mwahah. i return- with a twist!
summary on crack: axel. roxas. dark!sora. a ghost, a house, and dreaming. akuroku, sora x roxas, some sora x riku.
disclaimer: i own no ghosts, angsty squeenix/disney based characters, or houses, or the song long way down by the goo goo dolls. boo.
author's note: hello and welcome back to my crazy mind. i bet ya'll are expecting laughs and fluff now, aren't you? -snicker-
yeah so i lied. i was totally gonna write another huge fic but then i realized a) i was in school b) i was crazy and c) i like making no sense and being philsophical. so deal.
this story popped out of nowhere and starting screaming to be written down. it's akuroku, only because this fic is dark and angry and features death and fate and the author rambling on about mirrors and oranges. axel and roxas seem like that more to me. sora and riku are just to cute for bad things to happen to them. plus, i can't make them snark at each other like axel and roxas can!
this will be in two parts. it was going to be a one-shot, but then i realized that i was a rambler and no god or man can change that about me. so. yeah.
also- i rated this T, but has lots of swearing and later some other stuff, so it might jump to M.
without further ado...
welcome to the yellow house, where things are a lot darker this time around...
It was two a.m on a Sunday when I first saw my ghost.
There's a lot of prologue I could go into, before I start this story, a lot of messy little plot points to get out of the way. My English teachers always did say start from the beginning- get the story right, don't get the reader all confused. But frankly, that little stuff seems pointless- I'd already had to explain to my parents about the whole no-more-college and no-more-classes and no-more-fucking-degree, and boo hoo, poor little Axel out on his own. And I don't want to have to listen to that kind of screaming again.
But I've already said too much and I will say too much later on, but let's stick to simplicity for now; my realtor's name was Damien, he had a handlebar mustache that twitched in agitation as he talked about property tax, and the tiny house was a bright, eye-catching, look-at-me-don't-I-just-want-to-make-you-puke-daffodils kind of color. That kind of yellow.
I told him I'd take it before five minutes had passed- anything to get away from the perky little mustache. And I had always been one for gut feeling- split-second decisions, decisions you regret almost immediately after you make them, and simultaneously don't regret at all. Not one fucking bit.
So, long story short; I was twenty and pissed and there was this yellow house, and it was Sunday morning in the dark and he showed up and was so god awful tragic-beautiful, it was like dark teen poetry, like Shakespeare on speed- just like that. Just my ghost.
But there I go again. Getting ahead of myself.
I spent my first day at the yellow house exploring and then getting drunk. I had only brought a suitcase and a six-pack with me: the rest of my luggage was coming soon (not that that would be much of an improvement) but for now I had very little options for entertainment.
I moved in at five on a Saturday night, and spent a while wandering around. The place had two bedrooms, one small and cramped and with the unmistakable dry feeling of a guest room, and one larger and with a large, creaky bed in the middle, and no other furniture. There was one bathroom, a living room, a kitchen and a back porch with a few scraggly weeds trying to poke their heads out of a tiny garden. There were three closets, four chairs, a table, a couch, and no carpets; the wood floor was very cold against my feet.
I stepped outside into the twilight and noticed the tiny square plot of yard, the trees behind it. There were even a few bushes in sight; I wondered if they produced anything edible. I remembered good ol' Damien mentioning something about blackberries, as if this was going to be the deciding factor in the sale. See, this house is nice and all, but those blackberries just make it all worth it. Damn, those blackberries are so fine!
I smirked a little to myself and closed the door; it was getting cold. I hadn't lived up here long but I had been prepared for the weather; when it wasn't raining it was snowing, when it wasn't snowing it was hot and humid as hell. It made the tiny little excuse for a garden out there even more comical; I wondered what the ex-owner had been trying to prove.
All of this had taken a half hour and I was bored as hell. It was just growing dark outside, and a few months ago that would have been cue to shut my books (assuming I had opened them in the first place, a very unlikely event) and go wandering around campus looking for trouble. I found very little of that, but there always was a lot of alcohol.
oh, here you are—there's nothing left to say
That night at the yellow house, I was tipsy by ten, drunk by midnight, wasted by two. My breath was hot and sticky and my throat felt clogged up as a drain, but there was the pleasant humming in my chest that was drowning out the empty, restless feeling that usually occupied that space. I was sprawled on the couch, using my suitcase as a pillow, and taking sips out of an already empty beer can. The night was dark and the house was dark and smelt faintly of dust, and the only light came from one gingery bulb in the kitchen that cast the corners into playgrounds of shadow.
