A/N: I...what just...happened.

Disclaimer: I mean I don't even know what's going on here. Disclaimer, what? My world stopped making sense when I wrote this.

I mean, I can't even...just...read it, I guess.

Paranoia

Being a bouncer at a strip club was surprisingly boring for Axel. For one thing, hardly anyone ever did anything that warranted beaten with Axel's aptly-named Hobo Stick, which it was generally agreed was his specialty. For another thing, hot chicks in six inches of heel and three square inches of clothing sort of lost their appeal when he knew their personalities. He was surrounded by people of the Damn Fine persuasion but few of them held his interest.

Guarding the VIP room wasn't exactly cheering him up, either. The club was already so crazy exclusive that they had to make sure they had pretty bouncers; it was rare that more than one group of rich businessmen got in there on any given night. So yeah. That meant standing next to the velvet rope in front of the velvet curtain, finding new and interesting ways to apathetically jut his hip to the side and nod at the vacant-eyed waitresses who shuffled in and out. Ugh, God. The waitresses. You know you've sunk low when you can't even make it to the upper half of the strippers and get downgraded to waitress duty. Or you were Yuna and were desperate for cash but not, you know, six-inches-of-heel-and-three-square-inches-of-clothing desperate.

Inside the room he could hear cackling, some guy hooting his approval and applauding whatever Rikku was doing (which was creepy because Rikku was barely out of high school but whatever, not his business), a few clinking drinks. Being more or less used to this sort of bullshittery, Axel just crossed his arms and leaned against the wall to stare at stage. He started humming the Star Wars theme. That was one way to keep himself amused while watching the dances: strip-teasing became fucking hilarious with a John Williams soundtrack.

Of course, he only knew the first minute and a half or so of the Star Wars theme and wasn't too keen on repeating it after that, so he snuck a covert look around the corner at the huge clock on one of the walls. In addition to being, he didn't know, some kind of modern art...clock, it actually served the purpose of telling the time, for which he was grateful. He thought it might have something to do with Hollow Bastion's iconic clock tower. But right now the only shit he gave about it was the fact that he still had three hours to go.

"Axel, why are you away from the door?"

"Whu – fuck! Where did you come from?" Just once he wanted to know how Zexion did that. There was no way he was there three seconds ago.

"You're on VIP duty tonight. You know the sort of trouble Rikku gets in," he said, straightening out his vest and glancing impassively at the stage. "Do you really trust her alone with nine trust-fund frat boys?"

"Rikku's never gotten coerced into anything she didn't want to do," Axel said, glancing at the curtain.

"That's not what I'm talking about."

"Oh. You mean that thing with the, um. The knives?"

"Yeah," Zexion scrunched his nose up and smiled with impossible sweetness, "That thing with the knives." Axel's eyes slid to the side to look at the curtain again.

"I'm gonna...go...back...there."

"Funny, I was about to suggest that." Zexion just raised his eyebrows and stalked away, patent leather boots clacking on the floor underneath his black slacks. Kinky. He leaned against the doorway to his office, surveying the operations with little amusement, and eventually glared at Axel and made a shooing motion.

Okay, fine, Axel thought, reclaiming his position next to the curtain. He couldn't hear anything out of the ordinary inside, and looked up at the stage to see Paine in all her glorious dominatrix leather take the stage. Alright, so if it had to be girls, Axel was a sucker for a chick in leather. Not that it mattered anymore, he remembered with a grin.

Today Paine would be seductively dancing to Indiana Jones music. It went with the whip, at least.

Axel glanced covertly at Zexion, still standing and watching, adjusting his glasses, glancing at his watch and then up at Axel. Oh yeah. Paine would be dancing to Indiana Jones and his boss would never ever know.

Take that, you classy fuck.

Roughly forever later, Axel stumbled out of the elevator and out into the hallway, fumbling for the keys in his back pocket. He found a fiver someone had slipped in there under the very mistaken impression that the club catered to both men and women (Aw, come on, I am worth more than five bucks), and his stupid useless smartphone, and of course the day he came home at three in the morning and barely standing was the day he put his keys in his front pocket.

The rest of the night had been uneventful. Zexion sarcasmed at everybody who approached him, Rikku had a little too much fun with her clients and was replaced with Lulu, Yuna was approached by Tidus because fucking duh and she acted all flustered, and Axel didn't even get to use the Hobo Stick once. He'd just painted it, too; it needed some breaking in.

Roxas was sitting in front of his door.

