Title: Deae Ex Machina
Category: Kingdom Hearts, post-KH2 non-AU, humor/romance
Rating: M
Pairings: Primary – AkuRoku, Marluxia/Vexen; secondary – Cloud/Leon; tertiary – Demyx/Xigbar, Xemnas/Saïx, Riku/Sora, other
Summary: Should they have gotten a second chance? No. Do they deserve a second chance? Probably not. Will they do better as productive members of society than they did as criminal masterminds? Even they can’t fuck that one up.

Last time on Deae: “I feel really great today,” Saïx said. It was the first time he’d ever said anything of that sort to anyone. Axel and Roxas blinked at each other and pretended to ignore the proceedings.

A glance was exchanged between the other four. Vexen spoke up, hypothesizing, “Do you have your underwear today, Seven?”

Saïx smiled, his lips curving into a feral grin. “No,” he said. “They’re gone. I hope they stay that way. I hate having to wear clothes.”

Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6

Chapter 7 – On Sea Salt Ice Cream and Other Edible Substances

Xigbar wanted to go to the beach. The wind was not favorable for surfing today, but he needled Demyx for a solid hour after they woke up about going anyway, surfing or no surfing.

“We need to find jobs,” Demyx pointed out, brandishing the local paper in front of Xigbar’s face as he chewed on a piece of slightly burnt toast. Xigbar took the paper and tossed it into the recycling bin.

“Not on Saturday. No jobs on Saturday,” he said firmly. He pulled a sheet of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it to reveal a map printout with a group of red markings on it. One of the markings was their flat, and the others were clustered within a six-mile diameter situated on the south side of the city.

Demyx raised an eyebrow and examined the key that Xigbar had scrawled in the margin. “We’re all living around here now?”

“Yeah, dude; I looked everyone up in the phonebook.” Demyx took the paper from him.

“You have Roxas on here,” he pointed out.

“Um, so?”

“Are you sure that’s right?”

“’Course I am. I double-checked the spelling and everything,” Xigbar said coolly, not particularly enjoying having his phone-book-reading capabilities brought into question.

Demyx narrowed his eyes at Xigbar. “Roxas wasn’t dead, Xig.”

Xigbar shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe Axel just stalked Sora down and nagged him until he gave up Thirteen. Once Axel nagged me until I ironed his underwear for him.”

“You ironed Axel’s underwear for him?” Demyx asked incredulously.

“He’s a really good nagger,” Xigbar insisted. Demyx just sighed.

“You know, Xig, sometimes I feel like I don’t even know you.”

“You’re the only one who’s ever seen what’s under my eye patch,” Xigbar countered lightly, taking the map back from Demyx. “I’m going to call some of the guys and see who wants to go to the beach.”

“Fine,” Demyx relented. His finding-work ethic had finally burned out about ten seconds into the conversation.

Within an hour, Xigbar and Demyx were down at the beach with Xaldin and Luxord. The stretch of beach in the downtown area was fairly non-touristy; most of the people around Kismet proper on any given day were natives, and they didn’t care nearly as much about beautiful stretches of golden sand being lapped at by endless blue seas under bright, cloudless skies as one might expect. Thus there were relatively few people out on the shore, and the four former nobodies found themselves with a fairly uninterrupted view of the natural beauty of the islands.

“I don’t understand this ice cream,” Demyx said as they sat down in the sand at the edge of the water and tore open the paper wrappers on the popsicles they’d bought from a street vendor up on the boardwalk. He’d been the first one to taste it, and he was looking at it with abject confusion written all over his face. Xigbar stuffed his wrapper in his pocket and took a bite off of his.

“Tastes kinda like potato chips,” he said after a moment, his eyebrows furrowing as he stared at a passing seagull and let his head drop to the side in deep thought.

Luxord looked like he was enjoying his popsicle immensely. “Tastes like jizz,” he corrected. Xaldin had just taken his first bite of his, and now that same bite came right back out, all over the sand, leaving Xaldin coughing and sputtering.

The other three looked over at him and said, in unison, “Don’t be such a prude, Xaldin.”

“I’m not being a prude!” Xaldin exclaimed, gesturing with the ice cream. “I just don’t want to eat jizz ice cream!”