That's when Roxas showed up for the first time.
See, most people who've been haunted talk in terms of months or years, about the deep uneasiness in their chest and hearts and prickly noises at the corners of their ears, lights left on, doors slowly swinging shut, cold air across the cheeks. They talk about feelings and presences and feeling weird, man this feels so wrong, evil is here, something's here.
Maybe I can consider myself lucky, that my ghost was so damn headstrong. There was no playing around in the dark for him, no little games of peek-a-boo-I-see-you. He got right down to it. He showed up, and that was that.
At first I thought I had gotten drunker than I thought. Strange things seemed to happen when I'd had too much to drink; certain boys looking decidedly more scared of me in the morning, clothes on backwards, things a bit more charred around the edges than I had left them last night. But I had never hallucinated before, so when I looked up and saw the kid—the boy—standing in the corner watching me, I sighed and took a drunken swipe at my eyes.
He was still there when I cracked my eyes open again. He was young-looking, but his gaze was fixed directly on me, and he was glowing, very faintly, around the edges.
"Maybe I'm asleep," I murmured.
"You're not asleep," he said, and that was the beginning.
His name was Roxas, he said, and he was dead- like those two things needed to be announced together, so I could fully understand the situation, like it would lessen the shock. Hi, stranger, I'm Roxas and I'm stone-cold-mother-fucking-dead. Nice to meet you!
"God, I must be drunker than I thought,' I slur. "This is whacked-out."
He sighs, for all the world like he's impatient with me. He takes a step into the moonlight and for a moment, he looks almost, but not quite, real. Through the haze I see he's shorter than me and emo-boy slim, and has fair hair and hard, direct eyes. Blue eyes.
"Don't be an idiot," he says, and takes another short step towards me. "You think I'm some kind of dream? Do I look like something you would imagine?"
"If this was a dream, you probably wouldn't be as clothed as you are," I say truthfully.
His ice-blue eyes grow positively glacial. "Are you seriously trying to hit on a ghost?"
"Cute ghost," I correct. "Plus, you're only a figment of my imagination, right? Won't remember this in the morning!"
Apparently I've said something wrong; he makes a snarling noise low in his throat and runs an angry hand through his hair, which I'm fascinated to see moves, each blond strand looking real enough to touch.
"Is this some kind of joke?" he hisses out, but I get the distinct impression he isn't talking to me.
"Hey, lighten up, Roxum."
"Roxas," he says tightly. "It's Roxas."
"I thought ghosts didn't have names."
He shoots me a disgusted look. "You thought wrong."
I shake my head gleefully. "Man, this is so trippy. I should have hallucinations more often."
"Are you always like this?"
"People say I'm less moody when I'm drunk. Is that what you mean?"
He only stares at me some more, and I stare right back, alcoholic confidence bubbling through my veins. He was cute, but not in a kittens-and-puppies kind of way. There was metal in him. It shone out through his eyes.
"I can't deal with this right now," he says, and then I blink; once.
In the corner where he was standing, there's only a few faint specks of dust, floating idly in the moonlight.
I stare at where he was for awhile, trying to make sense of whatever it was that had just happened. But my hammered brain isn't up to the task, and I fall asleep within minutes, sprawled on the couch, the beer bottle clutched in my hand like a favorite teddy bear.
you're not supposed to be that way…
I could say a lot more boring stuff here. Like, hey, I woke up! And how I had a headache the size of a small mammal, and stumbled into of two of the three closets looking for the bathroom, or water, of Advil or something. I could go into great detail about tripping over one of the beer cans, shoveling something resembling food into my mouth for breakfast, and how much I didn't appreciate how nice the house looked by day, with the yellow paint on the walls shining and the floorboards gleaming, deep cherry tones.
I could tell you all of this. But this story is about him, isn't it? So let's skip, press fast-forward, and jump to when I'm slumped over the counter and he appears beside the stove like he's Mary-freaking-Poppins about to bake me a turnover, or something.
Cut to how I don't remember much of last night.
Cut to how I make some sort of noise that isn't in any of the human languages I know. Something like, "Huzadh?"
"Are you sober yet?" he said to me, in a very cross voice for someone who has just dropped out of thin air into my kitchen.
"Who are you?" I ask, jumping up with more agility than I knew I possessed. "What are you doing in my kitchen?"
