no plunger battles to the death, no shower curtains used as weapons, and no shrewd questions designed to determine if Roxas was "acceptably doable" or not. In fact, the two got along shockingly well. Roxas helped her make dinner (Axel had been banned from her kitchen long ago for setting things on fire in her microwave that shouldn't have been able to do so: a frozen banana, butter, and a steak among them) and during the movie, it had been Roxas that jeered the bad acting and thrown popcorn at the villains along with the savage nymph. But when there was nothing to jeer at he'd settled back into Axel's chest, and the redhead had never felt his heart beat that way before.

"You're smiling." Roxas' voice pulled him back to the present, and his gaze flickered down to the blonde before returning to the barely-visible road.

"Is that not allowed?"

Roxas laughed, burrowing into the redhead's shoulder a little farther, and almost as an afterthought wrapped an arm around Axel's waist. Axel looked over once to see how the blonde was managing that; he was barely in his seat, leaning over the gear shift, and Axel briefly considered telling him to put his seatbelt on. But they weren't going very fast, there was no one else on the roads this time of night, and besides – he liked this way a whole lot better anyway.

The option of stopping never once crossing his mind, Axel turned his eyes back to the road and kept driving. And when the blonde's lips began to move hungrily over the redhead's throat, when he unbuckled Axel's seatbelt and slid into his lap, all the older man did was tighten his grip on the steering wheel and speed up.

When you're gone, the pieces of my heart are missing you…
I can hardly breathe; I need to feel you here with me.

He stormed away from the office with his hands buried deep in his pockets, his expression so murderous that people walking the other way jumped slightly when they caught sight of it. Axel ignored them. The shrink's words were still echoing in his brain, and he wasn't trying to shut them out. He liked this anger. It felt real, more real than anything had in months, and he clung to it like a child, refusing to allow his rage to give way to reason.

It wasn't your fault. What a fucking joke. She had the file; she knew what had happened. How could she pretend it was anything but his fault? Disgusted, he fished the pack of cigarettes from his pocket and shoved one in his mouth, lighting it with a practiced movement. That woman knew nothing. The judge had ordered counseling, and the counselor had ordered 'emotional therapy,' and that meant he was stuck with that moron for two nights a week.

He took a deep drag on his cigarette, then stared blankly at it as he slowly breathed out the smoke. What had she said about his newfound habit? Ah yes, self-destructive behaviour, using smoking as a release mechanism for deep-seated guilt, yadda yadda…it was probably the only thing she'd been right about since he'd started seeing her. Oh, well – wasn't his money that was being thrown away on that idiot.

You're just angry, Axel. He snarled aloud and kicked over a wire newsstand at the bus stop, scattering the papers everywhere and ignoring the startled looks of the people around him. Why were those words so damn insulting? It wasn't because she was right – no, he wasn't just angry. He was frustrated. He was desperate. He loathed himself, and he was in terrible pain, because he tormented himself every day with the knowledge that if it weren't for him, Roxas would…

His train of thought snapped in exactly the same place it always did, and Axel felt his anger draining away. He let it go, feeling the familiar numbness settle back in its wake; the cigarette fell from his suddenly slack fingers, and as he habitually ground it out with his heel he could feel the stares of the strangers around him on his back. They were puzzled by his abrupt mood swing, but he didn't really care. When the bus pulled up he got on gratefully and slumped into a seat beside an older woman with a book open in her lap; he dropped his face into his hands, and wasn't entirely surprised when the woman patted his shoulder comfortingly.

After twenty minutes that felt like hours, he was finally turning his key in the lock and pushing the door open. The bus ride had taken a lot out of him. It gave him too much time to think, and he couldn't take that – every time he stopped running away from his own thoughts he needed to rage and cry and scream at the sky, but in public he couldn't do that. All he could do was wait, sit there and wait, seeing the woman with the book shoot him quick glances that judged and judged and knew nothing, sit and wait as the bus ground to yet another stop that was not his.

The apartment was dark. Axel moved mechanically, flicking on lights in his kitchen and tossing his jacket on the counter, then kicking off his shoes, wondering when the comforting familiarity of this place became so unwelcoming. In his head it smelled like defeat, like bad memories, like the aftertaste of vomit lingering in the back of your throat; there was nothing here now but the oppressive air and the fragments of life that kept showing up, unwanted, in their broken monotones.