Roxas was sitting in front of his door pretzel style in pajama pants and a dress shirt.

Roxas was sitting in front of his door pretzel style in pajama pants and a dress shirt, with a beer in his hand, swaying to and fro a little bit and focusing on something on the wall.

"Uh," Axel said. "Hey babe."

"You." There was such loathing in that voice that Axel actually jumped a little, and he was a bouncer at a strip club. Roxas slammed his half-empty beer on the floor, spilling a little on the carpet, and wobbled upwards, leaning one hand against the wall for support.

"Yup...me," Axel said carefully. "This, uh. This sure is my door you're standing in front of."

"Oh no," Roxas took a couple of unsteady steps toward Axel and put a hand on his shoulder. "No no. None of your charms, funny man. We are going to. We are going to. We're gonna talk."

"Those were...my...charms?"

"Firstly," a finger was jabbed in his face quite suddenly. "Firstly. Do not call me babe. It's uh." He waved his hand in the air dismissively. "That thing I called it."

"Creepy and inappropriate?"

"Yes. That is the thing that it is." Roxas hiccupped. "Don't call me it."

"Duly noted." He looked his boyfriend up and down, wondering how it was he'd managed to show up to Axel's apartment at three in the morning wearing Spider-man pants, a dress shirt and a silk tie, and hoped to God that Roxas had just come from his own house instead of getting smashed at a bar like this. "Do you wanna come inside?"

"And none of that, either."

"...hospitality?" Axel ventured a guess.

"None of your wily trickery," Roxas said, and the waggling finger was back. His...okay.

"My wily trickery."

"You're like that thing, the red thing that's always...climbing into...holes. Uh..."

He waited patiently while Roxas swayed a little, very carefully not saying "I know what hole I'd like to be in right now," but Roxas seemed to drop the thought.

"Do you know," he began. "Secondly. Secondly do you know," he poked Axel in the chest. It actually hurt. "Do you know how hard it is to date a bisexual?"

Again narrowly avoiding the sentence "No, but I do know what else could be hard in a few minutes," Axel just pinched his lips together and shook his head.

"It's really fucking hard!" Roxas shouted, giving Axel a good hard shove. "You're. Ugh. Ax-el . You like girls and boys. It's not fair. I have to be on the lookout for twice as much comp- compet- comparit -people. With...people with..." He slapped his own pectorals a couple of times like a drunken blond gorilla. "Those things. Breasts. And also for the...other thing. A penis. Both of those!"

Axel nodded sagely while trying to get his key in the lock as quietly as possible. "Right, yes. Transvestites. Of course."

"No," Roxas groused like a small obstinate child. "'Cause you like both of the...things. And I only have one of the things. And you want both of the things."

Axel was just trying to get this conversation out of the hallway and away from his many neighbors. Had he always had so many neighbors? "Roxas, I don't really think I'm going to leave you for a transsexual." Click. Well, he was too drunk to hear it anyways.

"Transvestites and transsexuals aren't the same thing!" Roxas declared, halfheartedly kicking at Axel's ankle. "That's not what I mean. That's not what I mean and you know it. You're just being stupid."

"You're wearing Spider-man pants."

"They are my best pants."

Axel was hard-pressed to argue with that logic. He put his hand on the small of Roxas's back and steered him into the living room, closing and locking the door with a sigh of relief. He flipped on the lights and turned back to face his doom. His hilarious, drunken doom.

"You're gonna get sick of me," Roxas told him, folding his arms. He tried to lean against the kitchen counter, stumbled, tried again, gave up, and sank to the floor with his legs out straight. "You think everybody's sexy. You're gonna get tired of just me and you're gonna leave 'cause I'm boring and you also like girls so you have lots of options. Nobody stays in a gay couple if they can be in a straight one." He said all this to Axel very assuredly and nodded his head a few times.

"I see."

"No you don't! You don't! You're a stupid – why are you, why are you so far away?" He reached up to tug on Axel's pant leg. Axel yielded and sat down next to him. "No. We're gonna talk."

"Okay," Axel tried a different approach. "What is the problem, Roxas?" he said slowly and reasonably.

Roxas seemed to appreciate this and stopped jittering his foot against the kitchen tile. He pursed his lips and said with no small measure of grandeur, "You like tits and I don't have them."

"...seriously?"

"What seriously! Seriously seriously! You don't even know! Everybody's trying to steal you!" He was working himself into a frenzy.

"Roxas, I have you." He put a hand on either side of his boyfriend's face and ignored his reeking breath. "I don't need a girl. I like you better."

