Kingdom Hearts, Axel/Sora, living with your ghost
That was the funny thing about Halloween town. Sora had thought it was just another world where people looked a bit different, no weirder in the end than Atlantica or the Pride Lands, but it wasn't that, not only that. All the stories that anyone had ever told about Halloween were really, really true, at least in this place. Maybe he'd sort of known that all along.
There was nothing special about the graveyard past the town square. He'd never come here as anyone but himself, had no connection to the place other than a sort of proprietary pride, a gladness at seeing the place free of Heartless and Nobodies alike. Only that wasn't entirely true, because the ghost leaning his hip on a weathered headstone had also worn black the last time Sora had seen him, hadn't been see-through, had been...something like a friend. Even if he had been a Nobody.
"Nice fangs," Axel said, and Sora raised a hand to his mouth, self-consciously pressing his fingertips to his teeth. Axel, being dead, at least got to look like himself.
"Thanks," he said, trying to figure out the weird flutter inside his chest--was he happy to see Axel, even like this, or did it just make him quietly miserable? The echo of Roxas inside him wasn't sure, but Axel's wistful smile, the way he searched Sora's face for traces of another, made him clench his teeth against an apology. He had a ghost inside him, but he couldn't look like Roxas for Axel, not even here.
But he could close the distance between them and reach up to frame Axel's face, and that was the good thing about Halloween Town; the rules of dead and living didn't really apply. Axel's eyes widened when Sora's palms didn't pass right through him, and Sora didn't let on that Axel's spirit-skin felt like ice, cool and smooth as marble.
He tasted like ash and flame when Sora pulled his head down and kissed him, though that was frozen too. It was easier to fist his hands in Axel's long coat as he was lifted, hiked up onto a headstone so that Axel didn't have to bend in half to keep kissing him, as he wrapped his legs around lean hips and squirmed as a cool hand unfastened his pants. It was the gloves, he told himself, that was all; leather got cold on nights like this.
Axel's grip was steady, sure, and he rocked up into that touch with his eyes mostly closed, not wanting to see if Axel was still looking for that other as he panted the man's name, teeth buried in his lip. He didn't want Roxas to be disappointed if Axel didn't find it. It was easier to focus on cold kisses, the flick of Axel's tongue as his thumb pressed just there and Sora seized with a muffled shout.
Axel's hand was stained with him, was halfway to Axel's mouth when Sora caught his wrist--the way Roxas would have--and brought it to his own lips instead. The leather was musty on his tongue, and he tasted strange to himself; he did it anyway, licking Axel's palm clean, his fingers, his knuckles, and hoped it was enough.
He didn't look up again until his own wrists were caught, stopping him before he could tug the zipper of Axel's coat down more than an inch. Axel's expression was torn, sad and hungry and uncertain, and Sora deflated on a sigh.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm not him."
"No." Axel's thumbs stroked the soft inner skin of his wrists, hands sliding as he stepped closer into the cradle of Sora's legs. "You're not. But I could get to like you too."
It made Roxas laugh at him, but that warmed him almost enough to let him forget about the cold.