FicWad

Demyx's feet itched all week. School had already been out for a month; his friends were on vacation, or they were in summer school, and some of them had even taken a road trip together up the river. He'd been jealous that they had gotten to leave Mounsid and see something besides dust and heat mirages, until Axel had shown up and taken him to a different world; and then he pitied them that they weren't here to come with him the next time. If there was a next time, though, because despite what Axel had said when they'd parted, it had been eight days and he hadn't come back.

An odd thing had happened one night after he'd come home from work. The discarded black cloak that had been left in the café was hanging on the back of his closet door; he'd hung it there to look at, to remind him that the world with three suns had really existed. He'd gone over for what seemed like the hundredth time, just to touch the black cloth, to see if he could evoke something stronger from his already fading memories - a smell, a sound, a feeling, anything. But the instant his fingers brushed the cloak, everything disintegrated: it hit the floor in a pile of threads and the clinking of metal, as the zipper and chains fell apart into their original pieces. Demyx knelt, shocked into silence, and sifted through the remnants with his fingertips.

They ended up in a little bag that he kept in the back pocket of his jeans everywhere he went. He could feel it now, digging into his tailbone, as he sat on his stool strumming his guitar for the eight customer-less night in a row. After the first two days, the nerve-thrumming anticipation of Axel's return that had filled him was gone; now he was just bored and only faintly hopeful. Demyx was absorbed by his guitar instead, not in the mood for tea or the book he'd brought with him, carefully practicing the intricate fingering for a song he'd been writing. He was humming it under his breath, trying a few words with the tune, when the edge of his periphery went dark.

This time he noticed the soft hiss of displaced air when Axel stepped through the eddying darkness into the shop. Demyx couldn't stop his heart from racing as he turned to face the redhead, slinging his guitar onto the counter and trying to act nonchalant. "I thought you were never going to come back," he commented casually.

Axel seemed preoccupied. He turned in a circle, looking narrow-eyed around the shop as if he was searching for something, without looking quite at Demyx. "Hey, didn't I leave my coat here yesterday?" he asked, glancing at Demyx briefly before hopping the counter to look behind it.

"Oh!" Demyx hopped upright and began to dig into his back pocket for the little bag, when that last word registered. "Wait - yesterday? It's been a fucking week since you showed up and kidnapped me, asshole."

Unperturbed by the insults, Axel popped up from behind the counter, a box of vanilla tea in one hand. "Time doesn't really work between the worlds. Sorry you had to wait so long for me. Can I take this with me?"

Demyx paused with his mouth open, and then gave up. He didn't know how to argue with someone who wasn't even fazed by anything he said. "Yeah, fine. Whatever. Um, your coat...it kind of...well." He held out the bag, a little shamefaced. "It...disintegrated. I don't know what happened, I swear."

"Fuck!" Axel swept the bag out of his hand and peered into it, dismayed. "Damn it. I should've remembered. Xemnas is gonna be pissed." He stuffed the bag into the back of the heavy canvas-like black pants he wore low around his hips, topped by a dark olive turtleneck, as if he'd just come from the snow.

Demyx plucked restlessly at his guitar strings, watching the other boy. "Who's Xemnas?" he wanted to know suddenly, wondering at the jealousy that sprung up at the thought that he wasn't the only one who had had Axel waltz into his life. Perturbed, he squashed the feeling.

The redhead waved the question away without answering and snapped his fingers crisply. The portal appeared again in midair and Demyx jumped: he was never going to get used to that thing appearing out of nowhere. "Come on, we're going somewhere else today." Axel leaned forward conspiratorially, hands on his hips. "No motorcycle, trust me," he added, although the wicked smile on his lips said don't.

But by now Demyx was too eager to see a new world to worry about trusting Axel, and he stepped forward without a second thought.

-

This time it was easier. He held his breath and didn't try to open his nonexistent eyes; instead of feeling the nothingness, he conjured memories of the pain of a bursting guitar blister, of the spicy sweetness of spiced tea, of snowflakes alighting wet and pinprick-cold on his forehead. He emerged from the nowhere-land upright and on his own two feet.

And immediately sank into a good foot of snow. "Shit," Demyx hissed when the cold hit him and began a little agonizing dance of frozen toes. Axel materialized beside him a split second later and waved away the vortex with an impatient gesture; the practicality of his warm clothes and ridiculously tall boots was suddenly much more apparent. He brushed snowflakes off his pants unconcernedly, ignoring Demyx.