“It’s kinda good, though,” Xigbar pointed out. “Once you get used to it.”

“Just like jizz,” Luxord added, smirking.

Xaldin screwed up his face and held out the ice cream to the other three. “Somebody else eat it. I’ve lost my appetite.”

Demyx grabbed it as though he were going to have to fight the other two for the privilege and shoved both his popsicle and Xaldin’s into his mouth at the same time. Xaldin shook his head. “The fuck is wrong with these islands, anyway?”

“Dude, this is an import.” Xaldin looked up at Xigbar, about to inform him that Destiny Islands were still culpably fucked up for bothering to import jizz ice cream, but as he did Xigbar gave him a long, steady look, then tilted his head back as he slowly slid nearly the entire length of his popsicle into his mouth. Luxord choked on his ice cream. Xaldin’s jaw dropped. Demyx just gave them both a smug look, watching Xigbar’s talent like it was a completely everyday occurrence. Which, for him, it probably was.

“Xigbar, I’m going to have my revenge, and it will not be fun,” Xaldin muttered at last. His face looked like he’d stuck it in a tanning bed for several hours with no protection, and he was staring determinedly at a spot on the horizon.

“You know who loves this shit?” Luxord said idly, still licking at his popsicle. “Roxas.”

Xaldin flailed at him. “Don’t tell me that!” He seemed to be in genuine distress over the idea. Xaldin had always rather looked at Roxas as something of a younger brother, and he really didn’t want to think about him enjoying things like jizz-flavored ice cream.

“No, seriously, Axel told me he does. He was flipping out because he thought that Rox liked this ice cream more than him. He started crying.”

“When was that?” Demyx asked, his voice taking on the tone of someone discussing a kitten being run over by a steamroller.

“After Roxas left.”

“Doesn’t count,” Xaldin said quickly. “Axel cried over everything after Roxas left. I caught him crying over spilt milk, for fuck’s sake. Started blubbering something about how Roxas used to spill milk.”

Xigbar brandished his popsicle at Xaldin. “Doesn’t change the fact that Rox loves jizz ice cream, though. Axel wouldn’t make something like that up just to cry about it.”

“Well, you know what?” Xaldin countered. “Roxas has an excuse. He doesn’t even know what ejaculate tastes like.”

Demyx took his popsicles out of his mouth long enough to say, “What’s ejaculate?” but was summarily ignored.

“Of course he does!” Xigbar insisted, waving an arm expressively.

“And how would he know that?” Xaldin scoffed.

“Axel!”

“Bullshit!”

Demyx mused, staring at a passing sailboat quite absently, “Maybe he likes the ice cream because it reminds him of Axel.” He was ignored again.

“They were doing it and you know it,” Xigbar insisted. “Did you ever see those two apart for more than like ten minutes at a time?”

“No, but I also never saw them playing footsie at dinner like you and Demyx!”

“Once I accidentally started playing footsie with Axel instead of Xigbar ‘cause they were sitting next to each other. Roxas threw his mashed potatoes at me.” Demyx seemed to be carrying on his own little nostalgic conversation entirely separate from the rest of the group.

Xigbar waved his half-eaten ice cream and said, quite smugly, “Axel never slept in his own room. I put a shadow in his bed one time as a practical joke and he never even noticed. Zex found it a week later when he went in to change the sheets.”

“He could have been sleeping anywhere,” Xaldin countered, crossing his arms defiantly and turning up his nose.

“He was in Roxas’s room!”

“Roxas never walked funny!”

Xigbar and Xaldin were on the verge of leaping up and making their dispute over Roxas’s chastity physical, but Luxord – who was sitting between them and had been watching and listening to the debate in silent amusement – held up a small notebook. He’d pulled it out of his pocket, and now he stood up and flipped it open to a page toward the middle, looking quite pleased with himself.

“If you recall, gentlemen,” he said happily, “we had a betting pool going on this very subject.”

“Oh yeah…” Xigbar said, sitting back down.

Xaldin likewise relaxed a bit. “I remember that.”

“Did we ever find out who won?” Demyx asked, and finally his contribution to the dialogue was acknowledged.