He rolls his eyes. "Well, I guess that's a bit of an improvement. I'm Roxas. Rox-as. We met last night?"
Hazy images are coming back to me through the drunken haze; a dark room, a glowing light, and blue, blue, angry blue eyes…
"Oh my god," I say, and sit down hard. "That was real?"
I don't believe it even as I say it; instinctively I scan the countertop for any drugs I might have ingested and then forgot about. But then my gaze finds him- Roxas?—and though it's true he looks less solid than last night he still looks there. In the light, he doesn't look more than eighteen. A kid.
"Shit,' is all I can think to say. "Shit shit shit."
Roxas says nothing, just stares at me like he's waiting for something coherent to come out of my mouth.
"Why are you here? What do you—oh, god, I'm talking to a ghost, shit…"
"Yeah, like you were a great conversationalist last night," he says mildly.
My mind is still reeling- this is something that cannot be happening, that defiantly shouldn't be happening. "Why are you talking to me? Why are you here?"
"Hey. This used to be my house."
I stare at him, taking in the youthful, ethereal softness of his lips and chin. "You? Alone?"
"Don't sound so shocked," he snaps, and I know I've hit a nerve.
"So…you're still attached? That's why you're here? You don't want to leave the house?"
He looks like he's thinking about that hard, and I can't make out the expression in his eyes. Finally, he gives me a tiny nod. "You could say that."
The shock is fading now, the whole omg-theres-a-ghost-in-my-kitchen-and-I'm-talking-to-him haze was slowly clearing. Now I was just focused on one problem, for that's what it was at the time, a huge, fucking problem.
Now, I should explain something about myself here. Previously, you've only seen me alone or drunk, which are two very different things from being around other people. You know how people have a public self and a private self? Well, my private Axel is a tad moody. Lots of inner monologues and depressing stuff and Hemingway, when I'm sober enough to read. If public Axel met private Axel, public Axel would probably spill beer on private Axel and then laugh about it.
Public Axel is a bit vindictive. Public Axel doesn't take sympathy, kindness, or crap from anyone.
Public Axel was surfacing in full force.
"Well, we can't both live here,' I said flatly. "You're gonna have to just move on, then."
He raises an arched eyebrow. "Excuse me?'
"Let go, or whatever. It was alright rattling around here when it was empty, but I bought this place fair and square, and you can just clear out. I've got enough problems in my life without some poltergeist angsting in my kitchen."
His eyes narrow to slits. "Angsting…?"
"Yeah. So you can just get going."
The kid (ghost? Roxas?) does nothing but stand there, and somehow I can feel the anger rolling off him in waves, like heat that batters against my skin. His eyes lock into mine, and I can see it there, too, and something that is like frustration.I don't care. Right now I just want him gone, whatever he is, I want my house and I want a drink and I want to be alone.
"Real nice, Axel," he murmurs, and before I can ask how he know my name he's gone, he's blinked out like a light-bulb, and I'm by myself again.
did they push you out? did they throw you away?
Later, Roxas would get angry at me for this, especially when I reminded him about how pissy he was when we first met.
"Can you blame me?" he would say, exasperation twisting up his ghostly features. "You wouldn't listen to me."
"I really didn't want to," I would say, sighing, leaning against a wall.
"Why not?"
I blinked open an eye, and there he was- so much closer than he would venture before, so close that if he was alive, I would able to feel his breath on my skin. But I know this is a ploy, so I ignore it.
"You had that look in your eyes."
"What look?" he asks innocently, though I know he hasn't been innocent a day in his death.
"That look." I sigh and run a hand through my hair. "That look- it said that if I stared to close, you would have to pull me into this shit. Like a moth to the freaking flame, Roxy."
touch me now and I don't care
Roxas, as I would soon come to find out, was a persistent, stubborn son of a bitch, and he started playing with my dreams the night after he had disappeared from my kitchen.
I had gone to bed reasonably early, around eleven; I was out of alcohol, my stuff still hadn't shown up, and I lacked the energy and money to take a trip into town. So I slipped beneath the covers of the creaky old bed in the bedroom and tried not to feel like too much of a loser, made some sort of promise that I would go into town and meet some kids and have some fun and forget about this stupid ghost thing, and then was deeply asleep.
He didn't wait long.
