InsaneJournal

[fic] Kingdom Hearts 2, "Beating Hearts"
Beating Hearts
Kingdom Hearts 2
Part of the Completionverse. Completion; The Story of the Time Riku Killed Axel in the Face
OT6. Namine, Kairi, Sora, Roxas, Riku, and Axel in various combinations. YOU HEARD ME.
Not safe for work! Post-game spoilers
Approx. 5650 words.



The problem lies in the guilt.

***

Here's the beach on which it happened. All of it. The races, the beginnings, the endings. Here's a beach where something that didn't exist pushed its way through to try to stake a claim.

Riku stops on it and looks down. He frowns. Axel's gone quiet inside him -- that's a rarity these days; Axel's always got something to say and seems to relish the fact that he's got a chance to say it.

"Well?"

Girl's got spirit, Axel says.

"What?"

This is Kairi's place, isn't it? And then Axel's silent again, and Riku sighs, sticks his hands in his pockets, and keeps walking.

***

Usually Roxas goes over to see Axel now, because Sora's room is small and close to his parents' and Roxas isn't good at things, he's found, that're gentle or quiet. Riku, however, has rich parents; his home is huge -- the balcony outside his room alone could belong to a prince -- and his bed is big.

It's not that Roxas really goes over so they can fuck, but it always ends up happening anyway. They get a few moments of conversation and then they're grabbing at each other, handfuls of hair and clothing. Roxas tearing Riku's pyjamas open over Axel's skin, Axel's own hands sliding down his back to cup his ass and pull him nearer. They bite and tear and roll around hard and once they fell off the bed and someone called up to ask if Riku was okay.

Roxas grasps the trellis on the wall next to Riku's balcony and pulls himself up slowly. Rose thorns cut into his fingers briefly and he sucks on one hand as he grabs the rail and slides over.

Riku opens the balcony door and looks at him.

Roxas looks back and jerks his chin up after a moment. He can never quite help but feel defensive about Riku. Something about the way Riku looks at him and not at Sora always puts him a little on edge, reminds him of all that time spent where Riku was willing to kill him to get Sora back.

Admittedly, recently that expression has been changing, but that's hardly something that makes Roxas all that more comfortable.

Riku's gaze drops. "You're bleeding."

Roxas shrugs. "Your balcony's hard to get up to," he says. It's all between them, sticks and the feel of being jerked upright by the joint of his shoulder. Sitting empty-handed on train seats. Beaches he missed out on. A long corridor that only goes one way and something at the end.

Shrugging back, Riku turns away. "I didn't know you were coming over tonight."

"Is it a bad time?"

"I don't care," Riku says, and then his body is stretching, changing that bit, red bleeding into his hair, and it's Axel who turns to look back at Roxas. "Sorry about that, baby," Axel says. "That guy sometimes doesn't want to move."

"Well," Roxas says. "It is his body."

"Tch, like I don't know that," Axel says. He takes a seat on his bed, pats it grinning. "I missed you."

"Are you lonely?"

"Nah," Axel says. "But I miss you anyway." He makes his eyes wide, like he' s playing cute, and Roxas lets Axel trick him, gets onto the bed with him, presses lips and bloody fingers to that familiar skin.

***

Later when Roxas is gone Riku rolls over and grumbles to himself; Axel leaves him damaged on purpose, he sometimes thinks. There's a bite on his throat that will be hellish to explain away tomorrow if he can't keep his collar turned out, and the throbbing near-pain is something else.

Like you mind it.

"From him I do," Riku shoots back.

Axel laughs. It fills his chest where their hearts nestle together.

You can't run forever, Axel says.

"Like you can."

I'm not running from anything any more.

Riku smiles tersely at him and throws at him an image from his past of Kairi collapsed rag-doll-like against a mast and the image grows until Axel can't back up any farther without falling and instead the ship springs up around him and he's there as Riku bends down and picks Kairi up in his arms.