"Isn't it lovely?" Axel sighed, theatrically stretching out his arms to encompass the fullness of the landscape. They stood in a clearing amongst a copse of trees that looked like pines, dark green beneath their petticoats of snow, but had perfectly circular leaves that grew symmetrically from each branch. The sky above was black with night, and although Demyx knew little of the constellations of his own home, he recognized immediately that the stars pinpricking the dark cloth of the sky were foreign to him. Everything was blanketed in pristine snow that had never been touched, immaculately blanketing the ground in rolling mounds that pooled in blue shadows and milky crests: starlight glittered on needle-sharp icicles that hung off of branches, bushes, and the eaves of the small house that perched in the snow not ten feet from where they stood.

Demyx could barely register the beauty of it all, as his watering eyes were rimed with a thin ring of ice. "Lovely," he agreed nonetheless, tucking his arms in tight to his lean body for warmth. "Might I ask that we go inside?"

Grinning broadly, the redhead reached over and patted Demyx comfortingly between the shoulderblades. "Don't worry, I wouldn't leave you out here to freeze," he pronounced, and began to tramp through the snow towards the light spilling out from under the door. Demyx followed, not entirely sure whether to believe him.

The warm air inside hit Demyx all in a rush, instantaneously thawing his icy cheeks and frozen eyelashes. Axel edged around the furniture to kneel in front of the fireplace as Demyx closed the door against the cold and took a moment to scrub the frost from his cheekbones; when he looked up, a purring fire blazed away contentedly in the hearth where only ashes had been before. Demyx blinked, took a curious step forward, and squinted at the flames, but Axel turned to meet his gaze with a purely innocent look.

"Look," whispered the redhead, sliding to his feet and going to stand before the window. He leaned forward until his forehead rested against the frosty glass. "It's beautiful. The world is asleep beneath its blanket, held in suspension until the sun returns to bring it back to life..."

Demyx followed, coming to stand beside him. "Very poetic," he commented, though internally he was a little wistful that he couldn't appreciate the immediate beauty of the world the way Axel seemed to. "Where are we, incidentally?"

Axel seemed not to hear him, eyes unfocused. At last he turned, left the window, and went to an ornate wooden cabinet on the other side of the room. "This world is called Demura," he answered, bending over to retrieve something from inside that clinked hollowly. "It's beautiful because the people ruined it. Now it's always cold, and the sun will never actually be able to melt the ice." When he straightened up, his face was stony.

Demyx didn't know quite what to say, caught at a loss for words. At last he edged across the room and slid to the floor. "Oh," he said finally, sitting back on his heels. "I guess...well, the same thing is kind of happening in my world." He sank into silence, uncomfortable at Axel's sudden change of demeanor.

The man turned and pushed the cabinet closed with his heel; dangling from his fingertips was a bottle, sloshing with some dark amber liquid that looked suspiciously like liquor. "You look cold," Axel informed him, easing himself down onto the floor beside Demyx and stretching his long legs out in front of him. "This'll warm you up damn fast." Raising the bottle to his lips, Axel yanked the top off with his teeth and threw his head back in a harsh swig. He passed the bottle to Demyx and dragged the back of his hand across his mouth, dark with drink.

Demyx took it gingerly, like it might explode in his hands. The closest he'd ever come to alcohol was a few sips of beer at a furtive junior prom afterparty last year, and he didn't really want to get drunk; yet something in him didn't want to look weak in front of Axel, so he raised the bottle to his lips and took a burning mouthful.

It tasted like hell but he swallowed anyway. "So," he began, trying to bring up something to talk about, "do you know why your coat totally crumbled like that? It freaked me out."

Axel took a contemplative sip of the liquid and shoved it back across the floor at Demyx. "I've got this theory, see," he started slowly, "that stuff made in one world can't exist for very long in another. Unless they're mirror worlds, but there aren't that many of those. Like, my coat didn't turn to dust or anything- it just fell apart into what it was made out of. The workmanship didn't belong in your world, so it couldn't exist. But then I guess you must have the same materials in your world as the stuff it was made out of, otherwise it probably would have actually turned to dust."

Somehow Demyx had managed to drink a good quarter of the bottle while Axel was talking, absorbed as he was. A pleasant humming had started up in the back of his skull; he couldn't imagine why he had thought it tasted so bad. "I guess that makes sense." He took a last long swallow and offered the bottle to Axel again. "Does that mean I can't ever bring my guitar with me?"

The redhead shrugged. "Maybe you could - how long did it take for the coat to fall apart?" His speech was a little slurred around the edges, sloppy and lazy, just like the feline way he sprawled his lean body out before the fire.

Demyx had to stop and think to remember how long it had been. "Uh...three...no, four days. Yeah. So I could bring my guitar for one trip? 'Cause I'd like to play for you. Sometime. Hm." He lost his train of thought and reached for the abandoned bottle, slurping a good amount of liquor and not noticing when some of it slopped around his mouth.