It was a bright sunny day in mid-fall, and the leaves were brilliant pops of color, red and yellow and orange and bright, so bright. They cast lovely pattered shadows on the yellow house, which looked just like it had when I had bought it, only when I had bought the house it had been spring, and it wasn't me who was staring at it with appraising eyes, it was Roxas.
Roxas…Roxas was alive. I had been right- he had been almost unbearably beautiful, in life- the soft golden light sifting through his hair, the youth shining on his face. Beautiful, but the stubborn twist of his lips warned that you better not call him that to his face.
I watched as he turned to the realtor (my own Damien, I saw with a shock, in pre-mustached days) and said "I'll take it," with an authority far past his years.
Damien shifted nervously, standing next to his slim charge. "Um…yes, then I'm sure everything is in order, Mr...?"
"Roxas," my ghost said firmly. "Just call me Roxas, please."
"Roxas," the realtor repeated slowly, the words sounding thick and awkward on his tongue- the man looked like he hadn't called anyone by their first name in his life. "How will you be paying for the purchase?"
"If you want to go down to the bank I'll write you a personal check," Roxas says, his eyes never leaving the house.
Damien twitches nervously behind him. "Sure, sure, I'm sure that will be satisfactory. And your parents…will they meet us there?"
When Roxas whirls on him, it is with such ferocity that I can feel the motion whipping through the landscape like a swift, snapping breeze. "No, my parents will not be meeting us there. I'm your client. Deal with me."
There is a brief, shocked silence.
"Whatever you say, Mr. Roxas," Damien says quietly, clutching his clipboard like a life-raft.
When Roxas turns back to face the house, his face has softened; it wears a gentler cast than anything I had previously seen on those hard features. His mouth is slightly open, his eyes wide and clear, his skin flushed with the bit of pre-winter cold that lurks in the ground and the air. He's even smiling; a faint, little smile.
"So," he says, conversationally. "How soon can I move in?"
I wake up gasping and he's sitting perched on the end of the bed, his face cupped in his hands, studying me for all the world like I'm his own personal theatre and have just been putting on a great performance.
"Nice dreams?" he asks pleasantly, and smiles a little. It is not the same smile I saw in the dream. This one has malice curled in its corners.
"What—no—you--?"
I rub my face in my hands and catch a glimpse of that triumphant little smirk. Light dawns.
"Did…can you…did you mess with my dreams?"
He's studying his fingernails now, and I'm thinking I've never met anyone with this much sarcasm sliding out of their skin. "Oh, just a little. I thought since we're going to be living together, it would do for you to understand my situation."
I can feel my face heating up and know its turning as red as my hair. "Listen, Roxas. I don't want you reaching around in my head and making me relieve your precious fucking little memories! You hear me?!"
"Calm down," he says softly. "No need to yell. I'm right here."
"That's the problem!" I yell, clutching my pillow tighter to my chest and digging compulsively further into the bed oh god it's his bed it must have been his bed what am I doing here…
There is a silence that rings in the air, and Roxas' smile fades as he surveys me, as he waits for the inevitable question.
"Why are you doing this?"
"You need to help me." It's not a question.
"What? Do you need someone to hold your hand as you ascent to your higher plane?"
He blinks, slowly. "You're too sarcastic for your own good."
'Look who's talking."
"I can't leave you alone until you help me," he says, and for a second something like pain crosses his features. "Even if I wanted to."
"I could get an exorcism," I threaten, though in truth I have no idea how I would go about ringing up a Catholic priest and asking him to bring over the Bible and Holy Water. Hey, Father Smith, yeah, there's this obnoxious blond ghost who says his name is Roxas, and he would be a helluva lot cuter if he wasn't dead and bitter. Help a brother out?
Roxas seems to find this idea amusing; he laughs, at least, and it is a dry, unused sound. "An exorcism? C'mon, can't you think of anything better than that?"
"Watch me," I growl, and lunge forward before he can move.
I expect it, but am still shocked when my hands pass right through his torso, leaving me feeling nothing but a cold draft across my skin, like someone had left a window open. Looking down at my hands protruding from his abdomen, Roxas smirks. "Too bad. Guess it's pointless hitting on me after all."
"It was pointless anyway," I mutter, withdrawing my hands quickly and folding them close to the comforting heat of my own, alive chest. "Ghosts can't really feel anything, can you? Lust, or love?"
When I look up he's studying me very strangely, and once again I find his eyes had become icy walls, revealing nothing, expressing nothing.
He is silent for a long time before he speaks. "Technically, our hearts die along with our bodies."