Her head flops back, and her eyes are glazed and a little open and her mouth is open.

"Kairi," Riku says, young then, and holds her closer to his chest. She looks so much younger, Axel thinks as he circles the image. Darkness is roiling under Riku's feet, darkness is roiling through Riku's veins, eyes are opening in the shadows, but where Riku holds Kairi there's only warmth.

She's not there, though; Axel could say that much. Instead there's some little girl getting shoved into a cage in a castle, but Riku doesn't know that and Kairi doesn't know that either and that's another world, another person, not here at all.

Instead Riku just carries her around and tries to pose her as if she's properly living. His own shadow mimics his actions in horrible dark parodies but he ignores it and tucks her into bed like she's just sleeping and

Axel remembers the feel of her wrist under his hand as she tugged to try to get free

then turns and goes to face Sora and Riku and Axel snap out of it at the same time.

I'm not running, Axel says. I've got nothing to say to her.

Riku puts a pillow over his own head. "Coward," he says.

Hypocrite, Axel throws back, but the word's never bothered Riku before.

***

Sora is held up at his house for cleaning ("It's so unfair," he'd said, "I'm the Keyblade master, do I really have to do housework?") and Riku and Kairi are waiting out on the island for him to get free. She'd started out sitting with her legs dangling over the edge, the water just a bare distance below -- they'd all knocked each other into the water from there enough times over the years to know the risk.

Riku'd been leaning against the paopu tree, but after a time he comes and he sits down next to Kairi.

"Stop staring out like that," he says, teasingly. "You're reminding me of me."

"Is that a bad thing?" she asks, and waits so expectantly that he shoves lightly at her shoulder. She shoves back, laughing.

He lets her push him over -- Riku always is weak to when Kairi pushes him, after all - and drags her with him.

"Oh," she says. There's a startled, anticipatory edge to her voice. She's been waiting for this. He's been waiting too, he thinks, though it's never quite the same. But she knows that and he knows that and they both know.

He draws a slow breath in.

With Sora, when they kiss it's like a shock of need sent right to his groin until his protections fall away and he's bare and desperate.

When he kisses Kairi her lips are soft over his and it's more like gently drowning, he thinks; it's not desperate, it's not filling him with need but he feels a little like he could die like this.

Later, when he gets home -- hours later, after they'd finished kissing and kissing again, after she'd got that strange inward-turned look before smiling at him again, after Sora had shown up and the three of them had played on the beach with the timeless enjoyment of three people who didn't have to go anywhere -- he realizes Axel had been silent for almost all of that.

I was sleeping.

"I didn't ask," Riku points out aloud.

***

"Man," Sora says, and dumps the sand from his shoes. "Today was awesome, huh?"

It was pretty good. Roxas is ghostly in front of him, not really there but just projected, and he kneels down and pokes at the sand starting to pile on the floor.

Sora tosses his jacket over a chair and pulls his shirt over his head. Muffled as he squirms out of it, he says, "You weren't doing much though."

I played with the sandcastles...

"Sandcastles," Sora says. "Pfft. I thought you liked the beach."

What gave you that impression?

Sora gets the shirt off and shakes his hair out. He looks down at Roxas and nudges a foot through him. "You're being kind of pissy today. What's with that?"

It's nothing.

"Roxaaaas," Sora says, and flops down. Sand gets ground into the floorboards. He flops half through Roxas, and though there's nothing to have pressure against Roxas goes down under him nevertheless, fingers catching against the bare skin of Sora's back. "You can't hide things from me, man."

I can too--

"Just tell me, come on."

Roxas is silent and hesitant, and all at once he relaxes; Sora can feel the muscles unknot in his own shoulders as Roxas lets go of the tension. "I just don't think Riku likes me very much," Roxas says through Sora's mouth.

Sora raises his fingers to his own lips, then looks down at Roxas, thoughtful. "Nah," he says. "Riku's just got a weird way of showing it."

Roxas shakes his head. There's history.