Axel nodded lazily without answering and flopped back onto the carpet. Demyx looked at him for a moment, then decided that position looked decidedly comfortable, and followed suit; for awhile, only the crackling of the fire filled the air.

Then Axel eased himself up on one elbow and looked over at Demyx. Demyx had closed his eyes to bask in the fiery alcohol running through his veins, but at the rustle of shifting cloth beside him, he opened them again. Axel was looking down at him in a decidedly peculiar manner. Frowning, Demyx opened his mouth to ask what?, but then Axel forestalled anything of the kind by kissing him soundly.

He tasted like brandy and cigarette smoke, and Demyx was too shocked to move or respond for a moment - and then he twisted his head aside and shoved Axel off with both hands. Axel fell back onto the carpet with an "oof" of surprise and just sat there for a moment, looking at him bemused and a little disappointed.

Demyx's head was spinning. "The hell was that?" he protested, struggling upright. The fire was warm and the alcohol made him sluggish, but even through his haze, he knew that he wasn't going to let Axel pull shit like that. "You some kind of pervert? Is that why you brought me here?" Beyond his feet, the fire popped indignantly.

The redhead's face clouded over. "I'm not a pervert," he spat, "and I brought you here because I like having someone to talk to. And you seemed bored." He picked up the nearly-empty bottle, contemplated it for a moment, and then pushed it violently away from him across the hearth tiles; it tipped over and spilled its contents into the grate, flaring the fire up with a hiss and a whoosh. "Fine, whatever. I won't ask anything from you that you don't want." Axel turned away haughtily and stared into the flames.

"What, you don't want me enough to try again?" Demyx shot back, and covered his mouth the instant he realized he'd said it. He didn't know where that had come from.

Axel's head swiveled around. He flipped his body and crawled hands-and-knees towards Demyx; with his long body, he loomed over the smaller boy and forced Demyx to crane his neck back to meet his eyes. "Don't be dumb," he snorted, and sat back on his heels. "I'm just a nice guy, you know? Don't want to disrespect other people's wishes."

It was probably just the alcohol talking, but Demyx felt very bold all of a sudden. "How's this for a wish, then?" he murmured, and leaned forward clumsily to kiss Axel. He missed and landed more on the corner of Axel's mouth than actually on his lips, but Axel just laughed a little and reached up.

"Whoa there, cowboy," he grinned, cupping Demyx's jaw. "Here - like this - " He pulled Demyx in at the same time that he leaned forward, and this time their lips met with a little more coordination. Axel pried Demyx's lips apart gently with his tongue, and Demyx was so surprised that he lost his balance and collapsed forward onto Axel's body; they fell with a surprised laugh, rolling, catching at sleeves and shoulders to hold onto each other. When they stopped rolling, Demyx's shoulderblades and elbows and tailbone aching, Axel was on top.

His smile was feral, and more than a little worrisome, as he straddled Demyx's hips and settled his elbows on either side of the blond's head. "Let me know when you're not comfortable with this," he whispered, his breath hot and ghostly over Demyx's skin, making the boy twitch. Smirking wider, Axel leaned down and nipped at the point of Demyx's chin, sliding one hand up to twine into his close-cropped hair.

Demyx responded by grabbing a handful of red hair and yanking Axel down into a rough kiss. "Not like I've never kissed someone before," he protested, wriggling a little as Axel reached up to undo the top button of his shirt. "Give me some credit. I'm just completely fucking wasted."

For a moment, there was a slightly wistful look in Axel's eyes; and then it was gone, so quickly it might not have been there at all. "Okay, but anything more than kissing?" he challenged, flattening his palm against Demyx's breastbone.

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. "No," Demyx admitted, feeling less embarrassed about the fact than he might normally have been. "So shoot me. On second thought, don't, although if I wake up in the morning and flip out because I've been sleeping with a guy you should probably shoot me then."

Axel's nuzzling, explorative kisses along his jawline stopped. Then, slowly and stiffly, he climbed off of Demyx and backed away. His eyes were flat. "I would not want to subject you to anything that would upset you," he said slowly, his voice unsettlingly careful and emotionless, for a man who was always so expressive and unhindered by his words.

Demyx gaped at him for a moment. "No!" He rolled over and lunged unsteadily across the floor. "No. I'm an idiot. That's not what I meant." Trying to keep the room from spinning, he tilted his head up and very carefully pressed his mouth to Axel's.

Axel barely responded until several moments had passed, and then only reluctantly. He pulled back with the stoniness in his face slightly softened. "Let's leave it at kissing for tonight," he finally said quietly, turning his head away. "You should go home."

He waved his hand without his usual flair and the portal materialized. Demyx winced.

"Fine," he answered, subdued. "I'll see you...whenever."

The coffee shop was colder that night than he'd ever remembered it being before.