A/N; So, yeah. AU. This is going to be my first attempt at multi-chapter fic. Please forgive me if I fail; college is a taskmaster like no other. The plan is that chapters will alternate between the two stars of the show and will always be written from a first-person PoV, though this is subject to change.

The title is rather shamelessly borrowed from the brilliant Quillslinger and her story Deceitful Above All Things, which I highly, highly recommend. It's an incredible and heartbreaking piece. And I honestly just love that phrase so much. Haría todo por ti - for you, I would do everything.

This story may or may not be based on some real events with serious amounts of artistic license. As far as first chapters go, this is probably an incredibly depressing way to start a story, but I promise it will get better. And worse. But mostly better, in the long run. Happy endings, after all, happen more often than you might think.

The way he fit in my arms was always so goddamn perfect. He'd slip right in and tuck his arms around my waist and he was the exact right height for me to prop my chin on his head comfortably, so I could shut my eyes and soak in his warmth. I had the idiot thought once that it was like a two piece puzzle, but fuck, who the hell makes a two piece puzzle? That'd be the most retarded thing ever. There's no challenge. There's no point. And that's maybe reason number one it wasn't so perfect after all. It worked almost too well. The way he'd lean up and press his lips to mine and always taste sweet, the way he was effortlessly beautiful and didn't even know it, the way we made each other laugh ourselves drunk over stupid shit nobody else would get. It was just too good. Nothing that good is meant to last.

I'll never forget the first time the kid showed up at my door, pink-cheeked from the cold and skittish like a deer in the headlights, looking ready to bolt in an instant even when he gave me that adorable little shy smile he sometimes gets when he's not thinking about it. It felt like something I'd been waiting for all my life had all of a sudden slid right in and clicked smoothly into place, and that was that. I grabbed his bags and ushered him in the door, gave him my most dazzling grin, and welcomed him to my humble abode.

That week-

Man, there's a reason I don't talk about that week anymore. I'd wake up days, months later in a cold sweat thinking maybe the whole thing had just been some really sick dream and against my better judgment go tearing through everything I owned until I found the pictures again. Every single time I'd regret it because once I remembered it was real, I had to remember what I'd lost. What I'd willingly let go.

I let the kid walk away. The week ended and we stood there in the airport, awkward as hell in front of the gate, and this time when he looked at me all I could feel was the yawning emptiness. I stared right back. And he said, I'll see you again in a few months, right? That's not so bad. And I said, Sure, kid. It's a date.

His eyes were so blue. I know I noticed it before that moment, but somehow, right then, their clarity and gravity pierced right into me. When he turned and walked away, when his gaze left mine for the last time, those blue blue eyes ripped a piece of my soul right out and he took it with him through security and onto that plane and it was just gone. Just like that.

It hurt so fucking much I couldn't breathe. I couldn't goddamn think straight. Months just sailed on by and every single goddamn day I felt like I was dying. I hate that stupid kid. Without him, this never would have happened to me. I wouldn't have turned into some maudlin, mopey shadow of my former self. I never would have goddamn known what it meant to be 100% complete, to be actually, truly happy. You don't miss what you never had. Doesn't hurt to lose what you never gained in the first place.

I guess it doesn't matter in the end, though. That or it's just plain too late. Both. I am so in love with this -- god, we're practically the same age, what the hell am I talking about -- kid that this whole thing is just a lost cause. Everything, every day of the rest of my life is a lost cause unless I get him back.

It's probably unspeakably pathetic for a guy like me to even be thinking this way, I know. But hey, I can at least take comfort in the fact that Shakespeare would write the most kickass play in history about us. Or maybe he already did. You know the one, with all the stabbing and the poison and light breaking in yonder windows and all that. And in the event of that particularly unfortunate metaphor, at least I know I'm not the one wearing the goddamn skirt.

... yeah. Sometimes the humor comes back. But it hasn't been quite the same since Roxas walked away. Nothing has.

We were perfect and not perfect, expanding and contracting to fit together into spaces too big and too small, and it never worked. It was never going to be fate and it was always going to end and we felt it. The most heartbreaking thing about our mutual destruction was that we knew it was coming all along and went through with it anyway. There was a burn like venom behind my eyes watching him leave because I knew we'd both end up with wet faces and broken hearts but even so-

Even so-

We said goodbye anyway, and that was that.

The thing that maybe gets me the most is the perfect, irritating as hell clarity with which I remember what happened next. Sitting in the airport cafe knocking back burning hot black coffee like it was going out of style and trying to pretend like I wasn't crying my eyes out. You try to tell yourself they're manly tears because you're not honking and snorting like a deranged seal like people sometimes do, and you're not blubbering and whimpering like a girl. You're just silent and you don't have a goddamn choice about the tears that won't stop coming out. But in the end you're still crying so hard you can't breathe, your throat still burns, your shoulders are still trembling, and the people around you still shift uncomfortably and shuffle away.

That was the precise moment an insidious little voice said in the back of my head, Welcome to the rest of your life.