Title: Any Percent
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts
Pairing: Axel/Roxas
Rating: Teen
Length: 1,658 words
Author's note: The "Quiet Mountain" joke is borrowed from Ninja Of The Night's Sora the Explorer cosplay skit. The referenced speedrunning event is an in-universe analog of the very real (and very wonderful) Games Done Quick, which is running as we speak <3 This story takes place at some point during the events of 358/2 Days, but it could just as easily be read as an AU, I think.
Summary:
Winter hasn't been so bad so far. Sure, it's chilly out, and yeah their missions have only gotten more exhausting, but Roxas can't complain, not when he and Axel get to watch their favorite speedrunning event every night after work this week.


Axel got them sea salt ice cream in summer, so in winter it was Roxas’s turn, and in winter you couldn’t have anything so frozen as sea salt ice cream. You could still have the sea salt, though. You just had to mix one teaspoon of it into one part honeybunch and any percent of soy milk before bringing the whole thing to a boil. Then you could pour it out into two mugs.

“Did I miss much?” asked Roxas. He was glancing at the screen as he set the mugs of sea salted caramel milk (okay, you come up with a better name for it) down on the floor. Axel’s room didn’t have a table you could set drinks on, none of their rooms did, so the floor was the only place for the mugs. It wasn’t a problem, really—Axel’s TV was on the floor, too, and he and Roxas usually sat on the floor to watch it.

“Nah, they were just reading out a few donations. Tech's setting up for the next run now.” Axel patted the patch of floor beside him, inviting Roxas to sit down.

Roxas sat down and climbed into the blanket Axel was holding open for him. The blanket was this heavy, woven thing that Axel had picked up from one of the markets in Agrabah ahead of winter. It had tassels on the end and Roxas threaded the tassels between his fingers as he wrapped the remaining half of the blanket around himself.

“Heartless Towner, Any percent. I can't wait,” said Roxas, settling into the blanket with a peaceful sigh, his side pressing close to Axel’s. He shook his head in awe. “I know it’s the whole point of the event, but still, it’s amazing they’re gonna play the whole game in thirty minutes. I mean… how? When we played it, it took us two weeks to clear.”

“Well,” said Axel, snuggling close to Roxas, “for one thing, we let the game go idle a buncha times 'cuz someone kept distracting us whenever it wasn’t his turn with the controller. I'm sure that had something to do with our total playtime being as long as it was.” Axel pressed a kiss into Roxas’s hair.

Roxas was laughing, and he snuggled closer to Axel as he laughed. Axel was warm. “You know what I mean.”

“And you know what I mean.” Axel pushed his shoulder into Roxas playfully. “You know that pause screen’s forever gonna remind me of your mouth and how good it feels, right?"

“Hey, I don’t remember you complaining about it at the time.” Roxas grinned.

“All I’m saying,” said Axel, grinning right back, “is that there’s a pretty good reason you and I could never be speedrunners.”

“Speaking of which, who’s running Heartless Towner, anyhow?” Roxas asked, looking up at the TV.

Up until now, all you'd been able to see on the screen was the crowd camera, broadcasting live from the hall where the speedrunning event was held in-person. Now the crowd camera closed out and the display on the TV screen reshuffled. The main menu of Heartless Towner appeared, taking up almost all of the display, and just to the left of it, another smaller window opened up to show a live video feed of the speedrunner's seat. A kid in a big, droopy t-shirt was setting up there. He had a toothy smile on his face, all gap teeth and excitement. …Hang on. Wasn’t that—

“Hey. I… I think I’ve seen this guy before,” said Roxas.

“He’s the guy who ran Quiet Mountain 2 back in summer, right?” said Axel. “I mean, checks out that he’d run Heartless Towner as well. Man's got a type."

In the live video feed, the speedrunner that Roxas recognized took his seat in the swivel chair and pulled on a headset. “Sorry it took awhile to finish setup,” said the speedrunner, through the screen, “but tech’s finally given me the double thumbs-up so we’re all good to get going. Thank you for having me here tonight, everyone, I’m DogStreet and I’m gonna be running the classic GameStation horror game…”

“I guess so,” said Roxas, speaking over the TV audio. “But…”

Axel was probably right—DogStreet was probably the guy they'd watched run the horror game Quiet Mountain 2 six months ago, during the summer leg of this same speedrunning event. That wasn’t what Roxas remembered him from, though. “I'm sure I've seen him somewhere other than that.”