"Sure," Sora says. "We all have history. But you gotta learn to let that stuff go."

I'm not the one holding onto it!

Sora says, "You both hold on to way too much anyway. I'm going to go to to bed; were you going to -- uh, stuff tonight?"

'Stuff', as if Sora himself doesn't sneak off to roll around with Riku and sink flesh into flesh. Roxas says, "No, not tonight."

He's already back into Sora before Sora can respond, and Sora shrugs; yawns a bit, and puts the two of them to bed.

***

Riku's sleeping.

Axel pulls himself separate like he's doing something illicit, slides his form out and crawls across the bed. He sits on the edge, it not dipping beneath his weight and he looks back at Riku.

Riku still wears his bangs long to help cut the light from burning his eyes, and when he's sleeping on his back like this, they fall back from his cheeks, a rare occasion. With his cheekbones bare, he looks younger; the sharp fall of silver bangs tends to elongate his face. But under there he's still round-cheeked.

Honestly, Axel's not sure how old he was when he died, but though he and Riku are about a same height, and though the Axel-who-is-Axel is only a few years, sometimes he feels much older.

Other times--

He shivers away from that thought and turns away from the sight of Riku's soft pale cheek and instead looks towards the balcony. The moon is full out there tonight, a lover's moon to guide night visits with ease, to make one recognize another even in the depth of the darkness. It's much smaller than Axel expects; he's not used to worlds where he's around at night and notices the moon. Before, Kingdom Hearts always shone at the back of his mind, at the reminder of where home wasn't. It was a light that'd chase them through the dark. They were never fully creatures of darkness; not when the insides of their hoods were marked with a pale light that nobody else could see.

But that was then and this is now; the moon is a tiny moon for a tiny world, and hangs high overhead in the cool air.

Axel stretches the limits of the separation from his heart, and heads out through the closed balcony doors. He leans on the rail of the large round balcony, stares out towards Sora's low house that he can't see from here. Roxas isn't coming tonight.

After a moment, he swings his legs over the rail, and just sits on the edge. The breeze catches at his hair even like this and he runs one hand into it, tilts his face to feel it.

One thing he'll say for this, he thinks. He feels everything so strongly it's like it wants to undo him. This isn't a bad thing; he's been knit pretty tight for fear of coming apart.

He closes his eyes and he remembers:




He corners Roxas on the open air balcony above the prisoners' tower. Roxas has been there watching the empty night sky like he could drive something into being there with the fierceness of his gaze alone. Axel slips out of nothingness to land cat-silent behind him and starts to circle.

Roxas knows Axel's there from the moment he crosses into Roxas's line of sight -- if he didn't know sooner, that is. But he doesn't really respond; just a quick flickering of his eyes over, then back to the sky.

"What are you looking for?" Axel drawls, arm brushing Roxas as he circles him in too tight a path to really let Roxas move from his spot. "Nothing's up there yet."

"They say it'll show up over our city."

"They say a lot of things."

"You don't believe it," Roxas says.

Axel shrugs. He thinks he can feel Roxas's breath on his skin even through the coat. "I don't believe a lot of things."

Roxas's lips tighten irritably. "Xemnas doesn't promise things like that if he can't carry through."

"The Superior," Axel says, "will do what he can pull off, sure."

"Fine," Roxas says, and turns away. He walks out of Axel's orbit when Axel's on his other side. Axel follows in a near-glide behind him. "Go away."

"No," Axel says.

"Why not?"

"Because I feel like following you."

It's no answer but Roxas doesn't deny it either. Axel leaps.

Roxas goes down under him only because he's taking the time to draw his weapons. He rolls under Axel and Axel has the gorgeously disconcerting feeling of what it'd be like to actually have Roxas under him instead of over him. He doesn't press it, and because he doesn't press it, the pale Keyblade impacts him hard in the side.