Roxas stared at him for a while, his cheeks a little smushed together by Axel's hands. He looked somewhat perplexed, his eyebrows coming together and his mouth open. "Listen, I think it's about time you threw up and went to sleep." It was a really bad sign when Axel was the voice of reason in their relationship.

"I don't need to throw up," Roxas stated proudly. "I already puked on my way over."

"Yay." He started to haul the blond up off of the floor, first by his arms and then grabbing him around the waist, when Roxas leaned heavily against him and started poking his chest some more. "Nuh-uh, no. We do this now."

"I don't even know what's going on."

"You even work for a bunch – with a lot of those, um – people! Who prof...who profess. Who have boobs for a job!" He looked up at Axel with wide eyes. "How do I beat a bunch of people who're so sexy they get paid for having boobs?"

"I'm so confused."

"This is not okay, Axel."

"I agree. I seem to be hallucinating that my calm and mature boyfriend has showed up drunk at my house screaming about boobs." Having more than given up on this conversation, Axel lifted Roxas up, hitched his chin over his shoulder, and started to drag the man over to the bed. Roxas may have been hilariously drunk, but Axel still wasn't above a little light spooning after the night he'd had. He dumped him on the mattress, intent on removing Roxas's dress shirt and cocooning him under the covers until the hangover hit.

"Wait! Axel!" Roxas cried as the redhead began to remove his tie. "Axel, this is important."

Axel sighed. "What?"

"You're going to stop liking me."

"I swear to God." Axel yanked the loosened tie, forcing Roxas to sit up and meet his eyes. "Shut up."

"But – "

"I get it. Girls have boobs. I like boobs. Please try to understand what I'm saying next: I like you more than boobs." He covered Roxas's mouth with his hand before he could interrupt. "No. Shut up. You have awesome eyes, you call me on my shit, you don't mind my fucked up work schedule, you are usually the emotionally stable one, and you actually own Spider-man pajama pants and wear them on a regular basis. What do girls have? They have boobs. That is it." He removed his hand from Roxas's mouth. "Do you see how the scales are tipped a little in your favor here?"

Roxas stared at him vacantly for about a minute, his lips a little parted and his eyes wide. He swallowed and put one hand on Axel's shoulder, the other on his face. "I want you to know," he said, "That that was really hot, and if I could, I would totally be having sex with you right now."

That said, he promptly passed out, and fell back onto the bed with few squeaks from the mattress.

Axel could only stand there. Roxas Sabin, brilliant young architect, toast of Hollow Bastion, freshly out of the closet, boyfriend of three months, and wearer of Spider-man pajama pants.

"Best paranoid drunk ever," Axel said out loud, and decided to add that to the list.

At five in the morning, Roxas and Axel were tangled together. The blond had this habit of curling up into a little ball and putting his arms around whatever was nearest (Axel, in this case). And it was while they were in this close proximity that Roxas's eyes shot open and he suddenly sat up, banging his head on Axel's chin in the process.

"Foxes!"

Axel opened one eye. "What."

"The red things that climb into holes!"

After a moment of tense silence, Axel put his hand on Roxas's chest and shoved him back down. "No."

"I'm not drunk anymore."

"You're not sober either."

Roxas frowned and waved his hand in front of his face. "That's...definitely true," he decided. "But I think I'm less crazy."

Sighing, Axel pulled him closer, feeling immensely grateful for the fact that it was Sunday. "Do you still think I'm going to leave you for tits?"

"...a little."

He closed his eyes and started to trace lazy loops around Roxas's stomach. "How about," he said groggily. "I tell you about all the pretty half-naked girls I saw today, and how they all failed to turn me on as much as the thought of you in Spider-man pants."

Roxas thought about it for a second. "Really?"

"Didn't even come close." It was actually true, Axel realized with a grimace. He had it bad.

"...okay."

"What, you're serious?"

Roxas rolled over and wiggled upwards a little to stare his boyfriend right in the eyes. "I," he said, "Am always serious."

A/N: It just sort of appeared. You know how sometimes you find like a bruise or a tiny cut you don't remember getting? Those are like this story, except it came out of my fingers and I watched it happen.

Also.

EVERYONE IN FINAL FANTASY X IS A STRIPPER, YOU ARE WELCOME (I hate you, Tidus. I hate you and I hate your stupid laugh and I hate your girlfriend. SO I MADE HER A STRIPPER.)

I apologize for wasting your time. Feel free to leave a scathing review which tells me what I horrible person I am. Love you.