Sip your tequila, give me some time

[fireintwilight]

Who: Axel, Xehanort
When: Thursday evening
Where: The Lux nightclub
Summary: Xehanort drops by for a nice chat!
Warnings: Nooone so far

Comments

[caliginose]

The environment was nothing new; the vitality, the same as ever. Bodies undulated against one another, each participant absorbed in their own little world, blissfully ignorant of the old man in the long dark coat that slipped inside and mingled among them. They moved aside without really thinking, without really noticing - once or twice he received a backwards glance, but their eyes flicked away quickly, the man or woman falling back into more familiar, safer patterns than to take the time to wonder what that dark shadow had been.

It was just as well. Xehanort had business to attend to. It lingered somewhere in the building, a little pocket of darkness that graced the very edge of his senses.

But how rude it would be to sniff him out.

Rather than turn immediately after entering to face the person he sought to meet, Xehanort simply continued forward, slightly bent, arms tucked against the small of his back. A booth near the bar offered an excellent place to sit and wait, his hands folded on the table.

[fireintwilight]

He was watching when Xehanort slipped in, one moment not there and the next there, much like a shadow himself. Even for someone like him, it was unexpected. The old man never had said when he would come, only that he would come. Crafty of him, in retrospect. Axel didn't react--he knew better than that, didn't he?--but tracked him longer than he had anyone else who had entered the club that night. An unassuming old man he'd only seen over NV before that night, his hands folded behind his back, making his way past the writhing tangle of bodies to a seat at the bar, incongruous and yet still dignified. It was good. It was really good.

But he still had a quarter hour of a shift to attend to, and the old man had kept him waiting long enough, hadn't he? Axel was never above returning such favors. He turned his attention back to his job until someone came to take his place for the length of his break, always aware of the deceptive figure at the bar. How deceptive was the question. Impossible to tell yet what he knew

[caliginose]

For his part, Xehanort finished off his glass - water, of course; spirits were not kind to him - and set it back onto the countertop before he turned slightly, offering a polite smile in greeting. "Yes. And you were...let me see." He paused, eyes lifting slightly as though in thought. "A-x-e-l. Axel."

Another pause, during which he regarded the man up close. "We have a similar taste in fashion, I see."

The greatest of understatements. Axel reeked of darkness, for all his human appearance, the air around his exposed face and hands tainted with it. Like Vanitas when he removed his helmet, like the open wound in Ventus' heart when Xehanort first removed what became his alter ego. Like, and yet...a little unlike.

Fascinating.

[fireintwilight]

He always did enjoy having the spelling of his name parroted back to him. "That was it. Thanks for memorizing it."

His eyes touched briefly on the glass Xehanort set down, and then over the black coat. It had been difficult to see it at a distance and in the ever-changing lights, but yes, it was a dead ringer for an Organization coat, the replica of the one he wore himself. Deliberately chosen? Guileless, Axel returned the smile.

"That makes three things we have in common. Fashion, worlds and an interest in the heart." Catching the bartender's eye, Axel motioned for his usual. "Can I buy you a drink? I did promise."