Axel doesn't have ribs that crack but he can feel the hit echo through him. He oofs, rolls backwards in an arch of his spine that bends him nearly double as he rolls up. Roxas follows, Keyblades weaving music in the air as they reflect light between them and catching Axel in a pattern of bruises that'll leave him too soon for comfort. Axel fights back with fire and the whirring edges of his own weapons spinning around him, but Roxas is better than him.

So much better than him.

He ends up on his back with a cut open on his cheek and the dark Keyblade pinning his hood to the ground and Roxas straddling his chest with his knees and he grins up and catches Roxas's gaze.

"If I had a heart," Axel says. "I'd give it to you."

He likes to say stupid things sometimes to see if Roxas responds. He never does but there's always that empty echoing tension in the hollow of Axel's chest as he waits.

"There's only one thing you actually want," Roxas says scornfully and Axel closes his eyes.



-- but that's the past and things are different now. Axel licks his palm; he'd closed his fingers around one of the vines on the trellis to see what it would have felt like for Roxas to bloody himself in his attempts to come to him. The blood there is salty and pulses with a rhythm like life. In the bed, Riku's fist is knotted in the bedsheets and blood seeps in there, faintly.

***

Riku dreams of light and the clash of weapon on weapon, of a demand to shut up, stop saying things you don't feel

But I do feel them

Roxas, Roxas, god, Roxas--

he dreams of the halo of light exploding behind that pale head over him and pushing Roxas's head out of the way to see the heart starting to form in the sky outside and for a moment it feels like maybe their actions did this but--

-- That's impossible; there is nothing their actions can do to affect anything. They're just flesh on flesh pounding out a rhythm of proof of nothingness and there's no connection between them right now. There's hardly anything but a faint physical need that Riku wants to tear open.

So somewhere else someone's doing something that can get them something if they steal things piecemeal so that they can claim something for themselves.

Roxas gets angry as Riku stares up past him, or as close as Roxas ever gets to angry -- cold -- and his lips pull back off his teeth as he grabs Riku by his hair and slams his head into the floor. "Do you think I'm doing this because I like it?" Roxas hisses at Riku. "This is what you wanted, so pay attention."



Riku wakes with an erection and a throbbing headache and for a moment he doesn't know where he is or who he is or what the feeling around his heart is.

***

As Kairi brushes her hair before bed, she's humming to herself. A dream is a wish your heart makes Naminé recognizes and smiles faintly.

Kairi's happy and she feels warm.

"You're in love," Naminé whispers. She leans forward, puts her hands to Kairi's shoulders. They glow where they touch.

Kairi looks up into the empty mirror and smiles. "That's true," she says, and the smile turns more beaming.

"Both of them?" Naminé asks.

"It's always been both of them," Kairi says. "More or less," she adds after a moment, embarrassed.

"More or less," Naminé says. "In different ways."

"You understand."

"Of course," Naminé says, and smiles her careful quiet smile. "I am you."

***

"Not today," Riku tells Sora on the phone.

"Huh?" Sora asks. "Something up?"

"Sorry," Riku says and hangs up. His first impulse is to go away; he doesn't have a gummi ship or anything, but he knows how to get messages out. That takes too long though and the uneasy feeling isn't going anywhere. Instead he tells his family that he's sick -- not that they care, really -- and stays up in his room.

You're going to drive us both crazy, you know.

"Shut up," Riku says. He's not talking to Axel today, except when he can't help it.

Axel looks up from where he's sitting on the bed. His thin brows crease in something like pain and he fades.

***

"Why are you always so sure of yourself?" Roxas asks.

Kairi sits up abruptly, then blushes and covers her chest. Sora's hand is still curled between her legs -- Roxas's hand, that is -- where Sora had fallen asleep against her. "Um," she stammers. "I, I--"

Roxas flushes. "Sorry," he says. He sticks his hand behind his back.

"I don't feel very sure of myself right now," she says and laughs in embarrassment. "Were you talking to Naminé?"

"No," Roxas says. "Just you."

"Oh," she says. "Sorry, we don't... talk often, I guess."

