Title: Closer [
Ao3]
Series: Kingdom Hearts
Pairing/Characters: Axel/Roxas
Rating: R
Total length: 719 words
Warnings: Demons, gore, reoccurring death (and devouring) of a character, horror
Summary: His brother always told him that their kind were persistent. That when they latched onto something, they never let go. They sucked it dry and ate it’s bones, but Axel thinks that if his brother were still alive, he’d agree that this level of obsession was maybe going a little bit too far.
Author's Note: Tumblr Music Meme #813.
Closer [Kings of Leon] Stranded in this spooky town
Stoplights are swaying and the phone lines are down
This floor is crackling cold, she took my heart, I think she took my soul
With the moon I run far from the carnage of the fiery sun
Driven by the strangle of vein showing no mercy I do it again,
Open up your eye, you keep on crying baby, I’ll bleed you dry
Skies they blink at me, I see a storm bubbling up from the sea
And it's coming closer
You shimmy shook my bone leaving me stranded all in love on my own
Do you think of me? Where am I now? Baby where do I sleep?
Feel so good but I'm old, 2000 years of chasing's taking its toll
His brother always told him that their kind were persistent. That when they latched onto something, they never let go. They sucked it dry and ate it’s bones, but Axel thinks that if his brother were still alive, he’d agree that this level of obsession was maybe going a little bit too far.
It’s been years and years since their first life together. Years and years since Sora and Riku and Kairi and Kingdom Hearts. It’s been eons since “Let’s meet again in the next life.” Years since Roxas, and years since Lea-
Axel hasn’t been human since that first life. But Roxas-Roxas has been human for all of them.
He’d come back from death’s sweet embrace with black eyes and fangs, with black smoke as a soul. He’d come back to life already in hell, and by the time he’d clawed his way to the surface, he’d already forgotten what it was to be human.
He hadn’t found Roxas at first. He’d wandered backwater roads and made deals with superstitious humans, smiled wickedly at them as he took their souls.
The first time he’d found Roxas, Roxas had been on the other side of a deal, wishing his brother back to life in exchange for his soul. For a moment, something inside Axel had whimpered to life, a wretched shriveled thing that might have been his heart. Axel had snuffed it clean, and when he leaned in to kiss Roxas, the smoke inside of him had been fanned into an open flame. Roxas’s soul was the most exquisite thing he’d ever tasted, warm and golden like the nectar of the gods. He licked his way into Roxas’s mouth, chasing that taste, and then he let Roxas go. He let the bag of bones that once was Roxas walk away.
When that wasn’t good enough, he crept into Roxas’s village, and devoured the rest of him.
The second life was barely any different. He found Roxas wasting away with some kind of disease, the corpses of his parents mere feet away, frozen to death in the middle of the night. He’d licked his lips and let Roxas cry into his chest as the night passed them by. When the sun began to rise and the corpses began to thaw, Axel ripped Roxas apart.
Years pass and he still chases him. The fields and trees have fallen way to concrete buildings and steel walls, but Roxas always finds him. The years that Axel can’t seem to find him, Roxas comes to him, a lamb to sacrifice. Some lives he even smiles as Axel devours him, closing his eyes and baring his throat to Axel’s teeth.
Years and years, and this time Axel finds him in an abandoned town, where the weeds have grown tall between the cracks of the sidewalks, where trees have grown around cars and buildings-the stoplights swaying and long dead.
He’s just a kid this time, younger than he was the first. Thirteen, Axel thinks. Maybe fourteen.
He’s dirty, covered in his own filth. “There’s a storm coming,” he says dreamily, squinting in the sunlight that Axel’s let through the doorway.
Axel sits down beside him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders and pulling him close. “Aren’t you tired of me yet?” Roxas asks, eyes glazed. “Surely I don’t taste that good.”
“I’m tired of the chase,” Axel says. “Two thousand years, kid. It takes it’s toll.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have to chase me anymore. Maybe what you’re after isn’t just my soul.” Roxas grins shakily and nuzzles closer. He’s tired, Axel thinks. An old soul, coming back time after time with cracks-fragments that have been lost to Axel, lost to the greedy reach of the blackness of his own.
“What else would I be after?”
“Maybe after all this time, you don’t have to chase me anymore,” Roxas sighs, resting his head against Axel’s shoulder, his eyelids drooping. “Maybe this time you should just keep me.”
Something in Axel’s chest gutters to life as Roxas falls asleep. He thinks of ripping the kid’s soul out right now, but he’s tired. Roxas’s soul is not the bright thing it once was and something inside of him is growing, drowning out the blackness.
He lets Roxas sleep. The kid looks like he needs it.