[fic] Kingdom Hearts 2, "Dancing Flames"
Dancing Flames
Axel/Roxas
Kingdom Hearts 2, spoilers flying fast and loose. Worksafe.



Roxas is standing in the middle of a large empty room in the Castle that Never Was, hands at his side, apparently unarmed, his hood up and his face in shadow. When Axel circles around him, his footsteps so silent they seem to do the opposite of echo and suck silence into them -- he catches sight of Roxas's face under the hood. One eye takes light and reflects it back ice-sharp.

"Roxas," Axel drawls. "Fancy running into you here." The circle of his footsteps narrows until he's sliding around Roxas, almost brushing him. Not quite. Roxas shifts his feet slightly, twists against a heel, so his weight is always balanced, so Axel is always in his field of view. "Doing much?"

"No," Roxas says.

"That's a shame, really. Wasting your time like that." Axel clucks his tongue.

"Wasting?" Roxas asks. He tilts his chin up and Axel sees a smirk in the shadows of his hood. "Do you, of all people, mean to imply that if I'm not doing, I'm wasting?"

"And if I were?"

"You wouldn't."

Axel takes another step closer. He puts a gloved hand on Roxas's clothed hip, traces it around over his navel, up over the other hip, crosses the small of Roxas's back as he circles. The muscle underneath is tight but not tense. Roxas does not flinch at the touch. But then, it's not really a touch. Layers and layers between them. Gloves and coat. Axel imagines stripping Roxas's coat down and touching his skin, but he dismisses the mental image when he realizes he's unable to visualize taking his own gloves off.

Roxas waits.

"Maybe I wouldn't," Axel allows. "But it's boring without you."

"You were doing important things," Roxas says. "Weren't you?"

"None of those missions are important."

"Not to you."

"Nah," Axel agrees. He listens to the sound of his finger over Roxas's coat, the hiss of leather on leather, the scrape as he crosses the zipper. "But I got a duty to the Organization and all."

Roxas smiles again. "Duty," he says. "Do you."

"Pfft. Yeah." It's no good to say anything else. Not even when it's Roxas right in front of him. One thing Axel knows better than anything is that someone can always be listening. So he says it, but he crosses in front of Roxas and grins. The expression he thinks has to look private. He forms it on his lips, casts it out, can't see if Roxas receives it; the hood is in the way. But Roxas chuckles, husky and faint.

"What," Roxas says. "Did you want to do?"

"What makes you so sure I wanted to do something?"

Roxas says, "You came to make sure I was free," simply.

Axel stops walking. He looks down at Roxas and his expression has slipped serious without his intent. He spreads the smile back across it. "Clever boy," he says. "Knew I liked you for a reason."

"Sure."

"Can't be friends with just anybody," he says, then drawls, "Oops, guess I'm not."

"Yeah," Roxas says.

"Let's dance," Axel tells him, reckless. One of his hands is still on Roxas's hip; he's stopped so that one of Roxas's hands, by his side, is brushing his own hip.

Roxas snorts. "You're not a Dancer," he tells Axel. "Don't be absurd."

"Hey, don't think I can only do what I am," Axel says. "That's not friendly of you, Roxas! Besides, my name--"

"It's a metaphor."

"What else do we have but metaphor?" Axel asks him.

Roxas is silent. "I don't dance," he says.

Axel rolls his eyes. "What do you do?"

This smile is different than the others. The others had been secretive, small, easily-mistaken curves of his mouth. This smile draws his upper lip off his teeth so that the room's ambient non-light reflects off them.

"I fight," Roxas says.

"That'll do," Axel says, and leaps back, letting his chakrams spin to life in front of his hands.

Roxas's keyblades are in his hands before Axel can even start up the flame around him; he has to leap back, out of the way, feet marking out a sharp non-staccato against the floor as he summons fire, lines the arena, lets them blaze around the edge of his weapons. Roxas is smiling as he fights; the flames cast dancing shadows up in his hood so that blue eyes flash almost yellow, his skin is cast in bright colours, his teeth are shown again.

Axel ducks back into the flames, circles around through their heat, leaps out towards Roxas and is caught as Roxas spins, blades flashing out. The grin on his face won't go away and he doesn't want it to as he leaps and twists in the air, calls fire, tosses it down without fear of burning Roxas even as the flames do hit him. Roxas doesn't cry out. In turn, when a keyblade cracks hard across his ribs and he can feel his air die in his throat, he doesn't cry out either; he just leaps backwards and vanishes into flames.

Arms straight out, he jumps out, spinning, his chakrams tracing blazing trails in the air as silver and black metal flies up to catch them. For a moment he is straining against Roxas and pressing him back, and then Roxas is in the air, flipping, blades circling around to the side to cut off anywhere Axel might dodge. His feet catch Axel in the face and Axel falls backwards. The flames die; he no longer has the concentration to spare to make them exist out of nothing, supporting nothing, consumed by nothing.

Axel looks up along the length of Oblivion.

For a moment, he thinks Roxas is going to swing. His eyes are burning from the depths of his hood and his lips are peeled back and his chest is rising and falling heavy and fast. For a second Axel thinks he might let him. What a way to go. What a goddamn way to go --

Not like this.

And so he kicks his feet out and Roxas makes a startled noise as he tumbles forward. He's not so weak to be caught off guard and so when he falls he brings the keyblade around and lands on Axel with Oathkeeper somewhere off to the side but Oblivion pressed like a bar against Axel's throat.

After a moment, he sighs, bows his head, and his cheek brushes Axel's.

It's like electric shock. Like burning alive, Axel thinks, not that he's ever tried it; not that he ever will. He suddenly feels, with complete and utter awareness, how small he is. Tiny and insignificant. A nothing, a nobody in this universe, dissonance shuddering through his nerves like it might tear him apart. One touch, he thinks, does this to me. God, he thinks. You're killing me, he thinks, and then he doesn't think anything for a timeless moment because he's not sure where he ends and Roxas begins; he's not sure if he begins, he's not sure if he ends, he's not sure if there's anything except this shocked epiphany of skin on skin. He might not exist. Surely he doesn't exist.

And then Roxas sighs again, sits up a bit. Axel stares at him. It doesn't look like Roxas felt any of that. He's so good at hiding everything that Axel can't be sure, so he just stares.

"Well," Roxas says. "There."

-- And really he shouldn't be showing Roxas this either, Axel thinks, and finds in of the depths of nothing a smile to put on. "Heh," he says. "We done already?"

Roxas pushes his hood back in order to run his hands through his hair, shaking away some sweat.

"No," Roxas says. "We're just beginning."