"...I can go."

"No," she says, and leans forward. Her hair showers forward past her shoulders as she leans. "Don't. It's okay."

He nods once, briefly. "You just seem that way."

"I don't know how," she says. "I change my mind a lot, you know." She blushes. "Like, agreeing to stay, then going after them. I feel a little like I couldn't keep to my promise to be the girl who waits for them."

"They move too much," Roxas says, "to keep up with if you're passive."

For a moment Kairi's hair pales. "Yes," Naminé says. And then she's gone again, fled back inside and Kairi makes a soft, fond smile, folds a hand over her chest.

Roxas watches.

Kairi blinks at him again after a moment, then laughs a bit ruefully. "This is a little weird, isn't it?" she asks.

His cheeks, their flush only starting to vanish, darken again. "Um, yeah," he says. "A little."

She tugs the covers up. "But what b-brought this on?"

"I," Roxas ducks his head. "You're just. You know what you want, and it's like you don't have any regrets."

"I'm not sure I really can," she admits. "It's kind of -- those feelings just don't happen for me."

"Is that part of being a princess of heart too?" Roxas asks. He sounds sort of shocked.

"I guess so," she says slowly. "Some feelings, they just don't happen. I never get really angry, and I've never hated anyone..."

Roxas says, "That's sad."

"Is it? I don't know," she says. "It doesn't really bother me. I'm usually pretty happy, so... but, I guess, it's like... when you know what you want, why let that cling to your heart and drag you down? Either it'll work out, at which point there's really no reason to be upset, or it won't and you might as well accept it."

He nods slowly. He says, "I'm sick of the past."

"Huh?"

"It drags me down," he says. "I'm tired of regret. I just want to let it go and live again."

Kairi hesitates. She leans forward, puts her hand over Roxas's knee. "Is this about Axel?" she asks.

"What? No," Roxas says. "Well -- only by extension."

"What do you mean?"

Riku, Naminé whispers.

"It's Riku," Roxas says, almost at the same time. His browse crease. "I don't know if he hates me or if he hates himself for me, but either way. I don't like it."

***

Normally Riku wouldn't have gone anywhere once he'd decided to stay in. But then Kairi shows up at the door, and is let up immediately, and she gives him that smile so bright that her eyes seem almost to close to protect herself from its brilliance.

He blinks at her slowly.

"Can I come in?"

Not going anywhere wasn't good enough, if she came to him. Protests dry up in his throat, though, and he holds his bedroom door open.

She walks in and looks around a little shyly, tucking some hair behind her ear. "Big room."

"...You've been in here before."

She grins. "Ah, you caught me," she says lightly, and goes over to sit on the bed.

All of a sudden Riku feels very awkward, like he doesn't know where to stand. He clears his throat, shuts his door firmly, and pulls out his desk chair, sitting on that.

"Are you okay?" Kairi asks.

"...Sure. Why?"

"Mm, Sora mentioned you didn't want to do anything today," she says.

Riku rolls his eyes skyward. "Sora worries too much," he says. "I can't do everything with him."

"But you've always wanted to," Kairi says. It's the same sort of tone she'd use for pointing out that it's nice weather.

Riku glances aside. "Yeah, well--"

"Is it about Roxas?"

"...no." A pain starts up in his chest. He's done too much he can't make up for and sometimes it pisses him off, that he's set up his life to be a losing battle all the time already.

Kairi frowns. "Well, if you say so..."

Riku shrugs. It's okay to be the sort of person who'd do anything for someone, to take on sins so they can live, but the memory of it doesn't go away later. His heart is throbbing now, painful and crystalline in his chest. "It's just--"

Kairi tilts her head. "You can tell me," she says.

He shuts his lips tight.

A moment later Kairi's mouth opens and Naminé says, "Kairi, we did some terrible things for Sora's sake." Her voice is calm, even. "I don't mind it much, because I knew Roxas would become whole. But Riku..."