“Joining me on commentary today," DogStreet continued, turning in his chair and gesturing, "we've got Grandstander and munnypouch, two very good friends of mine who actually speedrun Heartless Towner: The Emblem Chronicles co-op, so they're definitely no strangers to the Heartless Towner series.” Behind DogStreet, a boy with a haybale of hair and a girl in an orange tank top waved from where they were sitting on the couch.

Roxas sat up, pulling a bit of the blanket along with him. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s them. Axel, we’ve seen these guys in Twilight Town before. They're that group of friends we passed by that one time."

“Have we?” Axel scratched behind his ear, thinking, squinting at the screen. Then he sat back and shook his head. “Mmph, gotta be honest with ya, Roxas, I’m not sure I remember those two from anywhere.”

So much for getting it memorized. “It was during one of my early days with the Organization,” said Roxas. “Remember? We were walking around the back streets of Twilight Town, you and me, and I heard that—that…” How had he described it at the time? “…that ‘ha ha’ sound. When you taught me what laughing was.”

“Ohhh.” Axel smiled. “Now THAT I remember. Seems like ages ago you needed me to show you all those things, teach you stuff I’ve always taken for granted… Looking atcha now, you wouldn’t think there’d been a time when you had no idea what friends were. Heh heh. You were so cute, Roxas. Still are.”

“—Y-Yeah, right.” Roxas raised his shoulders to his ears, sinking his reddened cheeks into the blanket until all Axel would’ve seen of Roxas's face were his eyes and his very, very furrowed brow above it. What was he supposed to say when Axel said stuff like that? He felt warm inside, as if he’d drunk his sea salted caramel milk already. “Anyway,” Roxas said, lowering the blanket and getting back to the point, “do you remember them now?”

“Don’t worry, I remember. They were on summer vacation at the time, just hanging around doing nothing much the way friends tend t’do.”

“You're right, they were too.” Axel and Roxas had days like that too, sometimes. Sometimes it was fun to do nothing much with someone you loved. The best part was just being together. Roxas rested his head on Axel’s shoulder. “Hey, it’s starting.”

With a press of any button, the Heartless Towner main menu dissolved into the difficulty selection screen. DogStreet selected the Shadow difficulty level—the easiest one—this was the Any percent category, after all—and then selected his character. You could play as one of two characters in Heartless Towner. One character let you use the lockpick from the start. The other got the lighter.

“Like us,” Roxas had said, back when he and Axel had played the game themselves. “You know, ‘cause I have the Keyblade, and you…”

Smiling at the memory, Roxas leaned forward through the blanket and reached for his mug, wrapping both hands around it and lifting it toward him, watching as the timer appeared at the bottom of the screen, the seconds starting to count upward from zero. Quietly Roxas blew away some of the steam rising out from his mug. On the screen, the three friends from Twilight Town were laughing as the player character ran through the corridors of the old mansion, barreling past all the Neoshadows that jumped out in each room. The three friends looked so comfortable together. Honestly, the audience sitting behind the commentary couch looked really comfortable, too.

But no one in the world, in any of the worlds, really, could have felt as right as Roxas felt now. He had Axel by his side, the two of them under the one blanket, watching together as one of their favorite games was played on TV by someone who’d honestly played a pretty important part in bringing Axel and Roxas together in the first place…

Axel must have noticed the look on Roxas’s face as he reached over for his mug, ‘cause he squeezed Roxas’s free hand under the blanket.

Taking a sip of his drink, Roxas tasted cream and honey, salty, but sweet. He lowered his mug a moment later, turned his head away to make sure he didn’t have milk on his face or anything, then turned back, just in time to see Axel take a sip from his.

Roxas smiled hopefully. “How is it?”

Axel let out a grateful sigh. “So good. …No, it’s perfect,” he said, tipping his head back and closing his eyes. “It’s crazy. I never thought I'd be into hot drinks, but you've really changed my mind, Roxas.”

“I’m just glad it turned out all right,” said Roxas, smiling and looking down into his mug.

Looking down into a mugful of sea salted caramel milk wasn’t like looking into a glass of water, so Roxas didn’t see his reflection when he looked down. Which meant he didn’t see that there was still a little bit of milk on his upper lip. Axel saw it, though, as soon as he opened his eyes.

Well, Roxas couldn’t be too embarrassed about that. Not when it was the reason Axel leaned in close and kissed Roxas above the lips, right where the milk was. He kissed Roxas tender and slow, taking his time as if it’d never run out. Yeah, thought Roxas, returning Axel’s kiss, they could never be speedrunners.