Axel looked over the apartment once, apathetically checking to make sure that everything was the way he'd left it, and was about to slouch off to his bedroom to sleep when he spotted the dishes piled in the sink. He seriously debated leaving them there even though it would mean an ant infestation in the morning, but this time reason won out and with a long-suffering groan he dragged himself back into the kitchen. This required a compromise: instead of actually washing the dishes he filled the sink with soap and water, dumped the lot of them in, and turned back towards his bedroom.

"There, see? We can do them tomorrow morning, and I promise you won't have ants." Roxas impatiently shoved the last of the dishes into the sink before turning back to the redhead, who grinned and immediately pulled him into an embrace. The blonde threaded his wet hands through Axel's hair, gripping tightly as Axel pressed a hungry kiss against the younger boy's neck, and…

Axel's strength failed; he dropped to his knees on the linoleum. His eyes were scrunched shut, his head was in his shaking hands as a scream built within him, pushing on his chest from the inside, making him feel like he was going to explode, like he was going to die, because there was no way that much agony wouldn't tear him apart, wouldn't rip its way free of him and let him bleed out on the floor…

He wasn't conscious of getting to his feet or of stumbling to the bedroom. But when he awoke in the morning he was curled on top of the covers; there was a wet spot on the blankets under his temple, and he had one of Roxas' shirts pressed to his face.

I've never felt this way before. Everything that I do, reminds me of you.
Do you see how much I need you right now?

It had been a long time. Years, in fact – but things had never gotten back to normal. Axel wasn't even sure he knew what normal was anymore. He came down here every morning to get coffee from the stand at the entrance to the boardwalk, and then he would walk down to the long pier, but that didn't feel normal. It felt like an interlude – something to fill the space, to distract from the emptiness; it was meaningless, and Axel knew it, but he still came here and walked the same path, and drank the same coffee, and thought the same thoughts in the early hours of every single morning.

The boardwalk's baker, however, had always started her day long before his, and as Axel passed she'd offer him one of the first muffins or bagels of the day. If it was a good day he would accept, and if not, she would just smile understandingly as he passed. He rarely stayed to chat, though she never charged him for the baking and he knew it wouldn't kill him to be a bit more sociable, but there was something in her eyes that understood him too well, and Axel wasn't sure if he was ready to face that yet.

He was tired today. The nightmare had come again, wrenching him from sleep in a cold sweat, with the echo of twisting metal and splintering glass ringing in his ears. He never slept after waking from it. Instead he would drag himself to the kitchen table and play solitaire until the sun began to show, because that was the only way he could keep away the memories, and the anguish that came with them. But it was not enough to keep away the image of blonde hair stained red, of crimson drops splashed across a snowy canvas as he reached out a shaking hand to touch the jagged metal spiking out of his lover's chest.

The baker smiled as he passed; she could always tell the bad days from the good. He managed a tiny, grateful smile and turned onto the pier.

As he slowly walked on his head tilted to the side, his eyelids drooped just a little bit. Why did this always sound like eternity? There was so much noise, but just a few mattered – creaking ropes, seagulls calling, the heavy drum beats of his footsteps on the weathered wood – why did it always sound like that day, he'd just keep walking?

But at the end of the pier he stopped, leaning into the tall post and sipping idly at his coffee. It was getting quite light out now, but true sunrise was still a few minutes away. He waited for it patiently. It was why he came here – that one moment, that second in time, when the world went from hazy dawn to brilliant day, when the world awoke and proved once again that no matter what happened, time went on.

The catlike eyes shone their most brilliant green as the sun broke the rim of the horizon and cast diamonds among the early-morning waves. The breeze lifted and Axel closed his eyes, letting it wash over him as he had done so many times before. It never changed. It never stopped smelling like him.

Breathing deeply once more, Axel turned and headed back up the pier. The sandy beach was shining golden in the morning light; the ocean waters were unfathomably blue. The breeze was still stirring his long hair and Axel smiled softly, feeling a warm sort of peace settle deep in his chest.

I miss you.