"Shut up," Riku says. It hurts sudden and hard, like his chest being ripped open, because she's the last person he imagined betraying him in this.

Kairi's eyes glance towards him quickly with one of Naminé's calm expressions. "I'm sorry," she says, in that faintly pained calm tone she tends to have. "But it's just that Riku's a good person."

***

He hates this, hates how his feelings are changing. He can blame Axel for most of it -- Axel who moved in with a heart full of feelings for Roxas, and it presses against his own inside and rubs and sets off things he never should have felt and breaks him down and he thinks he's going to scream or maybe worse, but that'll scare Kairi and he reaches inside as if he could grab Axel and shake--

***

Kairi blinks.

Riku has never actually run away from her before, so she tilts her head hesitantly at Axel.

Axel ducks his head a little, looks up at her. "Hi," he says. "...Kairi."

"Um," she says, delicately. "Riku and I were just--"

Riku's looking at her again. "--I just--"

"Riku?"

They're flickering back and forth as if they're not sure how to share the same space, and Riku's skin is rippling, layer of identity shifting back and forth. Kairi folds her hands firmly together because she can feel Naminé shaking under her skin.

Blindly she reaches out and grabs one.

***

You talk to her, Riku argues, why the hell do I have to deal with this thing for Roxas? You're the one who's guilty over Kairi, you're the one who hates having dragged her off by her wrist to be captured by Saix and have who know what happen to her--

Approaching her had been the easiest and strangest thing in the world. Like he'd tuned everything out and there she was, and he hadn't exactly lied on the beach but he'd hated the truth enough to make it like a lie. They do have something in common, they're both in love and they're both idiots who wait and they're both idiots who will chase someone over the worlds if they can because sometimes waiting isn't good enough.

He'd stared down at her as if approaching something so completely foreign he couldn't comprehend it and maybe that's the worst part. He knows how she has to feel because of the way his own empty chest ached with recognition of similarities. It's not something he'd wanted to do. It's just something that he'd do.

There's nothing wrong with being someone who

's the sort of person who will do anything

for someone. But she'd been caught up in that and all she'd wanted was to go on her own chase and if he'd won he'd have frustrated her needs. Axel's need to see Roxas. Her need to see Sora. Who the hell is he to choose but a man in love?

Fuck it, he's sorry, sure, but he'd do it again so how can he say it to her

his

face?

***

Kairi tugs, leans back hard with her grip on whichever one she'd managed to grab.

Riku falls on top of her.

There's a long moment of silence; his form is his own and he looks down at her with a familiar confused, angry, desperate expression. She swallows a bit uncertainly and touches his cheek.

"Riku?" she asks, soft.

He closes his eyes. "Sorry," he mutters, and then ducks his head and kisses her.

She's startled by the urgency in his kiss, opens her mouth into it because it's Riku, and Riku needs something and if she can give it, she will. She lets him mouth at her lower lip, lets him tangle a hand into her hair, lets him pull back just enough to kiss her throat hard enough to bruise her there. He's shaking and she's shaking too, helpless; it's never been like this with Sora, but Riku isn't Sora, and that's why he's Riku.

Kairi draws a deep breath, tries to stop her thoughts from whirling, unzips a pocket. "Here," she whispers and presses the packet into his hand.

It takes him a moment to realize what she's given him and then he blanches, starts to push back. "No," he says. "I don't, that's not," and she tugs at him again and kisses his slack mouth, kisses along his neck, draws another steadying breath and presses a hand to the front of his pants.

He groans helplessly and he folds then and unzips her, peels her out of the pink outer dress until she's only in the white slip dress beneath. For a moment he pulls back and looks at her strangely but she smiles back encouragingly and he nods, like he's accepting some sort of task.

Kairi giggles.

He blanches again. "Kairi..."

"Here," she says. "Don't look so nervous. Together," she adds, and helps him undress and rolls with him lazily and kisses him, undoes the packet, rolls it on him. The look on his face is relieved enough that she almost feels strange, a knot in her stomach.

