Tinderflame
Kingdom Hearts 2 [Alex cornerverse] -- Roxas/Alex
2027 words

+++++

Alex was in the middle of some half-formed peculiar dream

(with the roar of the ocean in his ears, and wet sand under his feet
and Kingdom Hearts in the sky overhead
while he stretched his arms up)

when his bedroom door opened. He didn't lift his head from the pillow; only two people ever came into his room without knocking first, and the footsteps were too quiet to be Sora. He did tense a little, because he was lying on his stomach with his face in the pillows, and while it was comfortable enough, it was also quite a bit of his back being left open.

The bed sank a little, and then Roxas said, "You're awake, aren't you."

Dutifully, he grunted agreement. When he turned his head just a little, he could see Roxas' profile, head tilted up and expression thoughtful.

"Mphnrrrgh rrngh," he said, which had originally meant to be "Where'd the others go?" and got lost in translation.

"Out," said Roxas. "Riku went to meet Kairi for after her club meeting gets out."

... Well, then. That bit of information was worth a bit more effort.

Alex pushed himself up onto his elbows and yawned widely, showing off teeth, and said, "Then, what, they trust us without a chaperone now?"

Roxas looked vaguely annoyed. "Like I need one."

"Course you do." Alex yawned again, blinking watery eyes from the force of it. "You're a troublemaker, Roxas, the worst sort. Always running off, doing your own thing, driving the rest of crazy trying to keep up with you ..."

"Half the trouble I got into when I first joined the Organization was your fault."

"... blaming your elders for your sins, Roxas, the list just keeps going on!" Alex heaved himself onto his side instead, crossing his arms under his head. "You wonder why we always had someone watching you at all times!"

Roxas shifted and then leaned over Alex, one hand on each side to support his weight. "I thought it was 'cause you liked me," he said. His expression was mostly deadpan -- as it usually was -- but there was also a brief glimmer of amusement in his eyes, and that was enough of a hint to keep Alex smirking back.

"You're okay," Alex said. "For a scrawny trouble-making little kid."

"What," Roxas said, "you're not interested?"

"I could melt the doorknob before you get out," Alex said, matching his bland tone. "Yeah, yeah, Keyblade and everything, but that'd slow you down enough for me to get you."

"That's just what you think," Roxas said, and leaned down.

+++

Sex as a Nobody was a practice in mechanics and dynamics: the body could react and responded to stimuli -- but without a true heart, the process was really more stilted and embarrassing than anything else; there was no point, except for the power implied in the act, and that was why Alex-as-Axel had always done it -- first it had been to show others that he was in control of them, because his Assassins and other lower Nobodies would yield willingly to him

(he was their master, their king, their savior and he would take what was due to him)

and then other members of the Organization (though a good actor never tells his secrets); he'd done it to show his dominance over them, and had been retaliated on in return. That was how sex with a Nobody went.

With Roxas, though, it had always been less of control over him (because, rumors went, even Xemnas could not completely control the wild card the Key of Destiny was), but to show control over himself.

Because they had no hearts, no worlds, no true existence to call their own, but they were still real, and sex cemented that. Even without a heart, he could decide how he felt, if only for a brief moment in time.

... and sometimes, sex as a human wasn't entirely different, but hell, a bed was a lot more comfortable than an anonymous Castle hallway.

Alex flipped them with a small heave midway through the kiss, which Roxas allowed with a brief noise -- but then maintained the roll, so that they went tumbling until Alex's shoulder hit the wall, so that he was wedged in the corner between it and the bed, with Roxas still sprawled on top of him. He grunted once, something vaguely akin to protest, and Roxas pulled back to blink bright eyes at him.

"Have I mentioned disrespecting your elders?" Alex said.

"It might have come up," said Roxas, who then sat up and tugged his T-shirt off. His tan matched Sora's, brown all over, but more so along his arms and from a low neckline up. Comparatively, he sort of made Alex look bone-white, even without the stage makeup. "Wasn't worth my time."

"You really know how to romance a guy, Roxas," Alex drawled. "Why am I doing this again?"

"Because," Roxas said, reaching to undo the buttons of Alex's pants, "I'm the only one who puts up with your bullshit."

Alex pretended to consider that and nodded. "Hell, works for me," he said, and lunged.

+++

Roxas fought -- Roxas always fought, no matter what, because that's what he did -- but Alex had the advantage of surprise and greater height, if not necessarily weight -- he had an acrobat's training, but Roxas was pretty much pure muscle -- and eventually he managed to wrestle Roxas into a backwards sprawl across the bed, wrists pinned down.

"Wanna say uncle?" Alex asked, breathless.

Roxas just lifted an eyebrow and looked at him.

"It was worth a shot," he protested, though he grinned slightly as he did.

"Moron," Roxas said, and reached up, grabbing a loose fold of his shirt and jerking him back down.