“No,” Luxord replied. “No, we didn’t.” He ran his index finger down the list he had in the notebook, humming thoughtfully. “Let’s see here. The bet was on who could give the most accurate description of their relationship. The pool started approximately… hm, right before the Castle Oblivion clusterfuck.”

The other three crowded around and peered over Luxord’s shoulder to examine the statements and wagers. The statements were as follows:

Superior – Eight and Thirteen are too busy fucking around to get anything done on missions. I don’t care what kind of fucking around it is, but you’d think that they could cut it out long enough to at least do the grocery shopping.

Xigbar – They’ve been going at it like rabbits since a week after Roxas got here. They’re total nymphos.

Xaldin – Roxas doesn’t even know what sex is. And Axel is too stupid to know where to stick it anyway.

Vexen – They’re doing it, but they’re not using protection. I don’t think anyone in this castle is using protection, actually. I thought I told everyone that nobodies can get STDs. Idiots.

Lexaeus – I don’t think it’s any of our business.

Zexion – Yes. The answer is yes.

Saïx – They have sex constantly, but they cry when they do it and talk about their imaginary feelings the whole time. Pussies.

Demyx – I bet they like holding hands a lot. They’re so cute!

Luxord – It’s unrequited. Axel’s not doing his makeup when he spends all that time in the toilet; he’s rubbing one out. Probably crying, too. Pussy.

Marluxia – Axel’s on top. Always.

Larxene – Marluxia is high. Roxas is on top. Definitely.

“Well, how are we going to settle it?” Demyx asked.

They all shared glances and then Luxord said, a slow grin creeping across his face, “Let’s go see them and ask.”

“Field trip!” Demyx exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air excitedly. It was exactly the same thing he used to do every time Xemnas sent him anywhere, even downstairs to grab everyone something to snack on when the Organization’s bi-weekly meetings ran long.

“I’ve got their address,” Xigbar said, pulling his folded-up map out of his pocket and showing them. “Let’s go.”

The four of them all stood, brushing the sand off the backs of their pants and trudging back up towards the boardwalk as they finished off the last of their ice cream. They wandered down the wooden path in the vague direction of the university campus, but just a few minutes later they were stopped by a familiar voice calling out, “Hey, Two, Three, Nine, Ten!” The numbers were intoned and rattled off more like “twothreenineten” though, and that method of collective address was immediately identifiable as belonging to Eight.

They turned as one to find exactly the pair they were looking for staring at them, apparently having just appeared from behind the same cart where they’d bought their ice cream earlier. They both looked rather foreign to the party, but then again the party had looked rather foreign to each other when they met up.

Axel was staring at them with a popsicle in one hand and the other in the pocket of his white cargo pants. He had a tight, faded t-shirt on that said Tenbun Middle School Spelling Bee Champion – it had been Riku’s, but he’d given it to Axel after the third time Axel had asked him if he had something memorized in a single day. His hair was pulled back to keep it off his neck in the day’s muggy heat, and he was wearing the wire-framed glasses that a good chunk of the Organization had only ever considered an unfounded rumor.

Roxas had on a pair of threadbare jeans and a black and white sleeveless hoodie with a fraying heart appliqué stitched onto the left side of the chest, and he was wearing more armbands than were probably strictly necessary. He had his own popsicle sticking out of his mouth – apparently he was so set on not removing it from its place there that he didn’t even feel the need to keep a hand holding the stick.

For a long moment, they all just stood there and stared at each other blankly. The four older men were, if they took the time to analyze their own thoughts, rather shocked at seeing their old cohorts like this. They looked their ages – eighteen and twenty. They looked like college students. They definitely did not look like valuable assets to a borderline evil group set on achieving personal gain by unflinchingly crushing anyone who got in their way. It was rather jarring.

And then Xaldin said, “Roxas, please take that popsicle out of your mouth.”

Roxas gave him a long look, then reached up and removed the ice cream, whether it was because Xaldin had asked him to or just because he needed to in order to say, “What, why?”

“I… just…” Xaldin did not look happy. Luxord, on the other hand, looked more than happy.

“Good bit of luck you’re here,” he said, walking back over to them with the others close behind. “We were just going to come see you.”