"So, I'm right, then. You can't feel anything."
He doesn't answer, but stands up suddenly- I keep half expecting him to swoop around the room like a bat- and paces the floor at the foot of my bed. The floor is dusty, but he leaves no footprints.
"Will you help me, then?"
But right now I'm tired, cold, feeling decidedly strange to be conversing with a ghost in the middle of my bedroom when all I want to be doing is dreaming, dreaming easy, normal dreams. "If I help you with whatever it is, will you leave me alone?"
A pause in the pacing. "I can't promise anything."
"What is it that I would need to do, then? And if you say 'avenge my death'…"
"Sorry. Can't tell you. Not yet. You have to understand some stuff first. About me, I mean."
"Does this mean more dreams?"
"Yes."
I groan and sink back into my pillow. "Nothing's easy with you, is it, Roxas?"
"No," he says, and the smile is back, so small you would have to squint to see it. "No, I guess not."
He gives me one more dream that night, mostly because I think he knows I'm too sleepy to jerk myself out of it and partly because he's still pissed about the exorcism comment. This one is shorter, fuzzier, and when I wake up all I can remember is standing invisibly next to Roxas as he paces the halls of the yellow house, mimicking my actions of a few days ago, poking into the closets, standing in the backyard, feeling the cold air on his skin. He scuffs out a box in the dirt where the dying garden will be, and jumps a little when the floorboards squeak under his sneakers. When it gets dark he heads into the living room and watches television as I watch him, his eyes growing heavy until it's just him, asleep, and the blue glow of the t.v lights up his features, marks the curves of his sleeping eyelids in swirls of flashing, dim light.
I stare at him for a long time.
Hours later, when the morning sun is peering hesitantly over my curtains, I wake up feeling lonely, and I know it's his feeling, and not mine.
when you take me I'm not there
It's surprising how easily one can adjust to have a ghost as a roommate.
You know what the funny thing was? If someone had chosen to pop into my life and ask me about supernatural shit, like vampires and werewolves and aliens, I probably would have told them to stop watching the X-Files and get to a club. This from the guy who was being awoken every morning with someone's else's dreams in his head, from someone who barely blinked when a ghost popped up next to him as he made scrambled eggs and looked hungrily over his shoulder. Hell, if that same guy asked me about ghosts there would be a longer pause than there should be. I think I was still under the impression, deep down in my mind, that Roxas was mine, whatever he was, all mine; my delusion, my paranoia, my fantasy. Not something commonplace that could classified next to Casper in the encyclopedia. Mine.
I never did share these particular thoughts with Roxas, though he grew to be something of a presence in my life. Nothing I did seemed to deter him- I could be napping, hiding, in any room or any corner of the house and he would come and go as he pleased, exchange a few snippy, enigmatic words, and be gone again, but never for more than a hour, never long. I think he liked testing my limits, in that way- since I couldn't do a thing about him he was seeing how far he could throw me.
I guess he thought popping into the shower would be a fun shock factor. He looked pearly in the steam, leaning against the slick walls with his arms crossed across his chest. He seemed almost bored, or was trying to look that way. I don't know what he was expecting me to do, but hey, stuff like that didn't faze me- I had lived in an all boy's dorm for too long with people who were far more gone they he had ever been.
He seemed almost disappointed that I didn't shriek or cover myself or demand his immediate absence. I watched as his eyebrows furrowed. I found myself thinking it cute.
"Like what you see?" I said, feeling an easy smirk slip over my features.
He doesn't laugh. I've found out he never does, not once since I've met him. Rarely smiles, too. He's not smiling now, just staring. Staring hard and long.
"You know," I say, turning my back to him and kneading some shampoo into my hair, "All the people I've met say I have a nice ass. I'd like an option from beyond the grave, though."
But he's gone when I turn around, just like I knew he would be.
It's strange how quickly I forget that he's dead.
It's like, one second it hits me hard, full hard, right like a lead weight across the face. Am I crazy? Is there really a ghost in my house? And oh shit, he can mess with my dreams. He can mess your head, Axel, or maybe it's your head that's messed up in the first place, maybe it's been too much drugs and too few years and being alone that makes all the voices cry out louder…
But then he appears and the doubt is gone, just like that. Poof. I know you can't really believe this; I'm sure if a ghost appeared in your kitchen and started carrying on a conversation you would probably run screaming to your local therapist. But you haven't seen the kid. Something about him just screams, no, not screams, says with that voice (you know the voice, the quiet voice, the power voice), it just says Listen To Me. Shut up and listen to me. We have work to do.