+++

Another thing: Roxas kissed like he fought, all his strength into it -- though carefully controlled, only using his teeth instead of Keyblades for his weapon; though he was now hearted he wasn't any less -- desperate, really, his entire body thrown into the kiss. He liked to slide his hands into Alex's hair and hold on so tightly it hurt, occasionally flexing his fingers like a cat baking, and he liked to throw a leg around Alex's hips and pull them down, somehow finding a way for their limbs to fit together.

Somewhere along the way he might've said "ow" as Roxas' ankle jammed itself against his kidney, which earned him a low irritated noise and a hard yank at his hair. When he pulled back to breathe, Roxas' eyes were gleaming bright blue.

"Hi," Alex said, short of breath and inane, but hardly able to care.

Roxas' lips quirked, not quite a smile, and his next kiss was almost gentle. The pads of his fingers, rather than the nails, dragged against his scalp and felt embarrassingly good, almost better than the kiss itself, and Alex had the interesting split second of trying to decide whether to kiss harder or press more into Roxas' hands.

Then one of Roxas' legs bent up between his, nudging up, and pretty much decided the whole thing.

Alex let his arms relax, dropping the full of his weight atop Roxas, who grunted and pressed up with his knee, almost in warning, and Alex just laughed, low, and bit down Roxas' lower lip till he tasted blood. Roxas' hands pulled from his hair, yanking a bit at the end, and came to paw at Alex's own shirt, squirming up under the hem to palm against his stomach and up. One hesitated at his heart and then curled its fingers in, a fist against his chest, and finally Alex pulled back.

"Never mind," Roxas said, before he could ask. "Take your shirt off."

"Yes sir," Alex sniped and sat up, tugging the T-shirt over his head and dropping it somewhere behind him. "You gonna keep those pants?"

Roxas twitched a leg. "You're heavy," he said. "Get off, first."

"That's the idea, isn't it?" Alex grinned with all his teeth showing, but shifted off, batting Roxas' own hands away and hooking his fingers in the waistband. "Lift your hips, why don't you?"

With a snort, Roxas arched his back, then kept rolling, shoving hard with his shoulder in an attempt to bowl Alex over. He'd been half-expecting it, though, so he moved with it, using the same trick Roxas had tried earlier, using momentum to keep them going until he could pin Roxas again.

"Nuh-uh," he said, when they finished moving. "Let's do it my way."

"... your way sucks," Roxas said, then reached down to undo the button and fly of his pants.

"Maybe," Alex said through gritted teeth. "You might regret that."

Roxas paused, fingers brushing low on Alex's abdomen and looked up. His eyes were wide and clear, and he was smiling just a little -- a lopsided upper curl of his lip.

"Make me," he said.

+++

The biggest disadvantage of sex as a human, as opposed to sex as a Nobody, was that a human body could take a limited amount of abuse compared to the Nobody, so even when you really wanted to hurry now-now-now, you had to be at least a little careful if you didn't want to regret it later (if only because your partner would beat the crap out of you for damages later).

+++

Also, putting the bed up against the wall in a corner was both the smartest and stupidest idea he'd ever had; there were less chances of falling off the bed, but it made maneuvering kind of awkward, sometimes.

+++

And one of the things Alex liked best about having his heart back, one of the things he could admit to himself that he'd clawed back from that dark strange world for -- one of the reasons of a hundred that he'd hold onto this with tooth and nail until he was just a bone-cage over dust-organs -- was Roxas' head tilted back and the look of intense lost concentration on his face as his eyes squeeze shut and his mouth opens and his fingers are probably drawing blood from Alex's shoulders and he can't make himself care and

(in his own head he imagines opening a door
and the darkness falls away to show)

Roxas came in silence, not releasing his stranglehold even as the rest of his body relaxed, and Alex watched his face with something that was not awe -- but it almost felt close enough to count.

It wasn't really "love" that held them together, no matter what Sora and Kairi thought (Alex had them bandy the word around before, about him and Roxas, but he noted that the witch always remained silent). There was something a little more raw and a lot more tenuous about the whole thing, fitted together from strange mismatched pieces and promises made by beings that didn't exist -- and if one tilted one's head just so, it looked like love.

Maybe that was close enough.

+++

The next morning, Alex rolled over and opened one eye to find Roxas still beside him -- not faded back into Sora during the night and gone, which was odd enough that he froze, staring.

Light did good things to Roxas' sleeping face, slanting neatly across his mussed hair and the sharp rise of his cheekbone, which -- was really kind of a stupid thing to be thinking about a sleeping guy, anyway.

He reached out, hesitated, then scuffled Roxas' hair hard; all he got was a sleepy grumble and Roxas turning his face into the pillow. He did not, however, try to actually move away; if anything, the shift brought him closer, so that his hip was close enough to Alex's own that he could feel the warmth of it, a line that stretched to about the knee, where Roxas' leg bent away.

When he himself moved, though, Roxas' hand snaked out, closing around his arm and holding on with sleepy strength; the half-slice of his face that was visible showed -- not a smile, but contentment at least, and that was sometimes the better thing to ask for.

Alex grinned. There were worse ways to start a day.