“About what?” Axel asked, raising an eyebrow inquisitively at Luxord while he grasped Xigbar and Demyx’s hands in turn and pulled them into one-armed hugs. Roxas still had on his usual painfully apathetic look, but he reached up his arms and received a hug from Xaldin, and that was all the acknowledgement that any of them gave to the fact that they’d last seen each other before they all died or disappeared.

Luxord pulled out the notebook again, opening to the correct page and saying, “All right, we had a betting pool, and everyone either ran off or died before we could rectify it. There’s actually quite a bit of munny tied up in this, and we were hoping you could help us.”

Axel and Roxas glanced at each other, and Axel held out his hand for the book. “Lux, if this is anything like the last time you bet on me, I am not taking off any of my clothes again.”

Roxas’s head flew around so fast it looked like he might lose it. “What?”

Axel scratched the back of his head, glancing down and to the left and looking sheepish. “Well, some of the guys were having a dispute about my natural hair color…” He looked up and saw the way Roxas’s eyes had narrowed and jaw had clenched and quickly added, “It was before you came, and they would’ve just kept bugging me about it!”

“Uh huh.” Roxas still looked like Axel was going to get an earful later, but he just took the notebook from his boyfriend and looked down at the page full of Luxord’s neat, angular manuscript. Axel leaned over his shoulder, reading it silently. As he realized what the bet was, he began to fear that Roxas might try bludgeoning Luxord to death with it, but the blond just calmly and silently perused the page.

To his credit, Luxord looked like he was worried about the same possibility, and the other three seemed like they were ready to bolt at a moment’s notice if Roxas decided to get, as a lot of them called it out of Thirteen’s earshot, menstrual on them.

Finally Roxas turned to Axel and murmured something so low that the four who actually had stakes in the bet couldn’t make out any of it. Axel bobbed his head ambivalently, pointing to something in the notebook and replying in a voice just as low and inaudible. A bit more discussion and they both straightened up. Roxas turned to Luxord and held the notebook out to him.

“Demyx and Lex split the pot,” Axel said. Demyx squeaked excitedly.

Xaldin looked over at the page and said flatly, “It’s none of our business and you like holding hands and are so cute.”

“You got it,” Roxas said, twining his fingers with Axel’s as he took a bite of his ice cream. Demyx watched this, covering his mouth with both hands and bouncing on the balls of his feet.

“That’s so cute!” he exclaimed, earning grins from both parties in question.

Xigbar pursed his lips like he didn’t really want to say anything, but then he said it anyway. “That, ah… doesn’t really address the core issue…”

“‘Course it doesn’t,” Axel replied between bites of his ice cream. A silence that seemed to teeter on the edge between comfortable and awkward came over the group again. Roxas went back to sucking on his popsicle, and he didn’t seem to notice that he’d slid rather a lot of its length into his mouth. Ironically, all eyes except Axel’s seemed to be on the action; Axel was too busy watching someone on the beach trying to wrestle a frisbee away from their dog.

This was what caused Xaldin to blurt out, “Roxas, do you know what that ice cream tastes like?”

Roxas’s attention suddenly seemed to fly back to the rekindled conversation and he removed the popsicle from his mouth. “Sea salt?”

“No! Well… yes, but… no!”

Roxas blinked slowly. Axel turned to Xaldin and gave him an odd look; he wasn’t used to not being the one acting strangely in this sort of company. “This is sea salt ice cream,” Roxas said after a moment, his voice a rather confused sort of monotone. “We came down here specifically to get sea salt ice cream.”

Luxord smirked. “What he’s trying to say is that while it is sea salt ice cream, it tastes like something else.”

Roxas and Axel both stared at him and then at their respective popsicles, until Xigbar supplied, “Jizz. It tastes like jizz.”

It took a long moment for either Axel or Roxas to respond. Then Axel was overcome by the sort of newly-comprehending look common amongst people who’ve just had general relativity broken down into terms of a bowling ball on a plastic tarp.

“Oh my god,” Roxas breathed. “Oh my god.” His face was turning red rather quickly and his already large blue eyes were about as wide as they could have gotten without actually falling out of his head. For a long moment, it looked like he was going to react like Xaldin had to this news, but then suddenly he turned on his heel, practically running back over to the ice cream vendor. He slammed down some munny on the top of the cart, and just moments later he was back.