He's given me more dreams and I can't see a pattern, or maybe I'm just bad at this game. He keeps rattling on about this big secret purpose and how I need to help him, but so far none of that's leaked through. So far it's just been me spying on him as he made a pathetic excuse for a pasta dinner, slept, and handled some pretty explosive phone calls that I never pry about in the morning. I know parents.
He even brought kids back to the house once; friends, once, I think, but the memories are skippy and I'm never quite sure of the timeline but I'm sure it's been weeks or months, and all they can do is talk awkwardly about college and how Roxas is missing out. They leave right after dinner and Roxas locks the door behind them.
He shows me planting the garden, too, and these are the memories I enjoy most, him in the sunshine, his skin and hair drinking the gold light in greedily, long, pale fingers fussing with the soil and the leaves and tiny, delicate stalks of tomatoes and peppers.
"Why the garden?" I ask, after I wake up. "And why no flowers?"
He snorts at me from his customary perch at the end of the bed. "Flowers? What use are those to me?"
I notice something else, those days. He can follow me all over the house, but he never once follows me outside.
almost human, but I'll never be the same
Its night in the house, dark and pregnant with quiet and for the first time Roxas is nowhere in sight. It's not going to be him planting vegetables or washing dishes this time. This is night. At night he sleeps, alone. But I'm not in the bedroom and I'm not by the couch, I'm in the kitchen, and I know intuitively the yellow house is empty, that he's not here.
I wait for what seems like a long time, and I'm getting half a mind to ask Roxas- my Roxas, not past-Roxas- what's he's playing at, when I notice headlights in the driveway. So I wait, and listen.
The door creaks open softly and Roxas steps inside, but he doesn't close it. Instead he stands in the doorway with his arms crossed nervously in front of his chest and stares at the person left outside. "Erm...do you want to come in? Coffee, or…whatever…?'
There is an amused little laugh, and I drift closer so I can see who he's talking to in the light. It's a boy, that much I can see; another beauty like Roxas, with skin like burnt cream and artfully styled brown hair. I can't make out his eyes.
"Nah," he's saying, "Nah, better not. It's late, and I've got some stuff to do in the morning."
"Oh," Roxas says. My trained ear can hear the disappointment in his voice.
The person laughs again, and smiles widely into the dark. "Don't think for a moment it's because of you, Roxas. I haven't had that much fun in a while."
"Yeah. Me too."
The other person is quiet for a moment, and from my perch behind Roxas I can almost feel his thoughtful stare. "We should do this again sometime. You and me, I mean."
Roxas lifts his head up very suddenly. "We should? But…at the club…that Riku guy…"
"And how many times do I have to tell you," the stranger says chidingly, "Riku is only a friend. I'm single. Ready to be wooed, swept off my feet, champagne under the moon. The works." He winks. "If you're up to the task, that is."
"Well…um…Friday?'
"Pick you up at seven," the boy says smoothly, and before I can blink he's swooped up, lightning swift, and given Roxas a quick, tantalizing kiss.
"Night," he says.
Long after he's gone, after his the sound of his footsteps crunching on gravel has faded and the glare of his headlights has given way to darkness, Roxas still has his fingers pressed against his lips.
He's looking blank and cold again when I come out of the dream, like he's already preparing for me to make some teasing comment about how he was such a little-bitty-softy when he was alive.
Instead I ask, "How did you meet that guy?"
He blinks, and for a second there's a passionate emotion dancing behind his eyes. It's gone when I look again.
"At a club, a couple of towns over. I was tired of the TV."
He's sitting on the edge of the bed (my bed? his? ours?) and once again the differences hit me full force. It's not just the way the moonlight passes through him to collect in a puddle of shadow, but how he holds himself, drawn and tight and so, so inward.
"And did you go out with him again?"
"You'll have to see, won't you?"
He uncoils himself stiffly, moving towards the door. "Get some sleep, Axel. I'll see you in the morning."
He doesn't give me more dreams that night, but that doesn't matter; I'm lying awake thinking about the boy by the door and how Roxas held his finger to his lips after a stranger kissed him there. Like no one had ever touched him before.
told you, didn't i?
rightio, things get twisted in the next installment.
reviews for pissy roxas-ghost? it'll cheer him up!
or not.