"I don't want to hurt you," he says, which is funny because Sora comes back all marked up, but that's Riku all over.

She bites her lower lip. "I don't want to hurt you either," she says seriously and he laughs, and that makes it easier, makes it comfortable as he sinks down against her and lets her arrange them.

And after that movement and heat and sweat, the almost reverent pass of his hands over her breasts and she thinks he's scared and hopeful and

Do you think he'll forgive me? Naminé whispers.

Kairi opens her mouth and whispers, "Yes," and then she's coming like a rising waterfall as she gasps, arching under Riku

Riku's eyes are huge and very young and like falling apart as he starts to shake, but the tremors are different this time, pouring from the inside out, not pounding inward, and she gasps and shivers around spikes of pleasure and clings close to the Riku she knows.

***

Sora kicks a shoe at the wall -- not because he's sulking but mostly because he's trying to find the angle he can kick it up onto the shelf behind him at.

"Think Riku'll want to hang out tomorrow again?"

By hang out you mean...

Sora scowls. "I mean hang out! Whatever else happens is whatever else happens."

I don't know.

"Are you still worried about that?"

Roxas is silent a long moment. And then he yanks Sora's leg up and kicks. There. Look. You're done.

Sora turns and peers as his shoe topples off the shelf again. "Huh. I think Riku will want to. Kairi's gone over to let him know we miss him, right?"

Something like that Roxas says, and I hope so anyway.

***

Kairi falls asleep shortly after, clearly not really meaning to. She wakes a little while later and stretches luxuriously. Her eyelids rise slowly, lashes fluttering.

Axel watches her wake.

He watches her realize he's there in bed with her, naked, one hand resting on her hip. She freezes, and that expression on her face is a familiar one mixed with embarrassment -- that vague suspicion from the beach when a stranger offered her the hopes of Sora.

"Axel?" she asks with some trepidation. She gives him a tentative smile.

What do you say to a girl who held your heart in her hands, and gave it back to you along with everything you'd planned to take from her?

Axel grins at her. A moment later, he forces it into a leer.

"You've grown up into a fine young woman," he says, and lets Riku take over again.

***

They kiss, and Riku tells Kairi there's something he has to do, and she smiles, and kisses his lips, and then his cheek, and tells him he should do it then.

They dress. When he turns back -- he couldn't quite help but turn away while dressing, at least, even if it was a bit late -- Naminé is watching him with an uneasy expression.

He tilts his head and gives her a grin and a two-fingered salute.

The smile she bursts into is bright and sweet, and she nods to him, head ducking forward.

"Thank you," she says, and it's Naminé so he really can't tell if it was for that right then, or for what he's planning to do.

***

Night's worn on and Sora's fallen asleep, but Roxas can't seem to. He paces Sora's narrow room, looks up at the toy ship and plays with the sails, ends up sitting with his knees pulled up against his chest and not thinking about much at all.

There's a tap on the window.

He blinks and looks over in time to see a few more pebbles hit.

"What," he begins, and opens the window.

Riku leans in. "I'm coming in."

"Ah," Roxas says. "Sora's sleeping, but I can trade places--"

Riku tilts his head. "I thought I was telling you I'm coming in."

Roxas blinks. He nods slowly. "You were."

"Give me a hand up."

It's like a piece clicking into place. Not like it was when he joined with Sora; nothing of that magnitude. Roxas recognizes it a moment later as relief. Tidying up, putting things away. He leans out the open window, holds a hand down.

Riku takes it, grasps Roxas's hand firmly, gets his other arm over the windowsill, and lets Roxas pull him up.

When he's over the ledge he's Axel, and Roxas blinks, uncertain. He wasn't expecting much, he didn't know what he should be expecting -- but it's not this. Not Riku trading places here and now. Maybe some confrontation. Fighting. Getting it out.

"Axel?" he asks.

Axel grins.

"You didn't come last night," he says. "So we decided to come to you."