He’d wolfed down the last of his own ice cream but was now holding a bag with two whole boxes in it. He grabbed hold of Axel’s hand. “We have to go,” he said, his voice deadly serious. “We’ve got to be at home right now.” And he pushed through the group of his friends, dragging Axel behind him as the redhead practically squeaked with surprise. He stumbled along after Roxas, turning and waving at the other four with the hand still holding the popsicle as he was pulled off down the boardwalk.

“See you guys around!” he called back at them, and they all waved.

“Well,” Luxord said. “If they weren’t doing it before, they are now.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Roxas was fully fixated on dragging Axel back to campus as quickly as possible, and not just because on a day like today the ice cream he was carrying wouldn’t last long without refrigeration. He didn’t even notice as they passed a couple more familiar figures just a few yards down the boardwalk, but Axel did and he waved to them as well as he was pulled past.

Leon gave him a curt nod by way of acknowledgement, but if Cloud even noticed them behind his dark sunglasses, he didn’t give any outward sign. They’d followed Xaldin and Luxord today, and they’d been doing so since yesterday. Already they’d learned to be surprised when Luxord left the house without his cat; at first they’d thought maybe it was a sign that something was up, but then, of course, they got to the beach and realized why the cat had stayed home.

So they’d followed them, looking rather conspicuous at the waterfront in their unseasonable dress, but they still hadn’t been noticed by their marks; they were rapidly beginning to suspect that every member of the Organization was as thick as a brick and twice as dense.

“I want to go swimming,” Cloud said between working away at his light blue popsicle.

“We’re not here to swim,” Leon replied. “We’re here to make sure they’re not up to something.”

“They’re swimming,” Cloud pointed out. And they were; upon getting their bet settled, Xigbar, Xaldin, Luxord, and Demyx had apparently been left with nothing else to do, so they’d just walked back down across the sand. Except for Demyx, who’d run down across the sand and thrown himself into the water with reckless abandon and without bothering to take off his t-shirt or sandals.

“We’re not here to swim,” Leon repeated insistently.

Cloud was silent for a minute. They just stood there and intently watched like all of a sudden the four thirteenths of the Organization who were fooling around in the surf were going to put their shoes back on and start ripping people’s hearts out. Finally the blond stopped sucking on his ice cream again and said, “Kairi took Yuffie swimming.”

Leon tilted his head back and to the side just slightly, pursing his lips. “Yuffie’s here on vacation.”

That got a slight, almost inaudible grumble. “Why don’t we get a vacation?”

“Because we’re not teenage girls.”

The silence that Cloud slipped into was distinctly different this time. He was staring at Leon behind his opaque lenses, and somehow Leon knew this. “What?” he exclaimed at last.

“You had me put on that schoolgirl uniform that one time.”

Leon’s face didn’t change except in that it became significantly more red. “That’s… not the point.”

“I want to go on vacation with you,” Cloud said with an air of finality.

“We don’t have the time,” Leon muttered.

“We took time to come here and keep an eye on these morons.”

“They’re the Organization. They’re the reason we’re even on a Restoration Committee.”

“They’re burying each other in sand.”

Leon couldn’t argue with that. They were burying each other in sand. “We’ll follow some of the other ones tomorrow,” he said at last.

“And we’ll go swimming tonight.”

“Maybe.”

Cloud knew what Leon meant when he said maybe. He meant maybe, unless he was saying it to Cloud, in which case he meant anything you say, Dear. One corner of his mouth tugged back in the slightest of smiles as he took a bite off his rapidly-melting popsicle. “You know something?”

“Do I want to?”

“These things really do taste li—”

“I don’t want to. But thanks for sharing.”

A hand was extended, offering Leon a taste of the ice cream. “C’mon, try it.”

He pushed Cloud’s hand away. “I have tried it.”

“No, you haven’t! I asked you if you wanted one and you said no, and I’ve been standing next to you the whole time.”

Leon turned and gave Cloud a long, dry look. “If I’ve eaten strawberries, I don’t have to have strawberry ice cream to find out what it tastes like.”

“…Oh.”

Full stop.

Next time on Deae: Anyone could have told them that there was only one way to resolve this situation. It was totally obvious, and both Vexen and Marluxia knew it. They both decided to go for it at the same moment.

Chapter 8